Introduction in Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present. From the Greek anthropos (human) and logia (study), the word anthropology itself tells us it is the field that seeks to understand humankind, from the beginnings millions of years ago up to the present day. Anthropology considers how people's behaviors change over time, and how people and seemingly dissimilar cultures are different and the same. To understand the full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history, anthropology draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences. A central concern of anthropologists is the application of knowledge to the solution of human problems.

Concepts and sub-fields

Cultural anthropology was imposed and developed firstly in the United States of America;. Then, due to the big cultural, economical, and political power of USA, cultural anthropology spread wide world. Europe defended their own concepts in this area. Today, under the name of anthropology there are hiding an amount of fields and research areas about human kind. Anthropology is seen as a science of humanity and works to understand human existence as it relates to both evolutionary time and geographic space. The ultimate purpose of anthropology is to offer a complete and systematic image of humanity.

When we talk about anthropology, there are two points of view:1. Ontological (ontology is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions concerning what

entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences)

2. Epistemological (epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge)

The ontological point of view debates the study of human nature, identifies human essences and generalities of humans. Ontological vision analyzes the human being as a biological, social and cultural being. Man is the result of a biological evolution, is a part of biological world. But, human kind, step by step, overcomes the biological existence; people establish social relations, they create division of labor and institutions, so they form human society. More than that, men learn new skills and competences, develop new behavior and actions; so, the culture was created.

Epistemological perspective takes into account the diversity of researches and specialized branches of anthropology. For identification of the main branches of anthropology, it was used 3 differentiation criteria. During the 1970s and 1990s there was an epistemological shift away from the positivist traditions that had largely informed the discipline. So, questions about the nature and production of knowledge came to occupy a central place in cultural and social anthropology. In contrast, archaeology and biological anthropology remained largely positivist. Due to this difference in epistemology, anthropology as a discipline has lacked cohesion over the last several decades.

In the United States, contemporary anthropology is typically divided into four sub-fields: cultural anthropology also known as socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and physical (or biological) anthropology. The four-field approach to anthropology is reflected in many American undergraduate textbooks and anthropology programs. At universities in the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, these "sub-fields" are frequently housed in separate departments and are seen as distinct disciplines - with the field corresponding to American socio-cultural anthropology being simply anthropology.

Sub-fields of Anthropology: Physical Anthropology Cultural Anthropology Archaeology Linguistics Applied Anthropology

Physical AnthropologyAlso referred to as biological anthropology, Physical Anthropology is the study of people from a biological perspective. In its work, it draws liberally from the biological and physical sciences. Physical anthropologists study the evolutionary development, biological origins and genetic diversity of human beings by examining fossilized human remains. While physical anthropology could be considered a biological science, it is typically classified as a social science because the physical aspect of mankind is being examined in the context of human behavior and culture. One of its broad interests is in evolution and human origins.More specific to our interests here is the study of the fossils of modern humans and human ancestors, namely paleoanthropology. Hominids refer to modern humans (Homo sapiens), the Neandertals, Homo erectus, and the many Australopithecines/Paranathropus. They are our most direct ancestors. 'Lucy' is the most famous of the Australopithecines. Hominoid is a more inclusive term for all the hominids and their closest primate relatives, the apes (gorilla, chimpanzee, orangutan, and gibbon).A second area of interest to physical anthropologists is human variation. This is an examination of how and why physical traits vary around the world. Measuring human physical characteristics – anthropometry – was the main research activity of the first anthropologists early in the 1800s. A major focus for the early anthropometrists was the skull. Cranial capacity, jaw structure, the angle of the brow, and other criteria were analyzed in great detail. Although the focus and application of physical anthropology have changed from its early days, anthropometry remains a useful research tool for paleontologists engaged in the search for the origins of the human species. Variations in skeletal shape and bone structure are vital clues to our prehistoric roots. Some obvious traits are skin color, body size, and eye color. Less obvious, but more easy to quantify are biochemical traits such as blood type and genetic differences. Also, Physical Anthropology deals with human adaptability to extremes of heat, cold, and altitude.Primatology is a third broad area of study. Primates are studied for their implications in evolution and the insights they provide into human behavior. They are our closest relatives and as such have had a crucial role in medical research. Nearly a million rhesus monkeys were used in the research for the polio vaccine. Today, many primate species are endangered and such a study would be impossible. Studies of primates have also given insight into the incest taboo, a world wide cultural universal amongst human societies that restricts mating with close relatives. Observation of anthropoids reveals that many primates have an inhibition against mating with close kin. Thus our feelings about incest that we relate to law, religion, genetics and psychology may be a part of a more universal embedded inhibition shared with other primates.

Forensic anthropology is a specialized area of physical anthropology. It is the identification of human remains for legal purposes. Teeth are especially important for several reasons. They tend to be the most enduring body part, as in a burial or a plane crash. Teeth contain many details, especially when they have been restored. This brings up another reason for the importance of teeth: dental records are extremely common.Dental anthropology is the study of teeth in a perspective beyond clinical science. That perspective includes the study of dental growth, theories on dental origin, primate dentition, and population variation. Very briefly, dental anthropology is the study of teeth as recorded in casts of living mouths or as seen in the skulls of archaeological and fossil collections.

Cultural AnthropologyCultural anthropologists seek to understand the internal logic of societies. These anthropologists piece together cultural information by using o variety of methods, which involves face-to-face interviews and participant observation. While the cultural anthropologists of yesteryear studied a foreign culture as a whole, today's scholar typically focuses on a narrow aspect of the life of a human group, such as art, human sexuality, gender, religion, political organization or social control.Culture is believed to date back at least to the origin of the earliest stone tools, some 2.5 million years ago. As hominids appear closer to us in time, the evidence for culture increases. This is evident as stone tools become more complex, fire is harnessed, and as hominids spread out of Africa into more challenging environments. With the arrival of modern humans about 40,000 years ago, the pace of cultural evolution overtook that of biological evolution. With domestication, metallurgy, and population growth, the rate of culture change has steadily increased at an exponential rate. The pace of cultural change today is now driven by technology. The Internet, personal computers, and compact discs were undreamed of just a couple decades ago. New challenges will be to continue to adapt new ideas, methods, and know-how into our lives.Cultural anthropology is also called socio-cultural anthropology (in the United States, but especially cultural anthropology is preferred) or social anthropology (especially in the United Kingdom), ethnology or folklore (in Germany). After decades of confrontations, American concept gained as a general definition, unifying the studies about humanity from a cultural perspective. Other definitions did not disappeared, but they have restricted areas of study and research.Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group. It was pioneered in the field of socio-cultural anthropology but has also become a popular method in various other fields of social sciences - particularly sociology, communication studies, history - that studies people, ethnic groups and other ethnic formations, their ethnogenesis, composition, resettlement, social welfare characteristics, as well as their material and spiritual culture. It is often employed for gathering empirical data on human societies and cultures.Ethnology concentrates on the cultures of the present. It is the study of human behavior as it can be seen, experienced, and discussed with those who live in a particular culture. Ethnology is the theoretical aspect of anthropology, is concerned with the explanation of cultural regularities and variation through comparison and generalization based on existing ethnographic literature and the formulation of hypotheses for further research. Accordingly, theory building occurs both before fieldwork, as the anthropologist reviews the findings of other researchers to identify issues for investigation, and after, as he/she evaluates the significance of the findings. While there is some loose agreement on basic concepts, such as culture, numerous theoretical controversies and differences in orientation have dominated the development of ethnology. Ethnology is the study of many cultures from a comparative perspective. Earlier we briefly remarked about the incest taboo. The observation that it is a cultural universal is based on a cross-cultural perspective - the study of all known cultures. In the 19 th century

ethnology was historically oriented and offered explanations for extant cultures, languages, and races in terms of diffusion, migration, and other historical processes. In the 20 th century ethnology has focused on the comparative study of past and contemporary cultures. Since cultural phenomena can seldom be studied under conditions of experiment or control, comparative data from the total range of human behavior helps the ethnologist to avoid those assumptions about human nature that may be implicit in the dictates of any single culture.

ArchaeologyArchaeology is the study of human cultures and behavior through material remains - called by some material culture. The archaeologist is interested in how prehistoric and historical people live their daily lives, how people understand the world around them, how they adapt to the surrounding environment, and how and why cultures change. Answers deducted from the artifacts, architecture and human bones are developed in theories or picture. Archaeologists primarily study material culture, not fossils. That is the province of the paleontologist. Usually people associate archaeology with prehistory - before written history - but some of archaeology's most spectacular finds involve writing.Technology has been incorporated successfully into many aspects of modern archaeology. Landsat satellite images have located ancient Indian roadways in the American southwest. Radiocarbon C14 and other absolute dating techniques have made date in time much more precise than was possible a few years ago. Use of this technique revealed the famed Shroud of Turin to be a medieval fraud. The 'Iceman' mummy found in the Italian Alps some years ago was dated at 5,000 years using C14 absolute dating. After years of political and scientific wrangling, it is now on display in northern Italy.Archaeozoology is the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. The remains consist primarily of the hard parts of the body such as bones, teeth, and shells.Archaeobotany (or Palaeobotany) is the study of plant remains in Archaeology. Maritime Archaeology is a discipline within that specifically studies human interaction with the sea, lakes and rivers through the study of associated physical remains, be they vessels, shore side facilities, port-related structures, cargoes, human remains and submerged landscapes.Archaeoastronomy is the study of how people in the past "have understood the phenomena in the sky how they used phenomena in the sky and what role the sky played in their cultures.Industrial Archeology is the study of material culture from the past, but with a focus on industry. Strictly speaking, industrial archaeology includes sites from the earliest times, such as prehistoric copper mining in the British Peak District, to the most recent, such as coal mining sites in the UK, closed in the 1980s.

LinguisticsLinguistics is the discipline that studies speech and language. Linguistic anthropology studies contemporary human languages as well as ones from the past. Linguistic anthropologists seek to understand the connections between language and human behavior. They explore links between different cultures by examining various language components, primarily phonetics and morphology.Anthropologists regard language as 'conservative'. It is retained by people when they move. They may move to new areas, adopt new foods, take to guns and horses, but their language stays with them. Vocabularies are the clues, much as words in the English language today contains many cognates from Latin, German, and French. Linguistics is useful worldwide. It has been especially valuable in tracing the migrations of prehistoric Native American Indians. Navaho and Apache Indians are considered to be Athabascan – Indians who migrated to the south from Western Canada and who retained their linguistic origins as a New World immigrant group more recent than the 'first Americans' who came across from Siberia 12,000 years ago.Historical Linguistics examines the evolution of language. Ethnolinguistics studies how language shapes the perspectives of a certain culture.

Applied AnthropologyApplied Anthropology works to solve specific human problems with anthropological methods, ethnographic findings and scientific theories. Applied anthropologists work in various fields, particularly health and medicine, education, human rights, international development and business. Two current trends in the applied anthropology field include environmental issues and disaster research and development.Applied and practicing anthropologists build bridges between cultural worlds. They may make videos, or write explanations of policy or research for a lay audience. Anthropologists blend respect for cultural difference and awareness of common humanity. This, combined with interdisciplinary research methods, can help make policies, programs, and plans that improve human well-being around the world. They are called on to offer the anthropological perspective--a view of humanity grounded in a tradition of cross-cultural scholarship and action.The subfields of anthropology are not mutually exclusive: in practice, they overlap, but tend to use different methodologies and techniques. That overlap or sharing is best illustrated by new and emerging fields, such as

medical anthropology (it can best be described as the study of the interaction between culture, health, and disease In anthropology, we call this biocultural evolution; biology and culture interact; therefore, much of human adaptive change is a product of biocultural evolution)

religious anthropology political anthropology economical anthropology business anthropology (helps businesses gain a better understanding of their activities and

customers) visual anthropology (documents everyday life through filmmaking) environmental anthropology (believes that the well-being of the environment goes hand in

hand with the well-being of people) museum anthropology (interprets ethnographic and archaeological collections to the general

public)

Interdisciplinary Vocation

One of the main differences between anthropology and other fields that study people is holism, anthropology’s unique blend (mixture) of biology, social, cultural, linguistic, historical and contemporary perspectives. Paradoxically, while distinguishing anthropology, this breadth is what also links to many other disciplines. Anthropology has strong links to the humanities. Anthropology is both scientific and humanistic. The humanities include language sciences, comparative literature, classics, folklore, philosophy, the arts. These fields study languages, texts, philosophies, arts, music, performances, and other forms of creative expression. Also, historians are closely related to anthropologists. In particular, cultural and linguistic anthropology bring a comparative perspective to these forms of creative expression.Interdisciplinary studies may be defined as a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession.

We live in a complex world. We constantly draw on and integrate diverse information from our education and experiences to make decisions, interpret phenomena, and generally make sense of this world. This informal process represents a sort of interdisciplinary analysis. Interdisciplinary analysis in a more formal setting, such as the Introduction in Anthropology course, involves drawing on the specialized knowledge, concepts, or tools of academic disciplines and integrating these pieces to create new knowledge or deeper understanding.Over the past one hundred years, higher education has relied on academic disciplines to generate new knowledge and provide a process by which it becomes accepted. This discipline-based model has become dominant in most universities, controlling the resources that go into teaching, research, and outreach activities. This model capitalizes on the benefits of specialization—allowing specialists within a discipline to refine theories, methods, and technologies and push outward the bounds of knowledge within that field. Interdisciplinary analysis builds on, rather than supplants the strengths of the disciplinary model. The interdisciplinary scholar draws on appropriate disciplinary insights and reconfigures them in novel ways to address the question at hand.However, simply drawing on the concepts or methodologies of multiple disciplines does not automatically constitute interdisciplinary analysis.

