How Do Cultures Think? Introduction to Cognitive Anthropology

The course overviews intercultural variation in cognitive processes and their outcomes – the ways of categorizing and conceptualizing physical, mental and social worlds.

Philosophers for centuries have tried to outline the basic structures of human thinking, but only with contributions from linguistics cultural anthropology and cultural psychology has it become clear that people in various cultures have very diverse ways of conceptualizing the world. This is true not only of specific ideas, but also of the most fundamental categories in which our experience is framed, such as time, space, number, or causality. In our class, we will reconstruct those differences, proceeding from the most elementary aspects of human experience to more complex ones. We will also retrace how human thinking has been influenced by the development of communication media, especially writing and the Internet.

General readings:

Bloch, Maurice (2012). Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

D’Andrade, Roy (1995). The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Readings for particular classes:

1) Humans and other animals: how do we think?

Tomasello, Michael et. al (2004). “Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 5(28): 675-735.

2) Language and cognition: is thinking silent speech?

Pinker, Steven (2007). The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind. New York: Harper, chapter 2: “Chatterboxes”, pp. 23-54; chapter 3: “Mentalese”, pp. 55-82.

3) Space: my eastern leg.

Levinson, Stephen C. (2004). Space in Language and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (fragments), pp. 4-5, 76-95.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1970). “The Berber house or the world reversed”. Social Science Information 2(9): 151-70.

4) Time: which way to the future?

Boroditsky, Lera (2018). “Language and the Construction of Time through Space”. Trends in Neurosciences 10(41): 651-53.

Sinha, Chris et al. (2011). “When Time is Not Space”. Language and Cognition 1(3): 137-69.

Whorf, Benjamin (1950). “An American Indian model of the universe”. ETC: A Review of General Semantics 1(8): 27-33.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward (1940). The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, chapter III: “Time and Space” (fragment), pp. 104-107.

5) Number: one, two, many.

Feigenson, Lisa et al. (2004). “Core systems of number”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(8): 307-14.

Frank, Michael C. et al. (2008). “Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and cognition”. Cognition 108: 819-24.

6) Color: green, blue, grue.

Brent, Berlin & Kay, Paul (1967). Universality and Evolution of Basic Color Terms. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Wierzbicka, Anna (1996). Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, fragments: “Macro-white and macro-black”, pp. 318-22; “Macro-red and grue”, pp. 322-25.

Gilbert, Aubrey L. et al. (2005). “Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field, but not the left”. PNAS 2(103): 489-94.

7) Truth: the Bororo are macaws.

Nisbett, Richard (2003). Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently… And Why? New York: The Free Press, chapter 7: “Ce n’est pas logique” or “You’ve got a point there”? Logic and the law of non-contradiction vs. dialectics and the Middle Way, pp. 165-190.

8) Causality: magic is the second spear.

Incheol, Choi et al. (1999). “Causal attribution across cultures: Variation and universality”. Psychological Bulletin 1(125): 47-63.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward (1970). Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, chapter IV: “The notion of witchcraft explains unfortunate events”, pp. 64-83.

9) Body: my humors are fluid.

Strathern, Andrew (1996). Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: The University of Minneapolis Press, fragment: “Skin and its capacities”, pp. 84-96.

Sharifian, Farzad et al. (Eds.) (2008). Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs Across Cultures and Languages. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyer. From this volume:

Alice Gaby, “Gut feelings: Locating intellect, emotion and life force in the Thaayorre body”, pp. 27-44;

Poppy Siahan, “Did he break your heart or your liver? A contrastive study on metaphorical concepts from the source domain ORGAN in English and in Indonesian”, pp. 45-74.

Ning Yu, The Chinese heart as the central faculty of cognition”, 131-168.

10) Soul: body inside out.

Rivers, W.H.R. (1920). “The concept of the ‘soul-substance’”. Folklore 1(31): 48-69.

Pedersen, Morten A. & Willerslev, Rane (2012). “The soul of the soul is the body: Rethinking the concept of soul through North Asian Etnography”. Common Knowledge 3(18): 468-86.

11) Person: who is your name?

Mauss, Marcel (1985). “A category of the human mind: the notion of person; the notion of self”. In: Michael Carrithers et al. (Eds.), The category of the person. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-25.

Bodenhorn, Barbara (2006). “Calling into being: Naming and speaking names on Alaska’s North Slope”. In: Gabriele vom Bruck and Barbara Bodenhorn (Eds.), The Anthropology of Names and Naming. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 138-56.

Dengen, Cathrine (2018). Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and Life-Course. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, fragment: “The name doesn’t die: Reincarnation and the name soul in Kangersuatsiaq, Northwest Greenland, pp. 239-43.

12) Gender: neither male, nor female.

Ortner, Sherry B. (1974). “Is female to male as nature is to culture?” In: Michelle Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (Eds.), Woman, culture, and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 68-87.

Herdt, Gilbert H. (1982). “Sambia nosebleeding rites and male proximity to women”. Ethos 3(10): 189-231.

Callender, Charles & Kochems, Lee M. (1983). “The North American berdache”. Current Anthropology 4(24): 443-70.

13) Kinship: no fathers, many fathers.

Dengen, Cathrine (2018). Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Personhood and Life Cycle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, fragment: “Cultural variation in ideas about conception and personhood”, pp. 31-34.

Strathern, Andrew (1996). Body Thoughts. Ann Arbor: The University of Minneapolis Press, fragment: “Conception Theories and Skin and the Life Cycle”, pp. 76-84.

Carsten, Janet (1995). “The substance of kinship and the heat of the hearth”. American Ethnologist 2(22): 223-41.

14) Hierarchy: the curse of Ham.

Dumont, Louis (1970). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, chapter II: “From system to structure: the pure and the impure”, pp. 33-64; chapter VI: “Rules concerning contact and food”, pp. 130-151.

15) Cognition and the media: the impact of writing and the Internet.

Ong Walter J. & Hartley John (2012). Orality and Literacy: Technologizing of the World. London: Routledge, chapter 4: „Writing restructures conscioussness”, pp. 77-114.

Carr, Nicholas (2010). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. London & New York: Norton, chapter 3: “The tools of the mind”, pp. 33-42; chapter 5: “A medium of the most general nature”, pp. 56-65.

Participants are able to:

1) explain how cognitive structures in general are shaped by processes of cultural transmission;

2) discuss main cross-cultural differences in categorizing temporal, spatial, quantitative and qualitative aspects of experience;

3) understand different cultural models of truth and causality;

4) comprehend diverse concepts of individual human beings – their bodies, souls, personhood and gender;

5) compare different visions of the social, with a focus on kinship and hierarchy;

6) explain how the developments of writing and the Internet have reshaped human cognition.

Oral exam assessing participants’ grasp of the material presented in class and in assigned readings. The list of questions for the exam will be provided in the beginning of the semester.