Hans Blumenberg: An anthropological key

Pavesich, Vida University of California, San Diego 2003 해외박사(DDOD)

This project reconstructs the philosophical anthropology implicit in Hans Blumenberg's mature work. In Chapter 1, following a brief synopsis of philosophical anthropology's modern origins, I view Blumenberg's position through the prism of Heidegger's disavowal of philosophical anthropology and his challenge to Cassirer at Davos in 1929 over the proper interpretation of Kant and neo-Kantianism. I focus on a subtheme in this debate: the starting points and goals of philosophy as it relates to their respective conceptions of human existence. For Blumenberg, unlike Heidegger, this starting point is a version of philosophical anthropology, one that requires a reconceptualization of Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms as necessary cultural supports for human existence. Blumenberg's philosophical anthropology is simultaneously the basis of his philosophy of history. Chapter 2 expounds the new starting point. I develop Blumenberg's account of human existence as a consequence of its limits, which can be summed up by two facts: our biological deficiencies and the indifference of reality. These facts require a compensatory life-world, which is established through metaphor and symbol, as Cassirer would have it. Action, or self-assertion, is thus circumscribed by and shaped indirectly through the symbolic constructs that constitute a culture. This is further constrained by a regulative idea of humanity. Chapter 3 examines the resulting life-world, or the sense in human existence is supported by myths and institutions, with particular attention to how these can be understood as objective and rational. Within this context, I examine what could count as reason, which necessarily works within institutional constraints and is limited by myth and history. Chapter 4 is a case study that extends the resulting theoretical model. I pose the problem of understanding the significance of our contemporary preoccupation with gender. I claim it is both a myth and a reflective category. Gender can be understood as the story of sexual difference, a story that makes possible a reflective position for questioning modern disenchantment from the perspective of sexual difference. In conclusion, I contend that this reconstruction of Blumenberg's anthropology supports a larger argument: in modernity, it is in our philosophical and ethical interest to restate anthropological needs and reevaluate the life-supporting function of institutions rather than succumb to the temptations of anti-anthropology, which forgets “man.&rdquo.

Competing enterprises: A comparative analysis of introductory cultural anthropology and introductory sociology textbooks

Norris, William M Wayne State University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

What is anthropology? What is sociology? What is the basis of the division between the two? Is that division a relic of nineteenth century thinking?. With these questions in mind, anthropology and sociology are compared both as social science disciplines asking certain kinds of scholarly questions and as academic teaching enterprises. A model of the "Academic Credentials Market" in which the two disciplines compete for market share is developed and an analysis of their market shares in the last half of the twentieth century is presented. The histories of anthropology and sociology are traced from their common roots in antiquity through their nineteenth century separation into two distinctive disciplines and their institutionalization in the twentieth century. A content analysis of a representative sample of introductory anthropology and sociology textbooks was conducted to reveal how the disciplines are presented to introductory students and what they indicate regarding the distinction between the disciplines. Findings suggest (1) that there is a high degree of conformity to a "standard" model among introductory sociology textbooks while there is considerable variability in organization and content among introductory cultural anthropology texts, (2) cultural anthropology is presented as one of four subfields of general anthropology, a holistic discipline that straddles the sciences and humanities and studies all humans in all times and places while sociology is presented as a social science interested primarily in modern industrial societies, and (3) the two disciplines do not share widely in each other's discourse communities.