Intradisciplinary (involves work within a single discipline) Crossdisciplinary (views one discipline from the perspective of another) Multidisciplinary (draws on the knowledge of several disciplines, each of which provides a

different perspective on a problem or issue) Transdisciplinary (is concerned with the unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary

perspectives)

Interdisciplinary analysis requires integration of knowledge from the disciplines being brought to bear on an issue. Disciplinary knowledge, concepts, tools, and rules of investigation are considered, contrasted, and combined in such a way that the resulting understanding is greater than simply the sum of its disciplinary parts. However, the focus on integration should not imply that the outcome of interdisciplinary analysis will always be a neat, tidy solution in which all contradictions between the alternative disciplines are resolved. However, contradictory conclusions and accompanying tensions between disciplines may not only provide a fuller understanding, but could be seen as a healthy symptom of interdisciplinarity. Analysis which works through these tensions and contradictions between disciplinary systems of knowledge with the goal of synthesis – the creation of new knowledge – often characterizes the richest interdisciplinary work.Anthropology and sociology share many epistemological assumptions, theoretical and methodological closeness, but important differences. Initially sociologists focused on the industrial west; anthropologists on nonindustrial societies. Different methods on data collection and analysis emerged to deal with these different kinds of societies.To study large-scale, complex nations, sociologists came to rely on questionnaires and other means of gathering masses of quantifiable data. For many years, sampling (to choose a manageable study group by random sampling or otherwise) and Statistical techniques have been basic to sociology, where as statistical training has been less common in anthropology. Traditional ethnographers/anthropologists studied small and non-literate populations and relied on methods appropriate to that context – such as, close observation, records, engaging in the daily life of another culture, writing accounts of this culture, emphasizing descriptive details and participant observation (taking part in the events one is observing, describing, and analyzing).Cultural anthropology and sociology share an interest in:

social relations organizations

behavior race, ethnicity social class gender power relations in modern nations

As the modern system grows, sociologists do research in 3rd world countries. Also, as industrialization spreads, many anthropologists work in industrial nations. The diversity of social life in modern complex nations (or urban study) often requires that even anthropologists adopt some social survey and statistical procedures. However, anthropologists also retain the intimacy and first hand investigation characteristics of ethnography. Anthropology differs from other fields that study human beings because it is comparative, holistic, and global. Political science developed to investigate particular domains of human behavior (not holistic). Political scientists and economists have tended to work mainly in modern nations. In the small-scale societies where ethnography grew up, politics and economics usually don’t stand out as distinct activities amenable to separate analysis, as they do in a modern society. Rather, they are submerged, or embedded, in the general social order.Studying political organizations cross-culturally, anthropologists have increased our knowledge of the range and variety of political and legal systems. Legal codes, along with ideas about crime and punishment, vary substantially from culture to culture. Also, anthropologists have studied ways in which conflicts are expressed and resolved in different cultural contexts, especially in societies without formal governments. On the confluence line between anthropology and political sciences, political anthropology was born.Most psychologists do research in their own society. Anthropology contributes by providing cross-cultural data since statements about “human” psychology cannot be based solely on observations made in one society or in a single type of society. Anthropological research are very close to psychology through subjects like culture and personality.Economics developed to investigate particular domains of human behavior (not holistic). The findings of Economists are usually based on research in western nations – where profit maximization is the basic motive about decisions of economic transactions. But an anthropologist knows that motivations vary cross-culturally. Anthropologists have contributed to the comparative study of economics by showing that principles other than profit motive propel (drive forward) the economy in other cultures.Lately, historians prove a great interest in anthropology, due to their researches of those social segments, which do not emit and produce written documents such as peasantry, but others wrote about them; peasantry was during pre-modern societies the dominant population – 90-95% in European medieval society. So, “new” history appeals to anthropological investigation methods, specialized in studying societies without writing and in interpreting the written documents from anthropological view; all these determined the development of historical anthropology – a sub-field of historical sciences/ or a sub-branch of cultural anthropology. More and more, history is becoming an anthropological history or a historic anthropology. Anthropology conducted history toward the study of

mentalities daily life popular religiosity death, violence alimentation gender and children sexuality climate history

Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave.The term holism was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts, a South African statesman, in his book, Holism and Evolution. Smuts defined holism as "The tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution”. After Einstein studied Holism and Evolution soon upon its publication, he wrote that two mental constructs will direct human thinking in the next millennium, his own mental construct of relativity and Smuts' of holism. In the work of Smuts he saw a clear blueprint of much of his own life, work and personality.To study a subject holistically is to attempt to understand all the factors that influence it and to interpret it in the context of all those factors. With respect to studies of human cultures and societies, the holistic perspective means that no single aspect of a community can be understood unless its relations to other aspects of community’s total way of life are explored.Taken literally, a holistic understanding of people’s customs and beliefs is probably not possible because of the complexity of human societies. But anthropologists have learned that ignoring the interrelations between language, religion, art, economy, family, and other dimensions of life results in distortions and misunderstandings. Although more complicated than this, the essence of the holistic perspective may be stated fairly simply: look for connections and interrelations between things, and try to understand parts in the context of the whole.There is an ongoing dispute as to whether anthropology is intrinsically holistic. Supporters of this concept consider anthropology holistic in two senses. First, it is concerned with all human beings across times and places, and with all dimensions of humanity (evolutionary, biophysical, sociopolitical, economic, cultural, psychological, etc.). Some leading anthropologists disagree, and consider anthropological holism to be an artifact from 19th century social evolutionary thought that inappropriately imposes scientific positivism upon cultural anthropology.Theoretically, the holistic perspective of anthropology is given by:

The research of every space from Earth The research of every human aspect from past and present The interest for every problem of human nature Many sub-fields of anthropology The interdisciplinary dialogue

The holistic ambition is a utopian one. It is an objective toward the anthropology wants to point on, but we have to be realistic that achieving this is impossible.

Methods and Research Techniques

Anthropology is a science and, as such, must deal with both the objective collection and recording of empirical data and the treatment of their findings in terms of an explanatory system.Methods are ways of studying people from an anthropological perspective. They are the various approaches anthropologists take to learn about a given people or culture. They include such general things as "participant observation" (a key method of study in cultural anthropology), as well as including more specific things such as survey research, archival research, and more. Anthropologists draw on a variety of techniques to piece together a picture of otherwise alien life style. Anthropologists usually employ several (but rarely all) of the techniques discussed with this occasion.The theoretical aspect of anthropology is concerned with the explanation of cultural regularities and variation through comparison and generalization based on existing literature and the formulation of hypotheses for further research. Accordingly, theory building occurs both before fieldwork, as the anthropologist reviews the findings of other researchers to identify issues for investigation, and after, as he/she evaluates the significance of the findings.The anthropologist starts with certain cross-cultural analytical principles to help identify a research issue and organize and interpret the data but also considers his/her observations within the informants' categorization and meaning system to provide an additional empirical dimension. After fieldwork the research proceeds to process the data in an etic framework (Scientist-oriented) of general analytical categories and theory. However, some anthropologists maintain that it is not legitimate to apply any cross-cultural terms and that the etic approach is invalid.The Phases of Scientific Method:

1. Observe Things/Events in Field2. Develop an explanation (hypothesis)3. Gather relevant data4. Evaluate hypothesis with data.5. Repeat procedure6. Conclusion

Then, accept confirmed hypotheses or reject or modify disconfirmed hypotheses.

Traditionally, the research in anthropology is directly related to the field research technique. In time, the presence of the anthropologist in the field has been in many forms: from studies of a couple of hours to some days studies or in extreme cases to several years (leading to the integration of the anthropologist in the local culture and society) in order to offer an inside perspective alongside the exterior perspective.

Fieldwork: A multitude of studies with a descriptive character through which the researcher collect a various spectrum of data through direct observation including the participative one, which are organized in a way that suites the objective/purpose of the research.

The main methods of anthropological research: Direct observation

o Participant observation Conversation, Interviewing, Questionnaires The genealogical method The analysis of networks Monographic method Comparative method

Statistic and mathematic method Historical analysis and archival research

Direct observationThe necessity of knowing human groups, others that researcher is part of, gives an empiric character to anthropological researches. Often, these groups can belong to a society without writing, and consequently, the important role of words, gestures, rituals, symbols determined the presence of anthropologists as part of those groups. Also, this kind of researches is very important in gathering and preservation of ethnographical collections. The least invasive of anthropological fieldwork methods, observational methods allow the researcher to gain valuable information about the group being studied without intruding on their privacy too much. The researcher observes the group or individuals, records their findings, reflects on the findings, as well as openly participating with the community. It was a very common form of fieldwork during the first half of the 20th century before more progressive and participatory methods became popular. This method uses an ethic perspective to simply observe the facets of cultures. Anthropologists strive to establish rapport – a good, friendly working relationship based on personal contact – with the hosts. Anthropologists must pay attention to hundreds of details of daily life, seasonal events, and unusual happenings. They must observe individual and collective behavior in varied settings.Participant observationParticipant observation, one of the anthropology’s most characteristic procedure, is a fundamental method of research used in cultural anthropology. It involves a researcher, or researchers, living within a given culture for an extended period of time, to take part in its daily life in all its richness and diversity. The anthropologist in such an approach tries to experience a culture "from within", as a person native to

that culture might do. Anthropologists have learned that the best way to really get to know another

society and its culture is to live in it as an active participant rather than simply an observer. As human beings living among others, we cannot be totally impartial and detached observers. We must also take part in many of the events and processes we are observing and trying to comprehend. By physically and emotionally participating in the social interaction of the host society it is possible to become accepted as a member.It usually involves living within the community as a member, eating what they eat, and taking part in normal family activities. This can be a physical hardship and emotionally stressful. Sanitation may be poor or non-existent, the diet may be unsatisfying, and there may be minimal privacy for personal hygiene. However, the trust and familiarity that can result from participant-observation reduces the cultural barriers and allows anthropologists to understand the culture of the host society they are studying. By observing, we may learn how and why natives find such events meaningful, as well as see how they are organized and conducted.Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein (1997) have developed a list of what should be included in all fieldnotes:

Date, time, and place of observation Specific facts, numbers, details of what happens at the site Sensory impressions: sights, sounds, textures, smells, tastes Personal responses to the fact of recording fieldnotes Specific words, phrases, summaries of conversations, and insider language Questions about people or behaviors at the site for future investigation Page numbers to help keep observations in order

If the researcher collects some objects with ethnographical value, every object must have a paper/card where are written essential data:

denomination date, from where that object was collected a brief description of materials, techniques of production and decoration what is the use of that object, etc

Anthropologists often stay in the field for a year or more, in order to establish good relations with the people they are studying and to be thorough and accurate in making a record of what people say and do. This permits them to observe the entire annual cycle. This kind of field research requires special human skills as well as skill in anthropological theories, concepts, methods and techniques.The observer must also explain who he is, what he is doing, the reasons for doing his research, the use that he will make of the information he collects, how long he will stay, and other questions that are a part of honesty and courtesy towards one's hosts. He must not only abide by the ethical principles of his profession, but also by the ethical principles of the people he is living with and then writing about.Participant observation allows a deeper immersion into the culture studied, resulting in a deeper understanding of the culture. It allows the researcher to learn about the culture by speaking with those people within that culture. This develops a deeper rapport with the people of the culture which may result in them opening up more to the researcher, allowing the researcher to see and understand more than they might have as an outsider simply observing the culture.Participant observation, while a more in-depth research method, isn't perfect. Observed populations may alter their behavior around the researcher because they know that they are being studied, an effect that has been exhaustively documented and studied in psychological research. Thus, while this research method allows for a deeper immersion and understanding in the culture, it faces a very real set of challenges.To have scientific character, the participant observation must accomplish some conditions, such as:

To try to be objectiveo inevitably, conscious or not, researchers, as human beings, are affected by a smaller or

bigger degree of subjectivityo the research must be made on a sufficient amount of cases in order to be representativeo otherwise, the reality can be altered and the knowing of that analyzed group could be

false To be exact, precise To be complete To be analytical

Conversation, Interviewing, QuestionnairesParticipating in local life means that anthropologists constantly talk to people and ask questions about what they observe. In practice this requires learning their language and establishing close friendship ties. The anthropologist seeks out and interviews people who possess special and relevant knowledge and who communicate with accurate detail and completeness. This group of methods focuses on community interaction through language. It usually entails many open ended interviews with participants who are members of a group being studied. The researcher strives to learn as much as they can about the history of the community as well as individuals in order to gain a full understanding of how their culture functions. Interviews can take place individually or with focus groups within the community based on age, status, gender, and other factors that contribute to differences within the community.Often, this type of research strives to create an open dialogue, in which information flows back and forth between researcher and subject. This poses a challenge to the objectivity of socially produced data. The challenge is dealt with through reflection on the intersubjective creation of meaning, leading anthropologists to value reflexivity in their ethnographic writing. Because many anthropologists also

hope to help the communities they work with to make changes on their own terms within the confines of their own culture, in some cases objectivity is abandoned in favor of community based activism and social change.The ethnographer begins systematic observation and keeps daily field notes, in which the significant events of each day are recorded along with informants' interpretations. Initial observations focus on general, open ended data gathering derived from learning the most basic cultural rules and usually the local language as well. This initial orientation process is important not only for providing a background for more narrowly focused investigation but also helps the anthropologist to gain rapport with his informants, avoid breaches of etiquette, and test out whether the original research objectives are meaningful and practical in the local situation. After the initial orientation or entry period, which may take 3 months or longer, the researcher follows a more systematic program of formal interviews involving questions related to research hypotheses and specialized topics. Several different methods of selecting informants are possible. Usually a few key informants (between 10-20) are selected for in-depth sessions, since the investigation of cultural patterns usually calls for lengthy and repeated open ended interviews. Selection of such a small number does not allow for strict assurance of a representative sample, so the anthropologist must be careful to choose subjects who are well informed and reliable. Ethnographic researchers/anthropologists will also train informants to systematically report cultural data and recognize significant cultural elements and interconnections as the interview sequences unfold. The researcher must have the trust of the interviewed group in order to gain access to some information that may be hidden because of fear for repercussions, such as data about magic or with a highly degree of intimacy (menstruation, post-menstruation period). Also, the researcher must have very clear questions for the interviewed person not to use academic words so that everybody can understand him. The researcher must not believe only one answer but he need to verify the answer with other subjects. The researcher has to choose the right moment for the interview in order not to interfere with day to day activity or social festivals. If the researcher respects all these aspects, then he can say that he is doing the research in a very scientific way.Questionnaires may cause answers which lack background information or description. By creating multiple choice answers, subjects are limited to a small selection of responses. They cannot elaborate or explain their answers. Though questionnaires do generate quick, easy, and cheap responses, often of a large group of subjects, there is the risk that answers will lack depth or full truth. The questionnaire is the result of previous reflections upon the reality that the researcher intent to study. The questionnaire include questions with general and practical references The questionnaire is very systematic set of questions. Even if the questionnaire is more rigid, it is more precise.Interview schedules may be used to guide interviews, ensuring that the anthropologist collects comparable information from everyone. Interview schedule survey enables ethnography to be both quantitative and qualitative. The qualitative part consists of the basic information gathered and kept for later statistical analysis. In-depth interviewing is often leading to the collection of life histories of particular people.Life history is a term used to describe when a person conveys their entire life experience, usually starting at childhood and continuing to the present. Life histories document personal experiences with culture and culture change. This recollection of lifetime of experiences provides a more intimate and personal cultural portrait that would be possible otherwise. Life histories (recorded/videotaped) reveal how people perceive, react to, and contribute to changes that affect their lives – comparing them direct as show different people interpret and deal with the same problem. So a researcher can get a general picture of the subject’s life in order to analyze their experiences in the context of a larger society.

The genealogical method

The genealogical method is a well-established technique. In many non-industrial societies, kin links are basic to social life. Genealogical information is particularly important in societies in which principles of kinship, descent, and marriage organize social life. Genealogy is a prominent building block in the social organization of non-industrial societies, where people live and work each day with their close kin.Anthropologists need to collect genealogical data to understand current social relations and to reconstruct history. Anthropologists call such cultures “Kin-based societies”. Rules of behavior attached to particular kin relations are basic to everyday life. Marriage is another crucial point.

The analysis of networksThis method was first applied to study smaller groups; but today it is applied to urban areas with a high number of people and usually is backed up by an informatics technique. These method maps the type of links among people: in the frame of the family (blood or alliance connections), of social organizational civic associations, professional, religious, political ones; the relations between neighbors; sociometric (attraction and rejection). For each individual is established his personal network which contains the amount of his connections in various levels. The study of personal networks leads to discovering of liders/ rulers and persons who tend to have numerous relations in different levels.Clasification:

1. Networks with tide connections are characteristic for rural communities and, generally, for non-industrial societies, where everybody knows each other; so they all are family, friends, neighbors.

2. Networks with not so tide connections can be found in complex societies, such as urban one, where peoples who know each other, do not know the other friends, family or neighbors.

Monographic methodThe main advantage of this method is that an analyzed social institution is intensely and deeply studied, and for the very reason of its specificity it is particularly useful in producing policy recommendations. It has a deficiency too: the conclusions it offers cannot very easily be generalized and applied to apparently quite similar situations.Traditionally, it consists of investigations of some specified institution/issue/problem. Various techniques can be applied:

participant observation interviews questionnaires document analysis historical inquiries

Anthropological research is often, formally or informally, team research. Contemporary forces of change are too pervasive and complex to be understood fully by a “lone ethnographer”. Compared with the lone ethnographer model, team work – coordinated by multiple ethnographer, across time and space produces better understanding of cultural changes and social complexity.

Comparative methodThis method is essential in the frame of the research of cultural aspects of different human groups. Because each culture represents a particular configuration of elements and must be understood only in terms of its uniqueness. Anthropologists learned that the ideas and concepts that applied to their own societies often did not apply to those of other peoples, whose cultural traditions were vastly different.More than most people, anthropologists are aware of the enormous diversity of the world’s cultures. This diversity means that any general theories or ideas scholars might have about humans – about human nature, sexuality, warfare, family relationships, and so on – must take into account information

from a wide range of societies. In other words, general theoretical ideas about humans or human societies or cultures must be tested from a comparative perspective. The ways of life of people in different times and places are far too diverse for any theory to be accepted until it has been tested in a range of human populations. We may state the comparative perspective as: generalizations about humans must take the full range of cultural diversity into account.

Statistic and mathematic methodIt means application of different techniques of numbering and classification. Generally, this method is the calculation of data related to researched reality. Statistics represents that body of methods by which characteristics of a population are inferred through observations made in a representative sample from that population. Since scientists rarely observe entire populations, sampling and statistical inference are essential. Any experimental or observational investigation is motivated by a general problem that can be tackled by answering specific questions. Associated with the general problem will be a population.

Historical analysisThis technique was borrowed from the historians. It is applied in anthropological researches, because almost all societies and human groups that scientists want to study were created before the research, so they have a historical existence. Also, historical aspects and background can be known through the archival research. Anthropologists recognize ethical obligations to their scholarly field, to the wider society and culture, and to the human species, other species, and the environment. The ‘American Anthropological Association (AAA)’ provides codes of ethics. The code’s aim is to offer guidelines and to promote discussion and education. The AAA does not actually judge claims about unethical behavior. The code addresses several contexts in which anthropologists work, where the main topics are research (responsibility to people, animal, science), teaching, application.Research ethics.

Responsibility to people and animals. Responsibility to scholarship and science. Responsibility to the public.

Teaching ethics. Anthropologists should conduct their programs in ways that preclude discrimination on the basis

of sex, marital status, "race", social class, political convictions, disability, religion, ethnic background, national origin, sexual orientation, and age.

Anthropologists should strive to improve their teaching and training techniques. Teachers should impress a concern with ethics on their students. Teachers should properly acknowledge student assistance in their research and in the

preparation of their work.Ethics for applied anthropology.

Applied anthropologists should use and disseminate their work appropriately. With employers, applied anthropologists should be honest about their qualifications,

capabilities, aims, and intentions. Applied anthropologists should be alert to the danger of compromising ethics as a condition for

engaging in research or practice.

The problems of objectivity have led some anthropologists to conclude that unbiased research is an impossibility and that all ethnography is subjective. Postmodern anthropologists take this position one step further and argue that ethnography is fiction and is to be evaluated on the basis of literary form as well as scientific principles. My own perspective on this issue is that, although perfect objectivity may

not be attainable, it can be approximated. We must maintain scientific standards and procedures to try achieve as impartial a perspective on cultural data as possible. We must also acknowledge and clearly discuss our sources of bias when reporting research results.

Biases = use of any technique that fails to elicit a random/representative sample.All the information that contributes to the ethnography is filtered through the researcher's impressions and his/her biases inherent in theoretical orientation, research strategy, social status, and individual background and personality. The following constitutes a partial listing of the biases that ethnographic observers can introduce into their representation of other cultures.

1. Skewed (nonrepresentative) sampling. Informant selection. Since anthropologists work with a small number of informants, it is

difficult to guarantee that interview information collected is fully representative of all possible experiences or even taps the predominant cultural perspective.

Field location. Anthropologists need to develop an identity and role and make intensive firsthand observations within a single community, which is usually only a small component of the total cultural community and social matrix under consideration. Yet he/she will generalize about this totality from a relatively microcosmic view. This perspective neglects variations in traits, patterns, and values, that are often present within a culture. Focus on a single location also limits the extent to which the researcher can recognize significant influences that are present on wider regional or national levels.

Time frame. The anthropologist's observations are limited to a short time horizon, but many cultural processes may involve longer cycles unperceived by a short term visitor.

2. Theoretical biases. Current strategies in fieldwork emphasize the importance of formulating a research

hypothesis on theoretical grounds and testing it through the research activity. However, the presence of a hypothesis and commitment to a theoretical orientation may lead the researcher to selectively collect information that is consistent with his/her preconceptions and to ignore any counter evidence. The interview process in itself may include leading questions that influence the character of the informant's answer.

3. Personal biases. Researchers' personalities, cultural orientations, social statuses, political philosophies, and

life experiences will color how they interpret other cultures.4. Ethical considerations.

Anthropologists often uncover information, which might be harmful to their study community or otherwise threaten its cultural integrity. They may, accordingly, limit discussion of some issues to protect their sources of information.

The convergence of all the biases inherent in the ethnographic process may result in a description that is uniquely the product of a particular observer. Accordingly, two different researchers may produce contradictory accounts of the same culture.Researchers must make their research goals clear to the members of the community where they undertake their research and gain the informed consent of their consultants to the research beforehand. It is also important to learn whether the group would prefer to be named in the written report of the research or given a pseudonym and to offer the results of the research if informants would like to read it. Most of all, researchers must be sure that the research does not harm or exploit those among whom the research is done.

Evolution of cultural anthropology

Why is it important to make a review of the history of anthropology? to observe the evolution of anthropology (first, simple descriptions – now, deep studies of

human condition); to understand the influences of political, economical, social context upon anthropology as a

science (cause and consequence) to a proper understanding of some theories and methods used in anthropology, and the

closeness of anthropology with other sciences

Curiosity about the life ways and customs of different peoples is probably as old as humankind. People everywhere learn to recognize as relatives or friends those whose actions, language and dress are familiar. We learn to notice cultural differences, because these differences of speech, appearance and activities define for us what it is to be a "stranger". An enduring record of different customs has been made as far back as the earliest known written records, in ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, China and other centers of civilization.First identifiable researches of cultural anthropology come from ancient Greece. The Greeks, as navigators and explorers, came into contact with many populations. Homeric poems underline the tribal diversity of Greece, the populations inside and outside Balcanic Peninsula with whom Greeks lived. Homer drew extensively on a tradition of oral poetry, sung by wandering minstrels.Herodotus can be considered one of the first anthropologists, and his work can be considered some of the first anthropological studies. He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a well-constructed and vivid narrative. Also, he is considered to be “the father” of geography, ethnology, cultural anthropology. Herodotus sought to understand other people and cultures by traveling far and wide. Even though he did not practice anthropology like it is practiced today, he created a rather unbiased, truthful recording of other cultures’ legends and lifestyles by using second-hand and third-hand accounts relating to his primary subjects. In his nine scrolls known as The Histories, written in the later period of his life (430 BC), Herodotus describes the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, but he often digresses from his topic to describe what he had learned through interviews of the Scythians, who lived near the Black Sea. He learned about and recounted information on how the Scythians lived, and he also learned about nomads who lived further north than the Scythians. Even though the information he recounts was translated many times before transcribed, artifacts similar to the ones he describes have been found in modern excavations in Russia and Kazakhstan.The interest of Greeks scientist was very much accomplished by the military campaigns of Alexander the Great, who fought and conquered the Easter part of Asia till India. Here, the Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle had an important significance due to his statute as the teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Aristotle was appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon. During that time he gave lessons not only to Alexander. In his Politics, Aristotle states that only one thing could justify monarchy, and that was if the virtue of the king and his family were greater than the virtue of the rest of the citizens put together. Tactfully, he included the young prince and his father in that category. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be 'a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians, to look after the former

as after friends and relatives, and to deal with the latter as with beasts or plants'. Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.If Greeks were navigators and merchants, Romans were militaries and engineers. Romans borrow from Alexander the Great the idea of creating an imperium mundi, an universal empire which must include every peoples from the world and unifies into their superior civilization. From this point of view, the Romans’ descriptions still are very important for anthropology.Julius Caesar writes Commentarii de bello galico that is the primary historical source for the Gallic Wars. Although Caesar portrayed this invasion as being a defensive preemptive action, most historians agree that the wars were fought primarily to boost Caesar's political career and to pay off his massive debts. Still, Gaul was of significant military importance to the Romans, as they had been attacked several times by native tribes both indigenous to Gaul and further to the north. Conquering Gaul allowed Rome to secure the natural border of the river Rhine. In this book, Caesar do not only describes the military campaigns, but he presents the tribes and populations which entered into the attention of Roman army, such as Celts.After a century, in Geografia, Strabon makes some ethnographic descriptions of Germans tribes, in another stage of evolution than Cesar did. Although Strabo cited the antique Greek astronomers, acknowledging their astronomical and mathematical efforts towards geography, he claimed that a descriptive approach was more practical, such that his works were designed for statesmen who were more anthropologically than numerically concerned with the character of countries and regions.Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and as well as the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, he is known for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics. The Germania (Latin title: De Origine et situ Germanorum) is an ethnographic work on the Germanic tribes outside the Roman Empire. The Germania fits within a classical ethnographic tradition which includes authors such as Herodotus and Julius Caesar. The book begins (chapters 1–27) with a description of the lands, laws, and customs of the various tribes. Later chapters focus on descriptions of particular tribes, beginning with those who lived closest to the Roman Empire, and ending with a description of those who lived on the shores of the Baltic Sea, such as the Fenni.

