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Anthropology

<OpenstaxParagraph>
	More contemporary frameworks of <OpenstaxTerm>social inequalities</OpenstaxTerm> include an understanding of power. This section dives into the concepts and frameworks used in studying power. To recap, <OpenstaxTerm>power</OpenstaxTerm> is the ability to exert control, authority, or influence over others; <OpenstaxTerm>agency</OpenstaxTerm>, which comes from power, is the capability to act and make decisions. Power can be conceptualized as both subtle and coercive; in some contexts, it’s obvious who has power and how it’s utilized, but in other contexts, there are power imbalances that are allowed in everyday life. The point of this section is to contemplate why people allow certain power imbalances to exist while challenging others. Often, people allow power imbalances that they benefit from and resist imbalances that they do not benefit from. To better understand this, it is useful to discuss various concepts related to power, including <OpenstaxTerm>hegemony</OpenstaxTerm>, <OpenstaxTerm>the state apparatus</OpenstaxTerm>, <OpenstaxTerm>biopolitics</OpenstaxTerm>, and <OpenstaxTerm>necropolitics</OpenstaxTerm>.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxH3>Hegemony</OpenstaxH3>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Antonio <OpenstaxTerm>Gramsci</OpenstaxTerm>, famous for his writings on philosophy, political theory, sociology, linguistics, and history, came up with the concept of hegemony while imprisoned by the Fascist Italian government. A founding member of the Communist Party of Italy, he was arrested by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime for provoking class hatred and civil war and was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment. In <OpenstaxEm><OpenstaxTerm>The Prison Notebooks</OpenstaxTerm></OpenstaxEm>, composed of 33 notebooks written during his imprisonment, Gramsci writes about power using the notion of hegemony. <OpenstaxTerm>Hegemony</OpenstaxTerm> describes how people with power keep their power through the subtle dissemination of certain values and beliefs. Hegemony relies on the maintenance of a “groups’’ authority and various mechanisms through which those in marginalized groups accept the leadership of another group’s authority. These mechanisms include cultural institutions such as education, religion, family, and common practices of everyday life. When a paradigm is so dominant that no one questions it, it becomes hegemonic. For instance, the idea that the United States is a democracy, even though many Americans are disenfranchised from voting and several presidential candidates have won the popular vote but lost the election, could be considered a hegemonic paradigm.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxH3>The State Apparatus</OpenstaxH3>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	French Marxist philosopher Louis Pierre <OpenstaxTerm>Althusser</OpenstaxTerm> is known for his writings about ideologies of exploitation. Asking how those who are exploited continue to remain exploited, Althusser developed the concept of the <OpenstaxTerm>state apparatus</OpenstaxTerm>. The state apparatus consists of two intertwined but distinct sets of institutions, the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus, which function together to maintain state order and control. <OpenstaxTerm>Repressive state apparatuses</OpenstaxTerm> include institutions through which the ruling class enforces its control, such as the government, administrators, the army, the police, the courts, and prisons. These institutions are repressive because they function by violence or force. Althusser argues that the state also consists of <OpenstaxTerm>ideological state apparatuses</OpenstaxTerm>, which include distinct and specialized institutions such as religious institutions, public and private education systems, legal systems, political parties, communication systems (radio, newspapers, television), family, and culture (literature, arts, and sports). Ideological state apparatuses, although they include different institutions that are dominated by ruling class ideologies, are also sites where the ideologies of exploited classes can grow. Therefore, ideological state apparatuses can be places of class struggle and social change.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxH3>Biopolitics</OpenstaxH3>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	French philosopher Michel <OpenstaxTerm>Foucault</OpenstaxTerm> conceptualized power through <OpenstaxTerm>biopolitics</OpenstaxTerm>, which refers to the ways populations are divided and categorized as a means of control, often by the state. This categorization and division—in terms of race, religion, or citizenship status, for instance—seeks to further marginalize certain groups and increase the power of the state. Biopolitics can be understood as the use of power to control a population through surveillance, which Foucault refers to as <OpenstaxEm><OpenstaxTerm>biopower</OpenstaxTerm></OpenstaxEm> in his book <OpenstaxEm>The History of Sexuality</OpenstaxEm> ([1978] 1990). An example of biopower in action is government control of immigrants, especially undocumented migrants. In his ethnography <OpenstaxEm>Pathogenic Policing: Immigration Enforcement and Health in the US South </OpenstaxEm>(2019), medical and legal anthropologist Nolan <OpenstaxTerm>Kline</OpenstaxTerm> describes immigrant policing as a form of biopower that attempts to control and govern immigrants through tactics based on fear, making undocumented immigrants fearful as they go about the normal activities of their daily lives, with many afraid to even seek health services when necessary.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxH3>Necropolitics</OpenstaxH3>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist Joseph-Achille <OpenstaxTerm>Mbembe</OpenstaxTerm>, known as Achille Mbembe, writes about power through the idea of necropolitics (the power of death). <OpenstaxTerm>Necropolitics</OpenstaxTerm>, an extension of Foucault’s biopolitics, explores the government’s power to decide how certain categories of people live and whose deaths are more acceptable. Mbembe describes this as a power to decide “who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not” (2003, 27). The power to determine a life’s worth resides within both political systems and the decisions that policy makers are tasked with. It has, quite literally, life-or-death consequences, from who has access to life-saving medical technology to who is most policed and most likely to end up in jail.
</OpenstaxParagraph>
<OpenstaxParagraph>
	The <OpenstaxTerm>Black Lives Matter</OpenstaxTerm> social justice movement is a response to an understanding that modern necropolitics in the United States treats Black people as disposable. The Black Lives Matter movement has grown beyond the United States in response to other nations’ state policies that are seen as treating people of color as not worthy of protection or care.
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9.1.4 Power

