Anthropology Final

CONCEPT: Geertz's definition of religion and ritual

"1. a system of symbols which acts to 2. establish powerful, persuasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by 3. formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and 4. clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that 5. the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic" (90). -"The strange opacity of certain empirical events, the dumb senselessness of intense or inexorable pain, and the enigmatic unaccountability of gross inequity all raise the uncomfortable suspicion that perhaps the world, and hence man's life in the world, has no genuine order at all . . ." (108−109). -"The religious response to this suspicion is in each case the same" the formulation, by means of symbols, of an image of such a genuine order of the world which will account for, and even celebrate, the perceived ambiguities, puzzles, and paradoxes in human experience" (109). -Ritual="consecrated behavior" -"[It is] out of the context of concrete acts of religious observance that religious conviction emerges on the human plane" (112-113). - a way to tap into and experience religious models of the world -Unlike Durkheim, Geertz did not argue that religious belief or ritual served any functional purpose in culture or society. -Geertz: "The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said." -We rely on extrinsic sources of information - language/religion (culture)

CONCEPT: Caste

"A ranked group, sometimes linked to a particular occupation, with membership determined at birth and with marriage restricted to others within that group" - Originally a Portuguese word - Influenced by British colonial occupation and racism The four major castes or varnas are: -Brahmans: scholars, priests- -Kshatriyas: warrior class- -Vaishyas: merchants, business people -Shudras: laborers - "Untouchables," "Outcasts," "Dalits" -Comprise approximately 15% of the population• Technically fall outside of or below the caste system -Perform undesirable, "dirty" work -Now associations between caste and skin color -Efforts to improve the status of "untouchables": - Gandhi called dalits harijan or "children of God" - The Indian constitution in 1949 outlawed the unequal treatment of people based on caste - "Scheduled castes": a quota system similar to affirmative action that reserves places for lower castes/untouchables at universities and in government jobs Dr. Ambedkar (1891-1956) -Born an untouchable -Educated at Columbia -Helped write the Indian constitution -Converted to Buddhism -built into geography/city

Gender roles

"Accepted models of behavior, thoughts, and emotions associated with masculinity and femininity that are culturally defined and learned over the course of one's upbringing and socialization" - Before late 1960s, gender roles were referred to in social science as "sex roles" or just "sex"

Intimate apartheid

"The involuntary and predictable manner in which sharply delineated segregation and conflict impose themselves at the level of the everyday practices" (42). -racial segregation at an institutional level -Drug addiction and homelessness do not become common denominator/uniter - still racism, sexism, classism -White middle-aged people who did heroin were lowest of totem pole, white ethnographers still on bottom - reacted by being racist/white supremacist, trying to resist relative lack of power -Younger black men with renegade outlaw status were higher status (borrowing from hip hop culture) - more respected -separate encampments - I-beam camp started as all white w/ one Latinex person, and then moved to an even mixture from first Black friend, white people accused them of stealing and taking over, white people then moved out and establish new white camp - even in homeless drug addicted community, have "white flight"

Emily Martin, the egg and the sperm

"The more common picture--egg as damsel in distress, shielded only by her sacred garments; sperm as heroic warrior to the rescue--cannot be proved to be dictated by the biology of these events. While the 'facts' of biology may not always be constructed in cultural terms, I would argue that in this care they are" (491). -Written about Western/America society - easy to dismiss other cultures' beliefs as medically untrue (eg blood mixing with sperm to make baby in Sambia); this shows "depictions of the egg and the sperm in American biology and medical textbooks 'a scientific fairytale'" - reifies gender roles and stratification -Sperm traveling journey and breaking barriers - heroic warriors, streamlined, active, brave, strong, powerful, soldiers, assault etc., vs. Eggs are passive, large, docile, religious language (vestments/attendant cells), dependent/reliant on sperm for fertilization and survival -Menstruation described as failure, loss, waste, decay vs. sperm as heroic --> inaccurate -Facts of biology aren't always culturally constructed but scientists can't think about scientific facts without applying our cultural lenses - not necessarily even possible that there's a neutral way to see it

Hijra (India)

"Third gender" - dress and act like women and take on female pronouns, use female names - some may be born intersex, others get transformation surgery -Ritual performers in a group -Highly stigmatized - many make a living as commercial sex workers

CONCEPT: Culture-bound syndrome

"a health problem with a specific set of symptoms that is restricted to a particular culture or group"

CONCEPT: Nocebo effect

"a negative healing effect or result based on belief or symbolism"

Status

"a person's position in society"

CONCEPT: Placebo effect

"a positive healing effect or result based on belief or symbolism"

CONCEPT: Theodicy

"a theory that attempts to justify and explain human suffering and loss and to offer a path towards salvation or an end to suffering" -Justifying suffering and inequality

CONCEPT: Ascribed status

"social status based on qualities of a person gained through birth" -More or less fixed -EG. young white boys who grow up rich have 40% chance of staying rich as an adult and 10% chance of poverty/lower-middle class, vs. young black boys who grow up rich have only a 17% chance of staying rich and a 20% chance of poverty/lower middle-class -EG. for poor children, the pattern is reversed - most poor black boys remain poor (48% chance of remaining poor, 2% chance of becoming rich), vs. poor white boys (31% remain poor, 10% become rich)

CONCEPT: Achieved status

"social status based on qualities of a person gained through individual action"

Animism

"the belief in souls;" most "primitive" form of religion

CONCEPT: Somatization

"the process through which the body absorbs social stress and manifests symptoms of suffering" -susto: predominantly Spanish-speaking and other indigenous cultures in America; acute embarrassment or fright - soul is frightened out of body - symptoms including restlessness, depression, anxiety, etc. - severe illness, various treatments exist - going back to sight of accident/fright and ritualistically mending soul back with body -anorexia nervosa: body image eating disorder, only recently in West, asserting control/agency over one's body

CONCEPT: Sigmund Freud on religion

(1856-1939) -Religion as a "childlike dependency" -God is essentially a father figure, and religion is created as a comforting, guiding force that gives adults a sense of security -Example: Christianity

Localization

- "The process where by local cultural actors appropriate, adapt, rework, or reinterpret a global cultural form" - Localization is often seen by anthropologists as a way of resisting globalization by local cultural actors! - Example: Yunxiang Yan, "McDonalds in Beijing" (1997) -Local perceptions of McDonalds in 1990s China: - American/Western - Modern, progressive, cosmopolitan - Wealth, social status, consumerism - Efficient, professional service and management - Equality and democracy - Cleanliness and food hygiene - Domestic tourist destination - A place to "hang out" for long periods of time - A place "to see and be seen" - Romantic - "What appears to be the same institution represents radically different things in the two societies. These differences are so profound that the presumed 'American' style of the Beijing restaurants has itself been transformed... It represents a localized, Chinese version of America" (1997:54).

DEFINITION: Globalization redefined: (Inda and Rosaldo)

- A speeding up of the flows of capital, people, goods, images, and ideas across the world; - An intensification of the links, modes of interaction, and flows that interconnect the world; - A stretching of social, cultural, political, and economic practices; and - A heightened entanglement of the global and the local

CONCEPT: Rites of Passage: 3. Integration

- Also called aggregation or re-incorporation - The initiate completes the rite of passage and joins society once more in their new stage of life

Hybridization

- Also called syncretism or creolization - Refers to the situation in which two or more cultural practices or beliefs are combined to create something new - Example: rap and hip hop in East Asia

"McDonaldization" model

- Also known as "Coca-Colonization" - Argues that, under the influence of powerful multinational corporations, the world is becoming increasingly culturally homogenous - Example: global "fast-food culture" -Has been criticized as too simplistic

Anthropology of women

- Emerged in the 1970s -Mainly female graduate students, influenced by feminist discussions - arguing that anthropology has been too dominated by males and books written largely about men - Focused on studying the lives and concerns of women cross-culturally - Activist or engaged anthropology: sought to improve conditions for women around the world and at home (including anthropology) -Major question posed by anthropology of women and feminist anthropology in the 1970s: Is male dominance universal across societies and cultures as well as across time? - Findings: male dominance (in some form) seems to be a cross-cultural universal.

Anthropology of gender

- Emerged in the 1980s-1990s - Coincided with sex/gender distinction - gender norms aren't "fixed" "even if biologically sex is fixed" - Enlarged focus of study beyond women to gender more broadly, including men and masculinities - Eventually lead to anthropology of gender and sexuality and queer anthropology (2000s -today)

"Clash of civilizations" model

- From a 1996 book by Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard professor of political science - Huntington divides the world into "the West and the rest," and argues that people's cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War era -Controversial

"Gray zones"

- Inspired by the work of Primo Levi - "Morally ambiguous spaces that blur the lines between victims and perpetrators" (20) - "The micro-level mechanisms through which externally imposed forces operate on vulnerable individuals and communities" (20). -Victims exploiting other victims in order to survive

Political anthropology vs. political science

- Political anthropology takes a broader and more comprehensive view of politics: -Examines political beliefs, behaviors, and structures beyond formal party politics, voting, and state governments, vs. Studies power and politics in a variety of social and cultural settings, not only in developed nation-states

History of the study of gender and sexuality in anthropology

- Pre-1980s: • Sexuality (especially "homosexuality") usually ignored • Non-normative sexual practices or genders often treated as strange and exotic cultural oddities • Anthropology mainly "men talking to men about men;" gender studies largely seen as "women's studies" - Post-1980s: • Move toward studying femininities and masculinities • Increasing attention to gender and sexuality, especially non-heteronormative sexualities and gender identities • Increasing recognition of the value and importance of studying same-sex and gender-variant sexualities • Emergence of "gay and lesbian anthropology" (SOLGA) and "queer anthropology" (AQA)

CONCEPT: The body and personhood - dividual vs. individual

- The human body is not a universally defined, understood, and experienced entity or object, but is instead interpreted and inhabited in different ways in different historical and cultural contexts. -"A focus on the body, or bodies, can be provocative and enlightening, then, if we explore the specific and multiple ways the body (and male and female bodies) is furnished meaning and significance within particular cultural-historical contexts" (2000:17). -Geertz: Individual: "The Western conception of the person [is] as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and natural background." -vs. Dividual = "As opposed to 'individual,' someone whose identity or selfhood is tied to his or her relationships with other people" - Coined by McKim Marriott, who described the Indian cultural world as one of particulate 'flowing substances'" and argued that "Indians view persons in such a world as 'composite' and hence 'dividual' or divisible in nature" (31)

CONCEPT: "Mutual touching" (choy-achuyi):

- West Bengalis believe that "touching involves a mutual transfer of substantial qualities from one person or thing to the next" (31). - Touching transmits invisible and intangible (but very real) "substances" or "essences" from one person's body to another -Some forms of touching (cooking, eating, or cleaning up after food; living in the same house; sexual intercourse; giving birth) createsamparka or "relations" between people. -Thus touching can be seen as a negative thing (polluting) but also as a positive thing: people can touch, share food, etc. as a way of building up samparka and maya, a way of indexing closeness and intimacy. -women's bodies are more porous and able to get contaminated vs. men's bodies are less porous and harder to get contaminated - eg. virginity in America, chastity, etc.

