Riassunto esame Social and cultural anthropology, Prof. Gardini Marco, libro consigliato History of anthropology , Eriksen

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“Manchester School”: from Gluckman to Turner. deviates from the orthodoxy of structural-

functionalism and produces important methodological innovations on the analysis of societies It

was born in the 1940s. Some British, in full controversy, began to study the colonized countries

taking into account the transformations they are undergoing. In 1950, British anthropology was

internally fragmented. The 1950s and 1960s saw fundamental changes in the British tradition.

Some of the most important, in particular the transition from function to meaning. What changed

the most was trying to make sense of CHANGE. British anthropologists have begun to analyze

groups that are undergoing rapid changes.

The first research was that conducted at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (later called the

University of Manchester), which focused on the effects of urbanization, labor migration and rapid

population growth in Africa. The institute was founded by Godfrey Wilson, who is best

remembered for his discussion of "acculturation". He predicted that colonialism eventually brought

about massive culture change and "detribalization". Later, some Manchester School scholars

argued that this process created a new form of retribution, as migrants continued their identity as

members of one group compared to many others by surrounding them in their new urban

environment. Equally innovative were the methods used:

1. -network analysis

2.-situational analysis

3. - idea of scale

4. -Extended case method

change is not a mere object of study. change could not be understood simply by describing the

social structure as it existed before and after the change, and postulating simple rules of

transformation, which explain what happened the local effects of the processes are globally

investigated empirically, dissolve in complex networks of social relations that they affect each

other.

Gluckman

British-South African anthropologist, one of the founders of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in

present-day Zambia; later, a professor at the University of Manchester, where he headed the

Manchester school. Gluckman was an unusually influential teacher whose students may include

Victor Turner, Bruce Kapferer, John Barnes, Elizabeth Colson, and many others. In his work by

him, Gluckman has particularly focused on conflict and change, in the East African communities

he studied, which are undergoing intense "modernization", due to urbanization and a growing

mining industry. . he was an important anthropologist who went from structure to process in his

analysis of him. He added the notion of the critical event, the turning point, the crisis. He pointed

out that change was incessant and omnipresent, only reaching a point of crisis. In this case, a

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situational analysis was the best method to apply. it took an event or situation and analyzed in

detail in a broader context, to produce a bottom-up view on the large-scale dynamics of

macrosocial units (regions, nations, world market, etc.). led to do important research on rituals. He

believed that rituals contain crises and strengthen social cohesion.

Raymond Firth

British anthropologist, born in New Zealand; he studied with Malinowski (he was his first student)

at the London School of Economics. He field work in Oceania (Maori and, above all, Tikopia). He

is a pioneer of economic anthropology, where he is considered the first exponent of a formalist

approach. While anthropology, under the leadership of Radcliffe-Brown and Evans-Pritchard, was

almost completely dominated by structural structural functionalism, Firth continued Malinowski's

functionalist program. During the 1950s, he and his former pupil, Edmund Leach, became

prominent figures in the individualistic methodological movement at LSE and Cambridge. He was

an ethnographer and advocated, like the Manchester School, a theory of social change. he saw

the individual as the crucial agent of change. Firth does not exclude the possibility of a stable

social structure but proposes a complementary dynamic concept, to capture the changing

character of social action. That concept is what Radcliffe-Brown called SOCIAL ORGANIZATION.

While the social structure meets at the stabilizations of society, social organization is the actual

flow of social life, where the interests of individuals meet, conflicts meet and pragmatic life can

deviate from the social structure without consequences. This has taken a strong focus on politics.

It could be argued that in emphasizing the importance of political institutions, structuralism-

functionalism was digging its hole because politics deals with inherently manipulative dimensions

of politics.

Barth

Norwegian anthropologist, field work in Iraq, Sudan (Darfur), Norway, Pakistan (Swat), Iran, Oman

(Sohar), New Guinea (Bakhtaman), Bali. he formulated a relational theory of ethnicity, which

emphasized the boundaries between ethnic groups, rather than the "cultural stuff" that boundaries

enclose. Ethnic identity, strategically manipulated for political, economic and ecological reasons,

was also a category of meaning. Barth demonstrated how the individualistic choices of

antagonistic leaders maximize their interests, generate a stable system of two alliances against

each other. other. The social structure here has no primacy at all. His "Political Leadership" shows

two different ways of conceiving structures. Evans-Pritchard, we have a social structure that



works as a principle; in Barth, individual maximization is the only principle.



