Cultural Anthropology

Lewis on anthropologist as trained to be detached

"A basic part of the training of anthropologists, along with the creation of high cultural tolerance through exposure to cultural relativity, is preparation for detachment in the field. Anthropologists-in-training are warned of the negative results which ensue when they identify too closely with the interests of those they study."

Alienation

"But the exercise of labor power, labor, is the worker's own life-activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life-activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life-activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live" (ilc 204). --According to Marx, workers experience four relations of alienation in capitalist society: 1) alienation from the product of their labor 2) alienation from the labor activity 3) alienation from other people 4) alienation from their species-being

Sahlins definition of an Affluent Society

"By the common understanding, an affluent society is one in which all the people's material wants are easily satisfied. To assert that the hunters are affluent is to deny then that the human condition is an ordained tragedy, with man the prisoner at hard labor of a perpetual disparity between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means." (page 1)

Mahmood Mamdani on "Culture Talk"

"culture talk assumes that every culture has a tangible essence that defines it, and it then explains politics as a consequence of that essence. Culture Talk after 9/11, for example, qualified and explained the practice of 'terrorism' as 'islamic.' Islamic terrorism thus offered as both description and explanation of the events of 9/11 (18)

Cronon on wilderness as a cultural construct

"far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it [wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation - indeed the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history..."

Cronon on how many people in the US think about wilderness:

"for many Americans, wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness

Basso's argument/hypothesis identifying an underlying logic behind situations of silence in Apache culture

"keeping silent in Western Apache culture is associated with social situations in which participants perceive their relationships vis-à-vis one another to be ambiguous and/or unpredictable" (225)

Another world is possible...

"let us finally imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labor-power in full self-awareness as one single social labor force" (Marx) "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (Marx)

How anthropologists encounter death of studied cultures

"most anthropological studies of death eliminate emotions by assuming the position of the detached observer" A lesson: Anthropologists need to open themselves up to trying to understand the cultural force of emotions and for that, they need to engage their own subjective experience

reflections from Ghosh on modern modes of thought that contribute to an inability to recognize the instability of nature and the precariousness of our existence

"predatory hubris" of the European enlightenment --the view of the earth as a resource for consumption "habit of mind" that focuses on small, solvable problems rather than consider in full the things we can't control bourgeois belief in the "regularity of the world"

Susan Harding

-professor at UCSC who has retired -also taught at university of Michigan -starting in the 80s, did research on baptists fundamentalists -The Book of Jerry Falwell

Keith Basso on being silent

-speaking or being silent is not just an individual action; it carries social meaning and is regulated by cultural norms. There are situations in which it is appropriate or inappropriate to speak -these situations may be different across different cultures

Lila Abu-Lughod

-teaches at Colombia university -woks on women and islam in Egypt

Key elements of witnessing

-telling the gospel story (of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) -confront and invite the listener to know the lord as savior may also include: -telling about how speaker came to know the lord as savior and of their encounters with god -providing explanations of doctrine (heaven and hell)

Her critique on anthropologists being "neutral observers"

-this "detachment" estranges anthropologists from the people they study -it implies a position 'above' the people they study, and lack of involvement with their problems and suffering -it objectifies and dehumanizes the people they study -it denies the possibility of an "insider" or "native" anthropology -it reflects the colonial origins of anthropology

Objective:

-who are Muslim French -why the controversy arounds headscarfs and "burkinis" -French secularism and republicanism -the dilemmas faced by Muslim French -the contradictions of secularism

William Cronon

.professor of history, geography, and environmental studies at the university of Wisconsin-madison from his website: "William Cronon studies American environmental history and the history of the American west. His research seeks to understand the history of human interactions with the natural world: how we depend on the ecosystems around us to sustain our material lives, how we modify the landscapes in which we live and work, and how our ideas of nature shape our relationships with the world around us"

On the racial and cultural position of Garifuna

.some stereotypes and prejudices that circulate about Garifuna --"backward," "primitive," "superstitious" --"hypersexual" --"lazy" --"peaceful," "passive," "fun-loving" Mestizo Beauty Standards favor whiteness --"Blacks" viewed as "Racial Others" within the Honduran nation --Historic constructions of the Honduran nation view Mestizos - conceived as descendants of Europeans and Indians- as the 'true' members of the nation

Critiquing the notion of "Economic Man"

The notions of economic man: •Humans, naturally, have many wants but the means to fulfill them are limited. •They act out of rational self-interest to fulfill those wants as efficiently as possible. The critique: --Not all cultures institutionalize wants as infinite and means as limited --Capitalist societies have done that The idea of "economic man" is a construction of capitalist society

Possible essay question?

In your own culture(s), think about situations in which it is appropriate to be silent, and when it is inappropriate to be silent.