CONCEPT: Class

-"An economically, socially, and politically similar group of people, e.g., middle class" - Class has both ascribed and achieved qualities! - in America thought of as achieved; "The American Dream"

DEFINITION: Victor Turner

-"Betwixt and Between" (1967) -British social and symbolic anthropologist Conducted fieldwork among the Ndembu in northwestern Zambia -Wrote extensively on ritual, especially rites of passage and liminality -Middle stage of transition -Influenced by British and French structural functionism like Douglas and by webs of social structure like Geertz - Rites of passage "indicate and constitute transitions between states" (93) - State = "a relatively fixed or stable condition" (93); "any type of stable or recurrent condition that is culturally recognized" (94). - For Turner, rites of passage are a process of transition or transformation, like "water in process of being heated to boiling point, or a pupa changing from grub to moth" (94). -Rites of passage (and ritual in general) recreate, reinforce, and reproduce social structures and definitions (what Turner calls "states"). -Rites of passage carefully control and direct processes of social change and people going through ambiguous periods! -Rites of passage also create and reinforce relationships of power and equality between groups of people.

CONCEPT: Sarah Lamb, White Saris and Sweet Mangoes

-"From the very beginning of my stay in Mangaldihi up until the end, I heard a continual refrain—even after just one shared cup of tea, or a brief conversation on the roadside—'Oh, it is so sad that you have come, for you will have to leave again. How will we cut this maya when you leave?'" (29). -Maya: sometimes described as a "net" or a "web," it refers to "attachments, affections, jealousies, and love that in Bengali's eyes make up social relations" (28); "sometimes described as a "net" or a "web," it refers to "attachments, affections, jealousies, and love that in Bengali's eyes make up social relations" (28). - In addition to meaning "attachments, affections, jealousies, and love that in Bengali's eyes make up social relations," maya also means "illusion" - Although maya can be pleasureful, it can also cause pain, especially when people start "cutting ties" of maya at the end of the life course in preparation for death -"disassembling personhoods" (124) -West Bengali model of the life course: Student (brahmacarya) Householder (grhastha) Forest dweller or hermit (vanaprastha) Wandering renouncer (sannyasi) -Samsar ="family" or "family cycle" ("that which flows together") - Includes: people, animals, objects, places, maya -Don't keep track of chronological ages, think of lives as marked by milestone - parent, marriage, children, grandchildren - older people prepare to move into last stages of life course and change lives - move out/away from family, eat before others by themselves, less power/authority, seen as godlike status, powers to bless/curse, getting pampered, relinquishing control/authority/power - reversion back to childhood -Intergenerational reciprocity -Gendered - taking care of parents-in-law is daughter's responsibility, so kids that she has will not be carrying on her family line but her husband's - ritual of dirt-mouse ritual: wiping hair (porous), gives mom who she won't see very often dirt from mouse hole - it shows how debt can never be repaid -"The problem of Maya:" Maya is both good and bad, a source of both pleasure and pain; - more Maya = more pain and suffering; The amount of maya a person has increases as they grow older, which is precisely when it is the most dangerous Lamb: most of these daily bodily practices and disciplines had to do with "containing, controlling, and channeling women's sexuality toward a husband, marriage, and fertile reproduction within a patrilineage" (183). • Explained/justified in terms of bodily differences between men and women - Women's bodies more "open," "impure," "hot," and "sexual" -Women's bodies = seen as more dividualistic, porous, open to pollution, more polluting, drying up after menopause, - related to sexuality: heat - more hot than men's bodies, have more sexual heat and energy, become impure when they get their periods, sexually promiscuous - symbolic of social disorder (things coming in and out of bodies), labor makes them dirtier - ones responsible for care of children, cooking, cleaning, care of household gods, etc. -When get older and "dried up," bodies seen as less sexual and more as men's bodies -Widows in Bengal: has to shave her head every week, celibacy, wearing white, remove jewelry/makeup/etc, avoiding red and gold, permanent fasting state - only parched rice (dry/crunchy), no meat, no hot/sweet foods, no body adornments (bindi), social isolation, have to sleep on the ground, never remarry - dreaded, feared, undesirable stage of life (women tend to live longer than their husbands) - last phase of life - not the same for men, who were encouraged to remarry - bc women only exist in relation to men - woman's life ends when men's life does, woman doesn't have a role anymore - reinforcing notions of dividualistic personhood - all practices of cooling and hardening body - all seen as more appropriate for older people - attempt to control and regulate female sexuality - don't want free woman, as can be stigmatizing to family and also polluting; when a woman's husband passes away, a part of her dies - half living half dead - highly polluting and polluted; a lot are quite poor, some turn to prostitution and sex work which contributes to higher stigmatization

CONCEPT: Righteous Dopefiend

-"It was almost too hard to believe what we were seeing—a community of homeless drug users exists just yards away from major thoroughfares, but it remains invisible to people who pass by everyday. You only have to step down an alley, go behind a bush and—boom!—a universe of poverty and addiction opens up right in front of you." -Goal: "To clarify the relationships between large-scale power forces and intimate ways of belonging in order to explain why the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world, has emerged as a pressure cooker for producing destitute addicts embroiled in everyday violence" (5). -"Moral economy of sharing:" Homeless heroin addicts "balance on a tightrope of mutual solidarity and betrayal" (5); "The constant exchange of favors, money, drugs, and alcohol between addicts also creates "a web of mutual obligations and also establishes the boundaries of their community" (6). -Methodology: -"Collaborative ethnography" - "Photo-ethnography" - Photography's strength comes from the visceral, emotional responses it invokes" (14); Nickie: "If you can't see the face, you can't see the misery" (11). -they didn't spend years out on the street with informants - recognized as not belonging to homeless community -Cultural Relativism: "Learning about life on the street in the United States requires the reader to keep an open mind and, at least provisionally, to suspend judgment" (7). -Structure, agency, practice theory: "The conventional theoretical distinction between structure and agency is too binary a conception to explain why people do what they do" (15). -Gray zones -Intimate apartheid -Lumpen abuse -Tina: Everyone is constrained and limited by social structures - employs various coping mechanisms and strategies - violence and rage; unpredictable and explosive - Tina's relationships with men "illustrate" the complex continuum between altruism and instrumentality that haunts all male-female sexual relations and intimate feelings but becomes more visible under conditions of urban poverty and masculine domination" (52). -Making money: selling recycling, panhandling, odd jobs like at a Christmas tree place - manual labor, sex work; relationship with local business owners - flexible work, depict it as intermittent work, mutual aid, but it is actually exploitative - paying them just enough to get their fix of coke or heroin and then come back the next day -De facto apartheid: racial and ethnic divisions affecting employment - local employers much more likely to hire white dopefiends, who presented selves as needy and thankful, only hiring POC during "high rush" season - like Christmas tree season, but still put at the back of the lot, not communicating w customers - older white people more docile and subservient; the higher social capital and more resistant habitus of Black dopefiends led them to getting less jobs -"Male Love" - homophobic, but acts not read as homosexual identity -Treatment: -"Addiction is not simply biologically determined; it is a social experience that is not amenable to magic-bullet biomedical solutions" (272). -Lack of follow-up after treatment in terms of employment and housing -Lack of funding, funding allocated to programs with high rates of success: incentivizes selective exclusion of people - excluding people who have highest chance of relapse, so have to demonstrate readiness through bureaucratic obstacles (eg waitlist, call exactly at 9am sharp for 3 weeks), competing for limited number of positions, showing up at a certain day/time, having blood-work done, forms completed on time, have social work readiness interview, need ID -Methadone treatments: chemical substance similar to heroin but can be difficult - painful withdrawal symptoms and side-effects, etc. -Mandatory graduations after 31 days -Needing to stay clean -Political anthropology and treatment: "As anthropologists studying people who live under conditions of extreme duress and distress, we feel it is imperative to link theory to practice. Otherwise, we would be merely intellectual voyeurs" (297). -Call for end to war on drugs -Call to think of drugs/homelessness as medical/social/economic/political issue rather than criminal issue -Harm reduction: people are going to be addicted no matter what, so it is counter-productive to keep punishing; reduce harm people addicted are suffering instead - help them manage and support them if they choose to get off of drugs: legalization of heroin - heroin prescriptions, safe/monitored injection sites, needle exchanges, free effective methadone treatment, more funding and less beaurocracy, shifting funding away from police/prisons and shifted to improved medical access, housing, and employment services that are flexible in terms of drug and alcohol use, better coordination -Can be feasible and successful - examples of this being successful

"Lumpen abuse"

-"The suffering of homeless heroin injectors is chronic and cumulative and is best understood as a politically structured phenomenon that encompasses multiple abusive relationships, both structural and personal" (16).

