Delivering Unit 02 - AQA

50 Pages·2013·0.71 MB·English

Teacher Support Meeting

A Level Anthropolopy

Preparing to Teach
Summer 2010

Delivering Unit 2

Version 1.0
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Contents

Unit 2: Becoming a Person PowerPoint Slides p 04

Suggested Approaches and Sources p 07

Scheme of Work p 22

Ethnography p 27

Examples of Personhood p 26

The Development of Western Individualist p 28
Concepts of Personhood

Anthropology of Personhood p 37

Activity: Personhood Storyboard p 38

Personhood Storyboard: Rituals Surrounding Death p 39

Unit 2: Rituals PowerPoint Slides p 40

The Nacirema p 44

Unit 2: Cyborgs PowerPoint Slides p 46
Unit 2 Becoming a Person:
Identity & Belonging
• Building on Unit 1. What does it mean to be
human?
• Focus of Unit 2: understanding the
processesinvolved with becoming a
person and developingan identity
• Different aspects of personhood, identity
and belonginginterrelate.
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Unit 2
Personhood
• Understanding what personhood means here in
the UK (not the same for everyone)
• DDiiffffeerreenntt pprroocceesssseessiinnvoollveedd wiitthh ddeeveellooppiinngg
personhood
• Contrasting characteristics of personhood
• How personhood informs culture and social
relations.
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Unit 2
Becoming a person
• Understanding the complexity of rituals;
definitions, functions and characteristics
• Gender and sexuality; as a social construct,
contrasting patterns of gender in different
cultures
• Creating an identity; both given and made by
the individual
• The creation of the ‘self’ in relation to use of
place, history, language, symbols and totems.
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4
1
Unit 2
Drawing boundaries and defining groups
• How and why boundaries are drawn, reification of
cultural notions of personhood and identity
•• EEtthhnniicc aanndd rreelliiggiioouuss bboouunnddaarriieess;; aa wwaayy ooff
defining a group as different to other groups
• Violence as a result of boundaries, both on the
small scale and large
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Unit 2
Drawing boundaries and defining groups
• Alternative identities, who has access to them ?
• Critical assessment of representation of
aalltteerrnnaattiivvee iiddeennttiittiieess ee.gg. AAvvaattaarr
• Animal /spirit boundaries and patterns, how do
humans interact with animals? Cross cultural
patterns.
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Unit 2 Outline of Work
1. Introduction & Personhood(2 weeks)
2. Becoming a person
(i) Rites of passage (2 weeks)
(ii) Gender and sexuality (2 weeks)
((iii))Creatingg an identityy ((3 weeks))
3. Drawing boundaries and defining groups
(i) How boundaries are drawn (1week)
(ii) Groups and exclusion, discrimination and domination (3
weeks)
(iii)The drawing of boundaries between humans and other
entities (2 weeks)
(Total 15 weeks)
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5
2
Planning lessons
• Encouraging students to question their own
assumptions/experiences
• All cultures should be treated as equal –not for their
‘exotic’ otherness
• Using ethnographic studies imaginatively –old and
new
• Revisit the same ethnography/article drawing out
different concepts/issues/theories
• Link to theory where possible
• Fun! Role play, story boards, learner led research
• Drawing out links to other areas of the specification.
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Example of a lesson plan: boundaries
• Ask students to do regular fieldwork
• Visit a public/workspace
• Think about how boundaries are drawn
• DDrraaww tthhee ssppaaccee//wwoorrkkssppaaccee
• Apply some anthropology!
• You might want to do the same activity with
fences…
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6
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ANTHROPOLOGY AS UNIT 2
SUGGESTED APPROACH & SOURCES
3.2.1 Personhood
• Alternative concepts of personhood, seen historically and cross-culturally.
Key concepts:
personhood, social construct, identity, name, norms, cultural representation, ascribed
status, self realization, stratification, reincarnation, Hinduism, sociocentric, spiritual
mediums, dualism, kin, kinship, endogamy/exogamy, anthropomorphism, identity,
classification, animism, relational, Buddhism, ‘dividuals’, embodiment, habitus
This part of the specimen requires candidates to become aware of the socially constructed
nature of personhood. It requires the realisation that our own individual sense of who we are
is very much particular to our geographical location as well as the time that we live in. In
order to be able to draw out the characteristics of our Western Notion of personhood, it is
important to compare local forms of personhood with examples of personhood from other
places and times. As well as this, it is important for candidates to realise that there are
different processes involved with developing personhood; these can take different amounts of
time and vary from place to place and in different times.
A good beginning point is to ask the students to think about the following questions:
1. When do we become a ‘person’? (In many societies for example, children, those
without children of their own or outsiders, slaves etc. are not considered fully to be
persons.)
2. What is a person? (What is a person made of? In many societies children are thought
to inherit from both father and mother but what they inherit varies. For example, in
some places children are thought to inherit bone from their fathers and flesh from their
mothers. These conceptions of what, literally constitutes a person often reflect social
structures, relate to marriage systems and are symbolized in ritual.)
3. When do we cease to be a ‘person’? (Death is in many societies not the end of life but
the start of a different form of generally social existence.)
4. What does being a person mean to the individuals and to others around them?
5. Are there stages to becoming a person and if so how do we reach/pass these stages?
6. Is the experience of being a person the same everywhere?
7. Has being a person meant the same thing in the past as it does today?
Next students need to become aware of different conceptions of personhood, either through
their own research or through guided readings. The following examples are a good starting
point:

