Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

335 Pages·2010·60.39 MB·English

by  Merryl Wyn Davies

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
What is Anthropology?
What is “Primitive”?
Studying People
Anthropology’s Big Problem
The Other
The Changing Problem
The Origins of Anthropology
The Founding Fathers
The Hidden Agenda
The Age of Reconnaissance
“Fidelity to the Old”
The Question of Human Rights
The Jesuit Relations
Major Trends in Western Thought
The Continuity of Tradition
The Derived Minor Trends
Imperialism
The Complicity of Anthropology
Violations of Ethics
Back to the Roots
The Indispensable Primitive
Speculating on the Invention
What Came First?
Living Relics
Seen from the Armchair
Theories of Evolutionism
Integrating the Biological and Social
The Theory of Diffusionism
The Race Swindle
Field Studies
The Anthropological Tree
Physical Anthropology
Polygenesis vs. Monogenesis
Human Ecology and Genetics
The Rise of Sociobiology
A Refocus of Race in Gene Theory
Other Links with Early Anthropology
Archaeology and Material Culture
Anthropological Linguistics
Social or Cultural Anthropology
What is Culture?
Increasing Specializations
The Bedrock of Ethnography
Writing the Exotic
Franz Boas
Bronislaw Malinowski
Fieldwork
Human Ecology in Fieldwork
Ecological Anthropology
The Question of Economy
The Potlatch Ceremony
The “Big Men” of New Guinea
The Kula Exchange
Economic Anthropology
Exchange and Trading Networks
The Formalist-Substantivist Debate
Marxist Anthropology
Marxism’s Evolutionary View
The Household Unit
The Forms of Family
The Marriage Links
Marriage Contract Payments
The Study of Kinship
Kinship Codes
Classificatory Kinship
Fictive Kinship
Descent Theory
Marriage and Residence Rules
The Idiom of Kinship
What’s the “Use” of Kinship?
Alliance Theory and Incest Taboo
Structures in Mind
Forms of Elementary Structures
Does Alliance Theory Work?
Politics and Law
Further Examples …
The Terminological Approach
Political Anthropology
Age Grade Societies
Synchronic vs. Diachronic Views
Other Social Stratifications
Transacting Identity
Problems of Ethnicity
Colonialism
Anti-capitalist Anthropology
Anthropology of Law
Mechanisms for Resolving Disputes
Religion
Shamanism and Cargo Cults
Sacred and Profane
The Anthropology of Magic
The Debate on Belief
Examining Ritual
Rites of Passage
The Study of Myth
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Binary Oppositions and Structure
Symbols and Communication
Symbols and the Social Process
Actor, Message and Code
Symbolism and New Perspectives
Anthropology of Art
Visual Anthropology
Disappearing World
A New Branch or an Old Root?
Writing Up the Field
Writing in the Present
Auto-Anthropology
The Dual/Duel of Tepoztlan
Tepoztlan Revisited
Is Anthropology a Science?
A Pretended Science
The Indians are Off the Reservation
Who Speaks for the Indian?
White Man as God
The Myth of Authority
Event Horizon
Self-critical Anthropology
A Hero of Anthropology
The Fall of the Mead Myth
Observers Observed
Feet of Clay
The Issue of Self-projection
Writing Culture and Postmodernism
Postmodern Paralysis
Women in Anthropology
Kinship Ties of Anthropologists
The Field Helpmate
Feminist Anthropology
Situating Feminist Anthropology
The Virgin People
The Yanomamo Scandal
Creating Civil War
Whither Anthropology?
Further Reading
About the Author and Artist
Acknowledgements
Other Introducing Books …
Index

Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39-41 North Road, London N7 9DP
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ISBN: 978-184831-168-8
Text copyright © 2013 Icon Books Ltd Merryl Wyn-Davis Illustrations copyright © 2013 Icon Books Ltd
The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights Originating editor: Richard Appignanesi No part of
this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher.
What is Anthropology?
The word “anthropology” derives from the Greek and literally means “the study
of man” or “the science of man”. But the “man” of anthropology was a special
kind of “man”.
HISTORICALLY, ANTHROPOLOGY WAS THE “STUDY OF PRIMITIVE MAN”. I AM ANAZASI. THEY CALLED ME A PRIMITIVE MAN.
What is “Primitive”?
In The Mind of Primitive Man (1938), Franz Boas (1858–1942), founder of
American Cultural Anthropology, told us just who are the primitives.
PRIMITIVE ARE THOSE PEOPLE WHOSE FORMS OF LIFE ARE SIMPLE AND UNIFORM, AND THE CONTENTS AND FORM OF WHOSE CULTURE ARE MEAGRE AND
INTELLECTUALLY INCONSISTENT. A BETTER DEFINITION OF THE SUBJECT IS THE STANDARD ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOKE – “THE STUDY OF MAN EMBRACING WOMAN”.