Biopower (Foucault)

-"[A] power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply [life], subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations." -History of Sexuality Vol. 1, 1978 -Level of entire populations -Disciplinary power: centers on the individual human body as a machine vs. Biopower focuses on the overall human body as a population or as a species - Rather than "let live and make die," which characterized the workings of power in themedieval era, the modern state rather uses biopower to "make live and let die." - allowing people to die and fend for themselves if not able to live the way they are "supposed to live" -Examples: hospital not taking the people who need to be treated, making them have to wait until they "really need" it/shuffling in and out and budget cuts in government making hospital turn away = structural violence, the people not believing they deserve the care and doctors saying treating them is not worth it = symbolic violence, kicking them out before they are ready to go, scraping out abscesses, law enforcement kicking them out and stealing their things (prescriptions - everyday violence/discipline) before thanksgiving,

Communitas

-"a feeling of community and camaraderie that is shared by people who have undergone rites of passage together" - Turner - Similar to Durkheim's notion of "social solidarity"

Influence

-"the ABILITY to achieve a desired end by exerting social or moral pressure." -Unlike authority, influence may be exerted from a low- status or marginal position

Authority

-"the RIGHT to take certain forms of action" - Power is often backed up by force or the threat of force, and people can exert power without necessarily possessing the authority to do so

Medical pluralism

-"the existence of more than one health system in a culture or society" - The presence of multiple medical systems can give people more choices and options. - However, medical pluralism can also give rise to life-threatening cultural miscommunication -eg "The Spirit Catches you and you fall down" by Anne Fadiman - biomedicine colliding with Mong ethnomedicine - epilepsy - seen in Mong ethnomedicine as sign of being a shaman/able to communicate with spiritual world - no translator available, complicated medications, side-effects so thought daughter was getting sicker, doctors interpreted it as noncompliance (even child abuse) and then she was taken into custody and had a seizure and became braindead

Sacra

-"the heart of the liminal matter" (102) - Turner - Includes exhibitions, actions, and instructions, and often involve the most sacred, mystical, and secret knowledge of a culture or people

Weapons of the weak

-"the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so on." - "It is my guess that just such kinds of resistance are often the most significant and the most effective over the long run."-James C. Scott: Anthropologist and political scientist; Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985)

Time-space compression

-"the shrinking of space due to an acceleration in the speed of daily life" - Associated with David Harvey - Describes how, due to advances in transportation, communication, and manufacturing technology, the word feels like it's getting smaller!

Time-space distanciation

-"the stretching of social life across time and space" - Associated with Anthony Giddens - Refers to a process whereby people's meaningful, daily social interactions, instead of being local, intimate, face-to-face, are becoming increasingly remote, disembodied, and thinly spread.

Globalization and rainbow flags in China

-19 months of ethnographic fieldwork: - Summers of 2007 + 2008 - September 2010−September 2011 - Summers of 2017 + 2019 -Informants: mostly queer activists in Xi'an, China - Gay men's AIDS NGO (Tong'ai) - Lesbian women's NGO (UNITE) Methodology: - Participant observation - Repeated, in-depth interviews and focus groups with >50 informants - "Structured hanging out" - Additional visits to queer Chinese NGOs in Beijing, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Sichuan, and Ningxia - Why do queer activists and groups in China want rainbow flags? - How do Chinese queer activists understand and use rainbow flags? What is their significance? - Why couldn't they buy rainbow flags in China? - Are rainbow flags in China an example of the globalization of sexuality? - Is the spread of rainbow flags in China an example of globalization leading to increased cultural homogeneity (McDonaldization or Coca- Colonization)? - Or do Chinese queer activists and NGOs have their own, unique understandings and uses of rainbow flags that are different from the U.S. (hybridization and localization)? • Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé and Martin Manalansan: - Because "gay and lesbian lifestyle products" like rainbow flags and pink triangles, as well as media images of gay pride parades and TV shows like "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" are spreading around the world, "queerness is now global." -Dennis Altman: argues that a Westernized, "global gay" identity is spreading around the world that emphasizes: - Same-sex, different-gender relationships- Consumption and capitalism- The development of "gayborhoods"- Identity-based, public political movements -Because of this, Altman argues global queer culture is becoming more homogenous -Miller: - The truth is more complicated! - The difficulty that many Chinese queer activists face in getting rainbow flags shows how they are often left out of globalization - Chinese queer activists have unique, localized understandings and uses of the rainbow flag - Rainbow flags in China are best understood an example of hybridization. - Chinese queer activists use them to imagine and index themselves as members of a "global gay" community, while maintaining identities and activist strategies that are uniquely Chinese! • Chinese understandings of the rainbow flag: - "Pretty" (piaoliang ) or "sexy" (xinggan ) - Too "conspicuous" or "showy" (xianyan ) - Represented "belonging" (guishugan ), "diversity" (duoyuanhua ), "tolerance" or "inclusivity" (baorong ), "abundance" (fengfu), and "harmony" (hexie ). - Rather than examples of the globalization of sexuality or the localization of a global gay symbol, I would argue that rainbow flags in China can help us think of transnational queer identity, activism, and culture as a kind of hybridizationthat transcends sameness and difference! - Rather than examples of the globalization of sexuality or the localization of a global gay symbol, I would argue that rainbow flags in China can help us think of transnational queer identity, activism, and culture as a kind of hybridizationthat transcends sameness and difference!

CONCEPT: Rites of passage: 2 Transition

-Also called margin - The initiate is in limbo, out of status (out of their earlier phase of life but not yet in the next stage) - Transition can often be a scary experience! - Transition often involves learning sacred knowledge

The American Dream

-An example of "meritocratic individualism" -Idea that everyone has same ability to achieve higher class based on hard work - idea of mobility and flexibility -Not true - having higher class parents = having more connections/stability - depends on assumption of level playing field, but American society is deeply unequal - racial inequality (institutionalized racism), health status, ability, gender, sexuality, etc. - becoming more and more stratified and less likely for people born into upper classes to fall down and for lower class people to move up - how class intersects with race (disproportionate white privilege)

CONCEPT: Rites of passage: 1. Separation

-Beginning of rite of passage - The initiate (also called a neophyte) is separated from normal social life either physically, socially, or symbolically - They may actually be physically taken away or exiled/excluded from society in some way

Sex and gender

-Beliefs and practices surrounding sex and gender are important ways that social life is organized and interpreted across cultures -Sex and gender are closely linked to both culture and biology - biocultural phenomenon -Cross-cultural universal - "male vs. female," but different cultures and societies break down and define roles differently -Gender beliefs and practices vary widely from culture to culture and across time (some more egalitarian/gender-neutral vs. some inegalitarian and stratified) --> can learn a lot about values, power, and inequality by looking at this

Alternative modernities

-Charles Taylor, "Two Theories of Modernity" (2001) 1. Cultural: "Characterizes the transformations that have issued in the modern West mainly in terms of the rise of a new culture" 2. Acultural: "Modernity is conceived as a set of transformations which any and every culture can go through—and which all will probably be forced to undergo"

Globalization and models of cultural interaction

-Cultural interactions are a significant source of cultural change and innovation; they can also cause conflict and domination. -Globalization is one particular kind of cultural interaction that is having a large impact on peoples and cultures around the world. -"Clash of civilizations" model "McDonaldization" model -Hybridization -Localization

CONCEPT: Self

-Derives from an Old English word meaning "one's own person." - The object of one's own reflective consciousness, the subject of one's own feelings, the center of one's being and experience, etc.

DEFINITION: Arnold Van Gennep (1873-1957)

-Early European ethnographer -Wrote about rites of passage in the 1909 book Les Rites de Passage -Theorized that all rites of passage involve separation, transition, and integration

CONCEPT: Ju/'hoansi medicine

-Explain harm/sickness through //gangwasi - recently deceased spirits (also have high god/lesser god) - explained through longing gangwasi have/form of punishment for being stingy/fighting/"that's just what they do" -defend selves through herbs, natural products, n/um -"n/um is a substance that lies in the pit of the stomach of men and women who are n/um k"ausi—medicine owners—and becomes active during a healing dance" (143) -shaman = "a part-time religious practitioner typical of tribal societies who goes into trance to directly communicate with the spirit world for the benefit of the community" healing dances/trances -High god/trickster God has given everyone n/um energy and is to be freely shared - activated in dances, support sick person and healers -Both men and women can be healers but men are typically most famous healers -Social healing - effective -High god (//gangwan!an!a or big big god); Trickster god (//gangwa or small god); Spirits of deceased relatives (//gangwasi)

CONCEPT: Discipline (Foucault)

-Foucault: "Discipline may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a 'physics' or an 'anatomy' of power, a technology." -Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1977 - "The body is invested with relations of power and domination." -The use and types of disciplinary power have shifted from the medieval to the modern age, from focusing more on the body to focusing more on the mind. -Instead of enacting these new, more modern forms of power and discipline on people's bodies, it is more efficient for the state to get people to subject themselves to state power, to discipline themselves. -Example: soldiers (bootcamp - turned into a cog in the machine through discipline, not thinking before acting), The Panopticon (theoretical prison - instead of square prisons with cells and many guards, have circular prison with watchtower in the middle with bright lights pointed at prisoners so they don't know if they're being watched - really end up watching themselves, as theoretically the guard could have gone on break) - power getting inside mind/body -"He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection." -According to Foucault, power is not necessarily obvious, external, visible, and blunt. Rather, more insidious and effective kinds of power are fluid, invisible, hidden, and internalized by people in and through their own bodies and minds! -Foucault also analyzed schools, hospitals, and mental institutions as forms of modern disciplinary power

CONCEPT: Trafficking of women theory of male dominance

-Gayle Rubin, 1975 -Based on Lévi-Strauss' theory of the exchange of women as the basis for kinship and culture - "As long as men exchange women, it is men who are the beneficiaries of such exchanges—social organization."

Iatrogenic pathology

-Iatrogenic = "of or relating to illness caused by medical examination or treatment" Eg carving out abscesses rather than treating them otherwise, almost as form of discipline

CONCEPT: Dobe Ju/'hoansi Change

-Lee argues that non Ju/'hoansi people come into area beginning in 1920s and bring things like metal utensils, tobacco, blocking off watering holes, but Ju/'hoansi live didn't really change until white people (government, anthropologists, etc.) came in 1960s/1970s --> Culture shock, responding to this -Neighbors: Herrero and Tswana - live in similarly kinship-based societies, they are pastoralists (cattle) and small-scale horticulture - Tswana is dominant group and rules the areas, Herrero don't exist in as many numbers, all speak Bantu - they trade (cattle, milk, wives - Tswana will marry Ju/'hoan women but not the other way around) - Ju/'hoansi living with and working for Tswana, paid in milk/cattle/shelter (no wages) -Response to white people/colonialists: "animals of the village," thinking of Ju/'hoan as only real people - unable to understand language of white people - informant becoming sick from culture shock, but also curious and wanting to explore new technologies --> Social change: more horticulture, pastoralism, less foraging, increased privatization of land and water, fences, decrease in sharing, increased wage labor/market economy, hunting became illegal, becoming more sedentary in more permanent houses, people eating food of less quality - getting more processed foods, not as healthy, more carbs/grains, increases in hypertension, cholesterol, HIV/AIDS from working in mines, worsening equality between men and women, women become increasingly stuck in walls of homes, children have more responsibilities, education (1973), school is low-enrollment initially due to fees and secondary costs (transportation, uniforms, boarding, books), kids getting more disrespectful of elders when they went to school, school as form of colonialism - Ju/hoan culture/history not taught/Ju/hoan language banned in schools, increased presence of govt. and bureaucracy, problems of alcohol use and addiction w/ getting money and buying sugar and using sugar to brew beer, increase into 90s and 2000s, clinics opening up and more access to medical care, people living in mud houses with fences facing cattle pens -"In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the people of Dobe continue to travel the road away from their hunting and gathering past and toward an uncertain future" (199). -2010 survey of Ju/'hoan Tsumkwe residents: - Subsistence strategies - Dependence on cash economy - Health issues - Religious practices - Education levels - Question: "do you like the bush?" - majority of respondents said they obtained a significant portion of food from foraging practices, traditional healing rituals, attending church as well, 97% of people said they do like the bush when in '68 only around 50% did - Lee voices a "cautious optimism" about the future of the Ju/'hoansi: - "On several important socio-economic variables the Ju/'hoansi of Tsumkwe are making a reasonably successful transition to the cash economy and municipal life in a developing nation-state" (226). - credits this to continued sense of equality and sharing practices

