Introduction to Cultural Anthropology - Summary
Kyle Rzucidlo
10/2/2012
ANTH 207
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Summary Notes
1. Summarize what you consider to be the main points of the assigned readings and the arguments that are being offered in each text.
- Richard Robbins began Chapter 4 by asking how it is that people can believe in things that cannot be proven. The answer to his question requires examining the role of language, ritual, myth, and other features of social life that persuade people of the correctness of their beliefs or that convince them to change what they believe. How does Language affect the meanings we assign to our experience? The Ideas of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf demonstrate that the vocabulary of a language may direct perception to certain features of the environment, and the grammar of a language may encourage certain ways of looking at the world. The selection of metaphors also has an impact on the meanings we assign to experience. By taking language from one experience and applying it to another, we carry the meaning of one experience to the other. Robbins then explores the ways in which symbolic action reinforces a particular view of the world. Ritual, for example, symbolically depicts a certain view of reality in such a way that it convinces us of the truth of that reality. Examples include the Cannibal Dance of the Kwakwaka’wakw, which shows the values of Kwakwaka’wakw society and provides members with a way to control their lives, and the rituals of contemporary English magic and witchcraft, which convince persons of this society that mental forces can influence the material world.
Walter Benjamin's Surrealism essay explains how these competing political aims manifest themselves at the level of aesthetic form:
“Here due weight must be given to the insight that in the Traité du style, Aragon’s last book, required a distinction between metaphor and image, a happy insight into questions of style that needs extending. Extension: nowhere do
10/2/2012
ANTH 207
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
Summary Notes
1. Summarize what you consider to be the main points of the assigned readings and the arguments that are being offered in each text.
- Richard Robbins began Chapter 4 by asking how it is that people can believe in things that cannot be proven. The answer to his question requires examining the role of language, ritual, myth, and other features of social life that persuade people of the correctness of their beliefs or that convince them to change what they believe. How does Language affect the meanings we assign to our experience? The Ideas of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf demonstrate that the vocabulary of a language may direct perception to certain features of the environment, and the grammar of a language may encourage certain ways of looking at the world. The selection of metaphors also has an impact on the meanings we assign to experience. By taking language from one experience and applying it to another, we carry the meaning of one experience to the other. Robbins then explores the ways in which symbolic action reinforces a particular view of the world. Ritual, for example, symbolically depicts a certain view of reality in such a way that it convinces us of the truth of that reality. Examples include the Cannibal Dance of the Kwakwaka’wakw, which shows the values of Kwakwaka’wakw society and provides members with a way to control their lives, and the rituals of contemporary English magic and witchcraft, which convince persons of this society that mental forces can influence the material world.
Walter Benjamin's Surrealism essay explains how these competing political aims manifest themselves at the level of aesthetic form:
“Here due weight must be given to the insight that in the Traité du style, Aragon’s last book, required a distinction between metaphor and image, a happy insight into questions of style that needs extending. Extension: nowhere do