Culture and Comparison: Exam overview
Part 1: comparison in place
Lecture 1: philosophy of science
Comparative methods = a research method where people compare. However, in social and cultural
anthropology it is constrained by limitations.
Three kinds of comparative method
1. Global sample comparison
2. Controlled comparison
3. Illustrative comparison
Cultural realism vs. ethnocentrism
There are different views of people and anthropologist to view different cultures:
Ethnocentrism = put societies in hierarchy / you compare another culture with your own, but in a
form with superiority.
Cultural realism = look at differences without putting it in hierarchy.
Sometimes ethnocentrism is clear, sometimes it is not so clear.
Example: German research among covid. He set up a survey to do that in different countries. But one
of the question was, how many people do you chat with.
But in Brazil it was problematic because people chat with so many people on the street and local.
So the question had a German social life into the background. In the Brazilian context will not work,
you need a different question.
Epistemology = thinking about how to do science, sociology and anthropology. There are different
ways of thinking In this epistemology. One way of epistemology is positivism.
Positivism vs objectivity
There are different views on how to do good research and present arguments academically:
Objectivity:
There are facts that do not depend on our position as researcher. Results will be the same.
Science: present the fact as accurate as possible
Verification: check if our representation correspondents with reality. Are all ravens black? Then we
see ALL ravens. That is not possible
Falsification
Representation is valid until one finds a counter example. More realistic than verification?
,Positivism:
= the philosophy of the natural sciences, holding out that reality is concrete and can be learned about
using standardised observation techniques such as experiments
Deduction: top-down from statement to conclusion
- all humans are mortal
- Socrates is a human being
- therefore, Socrates is mortal
It is on an abstract level.
Emphasis is not on collecting information but on reasoning (making a logical argument)
Induction: Bottom-up from observation to theory
Observation: this far, all my anthro lecture where interesting
Theory: very likely, all lectures are interesting
Falsification: Today I had such a boring lecture
New theory is needed
Induction: more emphasis on collecting information
Problems with positivism
Our observations are influenced by our culture and the researchers’ biography background/context
(Thomas Kuhn: paradigm shift) = if you look at a specific things, you will not notice other things what
are also happening at the same time. But if you stop focussing, you look at things that were not seen
before. (example: video of the monkey while counting balls)
1. There is no way to study other objectively. We always have our own language and
background.
2. These categories are never ‘natural’ but do seem self-evident
3. There is always our interpretation
Hermeneutic circle
= Science is not about reaching objectivity but about constantly re-interpreting.
Not about reaching the ultimate truth, but always look at the interpreting.
Striving towards objectivity?
- For example by recording what people say as accurate as possible
Reflexivity: be conscious about who we are and our background:
- We make and use categories, we cannot always understand the context of what people do or say.
, Lecture 2: Bali: culture as socialization
Margaret Meid
Magaret Meid was trained by Franz Boaz.
She dived in the concept of culture and personality.
In the early work of culture and personality were based on 5 basic assumptions:
1. Childhood experience determined adult personality
2. A single personality type characterized each society
3. A particular shared basic or modal personality gave rise to a particular cultural institution
(there can be outliers)
4. Projective tests developed in the west could be used elsewhere
5. Anthropologist are ‘objective’, free of ethnocentric bias
They believed culture was not a system of norms and values, but a collection of emotions,
unconscious mindset, dispositions and habitus. (Habitus = use of the body were you not even aware
of (how you move your body, use your hands, how you eat) That’s why they study children)
They thought that culture is unconsciously learned during childhood. It has nothing to do with
languages, because it is learned before children can talk.
Article 1: Balinese Character: A photographic Analysis – Margaret Meid and Bateson 1942
The article describes the traditional Balinese culture according to Meid and Bateson.
The article is very objective and positivism.
Positivism = Meid has a very strong confidence that the methods are universal of everything. Just
collect data in the right way and analyse them.
She finds herself very objective (although she was very controversial in her own society). The Balinese
character was a visual ethnography and M&B sell this as pure objective.
But there are several problems what makes cameras not purely objective:
- Some people change when there is a camera there. The situation are not as authentic.
- Cameras can put on a perspective, what is not common for the normal life (bird view or zoom
in on something)
- It is only one moment
- You have the image but not the context
- In that time cameras could not capture dark skinned people on camera, only white people
- The camera is objective: but not the selection of images
She thought that objective research was a progress of knowledge.