During medieval ages the classical humanism of antiquity is renewed with another conception: man and humanity as objects of knowledge are replaced with “divine order” and “divine principle”. This is no more a good epoch for the scientific knowledge, and the knowledge based upon the revelations has the prevalence. The tradition of ethnographic descriptions is replaced with hagiographic works (presentation of saints’ lives), but this do not means that descriptive works disappeared definitively.Cosmas from Byzantium described his travels in India.The work of the great traveler Marco Polo, the Million, has an anticipative character of further descriptions and of greatest geographical discoveries.Marco Polo (c. 1254 – January 9, 1324) was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China, India, and Japan giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into the inner workings of the Far East. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years. Their pioneering journey inspired Christopher Columbus and others.

Medieval humanism changed the perspective of knowledge: how can men, who are limited beings, know the work of almighty God? So, they established that only modest truths are available for human beings, which can be logical verified: men must be known as a part of divine creation. So, the prevalent vision is a theological one. This way of thinking is taken away by Renaissance humanism and expressed in art and writings.Geographical discoveries meant a new impulse for the searching and describing human diversity: new populations, new religions, new cultures produced really cultural shocks. The curiosity was accompanied by the genocide made by Spanish conquers in America, where were killed between 60-80 millions of inhabitants.

Historians of anthropology often claim that anthropology as a discipline originated during, and due to, the Renaissance. It is also believed that anthropology evolved due to the other disciplines like social and cultural sciences, archeology, sociology and history. After the discovery of New World, it was encouraged the publishing of works about newly discovered populations, called primitive. Some of these writers are considered to be the first cultural anthropologist; they concur to the detachment of cultural anthropology from the frame of sciences where it has been included, cote-a-cote with geography and history.During 16th – 18th centuries, science academies are created. They encourage ethnographic descriptions.In 1714, Dimitrie Cantemir became a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin. Between 1711 and 1719 he wrote his most important creations. Cantemir was known as one of the greatest linguists of his time, speaking and writing eleven languages, and being well versed in Oriental scholarship. His oeuvre is voluminous, diverse, and original; although some of his scientific writings contain unconfirmed theories and inaccuracies, his expertise, sagacity, and groundbreaking researches are widely acknowledged. In 1714, at the request of the Royal Academy in Berlin, Cantemir wrote the first geographical, ethnographical and economic description of Moldavia, Descriptio Moldaviae. It contained a lot of geographical detail as well as administrative information, maps of Moldavia. This book was the first description of realities from Romanian space written from inside, because there were other works written by foreign travelers, which contain stereotypes of western thinking.The term 'anthropology' was coined in 16th century Germany, by German university professors. In those times, anthropology was not studied as a pure or different discipline, but was understood to be the systematic examination and observation of the evolution of man as a physical and moral being.

Enlightenment, sometimes referred to as the age of reason, refers to the fluorescence of rational intellectual activity in 18th century Europe. Thinkers : Newton, Locke, etc. pioneered modern 'social science'. Greatest social theoretical frameworks of the enlightenment incorporated two important 18 th

century concepts : Progress Culture

The writers are interested especially in non-European populations, considered to be savage, primitive, exotic. Step by step, they become “the good savages”, who are not yet corrupted by modern civilization.For example, John Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.

Locke’s ideas will be taken by illuminist thinkers of 18th century. So, Jean Jacques Rousseau was inspired the theory of social contract. His Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and his On the Social Contract are

cornerstones in modern political and social thought and make a strong case for democratic government and social empowerment. Society corrupts men only so far as the Social Contract has not, in fact, succeeded, as we see in contemporary society as described in the Discourse on Inequality (1754). In this essay, Rousseau traces man's social evolution from a primitive state of nature to modern society. Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, and hierarchy. In the last chapter of the Social Contract, Rousseau would ask "What is to be done?" He answers that what all men can do is to cultivate virtue in themselves and submit to their lawful rulers. To his readers, however, the inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed.

The Transylvanian School (Școala Ardeleană) was a cultural movement which was founded after part of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Habsburg – ruled Transylvania accepted the leadership of the Pope and became the Greek-Catholic Church (ca.1700). The Transylvanian School had a notable impact in the Romanian culture of both Transylvania, but also of the Romanians living across the Carpathians, in Wallachia and Moldavia, leading to the National awakening of Romania. Main representative figures are Samuil Micu Clain, Gheoghe Sincai, Petru Maior. They describe popular believes and superstitions, and after that they combat its. So, today we have historical sources about popular religion and church of Romanians.

Some of the writers and researchers, who tried to differentiate anthropology as a different branch of study, were Michel de Montaigne, Jean Bodin, Blaise Pascal and Rene Descartes, all belonging to France. Two other English researchers, who also contributed to the study, were John Locke and David Hume. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, were counted among the early fathers of anthropology.

Europeans regarded themselves superior from the primitive aboriginal contemporaries. Universal historians of enlightenment period divided human history into 3 stages and attempted to explain how one stage led progressively to the other.

1. Hunting = Savegery 2. Pastoralism = Barbarism3. Farming = Civilisation

The 19th century will affect in a positive way the evolution of anthropological sciences due to scientistic spirit (the logical use towards a more comprehensive understanding of intangible

aspects of reality that lack a direct connection to nature, focusing on the realm of thought itself), which will impose itself in the frame of different institutions, and especially in universities

the reformation of European universities (at the beginning of the 19th century, the University of Berlin is reorganized; the same thing is done by Napoleon with French universities)

the splitting of sciences in exact and humanistic sciences and attaching anthropology to the humanistic sciences

fixing for anthropology the task of research and politically promoting the culture of differences through underlining the ethnical specificities, especially at the level of popular culture

In the 19th century, colonialism reached a top of its expansion. There are new countries (like Germany and Italy) which try to become colonial powers by conquering neglected territories by the old colonial

empires or by the redivision of the world between new great powers. Study of colonialism erases the boundaries between

anthropology and history/literary studies postcolonial present & colonial past

Aspects of Colonialism: conquests and expeditions translation, conversion and mission settlers, plantation and labor

While the natural sciences were maturing, anthropology hardly existed as a professional discipline for most of the 19th century; even the term "anthropology" saw little use, with "ethnology" being the favored term for most scholars. Early anthropologists were usually scientific professionals in other fields (medicine, zoology, biology) and they drew upon the core concepts, theories, and philosophies of their primary disciplines to craft their visions of anthropology.In the context of 19th century, thinkers like Henry de Saint-Simon and August Comte have militated for creating a new and global science about humans, which must study all the matters regarding human beings. August Comte named this science “social physics” and then “sociology”. So, the first anthropological studies were comprised in the frame of sociology.

The theory of racial determinism claims that cultural differences and similarities between human populations are variables of racial elements.

the theory of monogenesis (it means "single origin") the theory of polygenesis (it means "multiple origin")

Monogenism (monogenesis) is the theory of human origins which posits a single origin for all human races. For the belief is that all humans are descended from a single, primordial pair of ancestors (Adam and Eve) and are therefore closely related to one another. The term is still used in discussions of Catholic theology over the same issue.Polygenists argued that the different races of mankind had arisen separately in different parts of the world. Races were created separate and not separated after the creation. So, Isaac de la Peyrere considered that Adam was only the ancestor of the Jews; other ancient populations like Chaldeans, Egyptians, Chinese, or Mexicans had pre-Adam ancestors.Beyond the contradictions between them, both theories talk about the existence of some inferior races, which are not capable to make performances in different domains and due to this situation they must be lead by the representatives of other races, such as the white one, who built colonial empires; The white race worked with slaves who belonged to other races, especially to the black one.

Racial determinism in America19th century America was a tumultuous place, wracked by war and suffering the growing pains of both westward expansion and industrialization. The intellectual world was equally turbulent, as a great battle of ideas challenged the Jeffersonian ideal of equality. The issues at hand were the very origins of humanity and the unity of humankind, and the social, political, and intellectual climate of nineteenth-century America proved to be fertile ground for the debate.Such theorists in the United States were Samuel George Morton, Louis Agassiz: all European-trained physicians with strong professional interests in the natural sciences. The work of American School lent support of the institution of slavery and the massive racism in America. Inferiority is biologically determined!

Samuel George Morton, a physician, was the first American to attempt a racial ranking using cranial measurement - skull's size and volume. He used to fill up cranial cavities belonging to different races and from different times with white mustard beans; after that he poured the beans into a graduated cylinder and read the volume of that brain. Based on these simple and mechanistic measurements, he reached the conclusion that Whites are superior due to the volume of their brains comparing whit the brain of Native Americans and Blacks. May be under the influence of anti-black prejudice, but his results were accepted by scientific, medical and academic community. Morton concludes that physical or organic characters which distinguish several races of men, are as old as the oldest records of our species. Therefore, maintaining blacks in slavery and Native Americans into the reservation was dully justified.

Louis Agassiz considers that data Genesis from The Old Testament are valid only to explain the Caucasians’ origin. Studying the Egyptian mummies, he concludes that in ancient times the social statute of Blacks and Whites is unequal like in his time. In his vision, this means that it must be set classes, hierarchic relations between races. Social equality proposed by liberal theories/trends is not available in the case of Blacks, because they are inferior as intellect, careless, sensual, imitative etc.

The dissolution of the American School and of the dispute between monogenits and polygenists was determined by the arrival of Charles Darwin in the last decade of the 19th century, who considered that both theories are wrong.In The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin affirmed that all forms of life share a common ancestry. Fossils began to be reliably associated with particular geologic strata, and fossils of recent human ancestors were discovered, most famously the first Neanderthal specimen, unearthed in 1856. In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, which argued that human beings shared a recent common ancestor with the great African apes. He identified the defining characteristic of the human species as their relatively large brain size and deduced that the evolutionary advantage of the human species was intelligence, which yielded language and technology.

Racial determinism in Great BritainRobert Knox (1791 – 1862) a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and zoologist, claimed that the race is everything; so, cultural components, such as literature or science are determined by the race. In addition to categorizing races as species, Knox found sub-racial divisions by national origin types; he considered English Anglo-Saxon superior to all others. During 19th century, in Great Britain who owned the greatest colonial empire the racial determinism become synonym with anthropology.

Racial determinism in GermanyGustav Klemm (1802-1867), distinguishing three stages of cultural evolution (which he identified as those of savagery, domestication, and freedom), divided mankind into active and inactive races and believed that peoples differed in mentality and temperament. Also, he sketched a history of mankind in terms of social organization, technology, and beliefs.

Racial determinism in FranceJoseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), in his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, asserted the superiority of the white race over others and labeled the “Aryans” i.e., the Germanic people, as representing the summit of civilization. Also, Gobineau considered that every racial group has its own

abilities and destiny. In the 20th century, Adolf Hitler was among those who turned to Gobineau for inspiration.

Racial determinism in TransylvaniaIn Transylvania, some ethnics groups have a privileged status, due to the idea that those ethnics were superior compared with the Romanian majority. So, Romanians were excluded from constitutional decisions of the province (Romainians were considered to be primitive, lazy and dirty – Romanian militaries did not know what soap is until they were recruited and they used to have greasy and sticky long hair). Liberal ideas will spread the idea of the abolition of any kind of privileges; there was the danger of losing the control by the minorities in favor of majority – thing that will happen in the end. The elites of ethnic groups from Habsburg Empire claimed that every ethnics had a cultural specificity which was expressed through language, folklore – popular culture, generally, that must be underlined; on the base of this specific popular culture every ethnics must form their own national ideology. Specificity can be proved through making references to other cultures; Romanian culture vs. Hungarian culture; Hungarian culture vs. German culture. This searching for national characteristics/ specificities was one of the ideas that ruined by inside Habsburg monarchy; the populations from the Empire being aware of these typical characteristics tried to create national states. This is the context when first systematic folklore gatherings and collections, and ethnographic researches are done.

One of the most important trends that anthropology knew was the classical evolutionism, which had its origins in the early modern notion of the Great Chain of Being. Basically, the evolutionism describes how cultures and societies have changed over time. Stimulated mainly by Darwinian thought, 19 th century classical evolutionism arranged the different lifeways of the world on a hierarchical and unilinear ladder proceeding from savagery to barbarism to civilization. The second tendency in this was the in the evolutionary competition for “the survival of the fittest”. According to Darwin’s arguments the progress of human institutions was inevitable, guaranteed by the development of rationality. It was assumed that technological progress was constant and that it was matched by developments in the understanding of the world and in social forms. The representatives of classical evolutionism put the foundations of the modern cultural anthropology.Representatives:

Herbert Spencer Lewis Henry Morgan Edward Burnett Tylor

Herbert Spencer is best known for coining the concept "survival of the fittest", which he did in Principles of Biology (1864), after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This term strongly suggests natural selection, yet as Spencer extended evolution into realms of sociology and ethics. He developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies.

Lewis Henry Morgan acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could not have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19 th century evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized. He publishes in 1877 the book entitled Ancient Society. Here he sets the well-known evolutionary scheme of human becoming, formed from 3 stages, established on the base of technological inventions:

savagery

barbarism civilization

So, Morgan distinguishes:1. Lower Status of Savagery = simple gathering of food2. Middle Status of Savagery = it is market by fishing, and the use of fire, that determined food

preparation and intellectual development3. Upper Status of Savagery = humankind discovers the arch/ bow and arrow, that determined the

development of hunting4. Lower Status of Barbarism = it is market by the invention of the pottery5. Middle Status of Barbarism = starts when agriculture is discovered and in architecture the stone

and bricks are used6. Upper Status of Barbarism = is dominated by the producing and use of iron7. Status of Civilization = is defined by the invention of phonetic alphabet

Also, Morgan writes a book that is entitled League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois (1851), which is considered one of the earliest objective ethnographic works of native peoples. From the book, one of the most important pioneering achievements of the first order is the study of kinship systems. He set a theory of how monogamous marriage evolved. The modern institutions of private property and territorially based political systems developed, together with the nuclear family. The work of Lewis Henry Morgan strongly influenced Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.