John Bodley, 1999, "The Price of Progress"

-Loss of autonomy/agency, "progress" often imposed/forced upon by outside actors etc. -Unforseen issues -Worsen inequality -Excuse/fig leaf appropriation of resources/land - loss of land and traditional culture -Difficult to measure objectively - not everyone agrees on "good"/goals - don't necessarily tell you anything about subjective experiences of quality of life -Diseases of development: malnutrition, obesity, hypertension, cholesterolemia, cancer --> 1970's: Nestle infant formula, encouraged governments and community leaders in Africa to move away from breastfeeding and to infant formula, began giving for free and then began charging them after the women stopped lactating and babies started going hungry, mothers watering down formula to last longer -Quinoa: has been grown in horticultural scale for centuries by indigenous people in South America, has become popular/fad and price has gone up, now there's not enough to keep up with demand, so now farmers of quinoa cannot afford to eat own quinoa/their families can't eat it and they eat from imported flours -Relative deprivation: "By comparison with the material wealth of industrial societies, tribal societies become, by definition, impoverished" (280).

Kathoey (Thailand)

-Male-female trans or 3rd gender crossdressing -Much more accepted - famous beauty competitions, singers, etc.

CONCEPT: Domestic versus public spheres theory of male dominance

-Michelle Rosaldo, 1974 - Pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding limit women to domestic sphere - Men better able to make social connections, economic and political relationships, etc. --women are entering the public sphere more, but now men aren't entering the domestic sphere enough --> double burden for women --plummeting rates of marriage and childbirth in China

CONCEPT: Sambia

-Paupa New Guinea - central mountain range area - small groups of people in fortified hilltop villages surrounded by enemies, constantly at war with other groups over resources and territory, always hostile and suspicious of one another --> always have to be ready for war; trained from early age to be hyper-aggressive and dominant, to be able to succeed and protect/provide for family --> highly ritualized and unique way of thinking about male gender and sexuality -Male-dominated and highly segregated; high degrees of implicit and explicit ideas of male dominance; patriarchal and patrilineal -Movie: Guardians of the Flutes -Must be able to kill enemy, looking him straight in the eye -Women kneeling - can't stand above man -Menstrual blood pollutes man and drains his strength -Forcing women to have oral sex to strengthen their bodies - women don't like this - until woman menstruates they have oral sex -Men "giving ritualistic birth to men" - claiming even birth -Menstrual blood and pollution = shame - parallels flowers, most fertile as young woman when bud opens -You get married "because your penis wants it" -Risk pollution even from smell of vagina - block odor with leaves -Sex is secret - have to go to forest, not be in village, children can't see sex -He'd leave in a hurry after coming, no need to pleasure woman - go to forest to drink tree sap to replace semen -"Pregnancy starts with the men's semen" - mixes with blood in womb to make baby and goes to breasts to make milk -Man leaves men's house and stops giving semen to young boys after has child, but then can't have sex for two years --> 2 wives - fight over semen -Purify selves after menstruation with mint and stinging nettles, if don't, husband will get sick -Women are exchanged for pig meat -Woman is property of husband -Virolocal, polygynous -When moon is full you know your wife is menstruating - painful ritual of nose bleeding in forest so you don't get ill - wife's menstrual blood will make stomach swell - makes man feel equal to woman's fertility (sympathetic menstruation) and confirms bravery as a warrior to do this ritual -1963 arrival of europeans - new customs that scorn old ones - war is now uncommon, strict social order breaking down - young boys wanting to arrange own marriages, haven't been properly initiated and prepared - don't need to go to war so no need to initiate them - young see new freedom to enjoy -Square houses free of taboos, can sleep together at night - agency - now promiscuity, jealousy and fights, "it's chaos without the old ways". -Teenage boy raped 6yr old girl - would have killed him under old rituals - now mix and hear sexual stories so boy had no younger boy to turn to and raped girl - violation of girl vs. boy -"Manhood puzzle" - girls are seen as automatically becoming women, boys have more difficult path to becoming men - men are something extra -Five Stages of the Sambia Lifecycle 1. 0-7 years old: boys are viewed as sexually androgynous, exist in world of women with their mothers 2. 7-14 years old: boys become first and second- stage initiates in the men's world, begin consuming the semen of older unmarried men 3. 15-18 years old: third-stage initiates: unmarried youth who supply younger boys with semen in order to help them grow big and strong 4. Newlywed: males engage in oral sex with their wives in order to prepare them for menstruation and childbirth 5. Father: exclusively heterosexual, engage in genital sex with their wives in order to produce children; considered fully adult men when they have at least two children

CONCEPT: Purity and Pollution - Mary Douglas

-Purity and Danger (1966) -British cultural and symbolic anthropologist and structural- functionalist Douglas asked the question: why are some things seen as sacred and others as profane: 1. Universal religious beliefs regarding purity and pollution symbolize beliefs about social order 2. The human body itself was a powerful and basic symbol of society -Bodily substances and processes are endowed with sacredness (or profanity) because they symbolize the power (or vulnerability) of social structures, hierarchies, and boundaries. - "Ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy experience" (4). -Eg margins are seen as unclean - bodily orifices (tears, sweat, blood, urine, feces, semen, etc. - traverse boundary of body), and societal margins (borders, etc.) --> threatening to symbol of political/cultural organization and structure -Dirt: "Matter out of place;" disorder/chaos/death - dirt is indexical to order/cleanliness -Collapsing distinction between secularism/medicine and religiosity/magical beliefs and practices - these are all ways of trying to preserve social order -There are always going to be issues in cultural symbolic systems - people that don't fit into categories or threaten categories - religion and ritual are dealing with this inevitable rise of people/things/processes that seem harmful to social/symbolic orderliness -Like sticky things seen as gross bc threaten distinction between liquid and solid -Eg something about American identity that is being threatened, so increased security at border

CONCEPT: Queer anthropology

-Queer anthropology: the anthropological study of non- normative genders and sexualities across cultures and time - Great degree of diversity in sexual and gender norms, practices, and identities across cultures - Many cross-cultural commonalities: - "Queerness" is a cross-cultural universal - "Same sex different gender" pattern common - Sexual roles often determined or restricted according to various social power hierarchies (gender, age, social status, wealth, etc.) - not necessarily egalitarian - Frequent social marginalization and discrimination (varies between cultures and within cultures)

CONCEPT: Emile Durkheim on religion and ritual

-Religion as "collective effervescence" and "social solidarity" - when talking to God you're not actually feeling God, but feeling the power of social collective --> glue that allows for social solidarity -Religions help societies survive by giving people a common identity and a common sense of purpose and activity -Examples: rock concerts, political rallies, etc. -All religious phenomena can be classified as either beliefs or rituals -All religious beliefs and rituals separate the world into the sacred and the profane

CONCEPT: Max Weber on religion

-Religion as "theodicy" -Theodicy = "a theory that attempts to justify and explain human suffering and loss and to offer a path towards salvation or an end to suffering" -Example: karma

CONCEPT: Karl Marx on religion

-Religion as the "opiate of the masses" -Religion is like a drug; it makes people feel good, and makes them numb -Argued that religion is a tool used by the capitalist class to pacify the working poor -Argued that in a perfect communist society religion would have to be eradicated

-Samsar ("family" or "family cycle" - "that which flows together")

-Samsar ="family" or "family cycle" ("that which flows together") - usually refers to this - Includes: people, animals, objects, places, maya

CONCEPT: Nature versus culture theory of male dominance

-Sherry Ortner, 1974 -Women's bodies and social roles are often seen as closer to nature (eg. Menstruation w moon and tides, etc.) -Men's bodies and social roles are more often associated with culture --> focus on dominance over/harnessing nature, so women, as they are connected to nature, are degraded

Margaret Mead

-Student of Franz Boas -Influential American anthropologist, Famous public intellectual - in time of sexism, nazism -Dedicated life to studying tension between biology and culture -"coming of age in Samoa" in South Pacific, and studied adolescence - "Culture is the most important thing" (puberty in America = rebellion, angst, etc.) - found that teenagers in Samoa didn't have an experience of adolescence - not the same angst/drama in America" -Sex and temperament in three Primitive societies" (now would say "indigenous" - biology vs. culture; Paupa New Guinea - early American feminist - early critique of American gender norms --> 3 Hill societies she studied for the book 1) Arapesh: both men and women were loving, gentle, nurturing, cooperative, and peaceful ("feminine") 2) Mundugumor: both men and women were hostile, violent, competitive, aggressive, and jealous ("masculine") 3) Tchambuli: men liked fashion, dressing up, putting on makeup, dancing, doing each other's hair, socializing and gossiping; women kept their hair short, were aggressive warriors, dominated their male partners and initiated sexual relations with men ("opposite") --> conclusion: "The material suggests that we may say that many, if not all, of the personality traits which we have called masculine or feminine are as lightly linked to sex as are the clothing, the manners, and the form of head-dress that a society at a given period assigns to either sex." - what we think of as gender is not a biological given - it's a cross-cultural construction -Does not call for abolishing gender - says it still gives meaning and texture to peoples' lives; does say people should be more forgiving and encouraging to people who don't fit their society's gender norms Problems: -She's looking at it from an American, ethnocentric perspective -Maybe she's being biased in her interpretation - adding her own opinion - can see her opinions coming through - came in with agenda -Didn't spend equal time with all the people -How does this happen - one group is feminine, one masculine, one opposite at random? too perfect - data has been largely supported, actually! -Influenced America's view on sex - revolution