초기 무용인류학의 연구관점과 방법론에 관한 연구

김재리 이화여자대학교 대학원 2003 국내석사

이 연구는 초기무용인류학자 조안 킬리노호모쿠(Joann, W. Kealiinohomoku)와 에드리언 케플러(Adrienne Kaeppler)의 연구 경향을 분석함으로서 무용인류학의 다양한 관점과 방법론에 대하여 알아보고자 하였다. 이와 같은 연구의 목적을 달성하기 위하여 킬리노호모쿠와 케플러의 주요 논문과 저서를 중심으로 분석하였으며 이들이 현지조사를 수행할 때 제시한 연구관점과 방법론을 연구하여 킬리노호모쿠와 케플러의 이론을 파악하였다. 논문 분석 결과에서 나타난 킬리노호모쿠의 연구의 특징은 초기 무용인류학의 개념 정립에 큰 영향을 끼쳤으며 무용인류학의 학문적 영역에 다양한 이론을 제공한 것이었다. 그리고 케플러의 연구의 특징적인 것은 무용인류학의 새로운 방법론을 제시한 점이었다. 이들의 연구에서 공통적으로 나타나는 특징은 서구적 시각에서의 무용을 비판하였으며 문화적 맥락(cultural context) 안에서 무용을 연구할 것을 강조하며 다음과 같은 연구관점을 가질 것을 주장한 것이었다. 킬리노호모쿠와 케플러가 제시한 무용의 인류학적 연구의 관점은 문화상대론적 관점, 경험주의적 관점, 전체적인 연구의 관점, 비교문화 연구의 관점 등이었으며 이러한 관점은 초기 경험주의 인류학자 보아스(Franz Boas)의 영향을 받은 것으로 분석되었다. 이들이 현지조사를 수행하면서 사용하였던 방법론을 분석해본 결과, 먼저 킬리노호모쿠는 기술적인 방법으로 큐라스의 기록법(Kurath's notation)을 이용하여 움직임을 기록하였으며 자신만의 체크리스트 (check list)를 만든 것이었다. 그녀는 무용을 분석할 때 다른 학문과 연계할 것을 강조하였으며 유전적인 특징을 연구하는 비교분석 방법론을 제시하기도 하였다. 그리고 무용을 연구할 때 다른 문화의 요소까지 연구해야 한다는 연구 접근법을 제시한 것으로 분석되었다. 케플러는 기술적인 방법론으로 라바노테이션(Labanotation)을 사용하여 춤을 구조화시켜 움직임을 분석했으며 무용을 분석할 때는 언어학적 유추의 방법을 사용하여 무용의 구조와 사회 구조의 관계를 파악하는 독특한 방법론을 제시했다. 그리고 무용이 갖는 가치와 의미를 그 무용이 행해지는 민족의 시각에서 찾아야 한다는 민족의미론적(Ethno-semantics) 연구를 강조한 것으로 나타났다. 이들의 연구를 분석해 본 결과 무용인류학에서는 무용의 다른 학문분야와는 달리 다양하고 실질적인 연구방법론이 제시되었다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 본 논문은 초기의 무용인류학자들의 방법론과 관점을 토대로 하여 무용인류학의 이론에 대하여 알아보는 과정이었으며 분석을 통해 나타난 방법론들과 관점들로 무용인류학의 다양한 연구의 가능성을 제시한 점에서 그 의의를 찾을 수 있겠다. This study is to examine a various point of view and methodology about Dance Anthropology by analyzing the study point of Joann, W Kealiinohomoku and Adrienne Kaeppler. To achieve a purpose of this study, I grasped the theory of Joann, W Kealiinohomoku and Adrienne Kaeppler by analyzing their important papers and writings and also investigating the focus point and methodology which they present during field work. What I found out by analyzing their papers is as follows. Kealiinohomoku's study had a great influence on establishment of the fundamental notion about the early Dance Anthropology and presented various ideas to the study field of Dance Anthropology. And then Kaeppler' study presented a new methodology of Dance Anthropology. The common characteristic of their study is that both of them criticized looking Dance from western viewpoint and emphasized the study of Dance in cultural context. They studied Dance Anthropology in the context of cultural relativism, empirical approach, holistic approach, cross cultural comparison approach and so forth. Their study like this was influenced by Boas who is early empiric anthropologist. What I found out as the result of analyzing the methodology they used when they performed field work is as follows. Firstly, Kealiinohomoku recorded movement using Kurath's notation and made her own check list. She stressed analysis associated with other sciences and presented comparison analysis methodology which study hereditary characteristic. she also put forward cultural approach to dance. Kaeppler analyzed movement by structurizing dance using labanotation and presented unique methodology through which the relation between dance and society structure can be grasped by using linguistics analogy. She also emphasized ethno-semantics study that the value and meaning of dance should be sought from the viewpoint of people who perform it. By analyzing their study, I found that practical methodology was presented in Dance Anthropology differently from other science. This paper is the presentation about the process of my grasping the theory of Dance Anthropology on the basis of methodology and viewpoint of early Dance Anthropologist. The meaning of this paper is in that the possibility of various study about Dance Anthropology is presented.

