Spring 2013 Philosophy of Culture Course Lecture Notes A

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These are the notes you will see displayed in class. They can be correlated to study questions for each class day.

January 07

First Class Topics

• Course, Materials (books, pdfs, and clicker), and Goals
• Course Methods and web sites - view course research questions

• Course website -- for reading schedule, grading scheme, email, pdfs, audio from class, audio comments on assignments
• Course wiki -- for basic course information, lecture notes, study questions.
• Einstruction site - for registering your clicker, viewing clicker questions.

• A typical prep cycle for the course: read, engage, review, prep SQs.
• Time commitment: 6 hours per week as a baseline.
• Grading Schemes: overview.
• Ereserves - pdfs for course reading not in book form.

January 08

Wilson, Prologue, Chapters 1 and 2

• Gaugin painting: Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?
• 7: Star Wars culture from Stone Age emotions
• Do myths explain origins or do origins explain myths? -- Strong claim for latter position.
• Our evolutionary equipment for survival predates our capacities for self-reflection on that equipment. Claims science can solve the riddle of Gaugin's painting.
• Evolutionary Account:

• pre-human evolutionary lines -- most went extinct
• Dates for invertebrates: 220 million years ago for termites; 150 million for ants; bees 70-80 million years. Stabilized around 65 million years ago.
• Dates for homo sapiens: several 100 thousand years ago; diaspora (out of Africa) 60,000 years ago; neanderthals, homo floresiensis (hobbits!); agriculture 10,000 years ago;

• Eusocial: lives with multiple generations and altruistic; diffs: culture, language, intelligence, empathy, judging intentions, mental maps of social space.
• How to explain differences? large size and low mobility --

Nanda & Worms, Chapter 3, part 1

• Terms: Ethnography, fieldwork, participant observation,
• Is ethnography science? (also raised in Malinowski)
• early relationship of anthropology to evolutionary theory, for example in Boas. relativism in anthropology
• Postmodernism as challenge to objectivity in anthropology
• Charles Brooks field study in India

January 10

Eno, A Big Theory of Culture

• Big Speculative Questions:

• Why do we engage in culture, especially since it is expensive (in time and energy)?
• Why do we fill our free time with culture?

• Is it possible to find a single language to talk about culture?
• Importance of metaphor.
• Art does real work for us. Art is transactional.

Wilson, Chapter 3, The Approach

• Some points to make about evolution (paralleling Wilson a bit): What does it mean to say evolution is "radically contingent" but also involves "design". Concept of "design space" and Wilson's concept of "preadaptation."
• Preadaptation (22): a step in evolution which opens up (or closes off) other possibilities.
• Major pre-adaptations leading to culture:

• Large size and relative immobility
• Large brain
• Emphasis on sight over smell.
• Bipedalism, freeing up the hands. (australopithicenes rock)
• Sweat glands and long distance running (Racing the Antelope)
• Control of fire (not available to insects and aquatic life)

• Big step toward eusociality: camping! Seriously, campsites (what's valuable about a campsite?) cf. hives, nests

January 14

Wilson, Chapter 4

• Dietary changes: Australopithecenes were vegetarians, Homo species (Habilis and later, Sapiens) scavenged meat before hunting.
• Changes marking Homo Habilis: facial structure, similar neocortex wrinkling to moderns, Broca and Wernicke areas of brain grow.
• Traditional explanations for growth of Hominins vs. recent speculation: 37-39
• Meat and hunting.
• Wilson's emphasis on the "nest" and, for Hominins, the campsite. Defensive architecture and lifestyle in modern culture.
• Importance of nests: division of labor, defense, sharing food, group competition.

Nanda & Worms, Chapter 3 part 2

• In spite of prominent female anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, feminist anthropology found bias in male ethnographies (androcentric bias), particularly in Malinowski's work.
• Examples of global influences in ethnography.
• Databases: Human Relations Area Files (HRAF): examples of research uses.

January 15

Diamond, Yali's Question

• Thinking about long term cultural difference among human populations

• Yali's question: Why do you people have so much cargo? General form:
• Some benchmarks: 11,000bc everyone hunting and gathering
• 1500ad: Australian aboriginals, Papua New Guinea, South Americans, Tasmanians

• Do differences justify domination? explanation vs. justification
• Is the question eurocentric?
• Does the question assume that so-called advanced cultures are more advanced?
• Old answers: social darwinist, racist answers. Example of Australia.
• Old answers: cold climates stimulate innovation; lush river cultures thrive;
• Diamond's approach:

1. Guns, Germs, Steel - biogeography focuses on environmental features of culture that created real and persistent differences in development.
2. Why Guns, Germs, Steel?

