Comparative Studies: Anthropology of Everyday Life

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

The course will cover the most important repetitive behaviors of social actors playing their roles in everyday theater. Students will learn about the fundamental Central European and Balkan cultural traditions, connected with everyday life in Central Europe and on the Balkans, and about their historical, geopolitical, national and supranational conditions. During the course students will be participating in a series of online activities that will enable and improve their ability to review and characterize the most important cultural behaviours that build local communities, shape their mentality, identity and affiliation. In this way students will exercise the ability of having relationships that acknowledge, respect and begin to understand each other’s diverse lives. Recognizing their own everyday rituals and habits students will learn how to understand a culture (on the examples of the Central European, Slavic and the Balkan cultures) on its own terms and not to make judgments using the standards of one’s own culture. Passing through sometimes surprising and shocking social behaviours they will learn that there is no right or wrong ethical system and that any opinion on ethics is subject to the perspective of each person within their particular culture. In this way the most common superstitions connected to the Slavs and the Balkans will be recognized, described and analysed. This component of cross-cultural relationship is crucial for the intercultural dialogue, and encourages mutual respect for other ways of life, beliefs, superstitions etc. The course deals with the concepts of cultural relativism (from Franz Uri Boas to Clifford Geertz) on the Central European, Slavic and Balkan real life examples. The idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, and not be judged against the criteria of another will be shown through the most important repetitive behaviours of Central European and Balkan social actors playing their roles in everyday theatre. The specificity of the culture of living, eating, working, resting and showing emotions will be discussed on selected examples. All practical themes are presented through case studies of everyday practices, actions and relations.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Syllabus

RITUALS AND HABITS: Meeting our basic needs: daily habits and Maslow's hierarchy of needs; The scientific approach to the ritual (anthropological and psychological point of view); Types of rituals (contingent rituals, divinatory rituals, rites of passage, calendrical rituals, commemorative rituals, rites of feasting, political rituals, seasonal rituals, life cycle rituals etc.); The theory of habits; The main differences between habits and rituals; The importance of the ritual subject's point of view.

BEHAVIOUR: BETWEEN ANTHROPOLOGY, BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY, PART 1: Evolutionary psychology; The brain as an information processing device, producing outputs (behaviour) from inputs stimuli); Two levels on which behaviours are transmitted; "How"? versus "Why"? Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz; Prisoner's dilemma; Altruism. Edward Osborne Wilson, Richard Dawkins; Social exchange theory; The brain's adaptive mechanisms as shaped by natural and sexual selection; Different neural mechanisms as specialized for solving problems in humanity's evolutionary past; Neural mechanisms; Neural mechanisms of aggression across species..

BEHAVIOUR: BETWEEN ANTHROPOLOGY, BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY, PART 2: Attitude, How Your Attitude Shows In Your Behaviour?; Intention, Subjective norm; Actual Behavioural Control; Behavioural beliefs; Normative beliefs; Control beliefs; Harry Harlow, Monkey Love Experiments; What’s the deal with group decision?; Social loafing; Conformity; Asch conformity experiments; Milgram experiment, Obedience, Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment; Groups, Culture, Identity, Social roles.

THEATRICALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE: Erving Goffman’s theory of staged authenticity; Between ritual and theatre; Schechner’s theory of performance; Main similarities and differences between behaviour, habits, customs and rituals.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN FOOD CULTURE. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspectives of food as a part of cultural behaviour; From the beginning of using fire and cooking to the fast food culture.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN LIVING CULTURE. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective of human shelters as the main components of everyday lives.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN WORK/EARNING CULTURE. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective of the process of working and earning (money) – from the Industrial Revolution till nowadays.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN CULTURE OF LEISURE TIME. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective of the anthropology of tourism; Staged authenticity (Dean MacCannell); Tourists and vagabonds (Zygmunt Baumann); Tourist Gaze (John Urry). Central European experience between Cannibal Tours (1988, by Dennis O'Rourke) and Tourists (2017, by Mateusz Ramaszkan & Maria Wójtowicz).

