Talk:Cultural anthropology

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1 Cultural anthropology/cultural studies
2 announcing new policy proposal
3 US POV
4 help!
5 community
6 request for comments
7 Social vs. Cultural Anthropology
8 Social and Cultural Anthropology
9 Distinctive Approaches not to be subsumed under Cultural Anthropology
10 article of concern

[edit] Cultural anthropology/cultural studies

Cultural Anthropology studies human beings and the development and dynamics of their cultures. Sociology is a statistical study of human social issues (my layman's definition). And Social Psychology studies individual human thought and behavior in social settings.

Welcome to compartmentalized academia. --Invictus

Thanks! But heck, I knew that much. I wanted a longer, more in-depth answer! I'll say so on the cultural anthropology page. --LMS

Ah, I wondered if that was your question, but since you had logged on anonymously (for that entry) and that didn't exactly seem like a question you'd ask, I just decided to write a rather brief description. What the heck, I need to do some academic reading this weekend, I can try to put together a more descriptive article.

Nope nope and nope... No arguments about Social psychology but Cultural anthropology and sociology are not distinguished by statics/cynamics. Traditional (and equally wrong) distinctions would have anthropology looking at whatever non-western and sociology looking at (yup) Western (euroamerican etc.) societies.

OK, so what is the difference between cultural anthropology and sociology, or do you think there is no difference? Do sociologists study non-Western societies? If not, then one might call sociology a branch of cultural anthropology. --LMS

I wanted to comment a bit about 146.230.128.xxx 's addition of Oct. 29, which I think needs to be entirely rewritten.

I find that hard to believe--that "the pre-eminent scholars," every one of them, agreed completely on something that two people wrote, particularly the something defining the field. I guess we just need to know more abut the nature of the consensus.

Also, why does it matter that the sociologists agreed?

has gradually replaced the materialist conceptions developed by Edward Tylor.

Who? What materialist conceptions? Your readers don't know what you're talking about. Moreover, how is the definition above-given not "materialist"? (I could have a materialist theory of "values, ideas, and other symbolic-meaningful systems.")

A major influence on Kroeber and Parsons would have been Franz Boas. In its earlier formation, cultural anthropology would have applied largely to what has also been considered as "anthropology" in the strict sense.

What strict sense? We haven't learned about that yet, have we?

Later, the methods and categories developed under the influence of the Kroeber and Parsons consensus

Such as? Again, without background, we just don't know what you're talking about.

were applied to those human aggregations that had properly been the study of sociologists, and this development has been a major impetus in the development of cultural studies.

What "human aggregations" are meant here? Remember, we're trying to make this clear as an introduction to the field, for people who don't yet know what the field is about.

Cultural Studies: Generally taken to refer to the study of developed human societies in terms of the catgories and methods of cultural anthropology.

What is this doing in this article? Is cultural studies often regarded as a branch of cultural anthropology?

Historically, however, cultural studies as a named field of research and teaching begins with the application of the methods and categories of literary criticism to the object of study of British social anthropology.

This probably most of your readers know a little more about, but can you indeed give some characterization of "the methods and categories of literary criticism"?

The latter overlaps with "sociology" in the broad sense. This early formation is attributed mainly to Richard Hoggart's establishment of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the early 1960s. Key texts for this early development are usually given as Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy (1957); Raymond Williams's Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution 1961); and Edward P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1960?). The association of Williams's work with Communications Studies topics (especially television) brought the conception of a separate "cultural studies" to the attention of US communications studies scholars. With time, the influence of the Kroeber-Parsons consensus has infiltrated US cultural studies, meshing cultural anthropology with literary criticism to create the dominant form of cultural studies in terms of publications and teaching programmes.

This is rather hard to follow: the article is using "cultural anthropology," "literary criticism," "sociology," and "cultural studies" as if they already had clear, well-understood meanings, when you're trying to explain what "cultural studies" and "cultural anthropology" mean!

Perhaps the discussion could use some examples.

Other influential cultural studies schools are those in Australia -- with their focus on post-coloniality

Huh?

and their subsequent influence on cultural inquiry along the Indian Ocean Rim -- and that developed from the experience of Southern and Central American social movements, with its special development of the thought of Paulo Freire.

The strengths and problems with cultural studies are fairly difficult to differentiate, because the strengths of the field in nominalist logics

Another term that needs defining.

is clear because of the absorbed influence of Nietzsche's philosophy via Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall.

Well, no, it's not clear, not to this philosopher. If it's not clear to me, how can you expect it to be clear to most of the people who are simply interested in what cultural anthropology is?