Ambiguous engagement: Invasion, intervention and participation in a Brazilian squatter settlement

Cohen, Peter F Columbia University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

How is a development intervention experienced by its beneficiaries as an event in their lives? This dissertation explores this question through an ethnographic study of local actors and their engagement with a large participatory poverty reduction Programme in Salvador, Brazil. By viewing an intervention primarily in terms of events rather than discourses , the author aims to reaffirm the value of multiple perspectives in the anthropological study of development. The anthropological literature on development is currently divided into two separate and antagonistic schools, distinguishable as "development anthropology" and "the anthropology of development." While anthropologists of development critique development anthropologists for abetting a process they considered insensitive to the situation of beneficiaries, their own methodological preference for the discursive analysis of global development institutions has effectively led them to bracket the experiences and expressed views of the beneficiaries themselves. This study seeks to fill this gap by focusing on the debates, ideas, strategies and actions of local actors involved in a development intervention. The anthropology of development reproduces several other failings that it attributes to its object, including the tendency to view interventions mono-causally and mechanistically as linear progressions from policy to planning to implementation to results or "effects." This study seeks to counteract this bias by following causality in the opposite direction: from the agendas, priorities and goals of local actors, to the strategies they pursue to implement them (via modalities of engagement ranging from direct resistance to cooperation), and finally, to the results of these efforts. This dissertation further compares local discourses on development with several key concepts in the anthropology of development---notably, Ferguson's idea of "the Antipolitics Machine." This comparison leads the author to conclude that local analyses may at times have more in common with the discourses of mainstream development anthropologists than with those of their anthropological critics. A more prudent approach would be to understand development beneficiaries as a distinct set of voices that are fully represented by neither school.

"Personhood": An examination of the history and use of a concept in the anthropological literature

Appell-Warren, Laura P Harvard University 2007 해외박사(DDOD)

The concept of "personhood" has been used by researchers and writers in the field of anthropology for the last four decades. Despite sustained interest in, and the sustained use of, the concept of "personhood," there is not a coherent understanding of the concept in the literature. In addition the concept of "personhood" is often conflated and confused with the concepts of "person," "self" and "identity.". The concept of "personhood" in the anthropological literature can be traced back to the publication of Marcel Mauss's paper entitled "A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; The Notion of Self." The concept of "personhood" was then further elaborated on by the likes of Fortes, Poole, Kirkpatrick, A. Strathern and others. This dissertation adds to the intellectual history of the field of anthropology by creating a meta analysis of how the concept of "personhood" is used in anthropology. In Part One of this discussion, the original emergence of the concept of "personhood" in the field of anthropology, as well as its development as a concept over time, is explored. As part of this discussion, a definition of "personhood" is offered. In Part Two of this dissertation, there is a continuation of the effort to clarify the use of the concept of "personhood" in the anthropological literature by comparing usages of the concept of "personhood" with usages of several often-conflated concepts: "person," "self" and "identity." This comparison is designed to illustrate how the concepts are conflated and confused by anthropologists, and to pinpoint how the concepts might actually be distinguished from one another. In the conclusion, the question of why the study of "personhood" (and the study of the related concepts of "person," "self," and "identity") is such a minefield is answered, with the blame placed on: a reliance on evolutionary thinking; the ethnocentrism of anthropologists; the inappropriate application of Western terms; the lack of good coherent cross-field discussion between anthropologists and psychologists; and, finally, sloppy and casual work done by anthropologists.

Herder's Science of Man: The Origins of Anthropology in the Philosophy of Language

Eck, William University of Pittsburgh ProQuest Dissertations & 2019 해외박사(DDOD)

Herder is one of the historical figures most responsible for the establishment of cultural anthropology as its own discipline. Before Herder, anthropology was conceived of as a science more closely related to biology and anatomy. Early anthropologists such as Ernst Platner proposed to answer philosophical questions by means of an examination of our physical bodies and nervous systems. Questions in logic, epistemology, and the theory of action were transformed by these anthropologists into questions concerning the workings of our nervous system and sensory organs. The central claim of this dissertation is that this transformation of anthropology from an empirical study of anatomy to an empirical study of culture and history was based motivated by a new picture of the relationship between mind and language developed together by Hamann and Herder in the 18th century. The development of anthropology from a medical science into a study of culture in the work of Herder and Hamann was largely instigated by Kant's critiques of Platner's anthropology. Concepts central to philosophy, such as freedom and reason, are, on Kant's view, fundamentally normative concepts, and therefore cannot be meaningfully investigated by means of an empirical study of the body. Hamann, however, develops a conception of reason as dependent on language, and therefore social and historical, and he comes to the thought that, just as languages are particular to a given community and a particular point in history, so must reason be. What this meant was that the study of reason not only could but must be made responsible to empirical evidence. Anthropology could then be rehabilitated into a study of reason and free action by means of the empirical study of language and culture. In Herder's work, rehabilitating anthropology into an empirical discipline capable of drawing conclusions concerning reason, meanings, and values meant coming up with an understanding of normativity consistent with both empiricism and naturalism. I reconstruct Herder's arguments for Einfuhlung, a method of "feeling one's way" into the culture under study, as providing an answer to the former problem, and his social conception of normativity, which provides an answer to the latter.