Franz Boas

Known for: --Leadership in making anthropology an academic discipline in the U.S. --Careful Documentation of Native American Cultures --Critiques of Ranking Cultures in a Hierarchy --Contributions to the Culture Concept --Critiques of Racism

Definition of Hunter Gatherers (Foragers) from Blackwell Dictionary of Anthropology

Peoples who subsist on hunting, gatherning and fishing with no domesticated plants, and no domesticated animals except the dog

Objectives:

Renato Rosaldo and Ilongot Headhunting: -understanding the anger in grief -the cultural force of emotions; finding the middle ground between the experience of emotions as culturally variable and universally human Susan Harding and fundamentalists baptists -approach belief -"witnessing" as a practice of conversion -the thin membrane between belief and disbelief -ethnography in the space between belief and disbelief

Sahlins argument of hunter-gatherer societies

Sahlins argues that hunter-gatherer societies can be considered affluent societies because the material wants of the people in the society are readily satisfied.

Harding on approaching "belief"

Social scientists through a variety of means generally do not let themselves get close enough to "belief" to understand it, or, for that matter, even to see what it is. Men and women convert to fundamental Christianity because they become convinced that supernatural reality is a fact, that Christ is the literal Son of God, that he did rise from the dead and is alive today, that the Holy Spirit is speaking to them, that Jesus will enter their hearts if they acknowledge their sins, that they will have eternal life, that God is really real. To continue to think otherwise would be irrational; it is disbelief that is false and unthinking. The appropriate question then is how does this supernatural order become real, known, experienced, absolutely irrefutable? (168)

Definitions of Fieldwork from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

in the past: field= small community of people now: field= anywhere; refers to the gathering of data through talking to people or materials 2: work done in the field (as by students) to gain practical experience and knowledge through firsthand observation 3: the gathering of anthropological or sociological data through the interviewing and observation of subjects in the field

seth holmes

medical anthropologists -has MD and PhD in anthropology -teaches at Berkley

What is Capitalism?

society that relies on markets (commodities)

Concepts often seen as closely related to culture:

society, civilization

on the idea of "naturecultures" or "nature/culture"

the basic idea behind this term is to try to rethink the separation between humans and nature, culture and nature, humans and non-humans ("more than humans"); see them as mixed together, as existing in relation to each other

how culture talk represents the west and islam

western civilization: modern, rational, secular, freedom as core value islamic civilization: non-modern, conventional, mystical, doctrinal, religiously dogmatic, absence of freedom good muslims: modern, secular, westernized bad muslims: anti-modern, doctrinal, anti-western

themes from "do muslim women need saving"

why do discussions of politics in the Middle East so often turn to questions of culture and women? the idea of "saving" muslim women: --as justification for intervention with colonial precedents the "politics of the veil" --women's agency / why women cover --modesty / piety --"portable seclusion"

Sahlin on consumption

"Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation. Bringing together an international division of labor, the market makes available a dazzling array of products: all these Good Things within a man's reach—but never all within his grasp. Worse, in this game of consumer free choice, every acquisition is simultaneously a deprivation, for every purchase of something is a foregoing of something else..." (82)

Lila Abu-Lughod: Critiques of the culture concept (from "Writing Against Culture")

"Culture is the essential tool for making other" (143) *essentialism: the culture concept can be used in ways that describe groups by a fixed set of qualities or traits, as "essence" that defines them *timelessness: tendency to deny history to cultures; to study people as if what they do today is how it always has been done; and if not, as if they have become corrupted is some way *coherence/wholeness: tendency to emphasize the "coherence" of a culture, downplaying heterogeneity and contestation *discreteness: tendency to portray cultures as bounded and discrete, viewing "self" and "other" (our culture vs their culture) in terms of essential differences rather than in terms of relations

Benedict on the molding Force of Culture

"Most people are shaped to the form of their culture because of the enormous malleability of their original endowment. They are plastic to the moulding force of the society into which they are born" (254). •This does not mean we are automatons; it just means that from birth we are very malleable beings who learn the values and norms and concepts and practices of our society. •We tend to see our cultural habits as normal or natural and so we do not recognize how much of our behavior comes by way of learned habit.

Rosaldo on the striking a balance between viewing the experience of emotions as culturally variable and as universally human:

"My vivid fantasies, for example, about a life insurance agent who refused to recognize Michelle's death as job-related did not lead me to kill him, cut off his head, and celebrate afterward. In so speaking, I am illustrating the discipline's methodological caution against the reckless attribution of one's own categories and experiences to members of another culture. Such warnings against facile notions of universal human nature can, however, be carried too far and harden into the equally pernicious doctrine that, my owngroup aside, everything human is alien to me. One hopes to achieve a balance between recognizing wide-ranging human differences and the modest truism that any two human groups must have certain things in common." (171)

Sahlin on Hunger

"One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of greatest technical power, is starvation an institution." (pg. 94) According to the organization Feeding America in 2015: •42.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, including 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children. •13 percent of households (15.8 million households) were food insecure. •5 percent of households (6.3 million households) experienced very low food security.

