9/6/2016 Lecture Notes Sunday, September  4, 2016 1:31 PM

What is culture?

• Pre-modern economic systems • The world has always been diverse ○ Biological

○ Cultural  

•

Culture- informally learned by all of us, tells us nature of the world around us,  specifies our role in reality

○ Tells us kinds of material goods we need in order to survive ○ Tells us how we should act towards people and objects

○ Specifies who we are

○ Everybody has a culture

○ Not synonymous with civilization

○ Everybody has a cultural tradition

▪ Without even knowing it sometimes

○ Born into cultural tradition: enculturation 

▪ Information given to you that you may not be aware of

▪ Process is informal

▪ Unaware of the assumptions we're making

▪ Stuff you pick up in the process of growing up

□ Ex. From anthropology: men are pigs in American society

◆ Not universal

▪ Different assumptions are made in different areas

What is polyandry?

□ Bikini in America vs. topless elsewhere

• Family imply concepts because first group a person has ○ Union between one man and one woman and their children ▪ Monogamous marriage

○ Polygyny: one man has multiple wives

vs.  

Polyandry: one woman has multiple husbands

▪ Questioned if legitimate family

• FDR married his first cousin

○ Some countries this is ideal and preferable  

○ Man is supposed to marry his sister's daughter in some place ▪ Cultural assumptions 

• Same sex marriage being legal

• FDR married his first cousin

○ Some countries this is ideal and preferable  

○ Man is supposed to marry his sister's daughter in some place ▪ Cultural assumptions 

• Same sex marriage being legal

•

When somebody from one culture looks at someone from a different culture it  is easy to consider that person unnatural  

What is Hunting or gathering society?

•

Ethnocentrism: notion that your cultural ways are the right ways and everybody  else is wrong

○ Deep thing within all of us

•

Cultural relativism: do not make assumptions about other people based on your  cultural values We also discuss several other topics like giraffe binomial nomenclature

○ Just because people are different does not mean they are wrong

• Cultural diversity: if you think people are wrong, your cultural diversity is limited ○ always been contact between various populations

•

No criteria to define one group from another group because of the exchange of  genetic material  We also discuss several other topics like brent marinan

• Cultural values are also exchanged between various human populations • Hunter/gather: longest lasting strategy humans have ever come up with ○ Hunt animals and gather plants to survive

Continue with this because does not harm environment as long as human  

○

population was low

○ Economic exchanges: tend to be dominated

Generalized- reciprocity: I give you something without specifying kind or  

○

time of give back

▪

Getting somebody a gift without expecting one back at a certain  time

▪

Helping someone move and then having them let you borrow their  car

□ Promote long lasting social connections between people □ Pattern in hunter/gather societies

□ Closely linked to social ties

•

Big Man societies- use idea of generalize-reciprocity  to manage production,  consumption, and distribution of goods

○ Ambitious

○ Spend all of its time doing favors

○ Gains cultural capital and wants favors to be returned

▪ Has a party

□ More goods than they actually need so they distribute them □ Redistributing wealth

◆

High productivity to areas of low productivity with the  absence of government

○ Big man does it for status and prestige within society

□ More goods than they actually need so they distribute them □ Redistributing wealth

◆

High productivity to areas of low productivity with the  absence of government

○ Big man does it for status and prestige within society • balanced- reciprocity exchange We also discuss several other topics like herodus spring
Don't forget about the age old question of gildid age
Don't forget about the age old question of punctuated uniformitarianism
Don't forget about the age old question of purdue phys 220

• Negative-reciprocity- take something and then run away

Whoever has excess amounts of good and not enough people to guard  

○

will be target

▪ Goods tend to be distributed

▪ Social system to redistribute wealth

□ No government

• Economic relationship between people promote exchange of ideas

•

Process of exchange is formalized with the formation of more organized  organizations

•

Hunting/ gathering society- equality between people because everyone has the  same skills

○ Don't get social stratification  

▪ Very few differences in material culture between various individuals □ Same wealth and same access

• Specialization of occupation ---stratification

○ People have different skills and therefore different wealth and status ○ Specialization of the division of labor

▪ Implications of social structure

▪ State level social organization

▪ inequality