The latter is easily the most influential figure in cultural studies after Hoggart, Williams, and Thompson. However, in a realist logical framework, the exceptional vagueness of definitions of "culture" derived from the Kroeber-Parsons consensus leads to the lack of concretely inferred conclusions in terms of which social, cultural, and political bodies can act.

The latter sentence makes zero sense to me.

There is some indication that a philosophically realist approach based on C.S. Peirce's logical doctrine of pragmaticism might lend more definition to the subject-matter of cultural studies.

Some indication on the part of whom? You, the author?

I suspect we should remove all but the clearest part of the above text. --Larry Sanger

Yes, it seems as if it was written by Sokal. - MMGB

I have removed two parts of the article.

First:

Cultural Anthropology: this is essentially the study of or inquiry into the "transmitted and created content and patterns of values, ideas, and other symbolic-meaningful systems as factors in shaping of human behavior and the artifacts produced through behavior" (Alfred L. Kroeber and Talcott Parsons: "The Concepts of Culture and of Social System." American Sociological Review, 23(1958), 582-583). This definition agreed upon by the pre-eminent scholars in their respective fields of Anthropology and Sociology at the time, has gradually replaced the materialist conceptions developed by Edward Tylor. A major influence on Kroeber and Parsons would have been Franz Boas. In its earlier formation, cultural anthropology would have applied largely to what has also been considered as "anthropology" in the strict sense. Later, the methods and categories developed under the influence of the Kroeber and Parsons consensus were applied to those human aggregations that had properly been the study of

sociologists, and this development has been a major impetus in the development of cultural studies.

Perhaps this was the original stub; I think it is superceded by the current article, but if someone wants to work it back into the article, here it is.

Second:

Cultural Studies: Generally taken to refer to the study of developed human societies in terms of the catgories and methods of cultural anthropology. Historically, however, cultural studies as a named field of research and teaching begins with the application of the methods and categories of literary criticism to the object of study of British social anthropology. The latter overlaps with "sociology" in the broad sense. This early formation is attributed mainly to Richard Hoggart's establishment of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the early 1960s. Key texts for this early development are usually given as Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy (1957); Raymond Williams's Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution 1961); and Edward P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1960?). The association of Williams's work with Communications Studies topics (especially television) brought the conception of a separate "cultural studies" to the attention of US communications studies scholars. With time, the influence of the Kroeber-Parsons consensus has infiltrated US cultural studies, meshing cultural anthropology with literary criticism to create the dominant form of cultural studies in terms of publications and teaching programmes. Other influential cultural studies schools are those in Australia -- with their focus on post-coloniality and their subsequent influence on cultural inquiry along the Indian Ocean Rim -- and that developed from the experience of Southern and Central American social movements, with its special development of the thought of Paulo Freire.

The strengths and problems with cultural studies are fairly difficult to differentiate, because the strengths of the field in nominalist logics is clear because of the absorbed influence of Nietzsche's philosophy via Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall. The latter is easily the most influential figure in cultural studies after Hoggart, Williams, and Thompson. However, in a realist logical framework, the exceptional vagueness of definitions of "culture" derived from the Kroeber-Parsons consensus leads to the lack of concretely inferred conclusions in terms of which social, cultural, and political bodies can act. There is some indication that a philosophically realist approach based on C.S. Peirce's logical doctrine of pragmaticism might lend more definition to the subject-matter of cultural studies.

Aside from other issues, this is not germaine to the article, SR

Incorrectly punctuated. "The period and the comma fall within the quotation marks," Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

Speaking as an American-trained cultural anthropologist, socio-cultural anthropology has historically studied non-Western peoples, has used participant-observation and other qualitative methods in preference to quantitative methods used by sociologists or social psychologists, and is particularly concerned with the way that individuals are shaped by and use cultural models, rules, etc. These days many anthropologists study people in complex and Western societies and some use quantitative (or at least mixed) methods, but their theoretical orientation is rather different from sociologists. The question at hand, however, is whether the articles on social anthropology and cultural anthropology should be merged. "Social Anthropology" is more commonly used in Britain and refers to a particular theoretical strain within Western sociocultural anthropology. "Cultural anthropology" is more commonly used in the U.S. There is not a hard and fast distinction between the two, but their emphases are different and people trained in one or the other tend to read different theorists.

Also, in regards to the punctuation: period and comma within the quotation marks is a relatively new format introduced by the NY Times newspaper because it saves space and was felt to look more elegant. Period and comma outside the quotation marks is the older style and still the accepted standard in Britain.

