As a follow up to Dr. Petersons lecture,
Id like to make a few additional points
on the culture concept in anthropology. I
also want to discuss how we do cultural anthropology:
First, how we undertake fieldwork. Second,
how we write descriptive and analytical accounts
of culture called ethnographies. And third,
how we use ethnography to address broader
theoretical questions.
Here, I am in the field in northeastern Gabon,
Africa, undertaking an interview with a Gabonese
elder who had worked on a nearby proposed
iron mine site. This site was originally developed
by an American steel company but never put
into operation. I was interested in the way
locals viewed this site in relation to their
marginalization in the global economy. I also wanted to know how they saw the potential development of
this rain forest region.
Let me make a few additional points about
the culture concept, a central concept in
anthropology and this course. You may be able
to use some of these ideas in your upcoming
ethnographic assignments.
Because the subject matter of cultural anthropology
is so vast, there is no easy way to summarize
what cultural anthropologists do. Here are
a couple of definition.
Many cultural anthropologists approach culture
and human cultural practices from a scientific
perspective. Here is a scientific definition
of cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology
is the description and explanation of the
similarities and differences in thought and
behavior among groups of humans. This definition
emphasizes the scientific approach to cultural
anthropology, meaning that it treats information
as a test of explanations of cultural phenomena
in terms of general principles.
Other anthologists approach culture from a
more humanistic perspective. From a humanistic
perspective, cultural anthropology is the
interpretation and appreciation of other peoples'
ways of life. Humanistic cultural anthropologists
strive to understand, engage with, and sometimes
celebrate defend, or protect another way of
life rather than to explain it scientifically.
Now lets turn to a few additional definitions
of culture. Again, there is considerable
variation in the ways cultural anthropologists
have approached the culture concept, but also
substantial underlying commonalities. Edward
Burnett Tylor, who taught at Oxford University
in England, was a founder of academic anthropology.
He defined culture as that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, law,
morals, custom, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of
society. This definition, although dated,
is still widely cited. A key aspect of this
definition is that culture is a complex
whole, which suggests that we must conceive
of it holistically. At the sometime, we acquire
or learn by being members of a particular
society.
Contemporary anthropologist Eric Lassiter
defines culture as a shared and negotiated
system of meaning. He also sees culture
as the lens through which we all view the
world. For Lassiter, culture is shared
but also generates our differences.
Douglas Rogers, of Yale University, defines
culture as the set of meanings, thoughts,
and behaviors by which human beings relate
to each other and to the world around them.
Rogers makes a number of important points
about how culture both unites and divides
us. All human beings have culture, but particular
cultures are shaped by membership in nations,
genders, ethnic groups, classes and other
social groups to which we belong. The shared
meanings of specific groups lead to important
cultural differences between groups.
According to Rogers, cultural anthropologists
seek to understand the similarities and
differences that unite and divide humans as
makers of culture.
One simplified way that cultural anthropologists
have approached cultures as complex wholes
can be represented in a pie chart model.
Using Western or etic categories, anthropologists
have divided culture into a number of interconnected
fields, including Ecology, Economy, Kinship,
Gender, Politics, Law, Religion, Worldview.
When we seek to describe a particular culture
or society, we sketch out each of these systems,
and then show how they operate and how they
are interconnected.
Most introductory textbooks in anthropology
are organized in this way with individual
chapters on each of these fields. This course
is also partly organized in this way, with
modules on economy, politics and law, kinship,
and religion, for example.
Another way to approach culture is to focus
on different dimensions of human cultural
life. David Haines outlines three key approaches
anthropologists have taken:
First, materialism, which focuses on the adaptation
to the environment, technology, as well as
material production, and how access to resources
generates inequality.
Second, social structure or systems: In the
20th century and even today, many anthropologists
focused on social structure or social organization.
They have sought to understand and explain
how human social groups, from tiny kin-based
groups and villages to empires and global
organizations are organized and how they operate.
