Anthro notes

Week 1:
Lecture 1 : What is anthropology
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The study of human beings, what does it mean to be human?

Biological anthropology animals
Archaelology study of buildings and prehistoric times
Ethonomusicology music and society, as a form of expression
Social anthropology
Applied anthropology

Perspectives- making what seems strange seem familiar and making what seems
familiar seem strange.
Lecture 2
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What do anthropologists do?: In anthropology, or anyway social anthropology,

what the practiccioners do is ethnography.
What is ethnography? Means nation + culture . It literall means, writing or
inscription of a way of life or the description of the way of life of a people

Three meanings in anthropology

-Ethnography as process: approach to the study of culture, involves fieldwork and
ethnographic methods such as participant observation
-Basic elements of fieldwork: Long term fieldwork, language competence and
participant observation. Such as living with people and experiencing everyday lives
-Ethnography as Product Description of a culture or way of life, written and
visual
-Ethnography as a set of commitments To be in the presence of the people one is
studying, not just the texts or objects they produce. Commitment of investigation,
allowing an understanding of daiuly life and not nust what is performed for the
ethnographer
Week 2:
Lecture 1:
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Encounters with cultural difference are a critical part of all human experience
Cultural differences include, obvious public activities, mundane details of
daily life
Encounters with cultural difference involves comparison, which is always
from a particular perspective
Long term encounters with cultural difference correct simple ideas about
social evolution

Lecture 2:
Culture
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The anthropological concept of culture, making culture visable

Anthropological words
-Ethnography
-Liminality
-Polyandry
Everyday meanings of culture
-Culture as a characteristic of a people
-Culture as high culture or civilization
Culture as a way of life
Contemporary English
-Culture as breeding of plants or animals
-culture as development of microscopic organisms
-Culture referring to high culture
-Anthropological use of culture is a democratisation of elitist use of culture
-Development through learning as something that all human beings do
-Culture is not idiosyncratic (distributed among people)
-Socially learned and learned socially
-Culture as a representation of the world
-Culture as a guide for living in the world
-Contested
-Culture is tacit, implicit and taken for granted (invisible)
Making culture visible
-How does one make culture visible (methodological problem)