[edit] announcing new policy proposal

This is just to inform people that I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view. In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate for the detailed proposal. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] US POV

To a European eye there is a bit too much US focus in this article, including the absence of Montesquieu, Condorcet and Rousseau and of the foundation of the Societe Ethnologique de Paris in 1839 or the Ethnological Society of London in 1843; I may try and sharpen it up in this respect. Most of all, the title of the article seems a problem (as some of the drafters of text seems to have noticed: socio-cultural anthropology would in fact be a better compromise between the British term and the US one). Mark O'Sullivan 09:43, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

The main reason "Cultural Anthropology" is US-centric is because "Cultural Anthropology" began as a US movement and is still largely identified with the United States. The British favor "Social Anthropology." I think the French favor "Ethnology." I have no objection to having other articles linked to Anthropology. But "Cultural Anthropology," for most anthropologists, means something pretty specific. Anpther approach would be to divide this article into different sections. "Sociocultural anthropology" is a portmanteau useful, maybe, for a stub -- but doesn't correspond to anything meaningful and a good article will explain the differences between social and cultural anthropology.Slrubenstein | Talk 14:04, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the article should be called "social and cultural anthropology", then? Mark O'Sullivan 16:08, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

It's a tough call. There could be one article called "Social and Cultural Anthropology" that goes into great detail about the history, different national traditions, etc. Or there could be several different articles. Solely on practical grounds, I think it is easier to just keep this article with the name it has, and add the stuff you and others think is missing, all the while trying to be clear about time period and different national traditions, I mean using separate subheadings and such, and then at some point we can discuss more effective ways to organize the article, or divide it into several ... Slrubenstein | Talk 18:30, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I would think that many of these 18th- and 19th-century theorists would be better placed in History of anthropology than in Cultural anthropology or Social anthropology, or at least should be mentioned only briefly. Most current work in both British and US anthropology runs in a fairly direct line from, or reacts to, social theories developed in Britain, France, and the US between about 1890 and 1920 (those are not hard and fast dates, of course). Montesquieu, Condorcet, etc. are historically important, of course, but they are not much more specifically important to anthropology than to sociology, economics, history, philosophy or a number of other fields. I would suggest that the main articles should focus on sociocultural anthropology and its branches as contemporary fields, though referencing appropriate historical articles. Mccajor 23:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] help!

Anyone who has this page on their watchlist, can you go to Virago? A who is putting forward notions of racial and identifying them with a notion of gender-difference, and I are in a conflict. Fundamentally, I believe he is a racist' his claims about race contradict everything I have read by physical and cultural anthropologists and as far as I can tell, his claims about gender at best seriously distort the literature.

You can see the difference here [1]

On the talk page, start here [2], and then just read the whole debate.

Comments from others needed. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 23:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] community

I think the community template ought to be removed. Anthropologists, at least, typically use culture to refer to something radically different from community. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that many anthropologists are interested in community. Some would even say cultural anthropologists have lost interest in "culture" as an unit of analysis altogether. But whatever the final decision is, someone should probably fix the misspelling of "anthropology" in that template.--Birdmessenger 15:35, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I never suggested that anthropologists are uninterested in community, only that culture is very different from community. There is a long history of "community studies" but this is only one genre among many others in anthropology. It would be wrong, for example, to define "ethnography" (the premier genre of cultural anthropological writing) as a study of a community.Slrubenstein | Talk 15:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I suppose I didn't exactly understand what the community template is supposed to do here. As I think more about it, it seems as if the template indicates that the cultural anthropology article is equivalent to an anthropological view on community. If that's the case, then I agree that it should be removed.--Birdmessenger 16:01, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Please give me a bit more time. You'll see I hope. CQ 19:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Please note the template I just placed at the top of the page and the new categories below. I'm attempting to create some contextual linkage through a series of articles and sections to show how the different disciplines are intrinsically relevant in the Context of community. I would also like to pull this article into the sociology camp, as I have with community psychology, if that's OK. What we want to do is link to this artical in a section "Community" from Community. I'm trying to make it easier for readers to get all the different perspectives on community and I was told that you have to start with Anthropology. This artical seemed the most appropriate. Can we work together? • CQ 19:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Slrubenstein, the template doesn't belong here. I've also removed the {{Community}} navigation box from the article. That is totally out of place, IMO. Community is important, but it isn't everything. Sunray 20:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