CONCEPT: The culture of poverty theory

-The term "culture of poverty" was coined by American anthropologist Oscar Lewis (1914−1970) - Member of the "culture and personality" school, Did fieldwork in Spanish Harlem, Puerto Rico, and Mexico City - First book: Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959) (applying Boas theory to this - argues that people are poor because of cultural forces) - Lack of money - Lack of participation in and a distrust of formal economic institutions - Women-focused families, lack of father figures - Absence of a long, protected, nurturing childhood - Internalized feelings of oppression, discrimination, anger, fear, helplessness, and frustration - Violence - Short-term economic thinking -Trans-generational -It is the culture that keeps people likely to stay in poverty -Problematic: doesn't get at root causes of social inequality, neglects large-scale structural forces that systematically make some people more likely to be poor and others not, that has nothing to do with individual actions - "blame the victim" approach

Heroin(e) Movie

-The women in the film approach opioid addiction as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice problem. What is your understanding of the difference between the labels? Do you agree with their approach? -How is the opioid addition crisis in Huntington, West Virginia similar or different to that of Edgewater Boulevard in San Francisco, California? -hopelessness, unemployment -Multiple generations -Blue collar area in West Virginia, od rate 10x national average -Drug court - in front of each other, putting in jail -Gender differences in arrests -Prostituting

CONCEPT: Anthropological theories of religion:

-Two major questions that any "theory of religion" must be able to answer: -WHY do people believe in religion or engage in religious practices? -WHAT does religion actually do for people? What are the social effects or outcomes of religious beliefs and practices? -Social solidarity/collective effervescence -Cultural/Symbolic -Childlike Dependency -Opiate of the masses -Pool of elements -Theodicy

Anthropology of globalization

-Understanding how globalization works on a local level -Jonathan Inda and Renato Rosaldo: "Globalization suggests something much more profound about the modern world than the simple fact of growing global interconnectedness. It implies a fundamental reordering of time and space." - eg. time-space compression/time-space distanciation

Apartheid

-a national policy in South Africa that legally sanctioned and required the segregation of dominant whites from non-whites from 1948 to 1994 -Every measure of life quality were marked by extreme levels of inequality - police brutality and structural violence - still higher rates of poverty and sickness amongst non-whites

Transgender

-an umbrella term used to refer to a wide range of non-normative gender presentations or identities - Can include "third gender," genderqueer, agender, cross-dressing, and/or intersex people and cultures -Glossed as transsexual, but not limited to this

Cartesian dualism

-belief in the separateness of themind or soul (immaterial) and the body (material) -traced back to Rene Descartes in western world - described body as a machine; soul is immaterial --> church should relinquish domain over material, physical world, but can still have domain over immaterial souls

CONCEPT: Benson Saler on religion

-religion is better understood as a "pool of elements" that tend to "cluster together": - Belief in god, gods, spiritual beings, or some form of supernatural power or transcendence - Moral or ethical code (usually extra-human in origin) - Belief in the ability to transcend suffering and loss - Ritual practices which involving extra-humans

CONCEPT: Anthropological theories of male dominance:

1. Biology 2. Domestic versus public spheres (Michelle Rosaldo, 1974) 3. Nature versus culture 4. Exchange of women (BEND)

CONCEPT: How do ethnomedicines "work"?

1. Mind-body connection -Example: Claude Lévi-Strauss' research on shamanistic healing rituals in North America - Kwakiutl shamans "suck sickness" out of people and show it to them - before they do it, put feathers etc. in mouth and bite lip to make themselves bleed; believe that the better the "trick" the better the healer -Example: placebo and nocebo effects -Doctor and patient must believe in the healing abilities of healing practices - SOCIETY must believe in the healing abilities; everyone must buy in 2. Mending of the social fabric -Community healing: "healing that emphasizes the social context as a key component and which is carried out within the public domain" -Example: Ju/'hoansi healing dances 3.Physical/biochemical effects on the body: -Examples:- Pytotherapy, "healing through the use of plants"- Mindfulness meditation 4. Most diseases /illnesses simply get better by themselves (about 90% of the time)

CONCEPT: Individual

A single human being, one among many similar living entities (physical, biological)

Travesti (Brazil)

Biological males who at a young age identify as travesti - gay men, start dressing as women, adopt female pronouns, etc., ingest hormones and inject silicone later

DEFINITION: Biomedicine

Definition -"an approach to healing based on Western scientific and biological understandings of the body and disease that emphasizes the importance of technology for diagnosing and treating health problems" -Is biomedicine just another ethnomedicine? -Three cultural assumptions of biomedicine: 1. The primacy and separability of the body (from mind, society, etc.) in diagnosing and treating health problems; 2. That biomedical knowledge is based on "objective," "scientific," empirically observable and verifiable, seeable and tangible "fact"; 3. That biomedicine is universally applicable Importance in cultural anthropology: -biomedicine has spread around the world - one of the only truly global forms of medicine Examples: -Contrary: the egg and the sperm - still imbued with cultural biases -Cartesian dualism -Implementing medical centers in Haiti instrumental in detecting and treating HIV/AIDS

DEFINITION: Structure

Definition -"large-scale social, cultural, political, and economic forces that shape how and what people do and think" - Usually conceived of as existing beyond or above individual control - However, social structures are constituted, perpetuated, and even changed through acts of individual agency! Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Structure/s are a big part of culture and shape people and individuals Examples: -Righteous dopefiend - police force, housing, economy, homelessness, stigma against drug users, racism, employment -Hunting in Ju/'hoansi - social structures/gender divide shaped around hunting -Hxaro exchange and insulting reinforcing equality

DEFINITION: Economic, Social, Cultural, and Symbolic Capital

Definition -Though social, cultural, and symbolic capital are distinct from economic capital, they are often related to it in different ways: Importance in Cultural Anthropology: - Social, cultural, and symbolic forms of capital can help people to acquire economic capital - Economic capital can be converted into forms of social, cultural, and symbolic capital - Social, cultural, and/or symbolic capital can also be a repository (signal) for economic capital Examples: -Healers being paid in Ju/'hoansi culture -Dopefiends proud of stealing things and having relationships

DEFINITION: Sex

Definition -Whether a person is male or female, as determined by biological characteristics like external genitalia and having XX or XY chromosomes - Primarily a biological category or endowment - Based on genitalia, genes, chromosomes, hormones, and secondary sex characteristics Importance in Anthropology -We are a sexually dimorphic species; all cultures recognize male/female sexes (or more - some cultures recognize additional sexes) - we organize ourselves based sex and on perceptions of sex (aka gender); can learn a lot about a society based on their understandings of sex and how they organize around sex Examples -In america we view kids as "male" or "female" from the time we are young, vs. in Sambia culture view young children (esp boys) as androgynous, until they are old enough to go through rite of passage and really become a boy/man; view females as automatically able to become females vs. males have a more difficult journey to become males; have to stop sleeping with mothers/needing mothers - needing to complete rituals to become and remain a man, like drinking semen and replenishing semen with sap -When women in West Bengali culture start menopause, seen less as women/females and more androgynous - they become "less hot" and "drier," and are seen as less sexed because their periods represent femaleness

DEFINITION: Social inequality

Definition: "A situation in which people have unequal access to goods or goals deemed valuable or desirable by society" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -It is the way society is arranged; important for applied anthropology and activism Examples: -Class in righteous dopefiend - intimate apartheid between blacks and whites and the more general disrespect of dopefiends -Castes - Brahmans as higher up, serfs and "untouchables" -Women as undesirable in Sambia culture

DEFINITION: Social stratification

Definition: "An arrangement of statuses or groups within a society into a pattern of socially superior and inferior ranks based on differential access to strategic resources" -Social stratification is basically a system of shared social inequality Importance in cultural anthropology: -It is the way society is arranged; important for applied anthropology and activism Examples: -EG. young white boys who grow up rich have 40% chance of staying rich as an adult and 10% chance of poverty/lower-middle class, vs. young black boys who grow up rich have only a 17% chance of staying rich and a 20% chance of poverty/lower middle-class; EG. for poor children, the pattern is reversed - most poor black boys remain poor (48% chance of remaining poor, 2% chance of becoming rich), vs. poor white boys (31% remain poor, 10% become rich) -Class in righteous dopefiend - intimate apartheid between blacks and whites and the more general disrespect of dopefiends -Castes - Brahmans as higher up, serfs and "untouchables" -Women as undesirable in Sambia culture

DEFINITION: Sexuality

Definition: "Cultural or symbolic meanings attached to sexual practices, desires, and relationships as well as culturally expected or prescribed sexual behaviors and roles for different genders and stages of the life course" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Great degree of diversity in sexual and gender norms, practices, and identities across cultures -Many cross-cultural commonalities -Queerness" is a cross-cultural universal -"Same sex different gender" pattern common -Sexual roles often determined or restricted according to various social power hierarchies (gender, age, social status, wealth, etc.) -Frequent social marginalization and discrimination (varies between cultures and within cultures) - important in applied cultural anthropology for activism Examples: -Queer China and rainbow flags -Ju/'hoansi as experimentally sexual from a young age -West Bengali women "drying up," becoming "less hot" and celibate as they grow older -Hijra in India: "Third gender" - dress and act like women and take on female pronouns, use female names - some may be born intersex, others get transformation surgery; Ritual performers in a group; Highly stigmatized - many make a living as commercial sex workers

DEFINITION: Symbolic violence

Definition: "Domination, hierarchies, and internalized insult that are legitimized as natural and deserved" (Pierre Bourdieu) -People who are marginalized/discriminated against are portrayed as deserving of not having the resources --> over time this can be internalized and they can blame themselves/think of selves as not equally deserving of rights - how these systems are produced and maintained over time (blaming selves allows this to keep going on) Importance in cultural anthropology: -This is important to help us understand how people react to violence Examples: -Drug addicts not feeling like they deserve doctors because they go there too much -Not going to the doctor until on the brink of death

DEFINITION: Structural violence

Definition: "Large-scale political- economic forces, international terms of trade, and unequal access to resources, services, rights, and security that limit life chances" (Paul Farmer) Importance in cultural anthropology: -Structural cviolence an tell us a lot about a society - how people use violence, how they respond to it, how it acts in larger picture - this has to do with greater society and is important for applied anthropology; understanding structural forces as violent Examples: -funding only most successful rehab centers -not enough doctors -Funding more to the police force -Red tape of getting into rehab centers -Unequal access to housing

