Ethnography 1. INTRO Originally people who studied cultures were amateurs who happened to either be particularly observant or who happened to travel a lot. Some of them did more or less what people did today. a. Ibn Khaldun was a famous Arab scholar who did observations of everyone, including the Vikings
Anthropology and Moral Relativism Two stories: In 1960's and 70's a prominent Harvard psychologist named Jerome Bruner decided that it would be a good idea to expose young people to some of the concepts of social science, so he developed a curriculum called \Man: A Course
1. As an organizing principle for life a. We tend to think of kin as something natural biological or as having some basis beyond culture i. For example, children reuniting with birth parents b. Kinship is actually highly variable and artificial from one culture to the next
1.The Nuer a. Famous in anthropology long before Hutchinson's book i. The Nuer were pacified by the British colonial forces 1. After their pacification anthropologists could study them 2. Much of early anthropology was caught up in colonialism b. Studied by many, but there can't be a definitive book on their culture or any other
More Problems With Culture 1. The culture concept has been used and misused This notion has traveled around the world it can be considered one of Anthropology's great successes b. Culture has also been distorted 1. Assumptions that cultures have clear boundaries