교육인간학 방법론 연구

박지현 연세대학교 대학원 2001 국내석사

본 논문은 교육인간학의 방법적 사고의 논리와 형식들을 살펴보기 위하여 Bollnow의 철학적 인간학의 방법론과 오인탁의 인간학적 비교 방법론에 관하여 연구하였다. Bollnow의 철학적 인간학에는 인간학적 환원의 원리, 기관의 원리, 개별현상들의 인간학적 해석, 개방적 물음의 원리 등이 있는데, 이들 원리는 인간의 문화와 비형식적 삶의 현상들을 일정한 논리적 귀결에 한정시키지 않고 연구할 수 있는 방법론을 제시하고 있다. 오인탁의 인간학적 비교는 문화의 다원적이고 일원적인 특성을 바탕으로 인간의 본질에 대한 추구가 특정 문화에 한정되어 연구되지 않도록 문화간의 해석학적 비교를 통한 인간학적 연구 방법을 제시한다. 이러한 교육인간학의 방법론들은 철학적으로 현상학, 해석학, 실존철학의 측면을 지니고 있다. 이러한 기존의 방법들이 교육인간학의 방법론들에 내재되어 있음으로 인해서 교육인간학의 연구는 보다 인간을 연구 대상으로 하는 인간 본질적인 연구가 되어질 수 있다. 그리고 교육인간학은 이러한 모든 연구 방법들의 특색을 바탕으로 인간의 본성으로부터 직접적으로 드러나는 교육의 내적 차원을 탐구 할 수 있는 것이다. 끝으로 교육인간학의 방법론은 연구자가 포착한 대상과 현상에 대한 끊임 없는 관찰을 필요로 할 뿐만 아니라 다양한 각도의 사고와 이해를 거치는 과정에서 비로소 점층적으로 연구에 적용되어질 수 있다. 교육인간학의 방법론은 그 자체로서 해석학적 이해의 대상이 된다고 할 수 있을 것이며 앞으로는 인간학적 연구의 철학적 인식관심과 그 방법의 관련성에 대한 연구가 이루어져야 할 것이다. This study is about thingking tools of educational anthropology. Bollnow offered the principle of anthropological reduction, the principle of organ, the anthropological hermeneutic principle of the specipic phenomena and the principle of often question. These principles make educational anthropology profound studies based on the human culture and the living phenomena. The principle of anthropological comparison offered by Oh, In Tahk compares different cultures on the basis of pluralism and monism of the human culture hermeneutically. These educational anthropology principles can pursue studies focused on man in itself because of including the theory of phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism. Finally, Studies on the Method of the Educational Anthropology should be continued in connection with philosophical premises and interests. The Methods of the Educational Anthropology itself are subjects of hermeneutics.

The Meskwaki and Sol Tax: Reconsidering the actors in action anthropology (Iowa)

Daubenmier, Judith Marie University of Michigan 2003 해외박사(DDOD)

In 1969, Native American activist Vine Deloria, Jr. stunned anthropologists with a blistering critique of their profession in his book Custer Died for Your Sins. Deloria labeled anthropologists a “plague of locusts” that descended upon Indian communities each summer, living off grant money and gathering information for books that were irrelevant to poor Indians. Deloria's critique, however, overlooked an effort twenty years earlier to practice anthropology in a more ethical manner, called “action anthropology.&rdquo. In 1948, some residents of the Meskwaki settlement near Tama, Iowa, delivered their own grass-roots critique of anthropology to graduate students from the University of Chicago. Through subtle hints and blunt questions, they demonstrated their resentment at being studied and their expectations of reciprocity from the researchers. In response, University of Chicago anthropologist Sol Tax and his students committed themselves to collaborating with community members on goals they set. In the encounter, Meskwaki individuals manipulated their would-be helpers and set limits on their behavior. Previous analyses of action anthropology on the Meskwaki settlement focused on its scholarship program and arts and crafts project on the settlement, but the project's influence went beyond that. Some settlement residents said contact with the anthropologists deeply influenced them by allowing them to come to know whites for the first time or making it possible for them to attend college. A decade of carrying out action anthropology on the Meskwaki settlement also helped to mold Tax's views on federal Indian policy and to establish his credentials as a consultant in that field. Tax spent much of the rest of his career promoting themes that emerged in his experiences at Tama—self-determination for Native Americans, leadership development in Indian youth, higher education for Indians, and cultural freedom. Until now, knowledge of Tax's contributions to Indian activism of the 1960s has been limited to his organization of the 1961 American Indian Chicago Conference. Tax's career, however, had other links to Indian political activity. A close examination of the effects of Tax's relationship with the Meskwaki shows his influence on Bob Thomas, who developed the concept of internal colonialism, as well as Tax's role in summer workshops for youth that brought together many of the next generation of Indian leaders. Thus, the encounter between the Meskwaki and Chicago anthropologists emerges not only as another way of doing anthropology but also as another source of 1960s Indian activism.

