Two Approaches, Hermeneutic and Cognitive in Modern Anthropology

Nikolas is fond of problems of the postmodern anthropology and its approaches

Among the characteristic features of the postmodern were distinguished most often such as increased interest in changeable, borderline, ambiguous, or

or loosely structured cultural phenomena. A fundamentally different

Here also fundamental ethnological categories are understood in a fundamentally different way:

- language - due to the impossibility of establishing clear meanings of its

notions;

- Consciousness - it has nothing to rely on in terms of existence and

reality;

- Man and the world around him - they are deprived of their usual boundaries and centers.

Thus, one of the main ideas of postmodernism

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is the democratization of culture, the rejection of the higher ideals that were

Hermeneutic Anthropology: Founders

Quiz

For each question, choose the best answer. The answer key is below.

1. What is the idea of W. Dilthey about hermeneutic method?
   • As the tool for understanding in sciences about spirit
   • As the tool for understanding in natural sciences
2. How does the hermeneutic method consider after W, Dilthey ?
   • As additional science
   • As philosophical method
3. What does philosophy of life mean in beliefs of W. Dilthey?
   • Abstract science
   • Unity of natural data
   • The sole subject of philosophy must be life in all dimensions

Answer Key

1. As the tool for understanding in sciences about spirit
2. As philosophical method
3. The sole subject of philosophy must be life in all dimensions

Three Ways of Symbolic Referencing:

V. Turner suggests looking at the structure of ritual from four points of view: 1) symbolic; 2) value; 3) thelic, and 4) role. In the first case, ritual appears as a collection of symbols, and a symbol as "the smallest unit of ritual that preserves specific features of ritual behavior. In the second, it is the transmission of information about the most important values and their hierarchy. The third point of view is the view of ritual as a system of goals and means, which may not have religious significance. Finally, a fourth perspective views ritual as a product of the interaction of different social statuses and positions. Each of these points of view is capable of capturing only one aspect of the structure of ritual, which can only be fully described when all four points of view are combined. V. Turner also speaks of three ways of symbolic referencing: 1) explicit meaning, which refers to the explicit purposes of ritual and is fully realized by the performers; 2) latent meaning, which is on the edge of the subject's consciousness but can be fully realized; 3) hidden meaning, fully unconscious and relating to the basic (infantile) experience common to all human beings. The dialectics of the social process, to which V. Turner points out, are not simple, and it would be naive to believe that the "keys" to understanding the culture of archaic societies, are able to fit the locks of any societies of any time.

W. Dilhey

The Cognitive Anthropology: Founders and Followers

H. Conclin

The Cognitive Anthropology

The attention of cognitive anthropology as a whole focused on cognitive theory and ethnolinguistics. The theory itself was based on a specific notion of culture. From the point of view of this notion, culture appears as a system of symbols organized as a set of rules that determine human activity, and culture represents a way of making sense of the surrounding reality. Within the framework of such understanding of culture "signals" coming from the surrounding world remain insignificant for a human being until they are subjected in the human brain to the process of comprehension or cognition (cognition - hence the name of the direction). Individual phenomena are grouped into classes or cognitive categories. The categories themselves are formed in humans in the process of language acquisition and enculturation. According to the proponents of the direction, language contains all the cognitive categories that underlie human thinking. From these theoretical positions came the understanding of the purpose and object of research - the language of the group under study was seen not only as a means, but also as an object of analysis, from which cultural and ethnological information is extracted. The directions of ethnology and anthropology retain their leading importance at the present stage of the development of sciences about peoples and cultures.