CQ seems to want to use the template like either a (1) regular link or (2) a wikipreoject. Either may be appropriate here but not the template. I am deleting it and making sure there is a link for "see also" which will suffice for now. If CQ wants to start a wikiproject on community studies feel free to do so, but that project cannot use this article as a place to advertise with a benner that is overwhelming, Slrubenstein | Talk 10:24, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Template removed. Sunray 19:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] request for comments

On race and intelligence, please [3] Slrubenstein | Talk 13:11, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Social vs. Cultural Anthropology

Try this—social culture is a shared pattern of ideas behaviors and beliefs: its causes, consequences and dynamics are the foci of Cultural Anthropology. Social structure is the shared pattern of roles and relationships within a society: the criteria for connectedness, social standing, rights and obligations, etc. are the concerns of Social Anthropology. I believe it was Clyde Kluckhohn (best check it out I would hate to misattribute such an elegant notion) who provided the perfect metaphore connecting the two. His take on the subject? Imagine a piece of carbon paper. It is a unitary object on the one hand, but on the other, it is comprised of two distinct objects: 1) a paper substrate, and 2) a transferable coating. Either part in the absence of the other has a completely different functionality. Similarly, anthropology is a single subject, but it too embodies two distinctly different "pieces." By Kluckhohn's reckoning, the substrate is the social structure and the transfer agent is the social culture. Together the two parts provide a functionality that neither can provide independently. Each discipline is unique but neither can be fully understood in the absence of the other. DBD24.98.226.147 23:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, I think you are confusing two institutional traditions within anthropology (social anthropology and cultural anthropology) with two concepts shared by the two traditions: society and culture. Moreover, Kluckhohn's functionalism is over 20 years out of date. It accurately reflects an important phase in the history of anthropology but misrepresents contemporary cultural anthropology. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Social and Cultural Anthropology

There are major differences between Culutral Anthropology and Social Anthropology other than the history of the disciplines. I'll edit this in a bit more precise manner later with some references, but simplistically one could say that each views the other as a epiphenomena of their own position. The differences between the two has widened rather than narrowed over the past three decades. Social Anthropology continues to develop the central idea of sociality, its atecedents and its consequences. The organisational principle of 'sociality' is not widely contested, though certainly social theories contest many aspects of one another. The development of Social Anthropology is marked by emergence of consensus in some areas, which of course lead to new problems and disagreements.

Cultural Anthropology has been subjected to a major interrogation of its central concepts over the past three decades, almost all of which are presently contested with agreement only within factions. It would not be unfair to say that from surveying the literature of the past 20 years we 'know' less about culture today than we 'knew' before (other than an increased range of what culture might be and how it might be manifest). This may be a result of never having had an agreed definition of culture to develop. Instead since its inception early in the 20th century the 'culture concept' has done little other than fragment.

Socio-cultural anthropology is one of the solutions some factions of American anthropologists have chosen to diffuse the 'culture wars' in American Anthropology. It is a term increasingly used outside the US, but has a rather different meaning there, seen as a vehicle to bring culture into social theory in a limited manner. Culture remains a epiphenomena of social interaction and organisation. The greater prominance of culture in social anthropology has served a useful purpose in recent decades, providing a means to better examine issues of globalisation, regional politics, social change, ethnicity while retaining much of the foundation of social theory that had been developed with little reference to culture as a focal category.

In any case there is ample reason not to merge the two entries at all on the grounds of controversy, though I agree that I and my colleagues will have to develop the social anthropology entry more for it to earn its keep. Certainly, it should not be merged into Cultural Anthropology, although there might be a case for eventually merging Cultural Anthropology into Social Anthropology. However, there is probably a better case for keeping them distinct given the difficulties of trying to merge two long standing traditions within Anthropology together given their rather different objectives and histories. Mdfischer 17:05, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Please note that new talk goes at the bottom - welcome to Wikipedia! I agree with you that the two are different and merit separate articles. I do not however agree that most cultural anthropologists see social relations (or social structure) as epiphenomenal. Moreover, I do not agree that the sobriquet socio-cultural anthropology is primarily a response to the culture-wars in the US - I think it at least as much reflects the purchase of "structural-functionalism" in American anthropology post-WW II. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:00, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

