Development Team

Paper No. : 10 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Module : 17 Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography Development Team Principal Investigator Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi Paper Coordinator Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi Sarika Negi Content Writer Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi Prof. Subir Biswas, Department of Anthropology, West Content Reviewer Bengal State University, Barasat, West Bengal 1 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Anthropology Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography Description of Module Subject Name Anthropology Paper Name 10 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Module Name/Title Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography Module Id 17 2 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Anthropology Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography Contents 1. Introduction 2. History of Cognitive Anthropology 3. Cognitive anthropology 3.1 Colour categorisation 3.2 Kinship relation and terminology 4. Critical comment on Cognitive Anthropology 5. Recent Developments in Cognitive Anthropology Summary Learning Objectives To understand the concept of cognitive Anthropology To understand the sub branches of the topic To appreciate the concept critically 3 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Anthropology Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography 1. Introduction Cognitive anthropology focuses on the cultural understanding, which is encased in words, narrative and material culture, and is grasped and shared with others. Cognitive anthropology is the study of the relation between society and human thought (Andrade). The scholars of cognitive anthropology studies social groups’ cognition about the objects and phenomena which built their world, ranging from physical to abstract things. 2. History of Cognitive Anthropology In the beginning of mid 1950’s scholars constructed a new methodology ‘Cognitive’ or ‘Ethnoscience’ or ‘New ethnography’, which emerged as a critic to the then existing traditional ethnography, questioning basically the methods of it. These scholars argued on the basis that there is no one method which is followed by anthropologists and every one studied and wrote in his or her own way. As a result ethnographies varied in their information and could not be compared. In order to make it more scientific and the descriptions in these ethnographies more accurate they argued for some new methodology, which is outlined with emic perspective. However, its intellectual roots go back to enlightment period, where foundation of human studies was led down. The enlightment thinkers contributing in the makeup of this intellectual interest were Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke, focusing on the interaction of society and mind. Among these Locke, put forth an important point where he argued that, humans at birth unwritten sheet, and with cultural exposure and experience a person gets a shape. He took forwards this idea in empiricism and propounded conceived knowledge shaping person, as conceived because of sensory experiences, experienced throughout life. Cognition of individuals rests on sensation and experience, in contrast his empiricism rationalist orientation emerged arguing role of mind alone in achieving knowledge. Some other whose work were dealt with human studies, society and mind were Turgot, Condorcet and Auguste Comte, put forth a philosophy of positivism, arguing evolvement of intellectual complexity and a need to move towards empirical observation to achieve an understanding of it. Post the modern phase in anthropological research i.e. of Geertz, Turner and Schenider, a move from finding a more scientific form of inquiry in anthropological research anthropologists turned for inspiration to Linguistic theory. Linguistics was in a stage of shift from Bloomfieldian and structural linguistics to transformational generative linguistics. In 1954, a major breakthrough happened when, Kenneth L. Pike published an essay, Language in relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour. He acquired idea from relation between sounds (phonetic) and meaningful units of sound (phenomic). Phenotics is the study of sounds that humans can produce while phenomics (phonology) focuses on the sounds differentiated on the basis of contrasts with other sounds. Through 4 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Anthropology Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography his study he proposed that, at universal level, the things which could be observed by an outsider formed the etic category. The emic formed the level of meaningful contrast within a specific language known to insiders. After his work anthropologist tried to built the concepts of emic and ‘etic’. The emic which was subjected to a long debate was seen factually as informant’s expression by Marvin Harris. In 1960’s, scholars of Cognitive anthropology thought of Benjamin L. Whorf’s perspective, which emerged in 1930’s, on the link between modern, western science, and worldviews of natives’. Along with Whorf, Edward Sapir was also interested in the relation of language and human thoughts, they both formulated the Sapir-Whorf’ hypotheses in which they explained that, language is not just way of communicating but also fabricated people’s thinking of the world. This link between language and perception was borrowed to connection between culture and language. Later Ward Goodenough and Charles Frake explained the methods to conduct fieldwork and analyzing the data. A highly structured interview, aiming at the understanding of indigenous conceptual categories, called as Domain by Ethnoscientists was proposed. Later, methodology, componential analysis emerged, to understanding definitive chararcteristics through which artefacts and ideas were sorted in each domain by the natives. These scholars believed that, components of the domains when organized under one of the several logical possibilities, covering pattern or model, classification, the collection and the type-token can make the study more accurate and systematic. The data collection following this way could be more systematic and replicable claiming the more scientific study which could conceptualize native categories. Some ethnoscience argued that, this will permit ethnographers to think like indigenous members. This move towards Cognitive anthropological study remained an active field of research. By mid 1970’s, advances in anthropology, psychology and field of artificial intelligence underlined the human cognition being more complex than frames derived from indigenous understandings derived from cognitive methodology. An elemental conception of ethnoscience and early cognitive anthropology was that, the categorised objects in their world by looking at the mental list of essential characters which was later developed that, people categorise by referring common mental prototypes which were called Schemas or Schemata, resulted from the prior experiences with a particular kind of phenomena which is not identical but similar to that phenomena. Mandler, in schema theory gives an example of a child identifies something that has characteristics green, round and is without stem as an apple only because it induces apple-ish schema, rather than because it matches a list of characters. In contrast to Tyler’s view, it is now understood that intellect is non-linguistic and is not governed by language. Now a days, cognitive anthropologists and psychologists have chosen the idea of Connectionism, where intellect is connected, nexus built and distributed by elements such as neurons involved in processing and through these information can be collected and analysed. 5 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology Anthropology Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography D’ Andrade sketched an example to explain schema and connectionism where, a car driving is taught based on rule learning via a particular language and in other case where driver is told that pedal for brake is on left, for gas, it is on right side and in a culture specific way where, car is driven in US on the right side of the route. Here, the practice will be different from the verbal instructions, where schema nexuses are built and where practice is foundational in building experience allowing one’s expressions according to situations. For 1950’s and 1960’s Ethnoscientists, culture was ideally construct in minds of people and that, could be charted out and reproduced using accurate interviewing methods. However, Mandler’s theory argued that, what goes in cognition of a person is definitely cultural, but non-verbal, and cannot be obtained through questioning. Hutchins, who explained culture as a process, where it is not only construct in mind rather involving process perceiving and communicating in and with physical world, which build schemas and link in the mind founding cognition. Several other studies pointed out the problems in the methods of modern system, where, different areas of inquiry were given relevance with the focus on reliability on these. The various problems in the areas of cultural thoughts, value system and beliefs studies were highlighted in the cognitive research. 3. Cognitive anthropology This field of anthropology details with the culture and human perceptions. It

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