Anthropology of culture with the aspects of the anthropology of the word

obligatory courses

Classroom

A course in anthropological knowledge (based on the author's programme and textbook "Anthropology of Culture"), introducing the basic phenomena, concepts and categories of cultural analysis. Presentation of various anthropological positions and orientations (enriched by the perspective of sociology and cultural history), recent and classical approaches. In the second semester, concepts and phenomena concerning the anthropology of words, above all oral culture and the culture of writing (based on the textbook "Anthropology of Words") will be further developed.

1. The concept of culture

Issues: Concepts of nature and culture, "spirit" and "intellect" vis-à-vis culture; culture as collective creation, material and immaterial aspects of culture, the "objectivity" of culture and its flexibility; the individual and society as subjects of culture; culture as an artificial human environment, organised behaviour and institutions of culture, its symbolic aspects; cultural regularities, culture and social structure; culture as an attribute of the human condition, cultural universals; innate and acquired factors and culture, cultural condition and human biological condition, anthropology in relation to the heritage of the natural sciences (sociobiology, genetics).

2. Patterns of culture

Issues: the diversity of cultures, its anthropological and biological interpretation; the integration of culture, its configuration; the concept of cultural pattern and its examples: the "Apollonian" (Zuni) and "Dionysian" (Kwakiutl) pattern; the individual and the collective and the cultural pattern; the issue of cultural pattern in developed society, the ideological system as a cultural pattern; patterns, norms and activities, axionormative order.

3. Time

Issues: secular time and sacred time, the reversibility and cyclicality of sacred time, the actualization of myths - ontophanic and pattern-making function; the anthropomorphicity and locality of cyclic time, the Christianization of time: from "a world without history" to "sacred history", from sacred time to the liturgical year, village time and city time - "Church time" and "merchant time"; theological and teleological models of time - overcoming them:secularisation, mechanisation, quantification, the clock as a figure of experiencing time, Darwin's opening of linear time; time as motion and time as an independent quantity, organic and functional understanding of time; concepts of hypothetical universal time: mathematical, Newton's absolute time, cosmic time; Einstein: time in relation to motion and gravity, a new vision of the cosmos, the relativity of time.

4. Space

Issues: the establishment of the world and sacred space, "our world" and "the hereafter", cosmos and chaos, settlement as sanctification, fixed point - point of support, the centre of the world and its symbolism; the body and the spatial orientation scheme:"up - down", "back - front", "right - left", the body and measures of space, personal pronouns and space; space as extents of the body, categorisation of space, distances: intimate, individual, social, public.

5. The body

Topics: the human being as a physio-psycho-sociological whole; the body - the first tool of man; body techniques - traditional effective actions; classification of body techniques; transmission of body techniques: prestige and training; the role of the face in social interactions: facial mask versus "facial nudity"; the creative and communicative function of the hands; the historical variability of the cultural attitude towards nudity, openness and intimacy; the "naive" versus "sentimental" cultural attitude towards bodily nudity.

6. The person - personality - social character

Topics: the concept of person and its evolution: from identification with the mask - through the legal, moral and spiritual person - to the philosophical category; psyche and personality in the psychoanalytic conception, the role of the Oedipus complex in the formation of the superego, the prohibition of incest - culture as a result of the defence of the self against drives, the influence of social interaction on the formation of personality; Cross-cultural and intra-cultural differentiation of character, social character as internalisation of tasks set by the social system, dynamics of the relationship between character and social process, economic situation and ideology, personality - between determination and freedom.

7. Marriage - family - kinship

Topics: marriage - its sexual, procreative, economic, legal and ritual aspects; social determinants of marriage: prohibition of incest, exogamy, endogamy; forms of marriage: polyandry, polygyny, monogamy; family and kinship system: clans, halves and classes of kin, critique of the hypotheses of primary promiscuity and group marriage; distinctive features of the family, the prohibition of incest and elementary social organisation, marriage as a group bond, the relationship between family and global society.

8. Primary and secondary social relationships

Topics: community and association - basic types of ties and patterns of social groups, constitutive features of community and association and their main forms; concept of primary group and its examples, primary group as moral unity and ideal of moral unity, ensemble and ensemble consciousness; personal and ideological bond, primary groups and social structure; negative and positive identification, group identity and civic duties, characteristics of the sense of group membership.