Edward Burnett Tylor demonstrates and concludes in the end that as intelligence increased, so civilization advanced. All past and present societies could be arranged in an evolutionary sequence. One of E. B. Tylor’s main contributions is due to the wish of replying to John Lubbock, who indentified seven stages in the evolution of religious believes.

Edward Burnett Tylor vs. John Lubbock1. Atheism; a stage of total ignorance and unconsciousness concerning God 2. Fetichism (the word comes from the attribution of religious or mystical qualities to inanimate

objects); "man supposes he can force the Deity to comply with his desires".3. Totemism; "natural objects, trees, lakes, stones, animals, etc., are worshipped"4. Shamanism; "the superior deities are far more powerful than man, and of a different nature,

and whose places of abode are far off"5. Anthropomorphism or Idolatry; the gods take the nature of men, but are still far more

powerful, being regarded, however, as amenable to persuasion. These gods are a part of nature, but not creators, and are represented by idols.

6. the Deity is considered "not merely a part of nature, but the author of nature; and, for the first time, becomes a really supernatural being"

7. "morality is associated with religion"; this stage is specific to the great religious systems with universal vocation.

Most of Tylor's work involved the primitive culture and the minds of the people, particularly animism and he used this concept to combat against Lubbock’s theory. Animism is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans and animals but also in plants, rocks and natural phenomena. Tylor thinks that animism is present everywhere/ in every cultures; it exists in different forms and it tends to evolve in monotheist. Tylor’s famous “minimum definition of Religion” is “the belief in Spiritual Beings”. Tylor advanced the view that all religions had a common origin, in the belief in spirits. His most important work, Primitive Culture (1871), which was partially influenced by Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. It developed the theory of an evolutionary, progressive

relationship from primitive to modern cultures. It did this by defining "culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society". Three things of enduring relevance are to be remarked in this definition.

1. it treats culture and civilization as interchangeable terms 2. it emphasizes ethnography3. it singles out that which is learned by means of living in society rather than what is inherited

biologicallyAlso, this definition encouraged the idea that even primitives possessed capabilities and habits that deserved respect. Primitive stereotypes were thus changed.

Ideas of classic evolutionism can be traced in the Romanian space, too; but they are not prevailing in anthropological writings. These ideas were revealed in questionnaires and investigations ruled by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Nicolae Densusianu. Romanian works with anthropological character were tributary to the concept of culture in its large way of understanding, but they were subordinated to some romantic political and national commandments; the main purpose was to legitimate national ideology based upon oldness, noble origins (Dacian and Roman), and number.The contribution of evolutionism to the delineation of the profession of anthropologist was a decisive one. This reality was determined by the political, economic and social context of the epoch = 19 th

century = expansionism and colonialism. Another factor was the development of anthropological museography; the connections between anthropological researches and museums were, and still are in our days too, very close one.The consequence of this evolution was the generalization of anthropology and anthropologist profession in academic life; this happened especially during 20s and 30s from 20th century in United States and Great Britain. Beginning in the 1930s, and especially in the post-World War II period, anthropology was established in a number of countries outside western Europe and North America. Very influential work in anthropology originated in Japan, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, Nigeria, and several other Asian, Latin American, and African countries. After the W.W.II, France and Germany preferred to keep the traditional denominations for their anthropological researches – ethnographic, ethnologic and folklore studies.

The 20th century knows some important moments for the development of cultural anthropology; during this century, new anthropological schools and trends were born, which confronted one with another and science gained benefits in information, methodologies, techniques and interpretations.

Historical particularism Structural-Functionalism Diffusionism Structuralism Particular synchronic diffusionism Neo-evolutionism

Historical particularismThis school developed in the United States in the first half of the century under the guidance of Franz Boas, who did much to develop the culture concept and the ethnographic tradition. Mainly in reaction to weaknesses in 19th century anthropology, Boas contested attempts to compare cultures and draw up universal cultural stages. The progress cannot be reduced to unilinear hierarchies, which proved to be an inadequate model for study human diversity. Individual cultures can be understood only as historically unique configurations and internal meaning systems. Historical particularism focuses heavily

on the influence of ideology and cognitive patterns on behavior and the primary influence of cultural values on all areas of human behavior. Some of Boas' students tried to depict synthetic models of total cultures in terms of world views based on unifying themes and values.The comparison of cultures that arose in early 20th century anthropology produced diverse theoretical and methodological consequences, most notably the concept of cultural relativism (developed by Boas), a theory of culture change or acculturation, and an emphasis on the study of symbolic meaning. Cultures and their component traits and institutions cannot be subjected to comparative conclusions or generalizations. Each culture represents a particular configuration of elements and must be understood only in terms of its uniqueness. Boas gave modern anthropology its rigorous scientific methodology, patterned after the natural sciences. He also originated the notion of "culture" as learned behaviors. His emphasis on research first, followed by generalizations, emphasized the creation of grand theories (which were only after tested through field work). Boas was truly the first person to develop an ethnography which is a descriptive account of anthropological studies. The culture became an infinite research field opened to some armies of anthropologists called to explain through facts gathered via empirical researches cultural particularities in the frame of their historical context.The greatest importance of Franz Boas and of his historical particularism is that it has been demonstrated that culture cannot be forced to fit into a theory, and cannot be reduced to some formulas, like in Mathematics or Physics. The followers of this trend fixed for anthropologists easier tasks, which have connections with the development of every phenomenon in its geographical distribution and historical evolution, also, in the frame of relations with other close realities. The opponents of Boas accused his anti-scienticism position.

Structural-FunctionalismStructural-functionalism Is a reaction against historical particularism; it is predominantly a social primacy or social determinist theory. It should not be confused with structuralism, which emphasizes cognitive, rather than social, structures. It was founded by the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, and developed as the central position of British social anthropology by Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown in the first half of 20th century.Structural functionalists investigate a number of social variables, such as population size, density, and complexity, but are most predominantly interested in how people are bound together within a social order, consisting of essential groups, roles, and conventions. Other aspects of society and culture are explainable in terms of their function in maintaining the particular social structure. Societies are classified into cross cultural types based on the size, distribution, articulation, and functions of basic social groups and categories.

For Emile Durkheim, social regulations and control were subtle and largely unconscious. They were achieved by getting people to participate in activities and beliefs that makes their membership in society important. Also, Durkheim considered that social institutions are 'collective representative' of 'collective reality' in the 'group mind'. With symbols and ceremonies, these institutions create a sense of 'sacred' which allows them to become more powerful social motivators than they were merely 'profane'. The function is the contribution brought by an institution or a social fact.

Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown saw the aim of his field to study primitive societies and determine generalizations about the social structure. He referred to the concept of social system, understood as interacting between social structure and the functions of its parts. A structure cannot exists without its parts being functional = Radcliffe-Brown emphasized the fact that all communities had to have a certain level of interconnectedness and unity in order to survive. For example, he saw institutions as the key to maintaining the global social order of a society, analogous to the organs of a body, and his studies of

social function examine how customs (rites and rituals) aid in maintaining the overall stability of a society. Functional analysis, then, was just the attempt to explain stability by discovering how practices fit together to sustain that stability; the 'function' of a practice was just its role in sustaining the overall social structure, insofar as there was a stable social structure. He considered that a major goal of social anthropology was to identify social structures and formal relationships between them, and that qualitative or discrete mathematics would be a necessary tool to do this. In that sense Radcliffe-Brown may be considered one of the fathers of social network analysis.Denouncing the search for origins as futile, Radcliffe-Brown argues that in order to understand a typical activity or an institution, it is not necessary to know its history and how it had developed over time but to know how it contributes to the continuity of the structure in the present. Radcliffe Brown holds that comparisons can be made for 2 purposes and there are 2 methods. He states "only by the study and comparison of many diverse types of culture can we hope to arrive at scientific generalizations in order to formulate universal laws". We must also see the kinds of solutions to the problems. These are of two kinds: synchronic and diachronic.

In a synchronic study we are concerned with only a culture as it is at any given moment in its history. The ultimate aim is to define the conditions to which any culture must conform if it is to exist at all. The concern is with the nature of culture and of social life along with the discovery of what is universal beneath the numerous differences that the data present. A synchronic approach does not attempt to make deductions about the progression of events that contributed to the current state, but only analyzes the structure of that state, as it is.Example: one might use a synchronic approach to describe the state of political parties in the USA at some specific time, analyzing their structure and functions only as they relate to the specific state that they were in at that time.

In the diachronic study of culture the concern is with the ways in which culture changes and the discovery of the general laws of such processes of change. It analyzes the evolution of something over time, allowing one to assess how that something changes throughout history. This approach is used to analyze the effects of variable change on something, thus allowing you to postulate WHY a certain state was borne of a prior state or WHY a certain state progressed to some future state. Example: you could use a diachronic approach to determine why the USA government has come to develop a system of political parties despite the fact that the founders mistrusted political parties and did not create them.

Bronislaw Malinowski made three expeditions to New Guinea. He emphasized the importance of detailed participant observation. He argued that culture was “functional” to the extent that it satisfied individual bio-psychological needs.Radcliffe-Brown distinguished his concept of function from that of Malinowski, who openly advocated functionalism. While Malinowski's functionalism claimed that social practices could be directly explained by their ability to satisfy basic biological needs, Radcliffe-Brown rejected this as baseless. Instead, he claimed that the fundamental units of anthropology were processes of human life and interaction. Because these are by definition characterised by constant flux, what calls for explanation is the occurrence of stability.Malinowski's basic theoretical attempt was to derive the main characteristics of the society and its social systems from a theory of the causally pre-cultural needs of the organism. He believed that culture is always instrumental to the satisfaction of organic needs. So, he considered that social and cultural structures must satisfy seven basic needs:

1. nutrition (metabolism)

2. reproduction3. bodily comforts4. safety5. relaxation6. movement7. growth

Malinowski had to bridge the gap between the concept of biologically basic needs of the organism and the facts of culturally organized behavior. His first major step was to set up the classification of basic needs which could be directly related to a classification of cultural responses which could then in turn be brought into relation to institutions. Next, he developed a second category of needs (derived needs) which he inserted between his basic needs and the institutional integrates of collective behavior. So, Malinowski systematized the needs in tree systems, which all culture must accomplish:

1. Assurance of biological needs by food acquirement and procreation2. Assurance of instrumental needs by norms, rules, laws, educational systems3. Assurance of integration needs by religion and art.

DiffusionismClassical evolutionism received a strong response/ reply not only from historic particularism but from diffusionism too. This trend appeared and developed in the same time in America and Europe. American evolutionists’ fieldwork, largely undertaken among American Indians, showed the widespread influences of diffusion between cultures, stimulating culture change that rendered any simple picture of unilinear evolution untenable.Diffusionism vs. EvolutionismWhere evolution held that all cultures necessarily passed through the same stages towards the same goal, the diffusionists thought this scheme too simple and uniform to fit the reality of human variations. These scientist set out to identify, for each culture, what was invented and what was borrowed (=diffusion), a distinction which raised a number of questions requiring researched and documented answers.Specific questions were asked about particular cultures and the answers were brought together to give a composite picture of the development of cultural traditions. Each composite was viewed as a system developing according to its own circumstances and with its own direction, integrating items that were borrowed over the years from neighbouring cultures or even from distant cultures.

Cultural areasResearchers may define a cultural area by plotting the distribution of a single cultural trait, such as maize agriculture, and uniting all the communities that share this trait into a single cultural area. Alternatively, researchers sometimes choose to group communities into a culture area because the communities share several distinctive cultural traits, known as having a common cultural complex. Culture area analysis has been used widely in both anthropology and cultural geography because it facilitates comparisons between regions, assists in the historical reconstruction of cultural development, and lends itself to questions about the impact of the natural environment on the form of human cultures.

Diffusionism in German-speaking countriesThe work of the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) inspired the development of the Kulturkreise school. Kulturkreise attempted to reconstruct the diffusion, or spread, of cultural traits from a few dominant cultural clusters.Kulturkreise = culture areas/ circles/ fields.

The Kulturkreislehre approach was developed by German ethnologists Leo Frobenius (1873–1938), Fritz Graebner (1877–1934) and Wilhelm Schmidt, who drew from 19th century theories of unilineal cultural evolution. Graebner posited that a limited number of Kulturkreise developed at different times and in different places and that all cultures, ancient and modern, resulted from the diffusion of traits from these centers of innovation = he postulated diffusions of primitive culture spheres derived from a single archaic type. His scheme launched the culture-historical school of ethnology in Europe and stimulated much field research. Leo Frobenius talks not only about the diffusion of some cultural elements, but about the diffusion of some entire cultural circles. Proponents of this school believed that the history of any culture could be reconstructed through the analysis of its traits and the tracing of their origins to one or more of the Kulturkreise.Wilhelm Schmidt (1868 – 1954), anthropologist and Roman Catholic priest attempted to apply Graebner’s cultural-diffusion principle on a worldwide basis. He identified 4 phases/levels of cultural circles:

1. Primary/Initial, represented by gatherers and hunters2. Primary/Initial, represented by animal husbandry 3. Secondary, marked by patriarchal and matriarchal systems 4. Tertiary, represented by great civilizations from Asia, Europe and America.

