I wonder if one's viewed as more valuable/masculine than the other

Their rite of passage into the community? I wonder if every anthropologist has to go through something like this.

This idea keeps popping up everywhere. The thought that a practice, a people, a belief, etc. is inferior, destructive and just overall bad, and that by trying to stop it, one is saving someone else from x. It seems to transcend all categories of human...I wonder why that is? I'd love to read some psychoanalytic theories behind this phenomenon.

Can/is the sacrality of the cow transferred to whomever consumes it?

Could this be a form of structuralist functionalism...?

If we can only view both ourselves and the world around us, at least to some degree, subjectively, can ethnocentrism ever be 100% eliminated?

I really, really love this.

This makes me question the validity of physical evolution. If it's too arbitrary to find a primitive culture, is it also too arbitrary to find a primitive, physical man? Or the physical origin of anything? Or is culture just more ambiguous? But anthropology's made me question the validity of everything, since even science is a socially fueled field.

This just reminds me how social everything really is. We don't think that something as simple and ordinary as humour can play a role into something as complex as society, but it really does. Again, one of those simple, but brilliant things when you put serious thought into it.

This is something that I've been thinking about lately, especially with the Posey Leadership talk. As anthropologists, we're supposed to be objective, respect others' beliefs and practices as a part of their cultural context, and understand that no belief or practice is greater or less than another. But when it comes to ethics and morality... it seems to be more complicated. In our society, many view rape as the evil of all evils, but there are other societies in which rape is part of a culture. As human beings with moral standards, we may think that's awful, but as objective anthropologists... Where is the line drawn?

I'm curious to know how they pointed this out

What body of theory could this be? Functionalism...?

Is this still positivism?

What are these "facts"?

The term seems to be used really lightly, which kind of makes you question the legitimacy of its use in other contexts.

I love this.

But at the same time, I can't help but question what the "truth" is that seems to be applied here. Is there ever a true truth? Isn't everything we perceive and interpret, at least to some degree, subjective? If so can there ever be a true truth?

Can anyone define this?

lol there seems to be a lot of questions that functionalists fail to ask

I wonder what drives the need to find all these; why is finding a single origin so important?

This is something that I've been thinking about throughout this reading. How big of a gap is too much of a gap? How is saying that cultural aspect B derived from cultural aspect A is more or less valid than D from C? And how does one going about trying to prove such connections/diffusions, etc. without jumping the gun too much? Idk, I just see a lot of room for criticism. I mean, I do agree with him. In most of these cases, thing Y was clearly diffused from thing X, but how much of that connection is arbitrary?

I think culturally, we often underestimate the power of imperialism.

This may be stretching his idea a bit too thin... but couldn't you apply idea diffusion to almost anything? Couldn't the simple act of written language, no matter the origin and disregarding phonetics, all forms of written language (no matter the specific language) be a practice that's derived from another's practice? Applicable to sustenance and kinship, or hygiene and wearing or not wearing clothes...couldn't these all be forms of at least rudimentary idea diffusion?

So idea diffusion = the baby steps of cultural diffusion. Take an idea/practice/aspect from a culture, build upon/change/adapt it to your own?

I'm confused. So with idea diffusion, is it the spread of ideologies, beliefs, social structures, theories/abstracts, etc., rather than the spread of concrete practices that leave evidence in history?

Functionalism?

As simple as this idea is, it's kind of brilliant. Quite a dismal way to think of humans though.

The word choice here is really amusing to me. In Chinese, we have a phrase: 什么鸟人都有. Directly translated: There are all kinds of bird people. It means that there's all kinds of people out there, and it's used usually when you encounter a negative situation involving horrible/crazy stranger.

Pretty irrelevant (and horribly explained) but I just thought that it was a funny coincidence.

I find this perspective interesting, if not amusing. Does he think that American scholarly pursuits are driven by the desire for fame, accolades and capital? I mean he might not be wrong, necessarily, but it's just interesting that this is coming from a French, sociological perspective (and by interesting, I mean fitting, almost).

Does this hold the same meaning as it does now to us? If so, why is this an important quality to have in a place where intelligence and achievement seem to be the most important?

Harsh, much?

Translation:: Labor Division: a sociological study

Off topic: The genius is always a little insane. If not, would he even be a genius?

Particularism?

Better or worse than being lazy & wasting food...?

With cultural diffusion, it makes sense that things would overlap.

Yeah it might make things easier to study, but it's also ignoring the fact that there aren't any concrete stages of development that haven't been made up by humans. Development is both arbitrary and abstract. It moves in a gradient, not in steps. It's putting categories to things that might not be meant to have categories. And that's not always an advantage.

yes

I don't think that critiquing "primitive" religion like this is fair. I'm sure primitive societies think the same of state religions. A specific religion, whether primitive or not, and though may not be understood by others, still plays a role in the lives of the people of that belief. Although the belief may seem "imaginary" (which I do agree with) still has tangible affects that seep and shape into that culture.

This order seems really weird to me. Is it a hierarchy of importance? Or time of development? It's just weird that they put government over language and family.

I wonder when & what it'll take for our capitalistic society to understand this...

I really like this, not just because it's one of the only sentences I've understood in this article so far, but also because this is a personal thought that I've always had but hadn't been able to articulate into words.

what?

On the one hand, I think greed and competition are both animalistic, instinctive behaviors, and humans aren't an exception. Purely in terms of survival of the fittest, the one with the most power wins.

But on the other hand, I think humans are particularly self interested. In the wellbeing of the individual vs. the wellbeing of the group, humans often choose the former over the latter. Our economic & political systems are more than often the epitome of that.

Yes, but we just compensate (accept those limitations) with what we call science.

I think it's interesting that we as humans, no matter the time, place, or tongue, are ceaselessly trying to control the things around us. And if we find that we can't, we have to find an explanation that makes "can't" okay.

Hmm, this is really interesting. I suppose that the difference for our knowledge (or rather, the accepted fact) of element X + element Y = chemical reaction Z and their causes & effects, is that our is "science"

So...being human?

It seems like there is still a common form of this today: shamanism

I don't mean to offend anyone by stating this, but I do often wonder, particularly of our time, how often do state and spiritual powers collide? How often do those who have spiritual authority use that as a right for state authority? And how often is that abused? Is this one of the reasons why secularism is still such a hot topic?

Interesting... Remembering from an anthropological perspective that everything's socially constructed, even religion, especially aspects of it that are taken to be set in stone, such as "the conception of the slain god"

Primitive religion? As in religions of primitive societies?