INTRODUCTION TO ANTHROPOLOGY WHAT IS HUMAN?

Anthropology - Anthropos meaning 'human' and logos Characteristic of human which differ from animals
meaning study/knowledge 1. System of Language
 All study which relates to human 2. Critical and Rational Thinking - ability for decision
making in order to survive
Two Concepts of Studying Human 3. Creativity
1. Essentialism - an idea which states that their 4. Human sense of morality - what is right and
essential biological to man wrong
 The way we think is a result of our 5. Higher form of language
biology because it is essential to us 6. Humans have culture
2. Social Constructionism - science that defines our 7. Abstract emotions
behavior and the way we think 8. Higher Intellect
 We are being influenced by our society 9. Self-awareness
NATURE AND NURTURE - anthropology believes that 10. Bipedalism
these two are always linked together 11. Upright

Anthropology - Most holistic among all sciences; study  We undergone physical appearances first
of all aspects relating to human
 Studies human across time and space Applied Anthropology - different dimension
 Thinking out of the box
Four Fields of Anthropology  Direct application to human
1. Biological - "races" problematic because it  Bridges academic setting and reality
establish discrimination
i. Pagsusukat ng tao - evolution Ethnocentric - ang kultura mo lang ang tama
(development of physical Cultural Relativism - pantay pantay ang pagtingin sa
appearances), genetics (offspring and kultura; understand other's culture
such), adaptability (skin color, sizes
of nose) Anthropology - looks at all perspective
2. Cultural/Social - analyses and interpret social
differences and similarities across cultures
i. Behavior of a person as a means of
connecting to others
ii. Understand beliefs of others
iii. Ethnology - comparison of ethnography
1. Culture - "cultured"
2. culture - to acknowledge
diversity, daily lives activities
3. Archeology - human remains
i. Reconstruct human behavior in cultural
patterns using human remains
ii. Uses remains to go back and examine
history
iii. Also studies the geography or location
of groups of people
4. Linguistics - differences of "wika"
i. Historical Linguistics - origins of how
"wika" has changed
ii. Sociolect - dialect of a social group E.g,
bekimon
iii. Dialect is a variation of Language
iv. Use of kinship terms shows close
relationship with you
5. Applied Anthropology - every field can be given
applications
DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN
1. Bipedalism
a. Forward oriented foramen magnum
b. Wider hips
c. Bigger butts
d. Knee movements (flex, swing, lock)
e. Angular femur
f. Wide and stumpy big toe
g. Energy conserving arch in the middle
h. Interlocked ankle, heel and other foot
bones
 This flexibility helped them get around in diverse
habitats and cope with changing climates.
From <http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-
characteristics/walking-upright>
"Lucy"
 First specie of the origin of modern human
Laetoli footprint
 3m y/o
 The footprint was preserved due to volcanic ash
c. Cook food, find warmth, safety from
predators, shared foods, and information
with other groups
d. Use of tools and fire for cultural ways of
adjusting survival challenges
5. Large brain in proportion to body size
a. Human brain up 1, 350 cubic cm, 3 times
bigger than that of a chimpanzee
b. Intellectual capacity is high if brain is large
relative to body size
c. Cerebral cortex (75% of the brain's activity)
i. Homo neanderthalensis - biggest
brain
6. Symbolic language

Why walk upright?

a. Energy conservation - food picking and travelling
longer distance
b. Survival - more intimidating to other animals
c. Hands are used to carry tools and babies
Drawbacks:
a. Caused back pain, slipped disks, arthritis
b. Eventually limited the size of the birth canal
making it difficult to give birth to babies

2. Smaller Canines
a. Closer relationship between females and
males
b. Pair bonding
c. Social Relationships

3. Stone teeth
a. Homo habilis - oldowan tools and
archaelian tools
b. Oldest stone tool was found in Ethiopia (2.6
m y/o)
Use of Tools:
a. Food processing - cutting, pounding, and digging
food
b. Hunting

