Bands

Tribes

Chiefdoms

States

-Egalitarian social structure - equal access within age and gender

-equal access to status mechanisms

-no single authority

-leadership is formal

-no separate identifiable political institution

-all aspects of social life are kin OR family based

-found among foraging societies

-Size 10-50

-foraging bands believe to be earliest form of societal organization

Similar to bands in their forms of leadership

-egalitarian

-do not have a single leader with authority

-leaders generally do not have coercive power

- leaders rely on persuasive power

-headman or big man (leadership depends on ability to organize others, for example, a feast)

-political institutions are indistinct

-correlate to horticultural and pastoral food procurement strategies

-larger populations (what size?)

-property ownership in hands of lineages and clans

-kinship based societal relations

sodalities - group whose membership is based on common interest rather than on kinship affiliation or residence group

-age sets?

-hereditary office of the chief

(authority is held by the person who holds this office)

(chief also has prestige [ascribed] which is also associated with the chiefs family)

-2 level stratification

-not available to everyone, thus not egalitarian

-office demands tribute to be paid

(often in the form of surplus)

(surplus is redistributed [redistribution economic system])

-most recent form of organization to emerge

-constitute themselves legally

(laws that are administered by the states)

(specific people are authorized and empowered to enforce the laws)

-political and economic stratification

-wealth is not equally distributed

-specialization at every level

-food procurement strategies - intensive agriculture with large surplus

-merchant class part of extensive market system of distribution

-associated with the rise of cities

-nation-state (shares both)

(nation - group that has a symbolic identity based on geography, culture, history, religion, etc.)

(state - designates a type of political structure)

Came up with a different approach to classifying societies based on their organization

Four types (focus is on equality and inequality)

-egalitarian

-rank societies

-stratified societies

-stratified state societies

if classifying societies based on organization:

-equal access to prestige, wealth and power

-Ex: foraging bands

when focusing on equality and inequality:

-individuals gain wealth and prestige through persuasive power, thus, inequities

EX: most tribes and chiefdoms

when the focus is on equality and inequality:

-unequal access to resources, societies based on inequity

when focus is on equality and inequality:

-have institutions in which coercive power and authority are determined

-social stratification - inequity between groups based on wealth, power, and prestige

-class - group of people with similar relationship to these mechanisms

-disorder occurs when people deviate from accepted norms and rules of a society

-social control - social mechanisms for ensuring that people behave murder

-informal means - bands and tribes (ex social pressures, ridicule, gossip, ostracism)

-formal means - chiefdoms and states (laws - cultural rules backed up by sanctions; often found in religious value systems)

-war and peace (conflict between groups)*

create a community - belong to a group of others, social rules outside what raised. can be:

-integrative

~cohesive and supportive functions*

~revitalization and euphoria - makes feel good less anxious, gives us answers to things hard to answer, helps us cope in difficult times - something to fall back on

-validating

~education and discipline - if you can get people to accept that rules of social norms come from higher power, its hard to argue against them. also if you break them - bad things will happen (often make rules on things people agree with already - codify in the belief system and add power)

~ecological - ex in india make it a religious rule not to eat cows because cows are actually good for the environment. killing them for food is less beneficial to society than keeping them alive - so codify in belief to benefit

-explanatory

~big one - explain the unexplainable - what happens if we die - why do good things happen to bad people and bad to good, etc. 

types of beliefs - supernatural beings.

Gods.

Polytheistic - more than one god

Monotheistic souls - only one. 

christian religion - says monotheistic but takes on some polytheistic forms (father, son, holy ghost)

inhabiting the body - first originated as a way to explain dreams - personification of self doing things

ex - latin america disease "susto" associated with the soul - believe that soul was scared out of them - anxious not themselves, treatment is to find a way to restore the soul to that person

Shaman vs. Priest

(Supernatural Practitioners)

Shaman - most common, part-time practitioners, supernaturally chosen mediator between the natural and supernatural realms, minister to physical and mental well-being of a community, do more healing, believed to be able to tap into supernatural world

Priests - other terms, chaplain, pastor, etc.; specialized full-time practitioners, must learn to be intermediary, help you communicate or interpret supernatural for you, chapels/churches-last rites

-formalized behavior that brings people together. Structured, patterned

-regularly repeated

-symbolic content

-form social bonds (ring, white dress)

