Apr 28, 2021 · Some of the elements that forensic anthropologists look for to help identify the victims in the mass grave is DNA , dental records , and fingerprints . As well as presumptive identification using clothing or identification cars for transparent and …
How did the forensic anthropologists use military records to help identify some victims? They searched through and found documents of the victims. 4. What did forensic anthropologists learn about "Grave 15"? ... Course Hero, Inc.
Jan 22, 2017 · 4. What did forensic anthropologists learn about "Grave 15"? Grave full of 63 bodies both woman and children. Woman and children were taken by the army after the army massacred the rest of the men there. Both clothing from the grave matched the clothing from where those people were taken. One of the people Maria … was found in the grave and they …
Dec 27, 2016 · What did forensic anthropologists learn about "Grave 15"? It contained the remains of women and children that were tied down and executed military trained peacekeepers. 5. Why is the work of forensic anthropologists important? It is important in helping us to identify remains.
Symbolic anthropology studies the way people understand their surroundings, as well as the actions and utterances of the other members of their society. These interpretations form a shared cultural system of meaning–i.e., understandings shared, to varying degrees, among members of the same society (Des Chene 1996:1274). Symbolic anthropology studies symbols and the processes,such as myth and ritual, by which humans assign meanings to these symbols to address fundamental questions about human social life (Spencer 1996:535). According to Clifford Geertz, humans are in need of symbolic “sources of illumination” to orient themselves with respect to the system of meaning that is any particular culture (1973a:45). Victor Turner, on the other hand, states that symbols initiate social action and are “determinable influences inclining persons and groups to action” (1967:36). Geertz’s position illustrates the interpretive approach to symbolic anthropology, while Turner’s illustrates the symbolic approach.
Victor Witter Turner (1920-1983) was the major figure in the other branch of symbolic anthropology. Born in Scotland, Turner was influenced early on by the structional-functionalist approach ...
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) studied at Harvard University in the 1950s. He was strongly influenced by the writings of philosoph ers such as Langer, Ryle, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Ricouer, as well as by Weber, adopting various aspects of their thinking as key elements in the construction of his interpretive anthropology (Handler 1991; Tongs 1993). In The Interpretation of Culture (1973), an enormously influential compilation of his essays, he argued that an analysis of culture should “not [be] an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning” (Geertz 1973d:5). Culture is expressed by the external symbols that a society uses rather than being locked inside people’s heads. He defined culture as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life” (Geertz 1973e:89). Societies use these symbols to express their “worldview, value-orientation, ethos, [and other aspects of their culture]” (Ortner 1983:129). For Geertz symbols are “vehicles of ‘culture'” (Ortner 1983:129), and he asserts that symbols should not be studied in and of themselves, but for what they can reveal about culture. Geertz’s main interest was manner in which symbols shape the ways that social actors see, feel, and think about the world (Ortner 1983:129). Throughout his writings, Geertz characterized culture as a social phenomenon and a shared system of intersubjective symbols and meanings (Parker 1985).
David Schneider (1918-1995) was another important figure in the “Chicago school” of symbolic anthropology. He did not make the complete break from structuralism that had been made by Geertz and Turner, rather he retained and modified Levi-Strauss’ idea of culture as a set of relationships (Ortner 1983; Spencer 1996).
A social drama is “a spontaneous unit of social process and a fact of everyone’s experience in every human society” (Turner 1980:149). Social dramas occur within a group that shares values and interests and has a shared common history (Turner 1980:149). This drama can be broken into four acts.
This drama can be broken into four acts. The first act is a rupture in social relations, or breach. The second act is a crisis that cannot be handled by normal strategies. The third act is a remedy to the initial problem, or redress and the re-establishment of social relations.
Thick Description is a term Geertz borrowed from Gilbert Ryle to describe and define the aim of interpretive anthropology. He argues that social Anthropology is based on ethnography, or the study of culture. Culture consists of the symbols that guide community behavior. Symbols obtain meaning from the role which they play in the patterned behavior of social life. Culture and behavior cannot be studied separately because they are intertwined. By analyzing the whole of culture as well as its constituent parts, one develops a “thick description” which details the mental processes and reasoning of the natives. Thick description, however, is an interpretation of what the natives are thinking made by an outsider who cannot think like a native but is guided by anthropological theory (Geertz 1973d; see also Tongs 1993). To illustrate thick description, Geertz uses Ryle’s example which discusses the difference between a “blink” and a “wink.” One, a blink, is an involuntary twitch –requiring only a ‘thin’ description of eye movement– and the other, a wink, is a conspiratorial signal to a friend–which must be interpreted through ‘thick’ description. While the physical movements involved in each are identical, each has a distinct meaning “as anyone unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows” (Geertz 1973d:6). A wink is a special form of communication which consists of several characteristics: it is deliberate; to someone in particular; to impart a particular message; according to a socially established code; and without the knowledge of the other members of the group of which the winker and winkee are a part. In addition, the wink can be a parody of someone else’s wink or an attempt to lead others to believe that a conspiracy of sorts is occuring. Each type of wink can be considered to be a separate cultural category (Geertz 1973d:6-7). The combination of the blink and the types of winks discussed above (and those that lie between them) produce “a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures” (Geertz 1973d:7) in which winks and twitches are produced and interpreted. This, Geertz argues, is the object of ethnography: to decipher this hierarchy of cultural categories. Thick description, therefore, is a description of the particular form of communication used, like a parody of someone else’s wink or a conspiratorial wink.