Diamond, Chatper 3, "Collision at Cajamarca"

• 1492: Columbus
• Cajamarca (modern Peru) 11/16/1532: Franciso Pizzaro vs. Inca Emperor Atahuallpa
• Follow the story: complexity of Atahuallpa's society, tossing the bible, Spaniard's fear, slaughter, role of religion
• Exaplanatory questions:

• Why did Pizarro capture Atahuallpa?
• Prequel for Atahuallpa: Small poz for the Aztecs
• Why didn't Atahuallpa capture Pizarro in Spain?
• Why did Atahuallpa walk into the trap?

January 17

Wilson, Chapters 5 & 6

• More lists of "pre-adaptations":

• Land (allowing for fire)
• Large size (allowing for large brain)
• Grasping hands with soft "spatulate" fingers & and free to use (not needed for walking)
• Meat -- cooperation to get it --
• Cooking
• Nest/Camp
• Division of Labor

Wilson, Chapter 6

• More on encephalization: australopithicenes 500-600 cubic centimeters --> Homo Sapiens 1500-1700!
• Kin Selection: Altruism benefits group members proportionally to genetic similarity.

• Note: Wilson believes he and some colleagues have disproven kin selection, but not everyone agrees.

• Multi-level selection: A broader range of scientists believe in multi-level selection (individual and group), whether they agree that kin selection is true.
• Group Selection: Holds that group competition affects the fitness of individuals.

• Traits such as group size, "tightness" and "cooperativeness" (quality of communication and division of labor) matter.
• Group selection advocates think this is a meaningful question: How do the costs and benefits of membership in a group affect my fitness (ability to pass on genes)?
• 54: If costs (of group membership) exceed benefits (of group membership), defection will increase.

January 21

Erickson, Chatper Two, Part 1, pp. 73-91

• Boas: importance, empirical yet anti-evolution, "historical particularism"

• responding to discredited 19th American schools which were racist, also "cephalic index" theory (phrenology?) was pseudo-scientific

• Big distinction: geistwissenschaft vs. naturwissenschaft
• Kroeber: thought of culture as sui generis; the "super-organic" (which is more theoretical than Boas' particularism would have allowed)

• still overcoming 19th century ideas, such as "great man theory"

• Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict

• brought psychological theory into fieldwork
• How does "enculturation" form personality?
• Example in Mead's work, Coming of Age in Samoa; note cultural impact of this work in the US
• Revision: p. 81, some naivete in Mead's valorization of Samoan culture.

• Benedict: also into culture/personality nexus

• thought of cultures as having a "gestalt" (note departure from particularism); yet retains relativism from Boas
• Revision: p. 83: Gorer: Benedict simplistic in applying to Freud to Japanese and Russian culture.

• Freud, early work on hysteria, also contributed to anthropology. We'll read Civilation and It's Discontents; note general connection between ind. and social psychology.

• Basic ideas from individual psychology: psyche (id, ego, superego); normal development is about negotiating "classic" challenges that derive from our deep history, especially about mom and dad.
• Basic ideas from social psychology:

• Pleasure Principle
• "Cultural work" - opposing the pleasure principle, encouraging sublimation, enforcing "reality principle"
• Primitivism in Freud -- primitive cultures less repressed (think Rousseau). But, yikes! That makes primitive adults like civilized children!

• Implications for view of culture -- culture opposes nature
• "Just so" story -- primeaval family -- patricide, Oedipus and Electra complex, taboos, etc.
• Kind of a redux of 19th century ideas.

• Kardiner -- example of a freudian anthropologist who abandons Freud's specific theory (too much a product of his own culture), but retains the interest in personality as product of culturally specific development.
• tools of this approach, also in Du Bois: Thematic Apperception Test, Rorshack tests
• Revision, p. 90: Crazy ideas followed nonetheless, ex. about toilet training and breast feeding.