-have participants including audience

-focus on the individual (as opposed to groups) [kinalda]

-mark culturally defined biological and social phases

-mark changes in status and roles (child-woman in tribe; marriage can have sex/children)

-phases

~separation

~liminality (transition)

~(re)incorporation - accepted as new status

-in us adulthood = when we move out

-wedding - separation = engagement/fiance terms, liminality = ability to get gifts etc. expected to participate in family functions/(re)incorporation = couple presented with new status

-focus on group (football)

-reinforce

~group solidarity

~values of a culture

~social and political - relations within the group

-us = 2 groups - what team you want to win - who has the tv to watch on/competition

-arise during periods of perceived crisis (belief system change)

-charismatic leader - often has communicated with a deity or has had a personal encounter with the supernatural (ex - islam - mohammed/christianity - jesus/ghost dance - laboka/buds on trees don't just bloom -> ritual (white people go away, they didn't)

shirt - protect you from bullets -> invalidated

-social distress - seek to adjust current social and belief systems to accommodate changing circumstances

expressive arts. 

What is art?

-something not represented in its literal shape, sound, color, movement, or feeling

-communicates in metaphors or symbols

-found in every society 

-provides emotional gratification and contributes to social well-being

-reflects and shapes values, beliefs, and ideological themes

-upper paleolithic (40,000-12,000 BP)

~areas of france and spain

~parietal art - executed on permanent features

~mobile art - can be moved or carried

~highly sophisticated technology

~do not know why they produced these art forms

~horse - voglehard cave (ger)

-not universal

-euro-american definition - art as opposed to non art -exclude designs, stories, artifacts that have a definite use in day to day subsistence activities and produced for practical purposes or for commercial use (ex. carpenters vs. wood sculptors) art establishment

~all cultures distinguish between satisfactory and less satisfactory aesthetic experiences

~anthropologists generally regard skilled wood carvers as artists

-most artwork fashioned in the image of preexisting forms

-complete originality is not strived for in most cultures

-does not mean that expressions do not change

-western art establishment is unique

~emphasis on formal originality

~de-emphasis on tradition

~artists as lonely, struggle in pottery

-inseparable

-found at all levels

~individual - magic songs - great plains

~communal - gravestone, singing, dancing at funerals

~ecclesiastical - altars, temples, priestly vestments

-impose human meaning on an indifferent world

-state sponsored art - politically conservative

-skills of artist used for political control

-church and state greatest patrons of the arts until the past few hundred years

-capitalism

~wealthy individuals replaced church and state as patrons of the arts

-display power of individual

-storytelling

-music

~ethnomusicology*

-dance

Cultural Change and Survival

Sources of Cultural Change

-internal (10%)

~innovations

~inventions

-External (90%)

~diffusion (sushi at uconn)

~acculturation

+westernization

-in our society, change is seen as a good thing

~enculturated - taught culture as you grow up

~acculturation- change that occurs when 2 societies come in contact with one another

~assimilation - lose previous aspects

-study

~the archaeological records

~historical records

~life histories

~longitudinal ethnographic research studies (restudies)-go back

-barriers to change - dogma/way of being linked to supernatural power

~structural barriers

~social and psychological barriers

-stimulants to change

~desire for economic gain

-the advancement of one culture at the expense of another

-modern technologies (the media)

~homogenizing effect

+homogenization among the elites (those who can afford what the west has

~means to retain old and create new communities

+Andersons idea of imagined communities**

-contemporary global culture driven by flows of people, technology, finance, info, and ideology

-tribal peoples participate in the culture

-people live multi locally

-post modern-a breaking down of traditional standards, contrasts, groups, boundaries, and identities

-creating new

-affects the groups we study and how we study them

-migrations studies, multi-sited research

-some embrace change (streets, houses, etc.)

-others were not (discouraging people with Kayapo)

-different villages response to the contact

~1 organized circular with mens in center

~2nd had streets and brick houses - men didn't sleep in men's huts

-technologies both=firearms, motorboats, airplanes, cameras?

~traditional - use plane to see if people on land and guard posts

~other one - plans to visit cities and government

-chiefs son and nephew - put on westner garb to deal with brazilians inside village return to body paints

-traditional village - tape recorder

-wasn't until the 80s that they had identity of Kayapo (as opposed to brazilians)

-stress things they had in common (name ceremony)