And she was also not objective in other aspects:
- Text plate 7 They look at the picture, there is an emotion. According to them, it is not an
interpretation, but a fact
- She compares everything with her own culture (USA)
Part 1: comparison in place
Lecture 1: philosophy of science
Comparative methods = a research method where people compare. However, in social and cultural
anthropology it is constrained by limitations.
Three kinds of comparative method
1. Global sample comparison
2. Controlled comparison
3. Illustrative comparison
Cultural realism vs. ethnocentrism
There are different views of people and anthropologist to view different cultures:
Ethnocentrism = put societies in hierarchy / you compare another culture with your own, but in a
form with superiority.
Cultural realism = look at differences without putting it in hierarchy.
Sometimes ethnocentrism is clear, sometimes it is not so clear.
Example: German research among covid. He set up a survey to do that in different countries. But one
of the question was, how many people do you chat with.
But in Brazil it was problematic because people chat with so many people on the street and local.
So the question had a German social life into the background. In the Brazilian context will not work,
you need a different question.
Epistemology = thinking about how to do science, sociology and anthropology. There are different
ways of thinking In this epistemology. One way of epistemology is positivism.
Positivism vs objectivity
There are different views on how to do good research and present arguments academically:
Objectivity:
There are facts that do not depend on our position as researcher. Results will be the same.
Science: present the fact as accurate as possible
Verification: check if our representation correspondents with reality. Are all ravens black? Then we
see ALL ravens. That is not possible
Falsification
Representation is valid until one finds a counter example. More realistic than verification?
,Positivism:
= the philosophy of the natural sciences, holding out that reality is concrete and can be learned about
using standardised observation techniques such as experiments
Deduction: top-down from statement to conclusion
- all humans are mortal
- Socrates is a human being
- therefore, Socrates is mortal
It is on an abstract level.
Emphasis is not on collecting information but on reasoning (making a logical argument)
Induction: Bottom-up from observation to theory
Observation: this far, all my anthro lecture where interesting
Theory: very likely, all lectures are interesting
Falsification: Today I had such a boring lecture
New theory is needed
Induction: more emphasis on collecting information
Problems with positivism
Our observations are influenced by our culture and the researchers’ biography background/context
(Thomas Kuhn: paradigm shift) = if you look at a specific things, you will not notice other things what
are also happening at the same time. But if you stop focussing, you look at things that were not seen
before. (example: video of the monkey while counting balls)
1. There is no way to study other objectively. We always have our own language and
background.
2. These categories are never ‘natural’ but do seem self-evident
3. There is always our interpretation
Hermeneutic circle
= Science is not about reaching objectivity but about constantly re-interpreting.
Not about reaching the ultimate truth, but always look at the interpreting.
Striving towards objectivity?
- For example by recording what people say as accurate as possible
Reflexivity: be conscious about who we are and our background:
- We make and use categories, we cannot always understand the context of what people do or say.
, Lecture 2: Bali: culture as socialization
Margaret Meid
Magaret Meid was trained by Franz Boaz.
She dived in the concept of culture and personality.
In the early work of culture and personality were based on 5 basic assumptions:
1. Childhood experience determined adult personality
2. A single personality type characterized each society
3. A particular shared basic or modal personality gave rise to a particular cultural institution
(there can be outliers)
4. Projective tests developed in the west could be used elsewhere
5. Anthropologist are ‘objective’, free of ethnocentric bias
They believed culture was not a system of norms and values, but a collection of emotions,
unconscious mindset, dispositions and habitus. (Habitus = use of the body were you not even aware
of (how you move your body, use your hands, how you eat) That’s why they study children)
They thought that culture is unconsciously learned during childhood. It has nothing to do with
languages, because it is learned before children can talk.
Article 1: Balinese Character: A photographic Analysis – Margaret Meid and Bateson 1942
The article describes the traditional Balinese culture according to Meid and Bateson.
The article is very objective and positivism.
Positivism = Meid has a very strong confidence that the methods are universal of everything. Just
collect data in the right way and analyse them.
She finds herself very objective (although she was very controversial in her own society). The Balinese
character was a visual ethnography and M&B sell this as pure objective.
But there are several problems what makes cameras not purely objective:
- Some people change when there is a camera there. The situation are not as authentic.
- Cameras can put on a perspective, what is not common for the normal life (bird view or zoom
in on something)
- It is only one moment
- You have the image but not the context
- In that time cameras could not capture dark skinned people on camera, only white people
- The camera is objective: but not the selection of images
She thought that objective research was a progress of knowledge.
And she was also not objective in other aspects:
- Text plate 7 They look at the picture, there is an emotion. According to them, it is not an
interpretation, but a fact
- She compares everything with her own culture (USA)