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1. The Hindu conception of the self
2. African conceptions of the self
3. Melanesian conceptions of the self

Suggested resources
On African/Melanesian concepts see, for example,
Lambek, M. & A. Strathern eds. 1998. Bodies and Persons: comparative perspectives from
Africa and Melanesia, Cambridge: CUP.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1994. “Structures, Habitus, Power: Basis for a Theory of Symbolic Power”.
In Culture/Power/History. Nicholas B. Dirks, et al., eds. Pp. 155-199. Princeton NJ: Princeton
University Press.

Eriksen, T.H. 1998. Small Places, Large Issues: an introduction to social and cultural
anthropology, London: Pluto Press. Useful chapter 3 ‘The Social Human’.
Jackson, M. 2006. ‘Knowledge of the body’ in Moore, H. & T. Sanders eds. Anthropology in
Theory: Issues in Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 322-335. (from a more
phenomenological perspective covering among other things initiation rites in Sierra Leone.
Martin, E. 2006. ‘The end of the body?’ in Moore, H. & T. Sanders eds. Anthropology in
Theory: Issues in Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 336-351.
Carsten, J. 1995. ‘The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding,
Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi’ American Ethnologist, Vol.
22, No. 2 pp. 223-241.
This article describes how, for some Malays, feeding (in the sense of receiving as well as
giving nourishment) is a vital component in the long process of becoming a person and
participating fully in social relations. The process begins with conception and birth; it
continues through feeding and through growing and living together in the house; it involves
marriage and the birth of new children; and it is only in a limited sense completed when adult
men and women become grandparents. For these Malays kinship itself is a process of
becoming.
Students should be able to:
• Start to consider the ways in which the above cross cultural concepts of personhood
differ from each other.
• Differentiate between the types of personhood above. Consider differences and
similarities.
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3.2.1 Personhood
• The relational concept of personhood contrasted with the philosophical and
psychological concepts common to western society.
Key concepts:
personhood, enlightenment, dualism, binary logic, rational thought, autonomous
individuals, empirical knowledge, Cartesian dualism, sociocentric, names, social
contruct, egocentric, materialistic, rationalistic, individual, ‘separable’, detached, class,
non-person, boundaries of personhood, animism, classification, the body,
commodification of body parts
Now that students are familiar with a range of contrasting notions of personhood, they are
able to draw out the differences between individualistic notions of personhood and relational
concepts of personhood. Students need to become aware of the ways in which these
differences inform culture and social relations. By the end of this section, students should be
able to discuss similarities and between types of personhood found cross-culturally (see
handout – overview grid of personhood).
1. Go back to the questions and answers that we started personhood with, discuss how
the examples have challenged the students notion of personhood as universal.
2. Using cross cultural examples of personhood, ask the students (in groups) to come up
with five characteristics of English personhood (indeed – is it agreed/the same for
everyone).
3. Next, ask students to think about if this has always been this way or if personhood has
developed more recently.
4. Tutor to draw out the socially constructed/culturally specific nature of personhood
5. Using the worksheet work through the development of western individualism. Ensure
students are able to write a summary of the characteristics of western individualism
incorporating relevant key concepts.
6. Begin to consider problems with the boundaries of western individualism, for example
is someone a person when they are on life support?
7. Evaluate western views of personhood by using the example of Ojibwa Indians whose
notion of personhood does not fit a normative western classification system. What
problem does this highlight in regard to anthropological attempts to understand other
cultures?
A good consolidation activity for this section on personhood is to get the students to complete
a story board (see associated handout) demonstrating the contrasting types of personhood, to
show that they understand the key differences/similarities.

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Conklin, B. & L. Morgan, 1996. ‘Babies, Bodies, and the Production of Personhood in North
America and a Native Amazonian Society’ Ethos, Vol. 24, No. 4 pp. 657-694. This is a
comparative study of personhood in the USA and among the Wari of Brazil. Also includes a
brief overview of western concepts of the person, the individual etc. vs. a relational
personhood as found in non-western societies.
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