DEFINITION: Medicalization

Definition: "The act of taking what could be viewed as (1) a natural problem or part of the life course, or (2) a broader social, emotional, or spiritual problem, and defining and treating the problem as a disease that requires biomedical intervention." Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Used so power structure and systems can stay in place; important for applied/critical medical anthropology and defending rights - Irving Zola: "The labels health and illness are remarkable 'depoliticizers' of an issue. By locating the source and the treatment of problems in an individual [rather than in society], other levels of intervention are effectively closed." Examples: - Treating poverty (malnutrition) with pills in Brazil, to ignore large-scale social/economic inequality - Homosexuality - designated a mental illness in America until 1972 - "Drapetomania" - used to control/dominate people - recognized as a mental illness that only affected Black Slaves which was the desire to run away, "cure" was amputation of toes or feet

DEFINITION: Personhood

Definition: "beliefs about what it means to be a person or a human being within a specific cultural, social, and historical context" Notions of person includes things like: - What does it mean to be human? - The relationship between mind, body, spirit, emotions - The relationship between the individual and society - When does someone become a person? - Are some people in a given culture considered or treated more fully as "a person" than others? - What are the aims of life? - How is the life course divided or understood? - What happens after death? - Why are we here? Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Biocultural phenomenon -Intersects w kinship, ritual, economics, etc. Examples: -Ju/'hoansi meaning "genuine people;" viewing whites and blacks as others, not understanding them -West Bengali view of individual in society/interpersonal connections - Maya -Becoming a full man in Sambia culture when have at least 2 children -Old people in West Bengal treated as lesser, moving to outskirts of society to break the maya -Old people in Ju/'hoansi as still part of society

DEFINITION: Intimate violence

Definition: "forms of violence that people perpetrate upon themselves or people close to them, including domestic violence, child abuse, and self-abuse" (Phillipe Bourgois) Importance in cultural anthropology -It highlights violence and helps us ask and answer questions for applied anthropology; reveals larger cultural patters Examples: -Tina being sexually abused -Fights between dopefiends -Verbal violence between blacks and whites -Verbal abuse/power over women

DEFINITION: Rite of passage

Definition: "religious rituals that mark important changes in individual status or social position at different points in the life cycle, such as birth, marriage, or death" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Important for understanding individuals, practices, statuses, rituals, religion, hierarchy, and what cultures view as important Eg. -Arnold van gennep: Theorized that all rites of passage involve separation, transition, and integration -Turner: rites of passage are a process of transition or transformation, like "water in process of being heated to boiling point, or a pupa changing from grub to moth" (94); Rites of passage (and ritual in general) recreate, reinforce, and reproduce social structures and definitions (what Turner calls "states"); Rites of passage carefully control and direct processes of social change and people going through ambiguous periods; Rites of passage also create and reinforce relationships of power and equality between groups of people. -Mouse-Dirt in West Bengal -Sambia rituals

DEFINITION: Symbolic capital

Definition: "resources like honor, respect, fame, prestige, or other forms of social recognition and status" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -We can see through this what kinds of things a culture values Examples: -Healers in Ju/'hoansi -Clout and celebrity

DEFINITION: Social capital

Definition: "social resources like networks of relationships, membership in certain social groups, connections, etc." Importance in cultural anthropology: -Power structure are often arranged through relationships Examples: -Dopefiends having running partners; camaraderie of the black/white groups -Ju/'hoansi relationships with Black cattle owners

DEFINITION: Ethnomedicine

Definition: "the medical theories, diagnosis systems, and therapeutic practices of a culture or ethnic group" Importance in cultural anthropology: -Biocultural phenomenon - this is an important part of all cultures; understanding the way cultures perceive and respond to sickness/health is instrumental in understanding them Examples: -Ju/'hoansi healers, healing dances, trances -Men in Sambia culture purifying selves with mint and stinging nettle after wives menstruate, replenishing semen with sap, belief that menstrual blood is polluting, belief of building up baby with washes of semen

DEFINITION: Gender

Definition: "the social classification of masculine or feminine" OR "how different cultures give meaning to, interpret, or embellish biological sex differences" - how sex is interpreted - Many societies also have "third gender" or transgender categories (or more) - Relatively new term! (late 1960s, right before 2nd-wave feminism - sex-gender distinction) Importance in Anthropology -Important way of how society is constructed Examples -Martin's the egg and the sperm - reinforcing gender roles and classifications of masculine and feminine by writing about female reproductive organs/processes/eggs with traditionally "feminine," submissive descriptions, and semen/male reproductive organs/processes with traditionally "masculine," powerful descriptions -Margaret Mead and the 3 societies - men as more submissive, men and women as gentle, men and women as hostile -Ju /'hoansi gender roles

DEFINITION: Medical anthropology

Definition: "the study of health and medical systems in a cross-cultural perspective" - Includes the study of biocultural adaptations to disease, ethnomedical systems, and cultural factors in health and access to healthcare - these are biocultural phenomenons; social, cultural, political Importance in Cultural Anthropology -Biocultural phenomenon - this is an important part of all cultures; understanding the way cultures perceive and respond to sickness/health is instrumental in understanding them Examples: -Healing in the Ju/'hoansi - important because having new medical care in an area where the people don't understand it can be dangerous - like the doctor in the Ju/'hoansi movie that determined the baby was sick because of the dust -AIDS in Haiti -The doctors in Righteous Dopefiend with abscesses

DEFINITION: Health system

Definition: - "perceptions and classifications of the body, health problems, prevention measures, diagnosis, healing practices, and healers" -There are two major types or categories of health systems in medical anthropology: Ethnomedicine and biomedicine Importance in Cultural Anthropology -Biocultural phenomenon - this is an important part of all cultures; understanding the way cultures perceive and respond to sickness/health is instrumental in understanding them Example: -Ju/'hoansi healers, healing dances, trances -Western medicine -Men in Sambia culture purifying selves with mint and stinging nettle after wives menstruate, replenishing semen with sap, belief that menstrual blood is polluting, belief of building up baby with washes of semen

DEFINITION: Interpretive medical anthropology:

Definition: - Examines health systems as systems of meaning; compares how people in different cultures and societies label, describe, and experience illness - comparative approach Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Another way people make sense of/interpret world - Beliefs about health, illness, and medicine are culturally created and experienced in radically different ways Examples: -Healing and ritual in the Ju/'hoansi - as cultural bonding, healers respected and seen as crucial members of society -Ethnomedicines vs. biomedicines - how ethnomedicine might work

DEFINITION: Ritual

Definition: -"A set of acts, usually involving religion or magic, following a sequence established by tradition" -Attempts to create some kind of change in the world - Rituals can can involve the supernatural but can also be secular, or both - Rituals can be either periodic or nonperiodic -Similar to the idea of perlocutionary force in linguistic performativity ("I dub thee knight...") some rituals also seek to enact or create a change in the world (natural or social). Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Important for understanding a culture and common cultural practices; what is important in a culture and their ideologies -Important for understanding culture's relationship to religion and relations to one another/environments Examples: -Sambia rites of passage -Ritual as consecrated behavior (Geertz) -Cleaning rituals in West Bengal -The "dirt-mouse" ritual in West Bengal of woman leaving mother and home of her father

DEFINITION: Power

Definition: -"The ability to get other people to do what you want them to do, often through use of force or the threat of using such force" -"The ability to resist the will of other people, the use of the threat of force, or the weight of social and cultural values and norms" Importance in Cultural Anthropology -Important in politics and cultural structure Examples: -Michel Foucault (1926-1984) - post-modern post-structuralist theorist - theories about power; one of first public intellectuals to die of AIDS, queer activist: discipline and biopower

DEFINITION: Practice theory

Definition: -"The conventional theoretical distinction between structure and agency is too binary a conception to explain why people do what they do" - Structure and agency are two sides of the same coin; you can't have one without the other - People's beliefs and actions are always to a large extent limited, directed, and shaped by our culture as well as larger social, cultural, economic, and political structures and forces - no such thing as free will - However, people are capable of contesting, resisting, and even changing society, structural forces, political and economic systems, etc. over time! Importance in cultural anthropology: -Complicates structure and agency to make it actually applicable Examples: -Dopefiends exerting agency/resisting power - urinating/defacating on storefront of restaurant that put bleach in the bread in their landfill so dopefiends couldn't eat it, but still doing this as a response -Tina using sex work to make money - form of agency but still a product of structure, needing to make money

DEFINITION: Violence

Definition: -"a continuum of practices or forces ranging from direct physical or bodily assault to less visible forms of coercion, fear, and subjectification" -Scheper-Hughes and Bourgeois: Violence is best conceived of as a continuum ranging from direct physical assault to more routinized or internalized forms of oppression -Direct physical assault: Direct, overt, bodily violence, which is more visible, physical, hard, exceptional, or barbaric -Routinized, internalized violence: violence that is more invisible, ordinary, gentle, natural, and routinized -Structural vs. symbolic violence -Everyday vs. intimate violence Importance in Cultural Anthropology -Violence can tell us a lot about a society - how people use violence, how they respond to it, how it acts in larger picture Examples: -Structural violence of funding only most successful rehab centers -Symbolic violence of drug addicts not feeling like they deserve doctors because they go there too much and not going until on the brink of death -Everyday violence of kicking out homeless people from encampments and taking away paraphanelia -Intimate violence of Tina being sexually abused

DEFINITION: Religion

Definition: -"attitudes, beliefs, and practices related to supernatural powers" including supernatural beings and/or forces. -However, this definition might not capture all beliefs or practices that people might understand or describe as "religious." Significance in Cultural Antrhopology: -Understanding people's religious beliefs and practices is a crucial aspect of studying any culture or society. -Religion, spirituality, and beliefs and practices regarding the supernatural world are cross- cultural universals. -Only 16% of people are agnostic/atheist/secular -New age beliefs (eg astrology, psychics, spiritual energies, reincarnations) are becoming more and more popular (esp among women and younger people) as they aren't identifying with other religions (eg christianity) Examples: - Religion as "belief in spirits" (Tylor) - Religion as similar to magic and science (Frazer) - Difficulties in defining religion - Religion as "attitudes, beliefs, and practices related to supernatural powers" - Religion as often involving moral and ethical codes and/or "theodicies" (Weber)

DEFINITION: Everyday violence

Definition: -"institutional practices, cultural values, and everyday interactions that render violence invisible and produce social indifference" (Nancy Scheper-Hughes) - Also referred to as "normalized violence" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -This enlightens us on what is going on around us, especially important for applied anthropology Examples: -Kicking out homeless people from encampments -Taking away drug paraphernalia as well as prescription drugs

