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San1 Symbolism - Coggle Diagram
San1 Symbolism
Questions
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How have anthropologists used concepts drawn from the analysis of language to understand the role of symbolism in social life?
What are the advantages and disadvantages for anthropological analysis of making a distinction between symbolism and reality.
what use have anthropologists made of the idea that everyday things such as food, bodies or houses are 'symbolic'
'Structuralist analysis in the Levi-Straussian mode tends to play down the plurality of cultures. It is concerned with culture as such, a universal attribute of humanity' (leach). Discuss with reference to anthropological writings on symbolism.
Does the anthropological study of everyday symbolism show that human societies are radically different from each other or that there are strong commonalities among them?
How have anthropologists used the notion of 'symbolism' to explore the similarities and the differences between societies?
'the idea that a symbol is something that represents something else is limited and misleading'. Discuss.
How have anthropologists used one or more ideas from the study of language in the cultural analysis of symbolism
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Key Thinkers
Saussure
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'we should distinguish between: (1) the combinations by which the speaker uses the language code for expressing his own thoughts; and (2) the psychophysical mechanism that allows him to exteriorize those combinations'
'the individual does not have the power to change a sign in any way once it has become established in the linguistic community'
'the first thing that strikes us when we study the facts of language is that their succession in time does not exist insofar as the speaker is concerned. He is confronted with a state'
Durkheim
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'the totem is above all a symbol, a material expression of something else'
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C.S. Peirce
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Keane: Peircean model 'processual: signs give rise to new signs... entails sociability, struggle, historicity, and contingency'
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Levi-Strauss
'to whatever society he belongs, the individual is rarely capable of assigning a cause to this conformity: all he can say is that things have always been like this, and he does what people before him did'
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