A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY - Periods in the history of Anthropology

7 important questions on A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY - Periods in the history of Anthropology

What are contract societies

Contract societies are based on individual merit and achievement.

What is the four-field approach according to the Boas in the chapter ''Boas and cultural relativism?


▪ Cultural and social anthropology
▪ Physical anthropology
▪ Archaeology
▪ Anthropological linguistics

Explain according to Boas in the chapter 'Boas and cultural Relativism' what Historical particularism is.

The view that all societies or cultures had their own, unique history that could not be reduced to a category in some universalist scheme of development.
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Explain according to 'Boas and cultural Relativism' what the ''Sapir-Whorf hypothesis entails''.


language determines cognition, and the world's languages differ profoundly in this respect
Implies that different peoples perceive the world in a fundamentally different way, due to differences in the structure of their languages

What is Mauss his theoretical position?


He believed strongly in systematic comparison and in the existence of recurrent patterns in social life at all times and in all places

What were the new specializations in the second half of 20th century?


▪ Psychological anthropology
▪ Political anthropology
▪ Anthropology of ritual

Mauss’s theory of exchange, ''consistently stressing the autonomy of the symbolic realm''. What does he mean by this?


cultural variation cannot be explained by recourse to material conditions or inborn biological properties of humans

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