Culture as Behavior: Structure and Emergence
01 Oct 1972-Annual Review of Anthropology (Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way, P.O. Box 10139, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139, USA)-Vol. 1, Iss: 1, pp 1-27
About: This article is published in Annual Review of Anthropology.The article was published on 1972-10-01 and is currently open access. It has received 34 citations till now.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the 88th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AHA) was held in Washington, D.C., and the Distinguished Lecture was delivered as the final speaker.
Abstract: This essay was delivered as the Distinguished Lecture at the 88th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 19, 1989, in Washington, D.C.
404 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a more principled and powerful formulation of the social organization of behavior is presented, which calls for a description of the ways people organize concerted activities in each other's presence, and the ethnographic victories which can be won with a careful attention to immediately concerted behavior.
Abstract: This review deals with a more principled and powerful formulation of the social organization of behavior. It calls for a description of the ways people organize concerted activities in each other's presence. We review research that adopts methods which assume that a person's behavior is best described in terms of the behavior of those immediately about that person, those with whom the person is doing interactional work in the construction of recognizable social scenes or events. Not all human behavior occurs in settings in which people are immediately available to each other's senses, but a great range of it does, and we are concerned to describe the ethnographic victories which can be won with a careful attention to immediately concerted behavior. Interactional approaches to the social organization of behavior have proceeded under several subdisciplinary banners: cognitive anthropology, conversational analysis, ethology, ethnomethodology, exchange theory, kinesics, network analysis, sociolinguistics, and even symbolic analysis. No
86 citations
TL;DR: Action theory in political anthropology differs from behavioralism in social psychology and from the behavioral approach in political science, although it has sometimes been confused with both. as discussed by the authors The approach to the study of politics to be reviewed in this essay is charac- terized essentially by a focus upon individual actors and their strategies within political arenas.
Abstract: -:.9612 The approach to the study of politics to be reviewed in this essay is charac terized essentially by a focus upon individual actors and their strategies within political arenas. In its earlier formative phase, the approach which, following Cohen (41) we shall call action theory, was associated with a range of theoretical frameworks, among them those built around transac tions, symbolic interaction, systems analysis, methodological individualism, game theory, interaction theory, and political clientelism. Today action theory relates most closely to dialectical theory and the general sociology of Marx and Weber (24, 35, 51, 98, 130). Action theory in political anthropology differs from behavioralism in social psychology and from the behavioral approach in political science, although it has sometimes been confused with both. In these disciplines, analysis begins with the individual and his motives, proceeds to emphasize choice, and concludes by inferring structural limitations from behavior. Action theory in anthropology begins by locating the individual within the framework of both formal and interstitial social organization and then proceeds to the analysis of political action and interaction. Within political anthropology itself, the approach differs from evolutionary and structural anthropology by virtue of its attention to processes, to political formations other than categories and corporate groups and, above all, by its underpin ning in a particular mode of fieldwork (50, 80, 85) that resulted in a distinctive form of finely grained political ethnography (25, 43, 46, 71, 76, 80, 118). Deriving explicitly from social anthropology, the action approach within political anthropology developed largely in conjunction with the analysis of
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01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed a method to solve the problem of "uniformity" of the problem.―――] and proposed a solution: this paper ].
Abstract: ― ―
48 citations
TL;DR: In the city of Jos, Nigeria, everyday life is shaped by interlacing rhythms of disconnection and reconnection as mentioned in this paper, and the character of these connections informs and transforms experiences of the social world.
Abstract: In the Nigerian city of Jos, everyday life is shaped by interlacing rhythms of disconnection and reconnection. Petrol, electricity, water, etc., come and go, and in order to gain access inhabitants constantly try to discern the logics behind these fluctuations. However, the unpredictable infrastructure also becomes a system of signs through which residents try to understand issues beyond those immediately at hand. Signals, pipes, wires and roads link individuals to larger wholes, and the character of these connections informs and transforms experiences of the social world. Not only an object, but also a means of divination, infrastructure is a harbinger of truths about elusive and mutable social entities—neighbourhoods, cities, nations and beyond. Through the materiality of infrastructure, its flows and glitches carefully read by the inhabitants, an increasingly disjointed city emerges. Through new experiences of differentiated modes of connectedness—of no longer sharing the same roads, pipes, electricity...
38 citations
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01 Jan 1970
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"Culture as Behavior: Structure and ..." refers background in this paper
...Culture and Biological Man: Explorations in Behavioral Anthropology....
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...With the recent publication of Chapple's book, Culture and Biological Man (5), it is clear that ever more systematic and quantitative observation of human interpersonal interaction has won through to remarkably rich results....
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