Leach

British anthropologist; pupil of Malinowski and Firth; field work in Burma and Sri Lanka. Leach's

fieldwork in Burma was carried out under difficult circumstances before and during World War II

and, although his field notes have been lost, he managed to put together a monograph - Political

Systems of Highland Burma (1954) - which has become a classic. In this monograph, Leach (who

had remained faithful to the functionalist anthropology of Malinowski and Firth) at the same time

contributed significantly to the attention of the then dominant structural functionalism on political

anthropology, and made a break with this tradition, which indicated the methodological tradition of

individualism that would soon become famous in Britain. The book shows how political leaders

manipulate the rules of kinship and ownership in their political conflicts and postulates that the

outcome of these manipulations is only visible if the entire plateau region is seen as a whole.

Individual Kachin villages appear not to be scattered along a continuum from quasi-egalitarian

political organizations to hierarchical political organizations. Leach argued that different forms in

fact represented phases of a second very long-term fluctuation from egalitarianism to hierarchy

and vice versa, confirming Malinowski's old idea that kinship and myth were not morally or legally

binding norms (as structural functionalism argued). ), but cards for action, which could be

manipulated and reinterpreted by actors according to their interests. Leach wrote "Political Distinction

Systems" on tension and conflict in politics. He made an important between models and reality.

Models are idealizations, norms that cannot be translated into reality, even in the most traditional

society. Rules cannot be translated into action. Role Analysis and Systems Theory The study of

aree

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social interaction became more important in British anthropology with the new methodological

individualists. It was Linton who introduced the career between status and role. status is defined

triossancton

by moral norms, by the expectations of other individuals and by the actor's attitude, formal position

in a relationship structure STATI

the role is the enactment of status in real behavior. while the state is static, the role is dynamic.

Goffman

American micro-sociologist, based at the University of Chicago. In the late 1950s, Goffman

pioneered a dramaturgical or performance-oriented approach to interpersonal communication, in

which individuals and groups perform for each other - as on a stage - when they meet (1959) .

Their meetings take place on stage (or frontstage); before and after these meetings, they retire

from the stage and go (behind the scenes) to prepare and assimilate their performances on stage.

In front of the stage, the performing groups are each other's audience. The stage contains a

number of means that are used in the performance, such as props, sets, etc., but the primary

means of controlling one's performance is the management of impressions - the control of the

signals that one "gives" (consciously, directly ) and "emanates" (unconsciously, indirectly) to its

audience. Goffman points out the difficulties of controlling the impressions that are emitted and

shows that there is often a contradiction between "giving" and "giving" of impressions. Goffman

has also studied, from a similar perspective, various institutions, in particular the so-called "total

institutions" (prisons, hospitals, etc.) (1962), and the stigmatization of deviance (1963).

Subsequently, Goffman's work on him became more complex and focused increasingly on the

reflective and contradictory nature of human interaction (1967, 1974). He focused on the mutual

self-awareness of interacting subjects, and on processes such as embarrassment, deference and

behavior, and the situations in which the actor is "alienated" from the interaction is best known for

his role theory. He has done numerous small-scale contested interaction and communication

studies in modern society, focusing on the actor, his motivations, strategies and decisions. In “The

presentation of himself in everyday life” he presented his drama perspective, which took the

metaphor of an actor on a stage. Another postwar innovation was Cybernetics, the theory of the

complex, self-regulating systems. This discipline has focused on circular causation or feedback,

where cause and effect influence each other. Study the flow of information in these circuits. These

ideas also inspired Bateson's "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" in which he devised a theory of

human communication.

1950s: In the 1950s, a generation of anthropologists = focus on symbols and meaning. In Britain,

many scholars viewed beliefs and symbols as expressions of social structure. Some an, like

Groody Watt, were interested in meanings, but focusing on their ownologists and politics. Evans-

Pritchard was instead more radical trying to understand the meaning of particular social

institutions.

In 1958, Peter Winch published "The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy". He

argued that it was impossible to create objective knowledge about cultural phenomena since their

meaning was defined by the cultural universe of which they were a part. He has conferr