Translating observation into narration: The "sentimental" anthropology of Georg Forster (1754-1794)

Karyekar, Madhuvanti Indiana University 2014 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation explores the nature of the anthropological writings of Georg Forster (1754-94), the German world-traveler (who accompanied Captain Cook on his second voyage in the South-Seas 1772-75), cultural-historian and translator in the late eighteenth century, showing how his anthropology proposes an "ironic" or "sentimental" (in the Schillerian sense) mode of narration. Although many others at the time were exploring what it is to be human, my dissertation argues that Forster's anthropology concerned itself primarily with what it means to write about humanity when one supplements the empirical-rational method of observation with an emphasis on "self-reflexive" and "ironic" (a la Hayden White) modes of writing anthropology, or the story of humanity. This study therefore focuses on those writings gathered around three salient concepts in his anthropological understanding, to which he returns frequently: observation, narration, and translation, presented in three chapters. The thesis not only undertakes close readings of Forster's texts centering on observation, narration, and translation but, crucially, places them within the historical context of late eighteenth century aesthetic and anthropological discourses in Germany. This study ultimately underscores the manner in which Forster's concepts of "sentimental" -- i.e. self-reflexive, ironic, and striving towards the goal of perfectibility -- observation and narration allow him to accept the fragmentary, exploratory, and temporary nature of knowledge about humanity. At the same time, his "aesthetic" -- sentient and open to testing -- translation allows him to engage and educate his readers' tolerance towards a provisional, composite and temporal truth in anthropology. In highlighting the self-reflexive as well as an open-to-testing attitude of Forster's anthropology, this dissertation underscores the mutual interaction between eighteenth century aesthetic and anthropological modes of thought.

Citizens of a Genre: Forms, Fields and Practices of Twentieth-Century French and Francophone Ethnographic Fiction

Izzo, Justin Duke University 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines French and Francophone texts, contexts and thematic problems that comprise a genre I call "ethnographic fiction," whose development we can trace throughout the twentieth century in several geographic locations and in distinct historical moments. During the twentieth century in France, anthropology as an institutionalized discipline and "literature" (writ large) were in constant communication with one another. On the one hand, many French anthropologists produced stylized works demonstrating aesthetic sensibilities that were increasingly difficult to classify. On the other hand, though, poets, philosophers and other literary intellectuals read, absorbed, commented on and attacked texts from anthropology. This century-long conversation produced an interdisciplinary conceptual field allowing French anthropology to borrow from and adapt models from literature at the same time as literature asserted itself as more than just an artistic enterprise and, indeed, as one whose epistemological prerogative was to contribute to and enrich the understanding of humankind and its cultural processes. In this dissertation I argue that fiction can be seen to travel in multiple directions within France's twentieth-century conversation between literature and anthropology such that we can observe the formation of a new genre, one comprised of texts that either explicitly or more implicitly fuse fictional forms and contents together with the methodological and representational imperatives of anthropology and ethnographic fieldwork. Additionally, I argue that fiction moves geographically as well, notably from the metropole to Francophone West Africa which became an anthropological hotspot in the twentieth century once extended field research was legitimated in France and armchair anthropology was thoroughly discredited. By investigating ethnographies, novels, memoirs and films produced in metropolitan France, Francophone West Africa, and the French Caribbean (including texts by Michel Leiris, Amadou Hampate Ba, Jean Rouch, Jean-Claude Izzo and Raphael Confiant) I aim to shed light on the kinds of work that elements of fiction perform in ethnographic texts and, by contrast, on how ethnographic concepts, strategies and fieldwork methods are implicitly or explicitly adopted and reformulated in more literarily oriented works of fiction. Ethnographic fiction as a genre, then, was born not only from the epistemological rapprochement of anthropology and literature in metropolitan France, but from complex and often fraught encounters with the very locations where anthropological praxis was carried out.