4. Uses and control of fire

a. Burned bone - 1.8 m y/o
b. Oldest evidence of hearth is 790, 000 y/o
found in Israel
DEFINITIONS OF CULTURE
Culture
 Way of life
 Historical tradition
 Art and heritage
 Practices
 Sense of identity
 Norms
 Systems of belief
 Patterns of behavior
What is Culture in Anthropology?
 "that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society" (Primitive Culture (Tylor,
1871))
o All-encompassing definition
o Culture is shared and it is learned - shared
meanings and experiences
 2 types of learning Culture
o Enculturation - learning one's own culture;
it shapes your actions and decisions
i. E.g. pagmamano, standards of
clothing
o Acculturation - adapting to or borrowing
traits/culture of another group
i. Engaging other's culture
 They go to the field, they study about it
1. Cultural Evolutionism (Tylor)
a. Culture as civilization
i. Culture go through a uni linear
process to attain its most complex
form
ii. Stages: Savagery, Barbaric, Civilized
(industrialized)
1. Savagery- lived in caves, used of
stone tools, simple life
2. Barbaric- hunting and
gathering, planting
3. Civilized- manufacture: excess
products and goods, more
advanced technology
iii. Used by westerners to colonize the
Ph: white men's burden
iv. Promotes hierarchy
v. Ethnocentric - a view that your
culture is the most valid
2. Historical Particularism (Boas)
a. Culture as an idea
i. The way you think is your culture
ii. Fieldwork - method of gathering data
iii. Cultural relativism - takes
consideration to other culture; what
is right from them may be wrong for
others but it has basis. It does not
undermine other culture
iv. There are some similarities in culture
despite differences in history
v. Ethnography - writing of life of the
people
3. Culture and Personality
a. Culture as patterns
i. One's personality is a reflection of
one's culture
e.g. the use of "po" of the Tagalog as
a sign of respect when speaking to
older people or people with higher
status
4. Functionalism (Durkheim) - Radcliffe Brown
a. Culture as system of beliefs and values
i. Why does it take several days for
some Filipinos to mourn and have
wake for their dead relatives?
ii. Malinowski - needs
iii. Imagined world that everything's in
place
5. Structuralism (Levi - Strawis)
a. Culture as a mode of thought
i. There is an internal logic to culture
ii. The way we categorize things around
us is usually in terms of binary
oppositions - raw/cooked;
man/woman
iii. There is rationality; dictates the way
you move
iv. E.g. gift-giving - creates a social bond
with an obligation to reciprocate
v. We put categories
6. Cultural Ecology (White)
a. Cultural as adaptation
i. E.g. Why are cows considered sacred
in India?
Why do Filipinos love to take a
bath?
7. Symbolic Anthropology
a. Culture as a web of meaning
i. Thick description is only achieved
when you do a field work
1. Emic -
An emic view of culture is
ultimately a perspective focus
on the intrinsic cultural
distinctions that are meaningful
to the members of a given
 society, often considered to be
an ‘insider’s’ perspective.
2. Etic -
An etic view of a culture is the
perspective of an outsider
looking in.
ii. E.g. Masama ang pakiramdam ko or
okay lang ako
8. Post-Modernism (Foucault)
a. Culture is an ideology (dominant idea)
i. Hierarchical organization of value
ii. Occasion of mechanism of exclusion
9. Post-structuralism
a. Culture as habitus/practice
i. Way of life
ii. "nakasanayan"
GENDER AND SEXUALITY
Body
 You use your body to form the culture; to show
the culture
o How were you influenced?
o The way you choose to display it
 A canvass and a tool
Embodiment
 Representation of something in a tangible form
o "Yung nalalaman, isinasagawa mo"
o e.g. the way we express our gender
Gender - KaSARIan
 Socially constructed characteristics of men and
women
 Binary (male or female)
 Third gender: "bakla"
o They have functions in the society (e.g.
babaylan)
o India: Hijra - role: religious function
o Thai: Kathoey - because they believe in
reincarnation
 To look at gender as binary is limiting
 Sari - diversity of categories
Gender Fluid
Sexual Orientation - whom you are attracted to?
Gender Identity - QUEER - what do you feel inside?
Sex
 Biological characteristics
 Physical characteristics
Institution - restricts your gender expression; dictates
how we should behave
1. Church
a. The way you dress
b. Marriage
2. Family
3. School
General Ideas
1. Heteronormativity - denoting or relating to a
world view that promotes heterosexuality as the
normal or preferred sexual orientation
2. Homophobia - dislike of or prejudice against
homosexual people
BODY AND SENSES THE MINDFUL BODY
 Smell distinguishes the environment you belong  an attempt to integrate aspects of
 How we use our senses to experience and explain anthropological discourse on the body into
and recreate culture across places current work in medical anthropology.
 Relates to historical particularism
o You can perform or show culture in many Three Bodies
places 1. Individual Body - lived experience of the body-
o Our culture is influenced by our senses self
a. Western epistemology - interpreted the
Five Senses: Before, very biological view. stream of social information as extraneous
1. Sight and irrelevant to the real biomedical
2. Smell diagnosis
a. Mapanghi i. Can be found in Hippocratic corpus
b. Mabantot b. Cartesian dualism - separates mind from
c. Malangsa body, spirit from matter, and real (i.e.,
d. Amoy-putok visible, palpable) from unreal
e. Bulok c. Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum-- I think,
f. Panis therefore I am
g. Amoy asim i. Descartes proceeded to argue the
h. Amoy-sibuyas existence of two classes of substance
i. Amoy-paa that together constituted the human
j. Mahalimuyak organism: palpable body and
 Shows how ethnocentric when it comes to smell intangible mind
o E.g. how we distinguish the smell of d. left suspended in hyphens, testifying to the
Bumbay disconnectedness of our thoughts
 Describes the nature (cartesian legacy)
3. Hearing e. Leon Eisenberg:
o We have different taste for music because i. Disease - abnormalities in the
of difference in our culture structure and/or function of organs
4. Feeling and organ systems
o Feeling of privacy ii. Illness - patient's subjective
o as a form of greetings experience of malaise
5. Taste f. Mind/Body Dualism -
o Comfort 'foods' i. Ornstein( 1973), for example,
 Something na kinalakihan nila; make understands mind/body dualism as an
them feel home overly determined expression of
 OFWs in Hong Kong gather to eat human brain lateralization (left and
Filipino foods to get the real right hemisphere)
experience of home
 When you eat, you use different g. Freud: dynamic psychology - the individual
senses at war within himself
 Shows how specific we are in comes h. Holism and Monism - inclusiveness
of taste i. Monism - harmonious wholes in which
everything from the cosmos down to
the individual organs of the human
body are understood as a single unit.
e.g Islamic Cosmology (Towhid)
ii. Holism - complementary (not
opposing) dualities, in which the
relationship of parts to the whole is
emphasized
e.g. Yinyang
 Person, Self, and Individual
1. Japan - family is considered as the
fundamental unit of the society
i. person is understood as acting within
the context of a social relationship
ii. Identity changes with the social context
iii. External self - tatamae
iv. Private self - honne
2. West - individualization is essential
3. Shintoism and Buddhism - feelings of
immersion in nature; nothingness
4. New Guinea - He maintains that there is no
awareness of the individual apart from
structured social roles, and no concept of
friendship
5. Gahuku-Gama - conception of Social Skin;
References to one's "good" or "bad" skin
indicate a person's moral character or even
a person's temperament or mood.
6. Bororo (like the Gahuku-Gama) -
understand the individual only as reflected
in relationship to other people.
7. Cuna Indians of Panama - eight selves - An
intellectual is one who is governed by the
head, a thief governed by the hand, a
romantic by the heart, and so forth
8. Zinacanteco - soul has 13 divisible parts.
Each time a person "loses" one or more
parts he or she becomes ill and a curing
ceremony is held to retrieve the missing
pieces
 Individual sickness is understood as a
disintegration of the body, likened to a
mountain landslide or an earthquake
b. Dogon of the Western Sudan - The village must
extend from north to south like the body of a man
lying on his back. The head is the council house,
built in the center square. To the east and west
are the menstrual huts which are "round like
wombs and represent the
hands of the village"
Our point is that the structure of individual and
collective sentiments down to the "feel" of one's body
and the naturalness of one's position and role in the
technical order is a social construct.
3. Body Politic - referring to the regulation,
surveillance, and control of bodies (individual and
collective) in reproduction and sexuality, in work
and in leisure, in sickness and other forms of
deviance and human difference

