Chapter 14

1. Chapter 14 The Arts

2. Chapter Outline • What is art? • Why do anthropologists study art? • What are the functions of the arts?

3. What Is Art? • The creative use of the human imagination to interpret, express, and enjoy life. • From the uniquely human ability to use symbols to give shape and significance to the physical world for more than just a utilitarian purpose.

4. Verbal Arts • Oral traditions denote a culture’s unwritten stories, beliefs, and customs. • Include narrative, drama, poetry, incantations, proverbs, riddles, and word games.

5. 3 Categories of Narratives • Myths - sacred narratives that explain how the world came to be as it is. • Legends - stories told as if true that recount the exploits of heroes. • Tales are fictional, secular, and nonhistorical narratives that instruct as they entertain.

6. Music • Study of music in specific cultural settings has developed into the specialized field of ethnomusicology. • Almost everywhere human music is perceived in terms of a scale. • Traditional European music is measured into recurrent patterns of two, three, and four beats.

7. Social Functions of Music • Express a group’s concerns. • Serves as a powerful way for a social or ethnic group to assert a distinctive identity. • It may be used to advance political, economic, and social agendas.

8. Pictorial Art Three ways to approach the study of art: • Aesthetic approach focuses on how things are depicted. • Narrative approach focuses on what things are depicted. • Interpretive approach can reveal the meaning of another people’s art.