ANTH 425 Power and Change

27 September 2011

Some classical anthropological debates:

Oct. 4: The standard cultural ecology political framework and a marxist critique

Read: Anderson, Robert (1963)" Review of Profiles in Ethnology by Elman R. Service." American Anthropologist 65(6): 1360-61.

Ekholm, Kasja and Jonathan Friedman (1985) "Towards a Global Anthropology." Critique of Anthropology 5(1): 97-119 Sage.

 

- how does cultural ecology work?

- how does it classify societies into bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states? (Sometimes with variations for big man/woman society; urban archaic civilization, folk society, etc.)

- what are the features of these societies?

- what is this typology proposed to explain?

- how do Ekholm and Friedman challenge this kind of typology, or any division proposed by anthropological theory into "us/them," "civilized/primitive"?

- what do they propose as an alternative way of understanding social change and social difference?

- reproduction

- regional/global systems in time and space

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