9. Traditional culture

Issues: primordial mentality as prelogical mentality, mystical nature of collective imagery (image, likeness, name, name, shadow, dream), law of participation, totemic relationships; orality, authority of tradition - authority of old age, conformism; folklore, gymna memory, family memory, value of 'old truth' and indigenous tradition.

10. Chivalric culture, noble culture

Topics: the rise of European feudalism; the personal bond between people in feudal society: The role of fiefs and vassalage; the idea of contract vs. chivalry and nobility; fief tribute and knighting - symbolism of feudal ties; being a knight as a profession and being a noble as a marker of social position; the transformation of chivalry into nobility; chivalry as an institution and chivalry as a myth; the sacralisation of chivalry - the birth of the ideal; honour as the highest value of the chivalric ethos; courtly love as initiation; chivalry today; class brotherhood and family responsibility; chivalry and nobility as a culture of affect and emotion.

11. Bourgeois culture

Topics: bourgeois - social type and cultural pattern, personal merit, property and freedom, economic and political individualism, interest vs. emotional ties and interpersonal relationships, instrumentalisation of interpersonal relationships, notion of homo oeconomicus; utilitarianism, methodical life, industriousness and frugality, Protestant ethics and Puritan attitudes, religiosity the sources of capitalist attitudes, irrational-speculative and rational capitalism - based on the rational organisation of free labour and on a rational structure of law and administration, the rise of the capitalist bourgeoisie and the proletariat as two classes linked to the rational organisation of free labour; from Puritan attitudes to consumer attitudes, from bourgeois culture to mass culture.

12. Mass culture

Issues: the phenomenon of agglomeration, the masses - its objective and subjective aspects, the concept of "mass" versus the concept of "crowd", the mentality and attitude of the mass man; mass culture - produced, standardised, homogenised; infantilisation of the vision of the world, corruption of creativity, depersonalisation of interpersonal bonds; mass culture - leisure culture, entertainment as a value in itself, the omnipresence of the spectacle, the playful concept of life.

13. Alternatives

Issues: alternatives as an attempt to go beyond society: contestation of prevailing models of life, direct experience, contact with nature; alternatives as an attempt to reform society: creating new and direct human bonds, transforming oneself and transforming one's environment; transcendental experience as the fulfilment of inner transformation; the sacred as the fulfilment and transcendence of art; the utopia of universal creativity.

14. Understanding culture

Issues: The human world as a product of human creativity, values as regulators of this creativity, their historical relativity; understanding cultural products and their interpretation; the ideal type, the "ideal boundary concept" as a tool for understanding; the humanistic coefficient - the subjective and intersubjective aspect of cultural reality; cultural relativism as a cognitive assumption and a practical attitude; the normative basis of relativism; the Russoist revolution - identification with the other as the starting point of the human sciences; questioning one's own identity as a condition for understanding the other; the question of cultural universalism: The question of tolerance towards ethnocentric and fundamentalist attitudes.

"Antropologia kultury. Zagadnienia i wybór tekstów"; opracowali G. Godlewski, L. Kolankiewicz, A. Mencwel, P. Rodak; Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2005

"Antropologia słowa. Zagadnienia i wybór tekstów"; opracowali G. Godlewski, A. Mencwel, R. Sulima; Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Warszawa 2004

At the end of the course the student/student knows the basic concepts of cultural studies. He/she understands and is able to describe the specificity of the anthropological view of culture. He/she has the ability to analyse various phenomena of social life - both contemporary and historical cultural forms - using the tools of cultural anthropology. He/she takes into account the cultural context when interpreting various types of texts. He/she presents an attitude full of openness and tolerance for otherness. He/she is willing/ready to correctly assess the significance of cultural heritage for the understanding of social and cultural events.

Checking attendance, activity, written work (analysis of selected phenomena of contemporary culture).

Two unexcused absences per semester are permitted, further absences must be accounted for during an on-call duty period. Absences exceeding 1/2 of the number of classes are grounds for failing the course.