Cultural Anthropology Social Organization

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Essex County College *

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ANT-101

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Anthropology

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Oct 30, 2023

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pptx

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Cultural Anthropology Social Organization Part 1 Dr. Solomon Caudle

 Assignment 1 – Due Wednesday, February 5  View the eight-minute video from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Anthropology Department titled "Doing Anthropology: Thoughts on Fieldwork from Three Research Sites" ( http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/315-doing-anthropology/ ).  Introductory textbooks in anthropology use a lot of examples from what are often geographically (and culturally) distant places to give students a sense of the range of human diversity. These ethnographers, however, are doing work here "at home" in the United States. Are you surprised to learn that many anthropologists do not need to travel far to do their research? How does the work that you see in this video influence your understanding of the nature of ethnographic fieldwork and relevancy of cultural anthropology to your life?  Having seen how these three projects took shape and the kinds of questions that the ethnographers asked to learn about the subjects of interest to them, think about what is happening in your community that interests you. Write a couple of paragraphs about the project that you would do if you were going to do an ethnography nearby. Who would you want to work with? Why? What topics would shape your plan for the project? What kinds of questions would you want or need to ask in order to learn about what is going on in the life and work of those with whom you chose to work?

What is a Social Organization  Anthropologists, together with other social scientists, have developed a set of analytical concepts that help describe and explain the orderly interdependence of human life in society. In particular they have noted that people who interact in society do not as unique individuals but as incumbents of publicly recognized social positions.

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Status  Status is a term that is used often in sociology. It is a very broad word that refers to one's position in a social system. Status refers to what a person is, such as child, parent, pupil, playmate, etc. Individuals usually have multiple statuses assigned to them at any given time. Status is important sociologically because it comes with a set of rights, obligations, behaviors, and duties that people of certain positions are expected to perform.

Two Types of Status  An achieved status is one that is acquired on the basis of merit; it is a position that is earned or chosen and reflects a person's skills, abilities, and efforts. Being a professional athlete, for example, is an achieved status, as is being a lawyer, college professor, or criminal.  An ascribed status is one that is beyond an individual's control. It is not earned, but rather something people are either born with or had no control over.  Examples of ascribed status include sex and race. Children usually have more ascribed statuses than adults since they do not usually have a choice in most matters. A family's social status or socioeconomic status, for instance, would be an achieved status for adults, but an ascribed status for children.  Homelessness might also be another example. For adults, homelessness usually comes by way of achieving, or rather not achieving, something. For children, however, homelessness is not something they have any control over. They become as such by default of their parents' actions.

Types of Societies  Egalitarian societies where all members (or component groups) enjoy roughly the same degree of wealth, power and prestige.  Stratified societies where some members (or component groups) have greater (and often permanent ) access to some or all of wealth, power and prestige.

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Castle and Class  Caste societies as stratified societies in which membership in a particular ranked subgroup is ascribed at birth and in which social mobility, or movement by individuals out of the subgroup in which they were born, is not allowed.  Social Class describes ranked subgroups in a stratified society whose members are differentiated from one another primarily in economic terms, either on the basis of income level or as Karl Marx proposed, on the basis of the kind of property owned by members of different classes. (the have and have nots)

Race and Ethnicity  Racial categories are culturally constructed on the basis of superficial appearances, however, different societies may draw the boundaries around racially defined social groups in different ways.  Ethnic Groups distinguish one group from another based on attributes defining group membership share culture in nature: shared language, shared religion, shared customs, shared history).

Gender and Sexuality  Gender referred to the culturally constructed roles assigned to males or females, which varied considerably from society to society.  Sexuality refers to the ways in which people experience and value physical desire and pleasure in the context of sexual intercourse.  Contemporary anthropology acknowledges the many ways in which sexual desires and pleasures have been shaped historically by culture, social and political structures of the larger societies in which people live.  Same sex sexual practices and (third gender or two spirit) has become highly controversial as it challenges western views on sexuality.

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