Body image refers to the collective and

idiosyncratic representations an individual
entertains about the body in its relationship to
the environment, including internal
and external perceptions, memories, affects,
cognitions, and actions.

2. Social Body - representational uses of the body as

a natural symbol with which to think about
nature, society, and culture
 What you feel is related to the environment
 Body as metaphor - reinforces social values;
traditions and culture

The Embodied World

 Paano mo inuunawa ang mundo gamit ang
katawan?

a. Qollahuaya -Andean Indians - understand their

own bodies in terms of the mountain, and they
consider the mountain in terms of their own
anatomy
BODY SENSES AND LANGUAGE

Olfactory Mapping
 Geography of senses
 Using different senses to recreate memories
 When you try to describe spaces occupied by
people, it is crucial to explain it using the different
senses get a deeper understanding

Second Reading:
 Ethno-science - you give importance to the fact
that there is a variety of understanding human
 Ethnobotany - to study the way local categorize
things
 Hanunoo - has no term of color
o Has distinct way of writing; similar to
baybayin

1. Color perception in not universal

o Western
o Spectrum - hue; range of colors
o Saturation - intensity
o Brightness
2. Color discrimination is the same in laboratory
condition but the way you label the color is
different depending on the culture

Hanunoo Mangyan has 4 categories for color

(Level 1)
1. (Ma) biru - blackness or darkness
a. Describes the environment
b. Of high value
c. Uses deep colors; seen in their ornaments
2. (Ma) lagti -whiteness
3. (Ma) rara - redness/dry
4. (Ma) latuy - greenness/fresh
a. Fresh veggies
b. Of low value

(Level 2)
 Use derivation of colors
 Adding description to the colors

Conclusion: there is a gender-perception of color