DEFINITION: Agency

Definition: -"the means, capacity, or condition of exerting or resisting power" - Usually thought of as individual action or capacity for action - Can be negative or positive - Another definition: "The ability of individual people to make choices and exercise free will even within dominating structures" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Michel Foucault: "Where there is power, there is resistance" - Power and agency are both never absolute! - power often creates terms of own resistance Examples: -Dopefiends exerting agency/resisting power - urinating/defacating on storefront of restaurant that put bleach in the bread in their landfill so dopefiends couldn't eat it -Tina using sex work to make money

DEFINITION: Politics

Definition: -"the use of power" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: - Includes the organized use of power in formal political institutions or organizations - Also includes the more informal uses of power in daily social life - Both forms of politics are important and involve the other! Examples: -Righteous Dopefiend - politics and addiction, money in police force, government budgeting effecting who gets treatment -Equality of Ju/'hoansi; power and change in power when Blacks and whites came and money was introduces -Class and caste in West Bengal - the Brahmans as higher and more powerful, need to clean selves after touch

DEFINITION: Modernity

Definition: -A model of change based on belief in the inevitable advance of science and secularism as well as increased: - Industrialization - Market expansion - Political consolidation (including expanding state bureaucracies) - Technological innovation - Literacy, and - Social mobility -Originates in Western Europe in Age of Enlightenment - assuming that social change is always for the better, often linked with globalization - globalization is seen as a symptom of modernity -This is idealized idea of modernity and progress Importance in cultural anthropology: -We must observe how cultures change and how West changes cultures; important in applied anthropology Examples: -Ju/'hoansi change -Bodley price of progress

DEFINITION: Modernity and progress

Definition: -As with globalization, both modernity and progress are involved in unequal power relationships: - Ideas that some cultural patterns or values (and not others) are "modern" or represent "progress" are cultural constructions and depend on power - "Modernity" also rests on a Western, teleological assumption of inevitable, linear "progress" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Importance of weighing what "progress" is Examples: -Most indigenous groups who are subjects of modernization/development campaigns don't fare too well -The "myth of modernity," Jean and John Comaroff: - "Looked at up close, then, modernity itself all too rapidly melts into air." - "For most Western social thought, modernity remains the terminus toward which non-Western peoples constantly edge—without ever actually arriving."

DEFINITION: Globalization

Definition: -Broadly refers to: - The increasing interconnectedness of the world - The expansion of global and transnational linkages - The organization of social and cultural life on a global scale, and - The growth of a global consciousness" -Globalization includes increased transnational or worldwide flows of: - People - Money - Goods - Media - Ideas -Textbook Definition: "A contemporary cultural, political, and economic process involving world capitalism by which production and consumption are expanded to be worldwide in scope or application" -Issues w/definition: "contemporary" - assumes that it is new, but looking into history we see that it has been happening for a long time - eg. ancient Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Chinese empires, also British empire, also US population made up of European immigrants peaked in 1907 -What makes globalization today a potentially "new" phenomenon are the scope or extentand the intensity or degree of global or transnational interconnectedness allowed by changes in technology. Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Globalization does not only (or primarily) involve political and economic processes. - The global flow of people, ideas, images, etc. is just as important than the flow of capital and goods! Contrary to its name, globalization is also not necessarily a "worldwide" process or phenomenon. - Indeed, as much as globalization may make some places more interconnected, it can also bypass or leave out other areas, making them less connected! -Beginning in the 1990s, globalization and modernity became a huge focus of academic attention and research! -Questions of social change, including globalization and modernity, continue to be important in anthropology today -Questions: - What exactly is globalization? - Is it new? - Is it leading to cultural homogenization? - Is it increasing or decreasing social inequalities? - Is globalization a form of "progress?" How is it linked to processes of modernity? - How do "local" peoples, societies, and cultures "resist" or "localize" global flows? Examples: -Ju/'hoansi change -Bodley price of progress

DEFINITION: Magic

Definition: -The law of similarity: if X is like Y, then actions performed on X can have an effect on Y; The law of contagion: if X is from or has been in contact with Y, then actions performed on X can have an effect on Y Importance in Cultural Anthropology -Compared with religion and criticized as worse than religion bc of ethical layer -Seen as prior to religion -A belief system that impacts way of life -Example: -Frazer is cultural evolutionary theorist - Likened religion to magic, or "the attempt to compel supernatural forces and beings to act in certain ways"; believed magic was more primitive than religion bc didn't have ethical layer

DEFINITION: Male dominance

Definition: 1. Social ideologies, either explicit or implicit 2. Social structures - Political and economic arrangements and patterns - Marriage (virilocal vs. uxorilocal, arranged marriage) 3. Daily practices and experiences - How do individual women experience their gender Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Male dominance is in some form pretty much a cross-cultural universal, so it impacts most people and cultures and can tell us a lot about hierarchies, politics, power dynamics, social structures, and idiosyncrasies in a culture Examples - belief in Sambia that men are superior to women - segregation, women have to kneel, menstruation taboos -virginity in America -Martin's the egg and the sperm - reinforcing gender roles and classifications of masculine and feminine by writing about female reproductive organs/processes/eggs with traditionally "feminine," submissive descriptions, and semen/male reproductive organs/processes with traditionally "masculine," powerful descriptions -Women in West Bengal moving to husband's/father-in-law's homes and providing/working for them

DEFINITION: Life course or life cycle

Definition: "a patterned sequence of stages, defined by successive roles and statuses, through which individuals move during their lifetimes" Importance in cultural anthropology -Although aging is a cross-cultural universal, understandings of aging and the life course vary tremendously from culture to culture! -This changes the way societies are set up and how people are treated Examples -Ju/'hoansi, less segregation in lifecycle - don't necessarily associate old age with degeneration and death: 1. Infants 2. Children 3. Adolescents 4. Adults 5. Elders (n!a) - The "very old" (m≠da !ki or "old/dead") - The "decrepit" (m≠da kum kum or "old to the point of helplessness") -Can eat different things that are considered too powerful for younger people; viewed as wise; mentors/teachers; have realistic and good-humored way of talking about aging; seen as owners of foraging grounds/water resources; older people have power in making calls about kinship relations -Younger people, family members, children take care of them - not gendered, equally responsible; everyone will pitch in; not seen as a burden -Complaint: comedic and melodramatic, pretty much not indicative of actual mistreatment - making their presence known, reminding people of existence and importance, warning against elder abuse/neglect; competitive performance - only place where this is allowed -Intergenerational reciprocity -African models of the life course: Lives reach their full potential and power not at middle age, but after death when a person becomes an ancestor, Instead of ending a person's status as a person, or beginning the cycle of life all over again, death opens the door to a new, powerful status of personhood -American: Birth, infant, toddler, young child, tween, teen, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood (18 - vote, military service, marriage, emancipation, 21 - drink), middle age, elders, death - long, idealized and drawn out childhood -Elizabethan (Shakespeare, from the play As You Like It: life course has seven stages): Infancy, "Whining schoolboy ... creeping unwillingly to school", Lover, Soldier, "seeking the bubble reputation even in the canon's mouth", Judge or administrator, Retirement, "his big manly voice, turning again towards childish treble", And finally, "second childishness and mere oblivion ... sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" -Asian models of the life cycle: Often similar to the Elizabethan model, but a major difference is the circularity or cyclical nature of how the life course is envisioned: - Example: Buddhist beliefs emphasize the inevitability of bodily decline and decay, but also stress how older people's lives are eventually "recycled" into newborns. -West Bengali model of the life course: Student (brahmacarya), Householder (grhastha), Forest dweller or hermit (vanaprastha), Wandering renouncer (sannyasi)

DEFINITION: Economic capital

Definition: "economic resources like cash, property, assets, etc." Importance in cultural anthropology: -Economics make up a lot of society and societal change -However, economic capital is not the only kind of capital of interest to anthropologists! Examples: -Economic change in Dobe Ju/'hoansi - learning about money and putting more worth in money, changing structures -Dopefiends not having economic capital -Bodley and the price of progress - this is what a lot of western society is concerned with

DEFINITION: Cultural capital

Definition: "resources like knowledge, manners, tastes, degrees, and titles used to acquire and assess prestige, honor, and respect" Importance in Cultural Anthropology -We can see through this what kinds of things a culture values Examples: -Healers in Ju/'hoansi -Dopefiends proud of stealing things and having relationships

CONCEPT: Culture

Definition: "the patterns of economy, social organization, and belief that are learned and shared by members of a social group."- "the way of life of a particular group of people, including the things they do (behavior and practices), their ideas and values (belief systems), and the things that they produce (material culture). - Transgenerational (yet fluid and flexible) -Heterogeneous (yet shared by social groups) -First anthropological definition: "Culture, or civilization, ... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, laws, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" -Vs society: In the past, anthropologists simply equated society with culture; today we recognize that society can be very complex, and that a single society can include many different cultures -Vs. Nature: ("nature versus nurture"), Anthropologists tend to emphasize the explanatory power of culture over biology. Culture is distinct from human nature (learned, diverse), but culture and human nature have a close and intricate relationship- Learned, not innate or "natural" - Exists in a complex relationship with nature/biology - Made up of symbols, practices, and material products - Shared, yet specific to a social group - Yet not totally homogenous, even within one society - Transgenerational, yet relatively stable - Yet fluid and flexible, capable of change and transformation through resistance, innovation, and contact with other societies and cultures - Separate and distinct - Yet not neatly isolated or completely contained

DEFINITION: Aging

Definition: "the process of growing older" Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Instrumental in how people understand their personhood and bodies - biocultural process Examples: -Among West Bengalis: becoming "dried out" and "less hot," moving to outskirts of houses and societies, seen as not a place you want to be in, stop eating spicy foods and sweets, going on trips/visiting daughters more, celibacy, eating only foods like rice; Student (brahmacarya), Householder (grhastha), Forest dweller or hermit (vanaprastha), Wandering renouncer (sannyasi) -Ju/'hoansi: Not disrespected, seen as pretty much the same - Infants, Children, Adolescents, Adults, Elders (n!a), The "very old" (m≠da !ki or "old/dead"), The "decrepit" (m≠da kum kum or "old to the point of helplessness") -Americans: Birth, infant, toddler, young child, tween, teen, adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood (18 - vote, military service, marriage, emancipation, 21 - drink), middle age, elders, death - long, idealized and drawn out childhood

