10/06/16

HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS: THE AFRICAN CONNECTION

ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF EARLY HUMAN MIGRATION:

PALEO-ANTHROPOLOGY
o Paleo-anthropological field excavations of human fossil remains
o Analysis of the changing environment
o Analysis of the human tools, diet, and other forms of material culture in

ancient camps
o Dating of remains and tools through carbon dating and other techniques
THE TRICKS OF DATING (HUMAN REMAINS)
o Radiometric
Carbon-14
Potassium Argon
o Genetics
CULTURE
o Extrapolations of cultural practices at the time of early human migration
Burial Practices
Musical Instruments
Arts
Camps
Tools
WHY ANTHROPOLOGISTS STUDY THE ANTIQUATED AGE
WHAT DOES THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL
WHAT THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE PAST TELL US ABOUT BEING
HUMAN TODAY?
o Put into more meaningful perspective why and how humans fight and
make peace
o Why and how humans destroy things; even while we build relations
o How humans establish sense of identity and difference; ethnicity; class
ANTHROPOLOGICAL FOCUS; ABOUT AND BEYOND THE HUMAN PAST, INTO THE
FUTURE
o Central problem that anthropology explores the similarity diversity if
human social life
o Anthropological fieldwork and theory tries to strike a balance between
similarities and differences.
THINGS, CULTURE AND THE QUESTION OF BEING HUMAN
o How humans interact, establish relations, make identity, constructing
society and culture. Using things such as technology and in the context of
their broader environment
o Material Advancement
Material culture]
What does it take to see and make sense of the world? How do anthropology and
sociology put things together?
o Anthropological and sociological Theories

10/13/16
SOCIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL OTHEORIES: TOOLS TO UNDERSTANDING
THE HUMAN

What is a social theory?

o General idea of how phenomena are to be explained
o Statement about the human condition
o Explanations have to be proven with empirical evidence
Why is theory necessary?
o To establish a framework of understanding of social phenomena
o Produce a body of knowledge that explains social phenomena
o Theories are not isolated statements of the human or social condition
o Theories are part of the body of knowledge generated by generations
of scholars

THEORIES: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Reference points in social and cultural analysis
POSITIVISM

A theoretical frame arguing that authoritative knowledge or the truth can only be
learned or derived from scientific knowledge
It exemplifies sensory experience, mathematical formulation, and logical
argumentation as basis for knowing the truth
Proposes that knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories:
Proving that something exists in the empirical realms
Associated with Seventeenth Century Thinker
Social reality is measurable
Social reality is discoverable
Social reality is made out of causes and effect
There is formula of understanding social reality
Example: Poverty can be measured. Poverty is caused by lack of education
Ancient and modern theorizing of human existence and relations:
Evolution
Natural analysis
Social Evolution and Diffusion of culture
Particularity of history and cultural Relativity
Functionalism
Structural Functionalism
Cultural ecology: Neo Evolutionism
Structuralism

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Argues that people generated knowledge through their experiences and in

the exchange of ideas

People construct their own understanding of the world based on their

experience and reflection of these experiences and the world
Highly influential in the development of anthropology, sociology, psychology
and other fields in the social sciences. Sometimes referred as transcendental
idealism
Social reality is not something that can be discovered but a product of
human interaction
Social reality unfolds, not merely an effect of a particular cause

Political Economy
Feminism

CRITICAL REALISM

Critiques the premise of empirical realism and transcendental idealism

Knowledge seeks to understand the things themselves and not simply about
our beliefs, experiences, or our current knowledge and understanding of
those things
To understand the experience or reality studied by natural science and social
science, a structured and differentiated account that examines openness,
difference, stratification and change
Power relations and ideology are factors that help produce social reality
Persons are shaped by their positions in society

Early Theorizing of social phenomena

Plato and Aristotle (5th Century BC)

o Plants and animals form a single, graded continuum going from
more perfection to less perfections
o Humans take the top of that continuum
Marcobius: Chain of being
o The attentive observer will discover a connection of parts from the
supreme Gid down to the last dreg of things
Carolus Linnaeus
Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
o Acquired characteristics could be inherited; spur species evolution
o Individuals develop adaptive characteristics for survival
Charles Lyell (1726-1797)
o Questioned Catastrophism
o Offered a theory of uniformism: Natural forces constantly shape and
reshape Earth over and over again

19th Century

o
o

Charles Darwin(1809-1882) and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823- 1913)

Rejected the idea that each specie was created at one time
Edward B. Tylor
Culture evolved from simple to complex

THE TROUBLE WITH SOCIAL EVOLUTIONISM

It emphasizes that Western ideas

Diffusionism

Spread of culture
Trade
Human interactions
ASSIGNMENT
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