In the mid-20th century, geographer Carl Sauer (1889–1975) reinvigorated the culture area concept within the field of geography by synthesizing the ideas of the European Kulturkreise school with the anthropological approaches to culture area introduced to him by his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. Sauer argued that the diffusion of ideas from a few "cultural hearths," or cultural centers, had been the driving force in human history.Every cultural area has a center and diffusionists tried to establish a diffusion law. A law like this tries to explain the ways that cultural characteristics tend to spread in all directions. The diffusion is done during phases that can be established through field researches; there was the belief that it can be determined the age of cultural area = that means a relative age of elements by their geographic distribution. In relation to the center, the periphery gets the cultural elements later, but it keeps more and better the oldest cultural elements. This virtue of cultural area periphery to preserve cultural characteristics distinctive to the center of that cultural area but in passed times is calling peripherization phenomenon.

StructuralismStructuralism is a cognitive approach. Structural anthropology looks for universal rules of human thought, usually far from our normal awareness, in unconsciously learned (and used) regularities in the mind. We make sentences as we talk with each other, and our sentences always follow rules of grammar, yet we are scarcely aware of the rules we use. We don't think to ourselves, "first the noun, then the verb" as we talk to each other. Much of our behavior is similarly guided by rules in our deep

unconscious, which we use intuitively and easily. In this way we organize our social relations, enjoy the

meaning in a book or story, and sense the 'rightness' of a ritual such as a wedding, a funeral or a church service. Structural anthropologists believe that all rules of this sort are variations on a few universal rules, which they are trying to discover

a structuralist will ask: “What are the rules that generate sentences?” a functionalist will ask: “Why do people speak to each other?”

The elements of culture must be seen in their relationship to one another as they form a structure. Through such structures, meanings are conveyed. The structural anthropologist looks for underlying

structure of a culture, which corresponds to the grammar of a language produced by the linguist’s analysis.Structuralists focus upon cognitive systems, kinship structure, art, mythology, ritual, ceremony. They look for similarities in underlying structures in different cultures which may group together societies that seem to be very different at first glance.

Marcel Mauss was often considered the father of modern French anthropology. Mauss's most influential work is his Essay sur le don (1923–1924).On the basis of empirical examples from a wide range of societies, Mauss describes the obligations on gift-giving:

the obligation to give gifts (by giving, one shows oneself as generous, and thus as deserving of respect)

the obligation to receive them (by receiving the gift, one shows respect to the giver, and concomitantly proves one's own generosity)

the obligation to return the gift (thus demonstrating that one's honor is equivalent to that of the original giver)

Gift-giving is thus steeped in morality, and by giving, receiving and returning gifts, a moral bond between the persons exchanging gifts. Gifts may be objects, verbal formula, women, children, talismans, rank/status in community. Usually, the gifts were offered during a ceremony, and it was an important moment in reaffirming the solidarity in the frame of that community. Refusing a gift or not returning the gift can mean a break of sociability, and a really declaration of war.

Claude Levi-Strauss is a well-known for his contribution to the development of structural anthropology. From 1935 to 1939, he conducted his first fieldwork in Mato Grosso and the Amazon Rainforest.For Levi-Strauss, structuralism implies a search for deep, invisible, and innate structures universal to humankind. These unapparent and hidden structures manifest in surface (and conscious) behaviour that varies from one culture to the others. Conscious structures can be misnomer and misleading. Therefore, we have to discover the underlying ‘unconscious’ structures, and how they are transformed into conscious structures. In his work on kinship, Levi-Strauss proposed what has come to be known as the ‘alliance theory’ (alliance is a French word for marriage). For Levi-Strauss, incest taboo is the essence of culture. Biological connections are not the only ones to establish kinship relations; there is ritual kinship, such as chum, godparent, brothers in law.Also, he devoted himself to the study of myths. Myths deal with the remote past, often with the time of the origin of things, both natural and cultural – how the world and its people were created, how fire was discovered, and how crops were domesticated. Levi-Strauss was preoccupied by the integrative role of myths, by the spheres/competences created mentally after the adhesion to myths. According to Levi-Strauss, myths provide explanations for contradictions that are present in a culture and that cannot be resolved.

American Synchronic functionalismRuth Benedict's work was greatly influenced by her mentor and teacher Franz Boas. The central idea of her book Patterns of Culture (1934), which was translated into fourteen different languages and used in universities for many years, is that each culture chooses from the great arc of human personalities, but only dominant traits emerge in people’s characters and the overall character of society. Her concept of configuration means that in every culture a tendency over stability exists around a familiar psychological theme. "What really binds men together is their culture – the ideas and the standards they have in common. The nature of the trait will be quite different in the different areas, according to the elements

with which it has combined". By her definition, every culture has a system of beliefs - the ideas and standards, the institutionalized motives, emotions, and values - that enables internal coherence.She emphasizes the utility of studying primitive cultures, because they provide the best data for analysis; although these cultures include cultural patterns, their relative simplicity, and implicit lack of cultural change, makes a more complete analysis possible.She desired to show that each culture had its own moral imperatives that could be understood only if one studied that culture as a whole. From her point of view, the task of anthropology is to describe the variety of human cultural traditions. This description can be made around one or more major psychological characteristics.

Margaret Mead was influenced by Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas. Margaret Mead focused mainly on child-rearing and personality traits in Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali. It was there that she was able to take a positivist method to her research, controlled comparison, taking hypotheses to different cultural settings. Mead was also popular to mass media as a speaker and writer of her work.

New evolutionismIn the 1950s and ’60s, evolutionist ideas gained fresh currency in American anthropology. Some of the new evolutionists (led by Leslie White) reclaimed the abandoned territory of the theory, arguing for a coherent world history of human development, through a succession of stages, from a common primitive base. So, they rehabilitated comparative method and diachronic perspective, obstructed by first diffusionists.

George Peter Murdock's particular area of interest, social organization, led him to study family and kinship structures and their role in the regulation of human behavior. He is notable for his finding that family structures, made up of parents and children, exist in all cultures. In Social Structure (1949) he described the family and kinship organization in the sample of 250 societies that he coded on features of kinship organization. He claimed that evolution is the key concept cultural anthropology. But he accepted this evolution only at the level of family and kinship and he rejected to apply this concept at macro-cultural level.He is most notable as the originator, in 1937, of the Cross-Cultural Survey, in which a vast amount of anthropological data was cataloged so that any known aspect of a society’s culture could be quickly summoned from a data bank. The outcomes were published in the reference work Ethnographic Atlas (1967). Murdock was interested in making scientific generalizations about culture. Cross-cultural studies made this possible. Murdock believed that the comparative analytical method was the key for studying culture. He first identified key variables, and then made causal and functional relationships between them; he coded hundreds of cultures for a wide variety of variables. In order to keep his method scientific, Murdock created databases for cross-cultural comparisons, coding them for statistical analysis. With this approach he was able to make global generalizations about cultures. His data sets were designed to be useful to those investigating many aspects of human society. The data that underlie these cross-cultural samples are the ethnographic records of anthropologists who visited the societies and recorded their observations.

Leslie A. White is a representative of cultural materialism and he launched the basic theory of evolution: "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased". So, White's main thesis was that the driving force in culture and human affairs was technology and its ability to transform natural resources into energy available for human use, in the sense of manpower and creativity.

The more developed a society, the more complex its organization and the more energy it consumed. White believed that energy consumption was the gauge of cultural advance. Cultures and societies assumed different forms and institutions in so far as they were able to capture different amounts of energy from the natural environment. Each society could be assigned a figure for the energy that its particular toolkit could produce, but would be more appropriately understood in terms of broader technological categories defined by one of a limited number of subsistence technologies.White differentiates between five stages of human development.

1. At first, people use the energy of their own muscles2. Second, they use the energy of domesticated animals 3. Third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution)4. Fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas5. Fifth, they harness nuclear energy

Culture is a super-organic entity that was sui generis and could be explained only in terms of itself. It is a social and cultural system and is composed of three levels:

the technological level – it is created from exploitation and uses mechanisms of energy the social organizational level – it refers to the fact that the regulation of human behavior is

indirect connected existence, delinquency, and defense the ideological level – it refers to arts and philosophies which express technological and social

experiences of man.

Julian Steward is most remembered for his method and theory of cultural ecology. Cultural practices were to be treated as modes of adaptation to specific environmental challenges. Steward urged the study of particular evolutionary processes within enduring culture areas, in which societies with a common origin were exposed to similar ecological constraintsHe observed that a culture's subsistence base was as dependent upon its local environment as it was on its technology. Accordingly, he proposed a local ecology model which emphasized the influence of technology, natural resource availability and some social variables, such as population and intergroup relationships. Steward actually referred to his theory as one of multilineal evolution and reflected some of the historical particularist influences = each cultural type has a different line of evolutionary development.Anthropologists today work with a variety of theoretical perspectives. Contemporary approaches are much less unified and do not share a set of assumptions as did the theoretical points of view we have discussed up to this point.Many anthropologists work within a historical framework:

Eric Wolf has been concerned with the impact on Europe during colonial period of the “people without history” (e.g. peasants)

Marshall Sahlin advocates a theoretical approach that combines history with structuralism (the experience and death of Captain Cook in Hawaii)

Culture

The concept of culture has a central place in cultural anthropology. The concept of culture as the entire way of life or system of meaning for a human community was a specialized idea shared by anthropologists. The range and specificity of anthropological research and the involvement of

anthropologists in work outside of academic life have also grown, leading to the existence of many specialized fields within the discipline.Theoretical diversity has been a feature of anthropology since it began. Some anthropologists argue that new integrative approaches to the complexities of human being and becoming will emerge from new subfields dealing with such subjects as health and illness, ecology and environment, and other areas of human life that do not yield easily to the distinction between “nature” and “culture”.Unlike animal’s behavior, which is under the biologic and instinct, human behavior is culturally determined. Anthropologists affirm that, unlike animal species, man is very free, in relation with patterns of instinctual behavior. But there are, even for the man, especially during childhood and before his socialization, some automatic actions and reflexes. Then, man has basic biological needs: hunger, thirst, sexual life, etc.; his survival depends on the satisfaction of these needs.If every man has the need to feed himself, the feeding manner is different and depends on cultural specificity. We all know that nourishments prescribed and consumed in some societies are forbidden in others. Political and religious reasons determined individuals and groups to keep very strict taboos and food diet.The elements of human behavior which ensures his survival are learned after birth in the frame of the cultural environment where that individual lives. Anthropologists say that human destiny is under the empire of culture.Culture may be defined as behavior peculiar to Homo sapiens, together with material objects used as a part of this behavior; specifically, culture consists of language, ideas, beliefs, customs, codes, institutions, tools, techniques, works of art, rituals, ceremonies, and so on.Culture is a very difficult thing to narrow down and define. If we were to compare our definitions, I'm sure we'd see some very different answers. The reason for this is that culture is such a huge and unwieldy thing. One of the simplest definitions is from Dr. Al Larson of the University of Illinois at Chicago. He defines culture as the "Attitudes, objectives, and technical skills of a people." In other words, culture refers to the accumulated knowledge of a people. Also, we have to mention that the concept of culture used by cultural anthropology is a technical concept. Its meaning is different from what can be understood through culture: education, good manners, moral behavior, which is selective and implies value judgments.Today it is impossible to select one definition from the existing ones. In 1952, Alfred L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 200 different definitions of culture in their book, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. They organized these diverse concepts of culture into eight categories:

Topical: A list of topics such as social structure, religion, economic system, and so forth Historical: Social heritage, or tradition, passed from generation to generation Behavioral: Shared, learned human behavior, a way of life Normative: Ideals, values, norms, or standards for life Functional: The way people solve problems and adapt to their environment Mental: Complex of ideas, or learned habits, that distinguish people from animals Structural: Patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviors Symbolic: Arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a society

Achim Mihu: culture is a way of life proper to a human group in the circumstances of a certain environment created by man and formed from material products/ artifacts and non-material products transmitted from a generation to another.This definition is made from tree aspects:

1. Culture is a way of life which means the particular way of living and acting in some circumstances.

2. The second part of the definition refers to the fact that for each culture, there is a specificity of environment: environment modified by man and natural environment.

3. The third part of this definition talk about component parts of the environment with human intervention across time; the way of using these parts is transmitted from a generation to other, through enculturation = the process by which a child learns his or her culture.

This definition is according to the definitions proposed over times by anthropologists. For example, more than a century ago, British anthropologist Edward Tylor proposed that systems of human behavior and thought are not random. Tylor’s definition of culture still offers a good overview of the subject matter of anthropology and is widely quoted. "Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society". The crucial phrase here is “acquired by man as a member of society". Tylor's definition focuses on beliefs and behavior that people acquire not through biological heredity but by growing up in a particular society where they are exposed to a specific cultural tradition.Zdenek Salzman considers that the list of Tylor can be completed with other component of the culture such as political organization, object manufactured by man, language, religion and many other particular features that make the differences between human societies from another.Alfred L. Krober and Clyde Kluckholm considers that culture consists in explicit and implicit patterns (regularities in behavior of which the members of a society may be minimally aware but which are nonetheless patterned to the same extent as the customs that are quite explicit) of behavior and for the behavior learned and transmitted through symbols; culture is composed from

distinct achievements of human groups and the materialization of patterns into the products.

The United Nations agency UNESCO has defined culture as the "set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs."Many definitions of the culture are limitative, emphasizing one or a number of aspects and components of the content and extension of the definition. For example, Richard A. Barett considers that from a symbolic perspective, culture is a system of accepted meanings, which is a network of sources and guiding lines for human behavior in a particular society.