It is good to have agreement these are distinctive even if we don't agree on why. Admittedly, my first point is over simplistic, and more problematic from the Cultural Anthropology side than the Social Anthropology side, particularly British Social Anthropology. When I first came to the UK from the US in 1985, I was relentlessly baited at seminars for my strongly cultural socio-cultural discourse. Since that time I have becomre more social in theoretical perspective, while building on the suggestions from Murdock's 1971 Huxley lecture that both social structure and culture are emergent, and using perspectives from both Cultural and Social Anthropology to explore their co-emergence. But this point is sufficiently contestable that a discussion should be saved for a rainy day (or read one of my papers). There is a stronger case for the second argument, that American Anthropologists have adopted socio-cultural as a primary identifier in response to the increased fragmentation of cultural anthropology. You are almost certainly correct in citing the origins of the basic intellectual material. 'Sociocultural' first appears in the various publications of the American Anthropological Association in 1941, where there are a total of 3951 articles using the term since 1941, 3482 of these post 1970, and 2723 post 1980. "sociocultural anthropology" emerges in 1959, with 4 references in one volume of an AAA report. There are 272 total references, 266 of which are post 1970, and 238 post 1980.

We don't want to get too excited about the raw numbers, since there has been an expansion of the number of articles written over time, and so on. But the trend is pretty clear. The intellectual ideas enter the literature sometimes in the 1940s, generate a decent amount of discussion, drops off a bit in the 1950s and early 1960s, and then begins to rise again. It doesn't become an 'brand' until the 1970s (where it becomes associated with a kind of anthropology), and the brand doesn't take off until 1980.

The following table looks at the frequencies of some 'brand' terms since 1970. It doesn't necessarily show that the growth of the use of a 'sociocultural' descriptor is a response to fragmentation of cultural anthropology. It does show evidence of strong growth of branding in articles over the period together with a relatively late takeup of 'sociocultural' as a focal approach and as a 'branded' anthropology. It certainly could be coincidental that this rising prominance and evidence of increasing division is assocated with the height of the 'culture wars' between 1969 and 1995.

Articles with descriptors in AAA publications 1899-2007
	Pre-1970	1970s	1980s	1990-	Total
cultural anthropology	633	524	836	1900	3893
social anthropolgy	840	552	484	719	2595
sociocultural anthropology	8	28	43	195	274
sociocultural	469	759	848	1875	3951
Total	1950	1863	2211	4689	10713

df= 9 p <= 0.001.

Mdfischer 22:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I am thrilled to see an established anthropologist who I hope is willing to work on this and related pages! Please review our core policies WP:NPOV and WP:ATT. Beacuse of the Wiki- and quasi-anarchic nature of Wikipedia, in addition to vandalism even the best editor will eventually confront others who will delete or radically change what they have written. Violation of NPOV and ATT are generally considered unimpeachable reasons for reverting an editor's work. If you know these policies and ensure that your edits to articles comply with them, your work will be respected and relatively safe. You and I may disagree about minor things although perhaps as we explain our own views in greater detail we will see that we do not really disagree all that much. Just to clarify about my initial point above, I think many American anthropologists have moved away from debates over determinism (e.g. Harris vs. Geertz) such that the word "epiphenomenal" just does not carry the weight it once did - it is not the primary locus of debates. Anyway, welcome and as you feel more confident about our policies I hope you will put mor of your good ideas in the articles themselves and not just on talk pages! Slrubenstein | Talk 10:42, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Distinctive Approaches not to be subsumed under Cultural Anthropology

There is a great deal of US POV in this article. The European traditions within Social Anthropology ought to be distinct, as per my edit of the lead sentence on March 2, 2007. Subsuming one under the other or calling them Social and Cultural as if they are one heading is not useful. These are very different approaches.

Please sign your posts. Cultural anthropology is largely identified with the US, so it makes sense that it relies more on US anthropologists. As Mike Fischer has pointed out above, there ought to be separate articles on cultural and social anthropology; presumably the article on social anthropology will rely more on British sources than this on. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is time to drop the suggestion that this article or section be merged into Cultural anthropology Douglas R. White 15:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

-- I second that we drop the proposed merge of Social Anthropology into Cultural Anthropology Mdfischer 18:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I just removed them...looks like there isn't much of an inclination to merge. Also, there hasn't been any opposition to this suggestion for the last three days. But of course, feel free to reinstate if necessary. --HappyCamper 03:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] article of concern

would people who watch this page please review the article, Early infanticidal childrearing, which makes many claims about anthropology and about non-Western societies? I was once involved in a flame-war with another editor, and it would be inappropriate for me to do a speedy delete or nominate the page for deletion. More important, I think others need to comment on it. I engaged in a detailed exchange recently with one other editor here, on the talk page; you may wish to review the discussion but it is getting involuted and I ask that you comment separately. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 12:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)