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN CULTURE OF DRESSING. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective of creating identity via the proves of dressing; Different types and different meaning of outfits; Between individualizing and de-individualizing powers of fashion.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN CULTURE OF SHOWING AFFECTION. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective; Concepts of taboo, morality, obscenity, sexual ethics, sexual norms, vulgarity and deviance.

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN ORAL CULTURE. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective: spoken, sung and voiced words of utterance recognised both by the speaker and the audience; repetitive patterns, sports songs, curses, new linguistic phenomena etc;

CENTRAL EUROPEAN AND BALKAN CULTURE OF FESTIVE EVENTS. Contemporary visual examples based on filmed and photographed materials and analysed in the theoretical perspective: patterns of expected behaviour within a group, expected way of doing things; seasonal celebrations, life cycle celebrations, community festival and events.

Reading list

• Bauman, Z. (1996). Tourists and vagabonds: heroes and victims of postmodernity. (Reihe Politikwissenschaft / Institut für Höhere Studien, Abt. Politikwissenschaft, 30). Wien: Institut für Höhere Studien (IHS), Wien;
• L. Beach, D.H. Kincade, S. Schofield-Tomschin, Human Complexity: Development of a Theoretical Framework for the Clothing and Textile Field, „Clothing and Textile Research Journal” 23(1), 2005, s. 28–44.
• Bordieu, Pierre (1996). “Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste“. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press;
• Cohen, Erik (1979). Phenomenology of Tourist Experience, „Sociology” 13:2, pp. 179-201;
• Crane, Diana, Bovone, Laura (2006), Approaches to material culture: The sociology of fashion and clothing, “Poetics” 34, pp. 319–333;
• Douglas, Mary (1972). Deciphering a Meal. “Daedalus” Vol. 101, No. 1, Myth, Symbol and Culture, pp. 61-81;
• Eliade, Mircea (1961). “The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion“. Translated by Willard R. Trask. New York: Harper Torchbooks;
• Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (2001). Small Places, Large Issues. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. London-Sterling-Virginia: Pluto Press;
• Geertz, Clifford (2000a). “Local Knowledge: further essays in interpretative anthropology”. New York: Basic Books;
• Geertz, Clifford (2000b). “The interpretation of cultures: selected essays”. New York: Basic Books;
• Gennep, Arnold (2019). “The Rites of Passage”. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press;
• Goffman, Erving (1956). “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Social Science Research Centre;
• Jezernik, Božidar (2004). “Wild Europe. The Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers“. London: Saqi;
• K. Johnson, J. Yoo, M. Kim, S. Lennon, Dress and Human Behavior, „A Review and Critique, Clothing and Textiles Journal” 26:10, 2008, s. 3–22.
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1966). The Culinary Triangle. Translated by Peter Brooks. “The Partisan Review” 33: 586-596;
• MacCannell, D. (1973), Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Spaces in Tourist Settings. The America Journal of Sociology, 79(3), pp. 589-603;
• Haldrup, J. Larsen, “Tourism, Performance and the Everyday”, London, New York 2010;
• Rocamora, Agnès. (2002), Fields of fashion. Critical Insights into Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture, “Journal of Consumer Culture” 2(3), pp. 341–362;
• Schechner, Richard (2013). “Performance Studies: an Introduction”. London & New York: Routledge;
• Schiermer, Fashion Victims: On the Individualizing and De-individualizing Powers of Fashion, Fashion Theory 14 (1), 2010, s. 83–104.
• Todorova, Maria (2009). “Imagining the Balkans“. Oxford: University Press.
• Turner, Victor (1982). “From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play”. New York: PAJ Publications;
• Urry, J. and Larsen, J. (2011). The Tourist Gaze 3.0. [3rd edition.]. Los Angeles, [Calif.] SAGE. Ch. 1: Theories;
• Zechenter, Elizabeth M. (1997). In the Name of Culture: Cultural Relativism and the Abuse of the Individual, „Journal of Anthropological Research“, Vol. 53, No. 3, Universal Human Rights versus Cultural Relativity, pp. 319-347.