Society and culture are similar concepts, but their scopes are different. Long time ago, it has been made the distinction between the concept of culture and the concept of society, even if in social and humanistic sciences these concepts are used as interchangeable. Sociologists believe that society includes culture too; anthropologists consider that society is a part of the culture. Strictly speaking, culture and society can be separated; but a certain thing is that society cannot exist outside of a culture, and no culture can exist outside of a society.Some scientists consider that the meaning of culture is the same with civilization, others, that these two concepts are different. Civilization is closely connected to culture, and has often been used almost synonymously with culture. This is because civilization and culture are different aspects of a single entity. Civilization can be viewed as the external manifestation, and culture as the internal character of a society. Thus, civilization is expressed in physical attributes, such as toolmaking, agriculture, technology, and so forth while culture refers to the social standards and norms of behavior, the traditions, values, and religious beliefs and practices that are held in common by members of the society.The “civilization”/“civilisation” word was used in its modern sense to mean "the opposite of barbarism" – as contrasted to civility, meaning politeness or civil virtue – since the second half of the 18th century. The earliest written occurrence in English of civilization in its modern sense may be found in Adam

Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society: "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization". It should be noted that this usage incorporates the concept of superiority and maturity of "civilized" existence, as contrasted to "rudeness", which is used to denote coarseness, as in a lack of refinement or "civility".

In Germany, it appeared the dissociation between Kultur (it comes from German language) and civilisation (it comes from French). Under the influence of romanticism, the culture was regarded as the thesaurus of the most special human forces, of artistic achievements and of individual perfection; civilisation was understood a progress of material development, a concept that pointed to the urban society.

Within history, the term of civilisation was used commonly to describe a particular stage of the development of the society. Other times, civilisation is used to underline that a culture is qualitative superior to another.

For Samuel Huntington, one of the most talked-about and controversial political scientist in the world today, civilizations has a restrictive meaning; the meaning is a human group with high cultural characteristics and especially with a very high level of cultural identy. Samuel Huntington, sees humanity organized into nine major civilizations: Hindu, Orthodox (Russian, Slavic), Latin American, Western (Western Europe, U.S.A., Canada), Islam, Confucian (Chinese), African, Buddhist, and Japanese.Huntington also investigates in his writings how these civilizations will compete for preeminence in the world in the 21th century. One of Huntington’s main theses is that the West is facing the decline of its power relative to others such as Islamic and Confucian culture. These civilizations are separated one from another by cultural fault lines. Along the Huntington’s fault lines may occur conflicts, clashes, even wars, due to the strong cultural identity of each of these civilizations

Anthropologists split the culture in material culture and non-material or spiritual culture.

Regarding this dichotomy, they are two sides orientated: Those who think that cultural anthropology must approach both cultural and spiritual culture. Those who consider that only spiritual culture represent the area of interest cultural

anthropology.

Material culture includes all objects (durable and not durable) = material artifacts (called so by English Anthropologists) of a human group and techniques of manufacturing those objects (axe, pottery, a stick, a tool used in agriculture, etc.)Sometimes, natural objects without suffering any change realised by man are considered to belong to material culture; these objects may be used by man or they have symbolic significance.Some anthropologists exclude material objects from the interest area of cultural anthropology. Others consider that knowing the techniques, which determine the improvement of material artefacts, is part of the concept of culture and not the outcome of the work. Also, those related to subsistence activities are of obvious importance – material culture has also been important in studying ritual, art, music, dance and symbolism.

Spiritual/non-material culture includes all human abilities, customs, norms, believes, attitudes, languages, etc. transmitted through enculturation.

Enculturation = the process by which a child learns his or her culture from his parents, family, community, etc.

Another dichotomous perspective over the culture distinguishes popular culture and high culture. Cultural anthropology does not make “discriminations” between them. All people are "cultured." Interesting and significant cultural forces are those which affect people every day of their lives, particularly those which influence children during enculturation.Culture, as defined anthropologically, encompasses features that are sometimes regarded as trivial or unworthy of serious study, such as "popular" culture. To understand contemporary North American culture, for example, we must consider television, fast-food restaurants, sports, and games. As a cultural manifestation, a rock star may be as interesting as a symphony conductor, a comic book as significant as a book-award winner.Popular culture = folklore Folklore is a literature (in the broad sense of the word) which consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared nearly unchanged between the members of a community.Popular culture is seen as a culture of pre-industrial societies, as a folk culture specific to a folk society. We could define Folk Culture as a way of life based upon an understanding of and a respect for Nature. Folk Culture seeks to create a society where there is genuine freedom and a harmony, and believes that this involves us, as individuals, living by certain ideals such as honour. You can think of Folk Culture as the knowledge and traditions that grew out of a people's unique history and experiences.

For most urban Americans, there is no difference between folk culture and popular culture. Popular culture is their folk culture.

Amish people Popular cultural is identified with commercial and market culture.

We live in a commercial culture. We sit down in front of the TV and ingest 50 to 100 ads per day. We open the newspaper and see more ads than news. We turn on the computer and are targeted by ads matching our interests. We answer the phone and are greeted by a fast-talking telemarketer. We walk out to the mailbox and find more ads than bills and letters combined. Thousands of other messages each day, at the ballpark, on billboards, even in our children’s schools, tell us to "buy," "buy more," "buy now!" Unlike other compulsive behaviors, society affirms that we are doing the right thing.

We’re told that consuming to excess is our responsibility, to keep our kids happy, to communicate love, to grow the economy, etc.

Another definition equates popular culture with Mass Culture. Culture for mass consumption, especially originating in the United States, is established by the end of World War II. A set of cultural values and ideas that arise from common exposure of a population to the same cultural activities, communications media, music and art, etc.Mass culture becomes possible only with modern communications and electronic media. A mass culture is transmitted to individuals, rather than arising from people's daily interactions, and therefore lacks the distinctive content of cultures rooted in community and region. Mass culture tends to reproduce the liberal value of individualism and to foster a view of the citizen as consumer.The term began to assume the meaning of a culture of the lower classes separate from (and sometimes opposed to) "true education". It has been argued by some that the lower class has developed and transmitted to their children, a different set of cultural values and expectations. They argue further that this culture is a barrier to their success in society. Used in this way lower class culture is associated with

the ‘culture of poverty thesis’ - The theory that certain groups and individuals tend to persist in a state of poverty because they have distinct beliefs, values and ways of behaving that are incompatible with economic success. Another term is “middle class”.

All cultures comprise different components that are necessary for members of society to participate in social life and interactions. First, culture provides a stock of knowledge – a cognitive component – that is a basic foundation for social behavior. Culture also comprises elements necessary for the maintenance of integration and conformity in society – a normative component that is, ways of specifying the correct ways of thinking and behaving and of defining morality.Cultures vary from one another and it shares four major components:

1. communication2. cognitive3. material 4. behavioral

Cognitive component of cultureIt includes:

popular knowledge scientific knowledge beliefs

Popular knowledge or common sense consists in an ensemble of explanations and interpretations of a great variety of phenomena: from natural phenomena to social action and human behaviour, in a not very elaborated way which is shared by the rest of the group members. Popular knowledge results from men’s everyday experience. Knowledge is considered as a storage of information fact or assumption, and these knowledge can be passed down from one generation to another.Scientific knowledge represents an ensemble of observations, theses, ideas, theories about nature, society and men; this type of knowledge must be as possible objective and must be verified. It stands on the base of technology, through which man controls the natural environment and solves the social problems. Scientific knowledge is expressed in a great variety of sciences. Beliefs are ideas which cannot be verified and they assume that a proposition, statement, description of fact are true in nature. These beliefs have an important role in traditional societies and are strictly passed down from one generation to another.

Behavioral (regulatory) component of cultureIt is a major component of culture that is concerned about on how we act in different situations. These are ways of meaning, feeling, acting, and conducting asked by the members of a group in particular situations. Rules = norms are learned in the frame of socialization process = enculturation. Every society protects its rules which involve social control – the different processes through which society enforces conformity to the norms. Such processes are also called social sanctions = social reactions to either conformity (positive sanctions) or violation (negative sanctions) of the norms.

It includes norms which further categorizes into: Social traditional norms Mores Laws Rituals.

Norms are considered to be rules and expectations eventually set by a particular society that serves as guides to the behavior of its members. It varies in the terms of the degrees of importance and might be change over a period of time. These are standards accepted by society culturally and serve as obligatory and expected behaviors of the people in different situations in life. It refers to the way of dressing, using the verbal or non-verbal language, etc.Examples: shaking hands, the bound of the head when two people meat. Nobody can tell when these norms became rules.

Mores (pronounced morays) are kinds of norms that are considered to be customary behavior patterns which are derived from a moralistic value – good-bad, fair-unfair. These mores are norms which reflect strongly-held values and whose violation involves a strong negative societal reaction, such as incarceration or even death, being considered as a breaking of some taboos.

In some societies, some norms are considered so important that they are put in writing and some categories of people are put in charge of their enforcement and specific punishment is imposed on violators. Such norms are laws. Laws serve as the formal and important norms that translated into legal formalizations. Laws are sometimes based on traditional mores. The law states negative sanctions. We know when these norms were institutionalized.

Values serve as guidelines for social living. Culturally, it can be defined as the standards of desirability, goodness and beauty. Values are general abstract moral principles defining what is right or wrong, good or evil, desirable or undesirable. In other words, values often come in pairs of positive and negative terms: we value freedom and dislike oppression, we value education and dislike ignorance or we value individualism and fear collectivism. Values are modeling the content of the laws. Complex societies do not necessarily have a consensus in values as different categories of people develop very different experiences that shape their moral standards.

Symbolic component of cultureSymbolic thought is unique and crucial to humans and to culture. The concept of sign is applicable to every object which substitutes other object. Examples: the colours of the traffic lights, the sounds of the bell: for danger, for calling people to the church, when somebody died. Any sign has a binary structure: significant and signified. Signs were classified into

natural signs such as signs of the rain: thunders, black and heavy clouds, lights etc. conventional signs are those which transmit significations upon a consensus; in this case, the

relation between significant and signified is arbitrary.The notion of signal has many definitions; so, a signal is

a sign communicated by an individual to another any sign or event which determine actions: heavy clouds, thunders urge people to find shelter,

so they will not be wetted by the rain announced by the signs a sign through gestures, lights to transmit a command or warning: burning fires on the hills

which transmitted to inhabitants danger warnings; the people know that they must gather their things and find shelter; red light of the traffic light, means that people can cross the street

The notion of symbol refers to a sign or signal which represent something else than its physical thing. The sign or signal receive the quality of symbol after a symbolism process, which determine that every significant has an information, judgment, value, feeling;

For example: black color is a symbol of mourning after the death of a dear person; yellow star, which Jews had to wear in some societies, shows their status of marginal people; snake is the Biblical symbol of malefic temptation; the flame is the symbol of immortality.

Economic changes have produced changes in attitudes and behavior in regard to work, gender roles, marriage, and the family. Some points of view expressed regarding the role of culture insists upon the values and cultural norms, which split the countries in those which have economic success and the group of countries which are not capable of economic performances. When we do such differentiations, we start with the theses of Maw Weber (1864-1920) regarding the role of “Protestant ethic” in the rise of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal nation-state in the Western world; this would explain why Protestant regions from Germany and Switzerland are more developed than Catholic ones.Another scholar, Lawrence Harrison compares Latin America, marked by poverty and inequality, with remarkable economic success of Japan and South Korea; he explains these differentiations through the different values and opposite cultural attitudes. Other anthropologists consider that South American hesitations are due to an attitude of contempt regarding the trade and industry from the Spanish elites. A former prime-minister from Singapore put on the base of the development of Asian states, the Confucian ethic of working and the cult for hierarchy and state.The influence of culture on the way that societies evolve is central not only to the goal of reducing poverty and injustice around the world. It is also a key factor in foreign policy.Robert Putman does an analysis of Italian situation and thinks that Italian institutions are correlated with “civic culture” of populations in some regions of Italy. Putman shows that efficient working of institutions is possible only in those regions where exist old traditions in this way – in center and north of the country; instead, in the south of Italy, where such traditions do not exist and the traditional component of the population is still very important, are working old institutions like family and clan; here organizations like mafia have developed.Francis Fukuyama approaches this question through the concept of the "radius of trust." Fukuyama divides societies in

societies with “narrow radius of trust” societies with “high trust”

Fukuyama’s societies with “narrow radius of trust”Such societies are China, France, Italy, where the close connections between population is consumed at the level of the family and do not allow the development of complex and higher level social institutions. In-group solidarity reduces the ability of group members to cooperate with outsiders, and often imposes negative externalities on the latter.For example, in the Chinese parts of East Asia and much of Latin America, social capital resides largely in families and a rather narrow circle of personal friends. It is difficult for people to trust those outside of these narrow circles. Strangers fall into a different category than kin; a lower standard of moral behavior applies when one becomes, for example, a public officials. This provides cultural reinforcement for corruption: in such societies, one feels entitled to steal on behalf of one's family.

Fukuyama’s societies with “high trust”Such societies are Germany, Japan, USA, which are liable to higher institutional organizations that make the them more competitive; these societies consist of a large number of overlapping social groups that permit multiple memberships and identities. Modernization (economic, political) was seen as antithetical to traditional culture and social organizations, and would either wipe them away or else be itself blocked by forces of traditionalism.