CONCEPT: Cultural Anthropology

Definition: "the study of contemporary people and their cultures and societies, including cultural change and diversity" -A discipline: "the comprehensive study of human societies and cultures around the world in all their remarkable complexity and diversity." Significance/Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -A way of life that will allow you to see and understand the world around you in a totally new way.-Helps you to appreciate and understand the great diversity of human cultures and societies; -Gives you a broad perspective on humanity, helping you understand and appreciate other people's beliefs and customs; -Enables you to become a better world citizen in what is an increasingly interconnected global society; and -Endows you with the tools and methods to learn about the cultural worlds around you.-Intersects w science and arts -Emphasizes the importance and power of culture for shaping (and understanding) human experiences, practices, and beliefs

DEFINITION: Applied medical anthropology:

Definition: - Examines how people's cultures and societies interact with their physical environments to cause health problems and/or influence the spread of illness and disease Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Can use these tools in interdisciplinary teams to deal w outbreaks of disease and develop better public health programs -Understanding the cultural dimensions of health and illness can help make healing more effective Examples: -Changing the treating of abscesses - doctors' relationships with patients and "punishing" them -HIV/AIDS crisis in Haiti and medical change - making messages and health services more accessible -Providing shooting centers

DEFINITION: Intergenerational reciprocity

Definition: -"an understanding of the life course emphasizing the mutual dependency of different generations" Importance in cultural anthropology -Impacts how generations treat one another, how children are raised and rituals surrounding death and major events in the life course Examples: -In West Bengali, Cyclical, vs. in America where parents care for kids and kids move out and care for their own kids; Just as parents care and provide for children when they are young, so will children care and provide for parents when they are old; Care, food, clothes, shelter, marriage, education, money - but parents give their children life/bodies/flesh/suffering/pain/time that children can't give back to them - continues after death in funeral/mourning/offerings, seen as giving parents new ancestral bodies (10 days like 10 month gestation in womb = never able to fully repay parents), attempt to repay through respect, obedience, and keeping the cycle going by having kids of your own

Anthropology

Definition: -Simple definition: "The systematic study of humans, including their biology and culture, both past and present." -Anthropos = "man" or "human being," Logia = "the study of" -Biological, Archaeology, Linguistic anthropology, Cultural Significance -Holistic -Fieldwork, Ethnography -Comparative Framework -To reveal human commonalities -To better understand, value, and protect human cultural diversity -To facilitate informed and respectful cultural critique and cultural enrichment. - "make the strange familiar and the familiar strange."

DEFINITION: Political anthropology

Definition: -a subfield of sociocultural anthropology that focuses on human behavior and thought related to power Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Politics are a cross-cultural universal - Groups of people will always contain inequalities and relationships of authority and domination - Even foraging groups have ways of making group decisions and distributing power and resources - Politics and power are a part of being human Examples: -Bodley and progress -Righteous Dopefiend - politics and addiction, money in police force, government budgeting effecting who gets treatment -Equality of Ju/'hoansi; power and change in power when Blacks and whites came and money was introduces -Class and caste in West Bengal - the Brahmans as higher and more powerful, need to clean selves after touch

CONCEPT: Cultural relativism

Definition: 1) Any cultural phenomenon (belief, value, practice, symbol, etc.) can and must be understood in its own particular cultural context 2) All cultural systems have intrinsic value and validity and are of inherently equal value Complications: 1) Simply reject the second premise of cultural relativism completely, in favor of some version of a personal and/or universal morality or criterion of right and wrong 2) Respect a society or culture as a whole, even while disagreeing with, critiquing, or condemning certain aspects or practices 3) Find local voices of disagreement or critique within a society or culture 4) Focus on how "we" and "they" are both flawed, and thus still "inherently equal in value" 5) Seek to go beyond or transcend"traditional" cultural relativism (the idea that cultures are different but equal) by recognizing and critiquing global systems of inequality and exploitation

DEFINITION: Critical medical anthropology:

Definition: Examines how economic and political structures and inequalities help shape people's health status, their access to quality health care, and the distribution of illness and disease 1. Examines cultural, social, economic, and political effects on the distribution of health, illness, disease, and healthcare access 2. Critiques elements of medicine or health systems that control, dominate, or "normalize" people in different ways 3. Also critiques aspects of biomedicine and Western medical beliefs and practices Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -The distribution of illness, disease, and health are intimately connected to larger issues of politics and socio-economic inequalities -Viewing (treatment of) sickness/disease in larger cultural context and then acting on it can help not just heal the diseases but heal the greater issues and prevent the sickness/diseases -Major findings: - Poverty is often the primary cause of morbidity - Whether or not a person gets sick (and if they get well or not) depends on their access to resources - Health problems also differ between richer, more developed and poorer, less developed countries Examples: -Paul Farmer, 1999, "Culture, Poverty, and HIV Transmission" - Work focuses on critical medical anthropology and global public health - PhD and MD from Harvard Co-founded Partners in Health (PIH) - "To understand the rural Haitian AIDS epidemic, we must move beyond the concept of 'risk groups' to consider the interplay between human agency and the powerful forces that constrain it" (128). - HIV/AIDS: human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome - Originally classified as GRID: "gay-related immune deficiency" - Government classified it the "4h disease": homosexual men, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians - Nobody in Haitian studies were any of these 4 H's (except being Haitians) - being poor in Haiti affects risk to be infected w HIV because people (esp women) in rural areas try to get out of poverty by going to the city to become servants, taking a partner like a truck driver or military person who has stable income, as women and children are dependent on men for their income/survival, and trying to get out of poverty - women less able to negotiate safe-sex practices, multiple partners - economic dislocation and migration, no access to basic medical care and especially HIV treatments, high population densities, lack of employment, food, housing, safe water, electricity, exposure to other STIs, TB and malaria which increase the risk of getting HIV, lack of government stability - corruption, violence, coups - AIDS of north/south - in America, have more access to meds and less likely to die (HIV not even progressing to AIDS) -Critique of biomedicine or Western medical culture and training -Especially its emphasis on technology, lack of critical or independent thinking, and dehumanization - "Medicine, as it is taught in the United States, does an excellent job of separating students from their emotions. The desensitization starts on the very first day of medical school...." -Criticism of reasons for HIV/AIDS in Haiti - refugees, moving to bigger cities, women relying on men for stability, imposition of "Western" culture

DEFINITION: Feminist anthropology

Definition: Seeks to understand and critique processes whereby women and women's bodies are constructed and controlled by cultural, social, political, economic, and other forces - Also emerged in the 1970s - In conjunction with 2nd-wave feminism Importance in Cultural Anthropology: -Understanding whether male dominance is a universal across societies and cultures as well as across time; understanding that male dominance (in some form) seems to be a cross-cultural universal - little evidence about matriarchal societies, whereas patriarchy is extremely common --> this helps us compare and contrast cultures -Helps us apply anthropology to activism and social Justice, like Abu Lughod - amplifying women's voices. Examples: -Margaret Mead's 3 societies -Lamb's studies of women in West Bengal

CONCEPT: Biological theory of male dominance

Definition: Sexually dimorphic species - men generally stronger and bigger Example: External genitalia --> men having external so they can be more sexually violent

CONCEPT: Person

Derives from the Latin word persona, which originally meant a "mask" or a "character in a drama." - A member of society

CONCEPT: Gender in Ju/'hoansi

Differences: -Women can't touch arrows/bows esp. when on period -Menstruation taboos -Men can go hunting overnight but women can't -Men hunt and provide meat which is more highly valued -Men spiritually dominant - more men act as healers and heal broader networks of people - public vs. private spheres -Arranged marriages w/ age gap -Women more child rearing -Men can participate in gathering and child rearing but women can't hunt -Ritual reenactment of marriage by capture Egalitarianism: -Women equally arrange marriages -women participate in society equally (shaming meat, kinship, hxaro) -Men involved in child rearing -Men can participate in gathering and child rearing -Women main economic providers 70% of caloric intake -Control their own labor and sexuality -Agency in divorce -No concept of virginity -Concept of female orgasm - equally entitled to satisfaction -Can own ancestral rites -Uxorilocal marriage patterns -Can resist marriages -Little/no preference for male/female children

Pathogenic law enforcement

Pathogenic = "an agent (usually a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism) that causes disease" Eg police sweeps/raids during colder/rainier months and around holidays, taking their clothing and perscriptions, food, bedding, everything - reacting with self-destructive habits such as overdosing

Disease

Refers to "a biological health problem that is objective and universal"

Illness

Refers to "culturally-specific perceptions and experiences of a health problem"

Profane

That which is not sacred

CONCEPT: The disease/illness dichotomy

Western disease labels may not correspond to understandings and classifications of health problems in other cultures. -Eg. epilepsy vs. sign of shaman in the Mong cultural context -Doctors shouldn't just treat/understand illness but the disease - the entire person in cultural contexts

Two-Spirit (North America)

Widely found in Indigenous American communities - sometimes viewed as religious, healers, not only tolerated but celebrated

Intersex

a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit "normal" definitions of female or male -controversial whether this is okay/better or "disorders of sexual development" is okay/better

DEFINITION: Liminality

an "interstructural position" (93), a period of profound ambiguity, instability, and paradox, of being "betwixt and between." - Turner -Eg. ritualistic birth/death, genderless, tides/snakes/moons, nakedness -A way to pass on vital/sacred knowledge "sacra/sacrality" -A way of creating relationships - submission/powerlessness of initiate -Powerful place to be in; powerful to reaffirm social order and relationships -Potential disorder, danger, and chaos also involved Eg. -Traditional Chinese wedding - managing change in state from father's patrililine into future husband's father's patriline - eg. bride dressed in red, rituals to pay respects to father's ancestors, and carried over threshold of ancestral home and into transportation (Sudan chair) - cannot touch the ground until she has been carried over threshold of new husband's father's home - she's like a grenade in that liminal time and seen as dangerous --> becomes a dangerous, evil spirit/ghost, negative feminine energy

Sir Edward Tylor

cultural evolutionary theorist - theorized that early people were afraid of death so they developed belief in soul/spirit - animism; Argued that animism gave rise to polytheism and eventually monotheism; wrote that magic, religion, and science were all alike because they are all ways to understand/control the world

The law of contagion

if X is from or has been in contact with Y, then actions performed on X can have an effect on Y -One way magic works -Eg. Love potion - putting others' hair/nail in, etc.

The law of similarity

if X is like Y, then actions performed on X can have an effect on Y -One way magic works -Eg. voodoo doll

Sacred

that which is set apart, forbidden, or associated with supernatural or divine powers or forces -Durkheim: "[Religious] rites are rules of conduct that prescribe how man [sic] must conduct himself [sic] with sacred things."