Witchcraft Review

Chapter 1

Anthropological perspective means many things. It is an approach that compares human societies throughout the world--contemporary and historical, industrial and tribal

Anthropology: refers to the study of humanity. However, anthropology shares this subject matter with other disciplines--sociology, psychology, history and political science. It differs from other studies as it is an integrated study of humanity. E.g Marriage-many disciplines study marriage - anthropologist belief to truly understand marriage requires an understanding of all aspects of society. This can be viewed as a holistic approach

Holism- the study of human societies as systematic sums of their parts, as integrated wholes

Four fields of anthropology

Physical anthropology: is the study of human biology and evolution. Interested in genetics, evolutionary theory, biology and behavior of primates, evolutionary origin.

Archeology: is the study of people who are known only from their physical and cultural remains, gives us insight to an extinct societies

Linguistic anthropology: is devoted to the study of language, as it is unique feature of humans.

Cultural anthropology: is the study of contemporary human societies and makes up the largest area of anthropological study. They study people's social organization, economic, technology, political organization, marriage, family life

Holistic Approach

Requires a great deal of time to observe human behavior and time to interview members of society

Anthropologist complete long term studies of small and remote communities

Maintain limited focus

Views human behavior as complex set of interacting behaviors and ideas

Anthropologists take part in participation observation which is a research method whereby the anthropologist lives in a community and participates in the lives of the people under study while at the same time making objective observations. They study the broad range of human beliefs and behaviors, to discover what it means to be human.

Anthropologists are introduced to small communities such as foraging bands, small horticultural villages and groups of pastoral nomads.

They interact with small-scale groups- small communities, villages, and bands

Some questions an anthropologist may ask are: are there characteristics that are found in all human societies, what we might call human universal?

Key Terms

Foraging bands: small communities that subsist by hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plant foods

Horticultural: the use of cultivated domesticated plants without the use of fertilizers, plows, irrigation, and other agricultural technologies

Pastoral nomads: Societies that subsist primarily by herding domesticated animals

Human Universal: characteristics found in all humans

The Study of Human Societies

Ethnography is the descriptive study of human societies. People who study human societies and write ethnographies about them are cultural anthropologist, sometimes referred to as ethnographers

Ethnographic present: discuss these groups and people in the present tense as they were first described by ethnographers

Ethnographers: a person who produces ethnography

To understand the communities, their nature and distribution, we organize these societies into cultural areas. Cultural area is a geographical area in which societies tend to share many cultural traits. This occurs because these groups face similar challenges from the environment.

Besides geographical distribution, anthropologists organize societies in terms of their subsistence strategy, focusing on how they make a living. E.g. foragers, horticulturalist, pastoralists and agriculturalist

Foragers: people without any form of plant or animal domestication

Horticulturalist: people who garden in absence of fertilization, irrigation and advanced technologies.

Pastoralists: are people whose primary livelihood comes from herding of domesticated animals

Agriculturalists: People, who plow, fertilize and irrigate their crops

An anthropologist or any scholar cannot be completely neutral and objective when describing a culture. Observation, recording and analysis involve processing data in one's mind. One's culture, education, training and other factors will act as a filter or lens that colors what are thought of as objective observations.

Anthropologist must often take part in etic observations. Etic perspective: the study of society using concepts that were developed outside of the culture. Advantages to this approach are: outside analyst might see patterns of behavior or beliefs in a culture that the members might be unaware of

Emic perspective is one that attempts to view the world through the eyes of people being studied

Key Terms

Divination: supernatural techniques of obtaining information about things unknown, including events that will occur in the future

Divination ritual: a ritual that is used for the purpose of divination

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism: is attempting to analyze and understand cultures other that one's without judging them in terms of one's own culture.

Often, individuals use one's own culture as the basis for interpreting and judging other cultures, this is called ethnocentrism

Anthropologist must attempt to remain neutral and accept the ways of life of other communities as appropriate for those who live in these communities. Attempt to describe and understand these peoples customs and ideas without judgment

Post Modernism

Historically, to use science as a means to discover knowledge, truth and progress was termed modernity. Modernity: a philosophical movement based on ideas of rationality, objectivity, reason and