The role of culture in global politicsSome fundamental questions about what drives human progress cannot be answered without considering the role of culture and/or cultural change. For example:

Why have democratic institutions failed to take root in any Arab country? Why have the Confucian societies of East Asia experienced transforming rates of economic

growth? Why are East Asian immigrants so successful wherever they migrate? Why are Jews so successful wherever they migrate? What explains the "miracle" of Spain's transformation from a traditional autocracy to a modern

Western European democracy? Why do the Nordic countries lead the rest of the world in most indicators of progress? Why have Haiti and the Dominican Republic, two countries that share the Caribbean island of

Hispaniola, followed such divergent paths?

The role of culture in decision takingOther approaches have concentrated upon the role of culture in decision taking. Often the absolutization (= to change a principle into an absolute one) of cultural values by human groups forms barriers to collaboration and understanding between people and can deep the conflicts. Today it is more often speaking that the success of international coalition led by U.S. in Iraq, determined a radicalization of Muslim youth; they believe that this war was an anti-Islamic war conducted by Western Christian powers. In the Western world is use to put an equality between Islam and terrorism, without remember that Islamic fundamentalism exists like Christianity fundamentalism existed and still exists; also, Islam is a religion with universal character which promote common values like Christianity; historically speaking, Islamism promoted an advanced culture, made way for the rationalism and scientific knowledge; under this influence, rationalism and science was developed in the frame of Christian universities, founded after the model of Arab universities from Spain. So, it is necessary that Western countries take political decisions regarding the Muslims to go beyond these prejudices. Unfortunately, Islamic issue remain a delicate and sensitive one at the level of EU, due to:

demographic and religious pressure of Islamism in the Western Europe, the conversion of a large number of European youth to Islamism, the migration of Islamic population in Western Europe and the failure of assimilating these

migrants over some generations. This situation creates permanent tensions powered by discussion over some apparently not very important issues, but which supplies the cultural sensitivities, through their symbolism, such as the ban by law in some countries of wearing the Islamic veil inside of school institutions.

Regarding the role of culture, different points of view, determined many theories, such as: Functionalist theory Ecologist theory

Functionalist theory Functionalists seek to describe the different parts of a society and their relationship through the organic analogy. They compared the different parts of a society to the organs of a living organism. The organism

is able to live, reproduce and function through the organized system of its several parts and organs. Like a biological organism, a society was able to maintain its essential processes through the way that the different parts interacted together. Institutions such as religion, kinship or economy are the organs and individuals are the cells in this social organism. Functionalist analyses examine the social significance of phenomena, that is, the function they serve a particular society in maintaining the whole.Examples: rituals and ceremonies:

marriage has an integrative function; the same are funerals ceremonies of celebrating the national day, the town day

Functionalist perspective helps to understand the presence or the missing of some cultural characteristic in certain societies. But, much too busy to find how cultural elements are combined into a cultural system, functionalist theory forgets cu determine the cultural evolution and social changes.

Ecologist theoryEcologist theory analyses cultural diversity connected with environment. Cultural elements are seen as ways to adaptation of the groups to cultural and natural environment. Example: veneration that Indians have for cows. Because of this religious norm, around 100 million of cows are wandering on the territory of India, in towns and villages, and determine traffic perturbations and ruin public spaces. Marvin Harris, a renowned cultural materialist, reduces the Hindu ban on cow slaughter as a factor of ecological pressures. He argues that religious sanctity has been mistakenly given to a phenomenon that can best be explained by socio-political factors. Marvin Harris asserts that an explanation could be India’s adaptive response to ecological degradation. Harris mentions other cases where the flesh of a certain animal is made taboo when it becomes too costly as a result of ecological changes. The animal was formerly sacrificed or eaten => a subsequent rise in population density => a responsive restriction imposed when the animal can no longer be raised in sufficient numbers to meet societal needs. India’s cattle were valued for their milk and traction power over and above their function as meat. Cows came to be protected, due to:

increased energy demands prolonged drought conditions cattle assure 700 millions tones of natural fertilizer every year;

o half of this is used in agriculture to fertilize the agricultural camps o half serves as a fuel to preparing the food

when a cow dies, an Untouchable cooks the meat and eats it + uses the skin of the cow Indian cattles do not need care, because they feed themselves alone

Axiological approach ( the study of the nature of values and value judgments) of the culture calls into question some issues, such as:

Ethnocentrism Cultural Relativism Culture Grading Cultural conflict

EthnocentrismOne of anthropology's main goals is to combat ethnocentrism = the tendency that view one's own culture as superior and to apply one's own cultural values in judging the behavior and beliefs of people raised in other cultures. Ethnocentrism is a cultural universal. It is fitting to the mutual logic to all cultures to consider the cultural alterity through a pejorative perspective. People everywhere think that

familiar explanations, opinions, and customs are true, right, proper, and moral. They regard different behavior as strange or savage.Example: The tribal names that appear in anthropology books often come from the native word for people. "What are you called?" asks the anthropologist. "Mugmug”, reply informants. Mugmug may turn out to be synonymous with people but it also may be the only word the natives have for themselves. Other tribes are not considered fully human. They are given different names that symbolize their inferior humanity.Ethnocentric manifestations are more obvious in the isolated groups. As an advantage we can mention that ethnocentrism has an important contribution in keeping together in a coherent way a group. Negative implications are emphasizing the racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism.

Cultural RelativismThe opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, the argument that behavior in a particular culture should not be judged by the standards of another. This position can also present problems. At its most extreme, cultural relativism argues that there is no superior international, of universal morality, that the moral and ethical rules of all cultures deserve equal respect. In the extreme relativist view, Nazi Germany is evaluated as non-judgmentally as Athenian Greece.Anthropology's main job is to present accurate accounts and explanations of cultural phenomena. The anthropologist doesn't have to approve customs such as infanticide, cannibalism, and torture, but to record their existence and determine their causes. However, each anthropologist has a choice about where to do field work. Some anthropologists choose not to study a particular culture because they discover in advance or early in fieldwork that behavior they consider morally repugnant is practiced there.Anthropologists respect human diversity. Most of them try to be objective, accurate, and sensitive in their accounts of other cultures. However, objectivity, sensitivity and a cross-cultural perspective don’t mean that anthropologists have to ignore international standards of justice and morality. It do not exist a universal patter to explain and interpret a culture(s). Cultural relativism claims to understand the way of life of particular society through the light of its values and norms, and not through an exterior perspective.

Culture GradingEthnocentrism and cultural relativism are considered extremes. Some anthropologists claim the necessity to find a formula for culture grading, which must answer to the question: to what extend a culture can satisfy the material and spiritual needs of the group members? For getting an answer there are analyzed indicators of life quality such as: welfare, crime and delinquency, demographic structure, the stability of domestic live, group relations etc. We can say that a culture can satisfy better the needs of its members if poverty rate is low as well as malnutrition, delinquency, suicide, environment degradation.Examples: Agriculture is a better means of providing food than hunting and gathering. The productivity of human labor has been increased by machinery and by the utilization of the energy of nonhuman animals, water and wind power, and fossil fuels. Some cultures have more effective means of dealing with disease than others, and this superiority is expressed mathematically in death rates. And there are many other ways in which meaningful differences can be measured and evaluations made.Thus, the proposition that cultures have ponderable values that can be measured meaningfully by objective yardsticks and arranged in a series of stages, higher and lower, is substantiated.

Cultural Conflict

Conflict is a feature of all human societies, and potentially an aspect of all social relationships. However, ideas about the root causes of conflict differ widely, and how one conceives of conflict determines to a large degree the sorts of methods we ultimately design to manage or resolve it. Cultural conflict = the conflict of behavior patterns and values that results when different cultures are incompletely assimilatedExample: the conflict may find expression in high rates of criminality and delinquency.Cultural conflict can have a lot of forms:

One opinion considers that Cultural conflict is the contradiction between ideal culture => how it is theoretically expressed in its norms and values, and real culture => how people use to report themselves to those norms and values.

Cultural conflict can appear on the demarcation line between the culture of the dominant group and the existence of minority group; in this context we talk about subculture and contra-culture.

A subculture shares the dominant culture, but keeps its own values and norms, expressed in a specific way of living: subcultures of poor and rich, ethnic groups in different medium such as army, prison, university etc. A contra-culture is o subculture entered in contradiction with dominant culture. Examples: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 involved the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis by extremist ethnic Hutu militia groups. In the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, conflict between the three main ethnic groups, the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, resulted in genocide committed by the Serbs against the Muslims in Bosnia.

Universality, Particularity, and GeneralityUniversal traits aw the ones that more or less distinguish Homo sapiens from other species. Among the most significant cultural universals are exogamy and the incest taboo. Different cultures emphasize different things.Uniqueness and particularity stand at the opposite extreme from universality. Between universal and uniqueness is a middle ground that consists of cultural generalities: regularities that occur in different times and places but not in all cultures. One reason for generalities is diffusion. One cultural generality that is present in many but not all societies is the nuclear family, a kinship group consisting of parents and children.

Universal Culture – Particular CultureWe can talk about

a universal culture a single culture many initial cultural hearths

From these initial cultural hearths through innovation ( radical changes in the frame of a culture due to some creative ideas) diffusion ( generalization of some inventions or innovations to other groups) synchronisms ( overlap of some cultural elements belonging to different culture, abandonment

of some own elements, adaptation of some borrowed elements to the exigencies of the group that borrow/ take)

Today there are a multitude of cultures.

Since the 19th century, particular cultures are seen in their national frames. A survey from 1995 in some countries from Western Europe, shows that 70 % from citizens relate themselves within a nation; their identity is expressed from a national point of view, in the frame of their own national culture. Since the second half of the 20th century, there are more and more talk about cultural unification of humanity by accepting common values and norms.

Today, the expression “universal culture” urges to discussions and has different understandings:1. Urban culture has a general spreading – today, in the whole world, urban population is almost a

half2. There are generalized some cultural elements of the Western culture, especially Americans at

the global level; examples: Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Hollywood, etc.3. An ensemble of ideas, values and ideologies accepted to be the expression of the conscience

and rationally of contemporary world are claimed by influent men from West or other parts of the Globe. This it is also called Davos culture (One of the annual gathering places for the elite is Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum)

4. Universal culture is seen in connection with Western culture, as a product or effect of generalization of Western culture; in fact we talk about considering western culture as a universal culture

Regarding this matter, another issue is the existence on a historically scale of some cultural mediator, which determined the creation of the cultures with universal vocation such as

Hellenistic culture (synthesis between Greek culture and oriental cultures after Alexander the Great made his military campaigns)

Roman culture (Greek + Hellenistic + Italic cultures) Christianity culture Arab culture Western culture Soviet culture

We have to accept that the greater cultural mediator which functioned at historically scale is Western culture; it conquered more or less the whole world due to increasing interactions between peoples and civilizations, economic activities (trade, investment, banc operations, tourism, mass-media, internet etc.); the leading role of Western civilization has states from the West, which, starting with the 18th century extend the modernization process through industrialization, urbanization, alphabetization, social mobility, diversify of social structures etc.Today, Western culture is a Euro-American culture or North-Atlantic one; its content consists in more elements, not only religion. Westernization is the process of spreading and imposing elements of Western culture through different ways. Huntington considers that westernization has been produced because due to the:

Superiority of ideas Superiority of values Superiority of religion Superiority of violence

Against westernization, other cultures may adopt different types of reaction:1. Rejection – the case of Japan, which during the 16th century till the second half of 19th century

took repeatedly measures against westernization; also, Islam did and does the same thing.2. Kemalism is the principle that defines the basic characteristics of the Republic of Turkey; this

ideology was called after the name of the first president of Turkey, Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), who created a modern Turkey over the ruins of Ottoman Empire

3. Reformism – a compromise solution between adopting the modernization and keeping the values and institutions of traditional culture, such as in China.

The process of modernization and westernization may interfere a counter response, called indigenization = the diminished interest in adapting the elements of Western culture, and the returning

to the traditions, or the efforts to realize a cultural mixture of a new culture. Since the 1980s and the 1990s, there has been a resurgence of Islam and "re-Islamization" in Muslim societies. In India, Western forms and values have been replaced in the process of "Hinduization" of politics and society and in East Asia, Confucian values are being promoted as part of the "Asianization" process. Japan has also had its share of Indigenization in the form of "Nihonjinron" or the theory of Japan and the Japanese.Today, it is clear that there is a strong connection between globalization and westernization. Globalization is more easily realized through the demolition of the cultural barriers as a consequence of adopting western culture. The elements which make possible globalization are those proposed by Western countries, such as mass-media (television, advertising, internet, etc.). There is the risk and danger that through globalization some particular cultures could disappear.

Multiculturality is the coherence during the same time period, in the same cultural space of several particular cultures or subcultures.Multiculturalism has as a assumption the reality of coexistence of a plurality of cultures. Multiculturalism does not mean scientific knowing and interpretation of cultural reality. It is a phenomena produced in the frame of ideology and policy. The observation that several cultures coexist is distorted by value judgments, biased positions, myths; also, there are political programmes aimed to put the intercultural relationships in convenient frames. Multiculturalism arose some tensions, or conflicts; these tensions were taken over by the economic and political spheres under the form of some efficient programmes, which became even state policy. From this perspective, multiculturalism may be characterized as a rational and benefic action.Since 1971, Canada adopted a multiculturalist model and improved it. Sweden adopted a multiculturalist model in 1975 and Australia in 1978. All these countries confronted with the problem of immigration. Multiculturalism is written in documents, like in those of the City Hall from Toronto: “Together we are one” = the town with the greatest ethnic diversity from the world, with immigrants from all over the world.