Third, many anthropologists also focus on
cultures as systems of meaning. They
tend to focus on the emic perspective and
seek to interpret how human beings, as members
of particular cultural groups, use language,
symbols, and ritual to create meaningful lives.
In this course, we'll look at culture from
all three of these perspectives. In fact,
the core units of the course are organized
around materialism and the global economy,
social organization, and systems of meaning.
Today, many anthropologists take a holistic
approach by approaching culture from all three
vantage points.
Let me give you just one example of how anthropologists
combine materialist, social, and interpretive
or meaning-centered approaches. Anthropologist
Beth Buggenhagen has studied Muslim families
in Dakar Senegal. From a materialist perspective
she is interested in how global migration
(primarily for economic reasons) is impacting
economic life in Dakar. In particular she
looks at how families in the Senegalese capital
have been changed by sending their sons and
increasingly their daughters abroad. With
some of the funds that emigrants send back
home, women invest in expensive cloths that
shape the women's networks they belong to
while also expressing what it means to be
women in contemporary Senegal. Emigrants also
send money to Muslim clerics, who invest these
funds in Koranic schools, mosques, and religious
rituals, thereby reaffirming the meaning of
Islam in global Senegal.
Lets return to the culture concept for
a moment.
Culture is not only about complex wholes.
The very culture concept itself is complex.
First, Culture is shared but also contradictory.
What I mean by this is that in any culture,
people differ and disagree on what the fundamental
values are. In the U.S., for example, we are
deeply divided on such issues as whom we should
be allowed to marry, whether we should be
allowed to end pregnancies, whether we should
be able to buy marijuana at the corner store,
or whether the wealthiest citizens should
pay more taxes.
Second, culture is both bounded and
open. Anthropologists have often portrayed
specific cultures as highly bounded, or closed
systems. The pie chart model represents culture
in this way. And indeed, when you cross the
US-Mexico border from El Paso to Juarez, you
immediately find yourself in a different cultural
world. But at the same time, in the age of
globalization, no culture is an island. Culture:
people, ideas, goods, and practices are constantly
on the move. In this sense, local cultural
identities, from southwestern Ohio to Syria,
are shaped by global processes.
Third, as already suggested, culture both
unites and divides us. By this I mean not
only that different cultural groups are divided,
but that cultures are of course also divided
internally.
Yes, culture is ordinary. In the nineteenth
century British poet and social commentator
Matthew Arnold defined culture as the best
that has been thought and said in other
words, High Culture. Most anthropologists,
however, follow Raymond Williams assertion
that culture is ordinary. In other words,
we look for culture in everyday practices,
such as the fast-food industry, drug culture,
shopping malls, the suburbs, and so on. We
can find culture not just in the opera house
or art museum, but wherever human beings are
up to something.
Lets turn briefly to what cultural anthropologists
do. We'll go more into depth on fieldwork
and ethnography in module three, but I want
introduce this here, especially given that
your first out-of-class writing assignment
is designed to get you doing some cultural
anthropology on your own. So first, we undertake
fieldwork.
Second, we write ethnographies, or descriptive
and analytical accounts of cultural practices.
Third, we engage in anthropological theorizing
to address more general concerns about human
social and cultural life.
This diagram shows that fieldwork, ethnography,
and theory are related to one another. When
anthropologists enter the field, they do so
having studied enough anthropological theory
to help them frame questions about cultural
life. While in the field, they gather information
they will use to write ethnographic texts
about the people they have been studying.
They use their ethnography to address more
general theoretical questions and seek to
produce new theoretical or conceptual insights.
According to anthropologist Peter Metcalf,
fieldwork entails three basic aspects. Long-term
residence. Language competence. Participant-Observation.
Fieldwork can also be unstructured. By unstructured,
we mean that often anthropologists engage
in deep hanging out, as one colleague
puts it. In other words, as we go through
the rounds of daily life with the people we're
studying, we wait to see what unfolds rather
than trying to shape events.
