Systems Theory in Anthropology - Closed Systems

Closed Systems

In anthropology, the term 'system' is used widely for describing socio-cultural phenomena of a given society in a holistic way. For instance, kinship system, marriage system, cultural system, religious system, totemic system, etc. This systemic approach to a society shows the anxieties of the earliest anthropologists to capture the reality without reducing the complexity of a given community. In their quest of searching the underline pattern of a reality, they "discovered" the kinship system as a fundamental structure of the natives. However, their systems are closed systems because they reduce the complexity and fluidity by imposing anthropological concepts such as genealogy, kinship, heredity, marriage.

Read more about this topic:  Systems Theory In Anthropology

Famous quotes containing the words closed and/or systems:

    For a long time, I went to bed early. Sometimes, my candle barely put out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have the time to say to myself: “I am falling asleep”.
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray’s Anatomy.
    —J.G. (James Graham)