1 What Is Anthropology?

1.1 The Study of Humanity, or "Anthropology Is Vast"

1.1.1 The Heart of Anthropology: Central Narrative and Commitments

1.1.2 Central Commitment #1: Exploring Sociocultural Diversity

1.1.3 Central Commitment #2: Understanding How Societies Hold Together

1.1.4 Central Commitment #3: Examining the Interdependence of Humans and Nature

1.2 The Four-Field Approach: Four Approaches within the Guiding Narrative

1.2.1 Biological Anthropology

1.2.2 Archaeology

1.2.3 Cultural Anthropology

1.2.4 Linguistic Anthropology

1.2.5 How the Four Fields Work Together: The Example of Race

1.3 Overcoming Ethnocentrism

1.3.1 Enculturation and Ethnocentrism

1.3.2 Primitivism and Orientalism

1.4 Western Bias in Our Assumptions about Humanity

1.4.1 Primitivism and Orientalism in Popular Culture

1.4.2 The Bias of Backwardness

1.5 Holism, Anthropology’s Distinctive Approach

1.5.1 Society as an Integrated Whole

1.5.2 Sources of Contradiction, Conflict, and Change

1.6 Cross-Cultural Comparison and Cultural Relativism

1.6.1 Relativism Is Not “Anything Goes”

1.6.2 Morality, Activism, and Cultural Relativism

1.7 Reaching for an Insider’s Point of View

1.7.1 The Challenge of Representing Others

1.7.2 Collaborative Methods of Representation

1.7.3 Working across Cultures toward Common Goals

1.7.4 Suggested Readings

2 Methods: Cultural and Archaeological

2.1 Archaeological Research Methods

2.1.1 Archaeological Techniques

2.1.2 Archaeological Dating Methods

2.2 Conservation and Naturalism

2.2.1 Early Efforts

2.2.2 Salvage Anthropology

2.2.3 Museum Collections

2.2.4 Interpretation and Voice

2.3 Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.1 The Development of Ethnography and Ethnology

2.3.2 Perspective and Interpretation in Ethnography

2.4 Participant Observation and Interviewing

2.4.1 Participant Observation

2.4.2 Interviewing Informants

2.4.3 Ethical Considerations

2.5 Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

2.5.1 Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Information

2.5.2 Modeling

2.5.3 The Science of Anthropology

2.6 Collections

2.6.1 Archives

2.6.2 Three-Dimensional Collections

2.6.3 Ownership

2.6.4 Suggested Readings

3 Culture Concept Theory: Theories of Cultural Change

3.1 The Homeyness of Culture

3.2 The Winkiness of Culture

3.3 The Elements of Culture

3.3.1 Culture Is What We Make

3.3.2 Culture Is What We Do

3.3.3 Culture Is What We Think

3.4 The Aggregates of Culture

3.4.1 Symbols

3.4.2 Ritual

3.4.3 Social Structure

3.5 Modes of Cultural Analysis

3.5.1 Evolution, Adaptation, and Historical Particularism

3.5.2 Functionalism

3.5.3 Structuralism

3.5.4 Ontology

3.6 The Paradoxes of Culture

3.6.1 Paradox 1: Culture Is Continuous, but It Changes

3.6.2 Paradox 2: Culture Is Bounded but Mobile

3.6.3 Paradox 3: Culture Is Consensual but Contested

3.6.4 Paradox 4: Culture Is Shared, but It Varies

3.6.5 Suggested Readings

4 Biological Evolution and Early Human Evidence

4.1 What Is Biological Anthropology?

4.1.1 Looking to the Deep Past

4.1.2 Exploring What It Means to Be Human

4.2 What’s in a Name? The Science of Taxonomy

4.2.1 Defining the Science of Taxonomy

4.2.2 Defining a Species

4.3 It’s All in the Genes! The Foundation of Evolution

4.3.1 The Units of Life

4.3.2 Gregor Mendel and the Laws of Heredity

4.3.3 Mendelian Inheritance in Humans

4.4 Evolution in Action: Past and Present

4.4.1 Early Evolutionists and the Fixity of Species

4.4.2 Charles Darwin’s Role in Changing Views of the Natural World

4.4.3 Understanding Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection

4.5 What Is a Primate?

4.5.1 What Is a Primate?

4.5.2 Primate Behavioral Variation

4.5.3 Explaining Primate Success

4.5.4 Primate Classification and Taxonomy

4.6 Origin of and Classification of Primates

4.6.1 Understanding Concepts of Time

4.6.2 Fossils and Dating Methods

Question	Answer
the ways in which populations are divided and categorized as a means of control, often by the state.	biopolitics
the ways in which people with power keep their power through the subtle dissemination of certain values and beliefs.	hegemony
distinct and specialized institutions such as religious institutions, public and private education systems, legal systems, political parties, communication systems (radio, newspapers, television), family, and culture (literature, arts, and sports).	ideological state apparatuses
an extension of Foucault’s biopolitics that explores the government’s power to decide how certain categories of people live and whose deaths are more acceptable.	necropolitics
institutions through which the ruling class enforces its control, including the government, administrators, the army, the police, courts, and prisons.	repressive state apparatuses
a system consisting of two intertwined but distinct sets of institutions, the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus, which function together to maintain state order and control.	state apparatus