Wilson, Chapters 7 and 8

Seven

• Tribalism -- examples from Sports
• Research on in-group and out-group judgements (59)
• Is this nurture or nature? "pre-pared learning" (like language, incest, other ev. psycho traits)
• Ethnocentrism -- in experience and in the lab. implicit racism

Eight

• War languge ubiquitous
• Examples of holocausts, genocides, study of violence as near universal; note connection to religion
• Exceptions might involve small group with high interrelatedness
• Human violence is not just post Neolithic (roughly after agriculture). (Might be product of group selection. Chimp murder and raids.)
• Hypostheses from population dynamics -- maybe violence is product of ecology of population and environment.

January 22

Diamond, Chapter 3, The Third Chimpanzee

• Some issues: long maturation in humans vs. other mammals. Parental investment needed
• Important Point: sexual behaviors and sexual anatomy track evolved strategies for reproduction (and child rearing). p. 71: "social organization shapes the bodies of men and women"
• Variables: How many partners are involved in fertilization? Does it matter if paternity is known? Does it matter if others know who's having sex with whom? Are offspring competent from birth or not?
• Body size: big harems, big males

• gibbons equal sized and monogamous; humans slightly polygynous, males slightly bigger
• Testes size: frequency of copulation (affected by harem size and frequency of ovulation), larger testes
• Penis size: Who knows? theories related to sexual position don't seem to work. Could have more to do with other men than men and women. phallocarps; probably not about modesty
• Concealed ovulation (concealed from men and women): comparison to other primates and mammals.

• Likely related to other differences: continuous receptivity in humans (odd); low probability of conception relative to other mammals
• Digression (78) on Catholic views of function of sex in light of contemporary ev. theory.
• Why do humans waste so much time on sex?
• Why have sex in private?

Major Theories:

• 1. Promoting cooperation
• 2. Binds men to women. (counter example in gibbons, who are monogamous without this)
• 3. Gives women power. Allows women flexibility with mating opportunities.(Donald Symons)
• 4. Balance of power. Exploits males paranoia about paternity, but also keeps him around. (Richard Alexander and Katherine Noonan)
• 5. Confuses paternity, avoids infanticide, which is costly to women. (Sarah Hrdy)
• 6. Allow women to trick themselves into not avoiding pain and risk of childbirth. (Nancy Burley)

January 24

Three areas of reflection on course research questions

1. Strengths and Limits of bio-culture explanations.

2. Getting inside a culture.

3. Criticizing a culture.

Erickson, Chapter 2, History of Anthropology

• Emile Durkheim

• Different forms of solidarity: mechanical, organic
• contrast with Marx, solidarity of society not illusory
• organic solidarity involves "collective representations" and "collective consciousness" or group mind: religion an example.
• Suicide: altruistic (in mechanical, homogeneous society), egoistic (a form of self-expression), "anomie" (self-alienation from flux in solidarity).

• French Structural Anthropology (Levi-Straus)

• Note on Mauss, The Gift -- transition to seeing individual at center of social facts. Potlatch.
• Levi-Strauss also thinking about "exchange" as basic means for promoting social solidarity.
• Binary oppositions (think about giver/receiver to start) fundamental
• def, p. 95: "Contrasting pairs of mental constructs that create social meaning."
• ex. exchange of women.
• ex. hunting as mediation of agriculture and warfare.
• ex. coyote as mediate of herbivore and carnivore (trickster)

• Durkheim and Levi-Straus on the nature and task of culture

Wilson, Chapters 9 and 10

• Some dates

• 700,000 years ago to present -- brain size double from 750 cc (Homo erectus) to 1500 cc (Homo sapiens)
• 200,000 years ago -- evidence of some burial practices
• 100,000 year ago -- Neandertaals in Europe
• 100,000 to 70,000 year ago -- first evidence of ornaments and burial artifacts (red ochre & travel acc.)
• 50-60,000 years ago -- out of Africa (also higher rates of mutation)
• 30,000 year ago -- no more Neadertaals!
• 10,000 year ago -- agriculture invented (peak in mutation rates) "Neolithic" (new stone age/ post stone age)
• Genetic diversity in contemporary sub-saharan africans.
• Significant environmental pressure in the time frame 135,000 to 90,000 years ago.

