Anthropology Foundation 2024-25
Batch - 1.0
Handout#11
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.
The scholars of cognitive anthropology studies social groups’ cognition about the objects and
phenomena which built their world, ranging from physical to abstract things. This field of anthropology
details the culture and human perceptions. It aims to understand how people understand their
surrounding artefacts and environment.
It is a subfield of anthropology rooted in Boasian
cultural relativism, influenced by anthropological
linguistics, and closely aligned with psychological
investigations of cognitive processes. It arose as a
separate area of study in the 1950s, as ethnographers
sought to discover “the native’s point of view,”
adopting an emic approach to anthropology. The new
field was alternatively referred to as Ethno-semantics,
Ethno-science, Ethno-linguistics, and New
Ethnography.
Cognitive anthropologists regard anthropology as a
formal science. They maintain that culture is composed of logical rules that are based on ideas that
can be accessed in the mind. It does not claim that it can predict human behaviour but delineates
what is socially and culturally expected or appropriate in given situations, circumstances, and contexts.
It is not concerned with describing events in order to explain or discover processes of change.
Furthermore, this approach declares that every culture embodies its own unique organizational
system for understanding things, events, and behaviour.
Some scholars contend that it is necessary to develop several theories of cultures before striving
toward the creation of a grand theory of Culture. In
other words, researchers insist that studies should
be aimed at understanding particular cultures in
forming theoretical explanations. Once this has
been achieved, then valid and reliable cross-cultural
comparisons become possible, enabling a general theory of all Culture.
Cognitive studies in modern anthropology can be traced back to Franz Boas. Boas, who first turned to
anthropology during his research on the Eskimo and their perception of the color of ice and water,
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realized that different peoples had different conceptions
of the world around them. He was so affected that he
began to focus his life’s work on understanding the
relation between the human mind and the environment.
Boas encouraged investigations of tribal categories of
sense and perception, such as colour, topics that would be
critical in the later development of cognitive
anthropology.
Some of the methodological rigor and theoretical
grounding of cognitive anthropology grew out of linguistic
anthropology. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in particular,
was an important precursor to the field. In the 1930s,
linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf
formulated the view that the structures of language and
culture create classificatory categories that shape meaning and world views.
In many ways, cognitive anthropology was a reaction against the traditional methods of ethnography
practiced prior to the late 1950s. As more and more scholars entered the field, it was found that the
ethnographies of places revisited did not always match the ethnographies of a previous generation.
The best known examples of this were the divergent accounts of the Robert Redfield and Oscar Lewis
of the Mexican village of Tepoztlan published in 1930 and 1951 respectively. Ethnographic
validity became a central issue in cultural anthropology.
The problem of validity was first tackled through the use of linguistics. The discovery of the phoneme,
the smallest unit of a meaningful sound, gave anthropologists the opportunity to understand and
record cultures in the native language. This was thought to be a way of getting around the analyst’s
imposition of his own cultural bias on a society.
During the 1960s and 1970s a theoretical adjustment and methodological shift occurred within
cognitive anthropology. Linguistic analyses continued to provide methods for understanding and
accessing the cognitive categories of indigenous people.
Schema theory had become the primary means of understanding the psychological aspect of culture.
Schemas are entirely abstract entities and unconsciously enacted by individuals. They are models of
the world that organize experience and the understandings shared by members of a group or society.
Bartlett first developed the notion of a schema in the 1930s. He proposed that remembering is guided
by a mental structure, a schema, “an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences,
which must always be supposed to be operational in any well-adapted organic response.
These notions are not necessarily culturally universal. In Japanese, the term kaku is usually translated
into English as writing. However, whereas in English, nearly everyone would consider writing to imply
that language is being traced onto a surface, the term kaku in Japanese can mean language, doodles,
pictures, or anything else that is traced onto a surface. Therefore, schemas are culturally specific, and
the need for an emic view is still a primary force in any ethnographic research.
Harold Conklin (b. 1926) conducted extensive research in Southeast Asia, producing one of the largest
ethnographic collections for the Philippines. His interest in linguistics and ecology and commitment to
ethnoscience led to pioneering investigations of indigenous systems of tropical forest agriculture. He
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also made important contributions to the study of kinship
terminology including "Lexicographical Treatment of Folk
Taxonomies”.
Conklin’s earliest, most influential research were pioneering
contributions to the then nascent field of ethnobotany. In his
dissertation on the Hanunoo (1954), he reported that they
distinguished 1,625 types of plants in their lands, of which 93
percent were culturally significant. These figures changed forever
our understanding of the diversity and value of the tropical
rainforest and also our appreciation of the knowledge of the native
forest dwellers.
Another pioneering ethno-scientific work was his paper on Hanunoo colour categories (1995).
Conklin’s investigation of colour perception in “Hanunoo Colour Categories” (1955) is characteristic of
the sort of study produced by the early ethno-scientific approach. In this article, Conklin demonstrates
that Hanunoo colour terms do not segment the color spectrum in the same manner as western color
terms. Conklin found that the complex Hanunoo system of colour classification could be reduced to
just four terms associated with lightness and darkness, wetness and dryness. He argued from this
case for the need to distinguish between human universals of sensory reception and the cultural
particulars of perceptual categorization, a principle that underpinned his work throughout his career.
Conklin identified basing the classification of colours among Hanunoo
were:
(ma) biru, linked to the relatively darker shade of colour i.e.
blackness.
(ma) lagti, linked to lighter shades of colours, like white.
(ma) rara, marking redness or shades of red colour.
(ma) latuy, appearance of green
CRITICISM:
According to Keesing (1972:307) the so-called “new ethnography” was unable to move beyond the
analysis of artificially simplified and often trivial semantic domains. Ethno-scientists tended to study
such things as color categories and folk taxonomies, without being able to elucidate their relevance
to understanding culture as a whole.
Cognitive anthropology deals with abstract theories regarding the nature of the mind. While there
have been a plethora of methods for accessing culture contained in the mind, questions remain about
whether results in fact reflect how individuals organize and perceive society, or whether they are
merely manufactured by investigators, having no foundation in their subjects’ reality.
Another criticism is that universal agreement on how to find culture in the mind has yet to emerge.
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