Often, we refer to fieldwork as ethnographic
fieldwork, which means fieldwork with the
purpose of writing ethnography. Initial fieldwork
is usually for an extended period, often 6
months to two years. Because most fieldwork
is intensely local is tends to emphasize local
behavior, beliefs, customs, social life, economic
activities, politics, and religion, rather
than developments at the national and global
level, which are harder to see on the ground.
At the same time, since cultures are not isolated,
ethnographers must investigate the local,
regional, national, and global systems of
politics, economics, and information that
expose villagers (and others) to external
influences.
One way to think of the ethnographic accounts
is as writing culture.
As already noted, ethnography sometimes refers
to the process of doing ethnographic fieldwork.
But here, an ethnography is a written account
of a culture or set of cultural practices.
Here are just a few examples of ethnographies.
Food gathering strategies among Hunter-Gatherers
in Tanzania. Religious Practices, Illness
and Healing in contemporary Gabon. Work and
family among Sudanese women in the town of
Sennar. Immigrants from Michoac in Mexico
and the American Midwest.
Dr. Cameron Hay-Rollins is a medical anthropologist
who teaches at Miami University. Currently
she is undertaking research on doctors, patients,
pain and suffering in the United States. But
she originally undertook field research on
the Indonesian island of Lombok. Her research
resulted in an ethnography on illness and
anxiety among impoverished rural Indonesians.
Leighton Peterson teaches linguistic anthropology
and ethnographic film, also at Miami University.
Dr. Peterson has undertaken extensive fieldwork
among the Navaho in Arizona. In addition to
speaking fluent Navaho, he has also produced
a number of ethnographic films.
Philippe Bourgois currently teaches at anthropology
the University of Pennsylvania. His initial
research was on economic inequality and exploitation
in Central America, but he has also undertaken
extensive research in the United States on
drug culture, including crack dealers in Spanish
Harlem and Homeless drug addicts in San Francisco.
We'll be reading a short article on his
New York based research.
Dr. Homayan Sidky of Miami University has
written numerous ethnographic works, particularly
on Central and south Asia. Here we see ethnographies
on healing and Shamanism. He has also written
a textbook on Theory in Cultural Anthropology,
Perspectives on Culture. Dr. Sidky thus illustrates
the important connection between theory and
ethnography within anthropology
What do we mean by theory in anthropology.
People use ethnography to develop more general
conclusions (theories). We also seek to engage
the arguments made by other anthropologists
based on their field research. Theories in
turn motivate new fieldwork. Particular ethnographies
tend to ask particular sorts of questions
For example, some anthropologists may ask
about the impact of colonialism, globalization,
or external domination in particular societies.
Let me give just one example:
French sociologist Emile Durkheim argued that
ceremonies or rituals create society (or social
groups, because when people perform rituals,
people symbolically worship society.) An obvious
example might be singing the national anthem
before a baseball game. This reminds that
all the fans and players are united in a single
national community.
We won't spend a lot of time studying theory
in this introductory course, but theoretical
perspectives will come up in the reading assignments,
lectures, and writing assignments.
In closing, let me talk about your upcoming
ethnographic assignment that you must complete
by the end of unit one.
Already, you can apply the three-part fieldwork-ethnography-theory
model we have just discussed to think about
this assignment.
First, you need to choose an appropriate field
site (and then get there). You should already
be thinking about that.
Second, you need to observe and then adequately
describe the setting, the people, and relevant
cultural interactions.
Third, you don't yet have a lot of anthropological
theory under your belts, but you can already
discuss the culture concept and try to explain
what is going on culturally.
Here's another way to think about this three-step
process.
First, during your fieldwork, you can observe
by watching and listening to what's going
on around you. In some cases, you may also
participate actively in the scene.
Second, based on the notes you take either
during or immediately after your fieldwork,
you should write a descriptive ethnographic
account of what you have observed. During
this phase of the writing, I'm asking you
to suspend judgment, in other words to adopt
a relativistic perspective.
Third, when it comes to theory, I am asking
for some incisive cultural analysis. What
is going on culturally? How can you analyze,
interpret, and reflect on your fieldwork?
That's it for now.
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