• Explaining emergence of "human" traits (social and cognitive)

• Population genetics and the "serial founder" effect. (note on chinese/native american dna)
• Genetic drift -- an effect, distinct from natural selection, that changes the frequency of variations of a genes (alleles) as a result of the random sampling of these variations over successive populations of organisms. [1] (Read first paragraph and marble example.) Genetic drift would have a larger effect on the genome of an organism following periods of high mutation rate. At low rates mutations disappear, above 30% (Wilson claims, p. 88) changes (at least those not detrimental to fitness) are more likely to be passed along. (Example of sickle cell in malarial areas of human habitation.)
• Coding vs. Non-coding genes. ? Is it plausible to think that noncoding genes helped makes us "human"?
• Recent claims in Turkheimer's laws of behavioral genetics.

• Some achievement of the early neolithic period (in addition to early agriculture)

• Better stone axes and adzes.
• Hollow structures -- food vessels and containers
• Weaving
• Better dwellings
• Cultivation of plant varieties (artificial selection)

January 28

Dennett, "Evolution of Culture"

• "Intentional Stance" -- connect to geist/natur-wissenschaft; culture as sui generus; narrative
• Limits of the "Cui bono?" perspective
• Dawkins theory of cultural memes
• Symbionts: parasites, commensals, and mutualists
• Metaphors for "sui generus" character of culture, p. 11: Wilson's "leash"; Dennett's "design space"
• Methodical vs. Unconscious selection
• A "just so" story about music as a cultural meme.

Method in Philosophy and Philosophy of Culture

• Review of Philosophical Methods
• Applying critical awareness of past anthropological explanations to contemporary problems of explanation.
• Reasoning by analogy: memes

January 29

Diamond, "Why Do Cultures Make Such Disastrous Mistakes?"

• Examples of Cultures that have made "big mistakes"

• Easter Islanders: imagining the sitation. How could it really happen

• Four main reasons:

1. Fail to anticipate the problem

2. Problem arrives, but isn't perceived

3. Problem perceived, but no effort to solve it

4. Effort to solve the problem is ineffective

1. Fail to anticipate the problem

• ex. of Forest fires in the west
• forgetfulness: Mayan droughts, 1973 oil crisis
• false analogies: Viking agriculture in Iceland

2. Fail to perceive problem

• hard to see state of soil nutrition
• slow trends: climate change
• distant managers

3. Failure to try to solve the problem

• rational bad behavior: toxic waste dumping in environment without sufficient penalties.
• tragedy of the commons: overfishing
• international logging
• denial: research on resident's near damns; holocaust denial by WWII European Jews.

4. Ineffective efforts

• invasive species abatement
• rabbits in Tasmania, Australia

January 31

Diamond, Ch. 10, "Agriculture's Mixed Blessings"

• Old "progressivist" view
• Ants practice agriculture and something like animal husbandry
• Details about the spread of agriculture
• Advantages of hunter gatherer lifestyle

• short work week, more leisure
• better nutrition (in some comparisons)
• no impact from crop failures

• paleopathology: what you tell from old bones and cookware

• health evidence from early adoption of agriculture
• height, nutrition, cavities, anemia, tb, syphillis, mortality
• low carb, varied nutrients
• class structures emerge after agriculture: diff outcomes dep. on class
• sexual inequality

• other differences that sustained agriculture

• increased population density made hunt/gather politically vulnerable
• hunt/gather requires lots of room
• agriculture created society that could produce sophisticated art (churches).
• grants that agriculture led to lots of great things, but also to large populations, which affects the equation about quality of life.

Critical Discussion

• How should we assess the value of transition to agriculture to human society today?

February 04

Freud, Civ & Dis, part 1/4

• Freud's comment on his friend's objection to Future of an Illusion: that he had missed the experience of religion. An "oceanic" feeling.
• Overview of Freud's view of religion. (really given in bottom half of p. 5)

• Notion of feeling mediated by structures of consciousness: id, ego.
• Boundary of ego and world
• Pleasure principle / Reality principle

• Model of Consciousness

• Analogy to growth of ancient city, such as Rome. Memory-traces, nothing abolished.
• Mind's past survives in our growth and development (5)
• Interesting point of connection with contemporary thought in evolutionary psychology.

• Problem of religion -- seeks to answer the question of purpose of life, which is happiness.
• Problem of happiness, then:

• "intention that man should be happy is not included in the scheme of Creation." 8 Not part of nature.
• strategies: pleasure seeking, pain avoidance, intoxication, renunciation, art (sublimation), work, phantasy (art again), becoming convinced of an alternate reality (religion again), love
• all of these strategies are part of "libido-economy"
• "happiness is a problem of the economics of the libido"

February 05

Erickson, History of Anthropology, Chapter 3, part 1

• Later 20th century can be seen as addressing tensions between particularity of Boasian tradition and the generality and abstraction of the Durkheim (rationalist) tradition.

Weber

• synthesizes idealist and materialist currents. human agent is active, but responding to material conditions.
• Basic approach: p. 109. roles, classes, inequality, alienation, response
• Crucial role for religion. Religion helps us respond to problems raised by civilization and culture, (esp. inequality) (cf. Freud)
• "Inner-worldly asceticism" -- psychological distance from this world while remaining in it. (vs. monastery)
• Calvinist Protestantism (The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920)) a big example of this. Calvin is a "prophet" who advises recreation of heaven on earth through hard work. Changes status of bourgeoisie. Prosperity a sign of grace. Meshes with capitalism.
• Weber's approach contrasts with the more static Durkheimian model. Cultures are dynamic responses to problems, not static wholes.
• Anthony F.C. Wallace: Weberian. Focus on charismatic prophets in diverse cultures experiencing 1st contact. "cargo cults"

Cognitive Anthropology & Sapir/Whorf

• Cognitive Anthropology: Mental structures and cultural structures (esp. language) correlated. (good topic for Italian language)
• etic, emic, phonetic, phonemic
• Sapir - Whorf: work this out for linguistic culture. Do specific languages lead us to think in distinctive ways?
• Hopi v. SAE, detail on 114.
• Ethno-linguistics.

Cultural Materialism

• Marvin Harris (1927 - 2001) attempt to make anthropology more scientific.
• etic, emic, behavioral, mental.
• Incorporates some of Marx's thought on difference between base and superstructure. (infrastructure, structure, superstructure)
• "False consciousness" -- the emic behavoral and mental are tricky because "insiders" can misrepresent the meaning of their behaviors.

Biologized Anthropology

• Biology of behavior emerges in 60s as a challenge to relatively open-ended practice of cultural anthropology. (nature vs. Sui generus - a part of our story in the course!)
• Early works, like "The Naked Ape" were sensational (see wiki page!) and others revived race theory (The Origin of Races). Jensen and IQ racism. Since disproven.
• Sociobiology -- E. O. Wilson -- how to explain emergence of altruism in eusocial insects and human culture. Initially opposing group selection, Wilson proposed "inclusive fitness" (altruism is "selfishness" practiced toward relatives -- could be passed along through relatives). Emphasizing "groupish" behavior opened Wilson and others to charge of supporting xenophobia. Maybe just "social darwinism" warmed over. Also, discussion of "asymmetry" between sexes seemed sexist.
• Note how later work by Wilson (The Social Conquest of Nature) favors group selection over kin selection. (More to come on this, epigenetics, and sexism.)

February 07

Freud, Civ & Dis, part 2

• General sources of unhappiness: nature, decay of body, inadequacy of relationship.
• "our so-called civilization itself is to blame for a great part of our misery." (13)

• first, Christianity already reflects this attitude with its "low estimation" of life on earth
• second, when we (Freud) discovered neuroses (read 13)

• Freud's "just so" story of civilization --- general & psycho-analytic considerations

• tools, fire, houses, technology (extending the body)
• apotheosis
• the useful and the useless
• importance of cleanliness in judgement of culture (cane merda! & bidets) - add note on olfactory.
• dev. of "higher faculties"
• management of power (17)
• emergence of culture based character traits

• example: transforming anal-erotic impulses into traits of orderliness, thriftiness, cleanliness
• culture manages libidinal development
• sublimation (look it up) (18) "civilization is built up on the renunciation of instinctual gratifications"

• Freud on sex and aggression in culture

• Sex (18-23)

• spiritualization of sexuality
• use of term "love" in culture: ("One the one hand, love opposes the interests of culture; on the other, culture menaces love with grievous restrictions." 20)
• culture manages process of "coming of age" through puberty and adolescence; separation from family
• "appropriate sexuality" regulated by culture -- suppression of homosexuality, for example
• enforcement of monogamy (remember: divorce is only recently legal)
• "The sexual life of civilized man is seriously disabled" (22)

• Aggression Homo homini lupus! -- instinctual and natural (Ethics students: note Veneer Theory!)

• Golden Rule
• Empathy
• Property
• Aggression toward outgroups -- war and hatred. "Narcissism of minor differences"
• Thanatos