Harding on believing or disbelieving

"The membrane between disbelief and belief is much thinner than we think. All I had to do was to listen to my witness and to struggle to understand him. Just doing so did not make me a fundamental Baptist born-again believer, but it drew me across that membrane in tiny ways so that I began to acquire the knowledge and vision and sensibilities, to share the experience, of a believer." (178) -her colleagues in anthropology warned her of the 'dangers' of doing this kind of 'fieldwork' "I was given to think my credibility depended on my resisting any experience of born-again belief. The irony is that this space between belief and disbelief, or rather the paradoxical space of overlap, is also the space of ethnography. we must enter it to do our own work" (178)

Benedict as culture as patterned

"The significance of cultural behavior is not exhausted when we have clearly understood that it is ... hugely variable. It tends also to be integrated. A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action. Within each culture there come into being characteristic purposes not necessarily shared by other types of society. In obedience to these purposes, each people further and further consolidates its experience, and in proportion to the urgency of these drives the heterogeneous items of behavior take more and more congruous shape. Taken up by a well-integrated culture, the most ill-assorted acts become characteristic of its peculiar goals, often by the most unlikely metamorphoses. The form that these acts take we can understand only by understanding first the emotional and intellectual mainsprings of that society" (Benedict, pg. 46, my emphasis).

Sahlin on rethinking the idea of poverty

"The world's most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, not is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization." (Sahlins, page 95)

Benedict on the relativity of "abnormality" and "normality"

"Those who function inadequately in any society are not those with certain fixed 'abnormal' traits, but may well be those whose responses have received no support in the institutions of their culture. The weakness of these aberrants is in great measure illusory. It springs, not from the fact that they are lacking in necessary vigour, but that they are individuals whose native responses are not reaffirmed by society" (270, emphasis mine). -abnormalities are cultural constructs

Vulnerable observer

"being a vulnerable observer means not taking the easy way out. It means not letting yourself off the hook. It means trying to hear other people's less-than generous readings of your hidden intentions, especially in the truncated context of politically correct speech" (221)

Class and Class Struggle

"the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (CM 473) "the modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of federal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat" (CM 474) For Marx, class is a social relation. One's class position is defined by their relationship to the process of production

Fish on how hypo descent assigns individuals to a racial category in the US system

"the various purported racial categories are arranged in a hierarchy along a single dimension, from the most prestigious ("white"), through immediate forms ("Asian") to the least prestigious forms ("black"). And when a couple comes from two different categories all their children...are classified as belonging to the less prestigious category" (275)

on the social reality of race and racism (and why) taking the "color-blind" positions is inadequate)

"thinking seriously about race and racism in the twenty-first century means starting with this paradoxical realization: we don't want race to rule our lives, yet we can't seem to live together without obeying its calls. Successfully dealing with racism means creating social policy and embracing personal politics that recognize the paranoid power of this knotty impasse confounding us all" (21)

William Willis' "minimal definition" of anthropology as historically practiced:

"to a considerable extent, anthropology has been the social science that studies dominated colored peoples-and their ancestors-living outside the boundaries of modern white societies" (from his essay, "skeletons in the anthropological closet" 1972)

secularism

-"indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations" -"the belief that religion should not play a role in government, education, or other public parts of society" -involves idea of separation of church and state (religion should be protected from the state; governance should not be dictated by religion) -in france, there is a predominant ideology that religion is a "private" affair and should not be a part of state governance or exercise of citizenship (citizens should leave religion at home)

What is muslim French?

-"women and men committed to practicing islam as French citizens and to practicing French citizenship as pious muslims" (13) -many are the children of immigrants from a variety of different places, mostly former colonies of France three largest countries of origin/ancestry for muslim French (includes parents, grandparents, etc) -algeria: under French control from 1830-1962 -Morocco: under French and Spanish control from 1912-1956 -Tunisia: under French control from 1881-1956

1932 letter from sixto cacho (a garifuna man) asking for gov. support

--"The authorities should protect us, in one form or the other; we are negros, we know it, but fortunately or unfortunately we are legitimate brothers of the indo-latinos; there are those that do not know the history and probably balk at what is written; but is very certain, like the sun that shines on us daily." --"I can demonstrate to whomever asks that the carib race (meaning Garifuna, the term Garifuna was not used at the time) that populates the north coast of Honduras descends from the inhabitants encountered by Columbus...during the discovery of America" (pg. 89-90).

what wilderness meant 270 years ago in Europe and the US

--"deserted, savage, barren, waste" --antithesis of order and good --derived from biblical sense of places beyond civilization, where Christ struggled with temptations of satan, where Adam and eve were driven from the garden of Eden

On the "clinical gaze"

--"in the paradigm of the clinical gaze, physicians examine and talk about the patient's diseases, while the patient remains largely silent" (115) --focus is on disease as separate from the person or wounded body parts rather than on whole person --critics of this paradigm argue that medicine can depersonalize and dehumanize the patient

on the idea of structure

--"the arrangement of and relations between the parts or elements of something complex" --for our purposes, think of a structure as a system of relations between entities in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts --in the social sciences: the focus on structure emphasizes the collective and social-culture-political-economic systems and forces

definition of anthropocene

--"the period of time during which human activities have had an environmental impact on the earth regarded as constituting a distinct geological age" example of word in use: Most scientists agree that humans have had a hand in warming the earth's climate since the industrial revolution-some even argue that we are living in a new geological epoch, dubbed the anthropocene the term anthropocene emphasizes how "humans have become geological agents, changing the most basic physical processes of the earth" (Ghosh, quoting Depish Chakrabarty, pg 9)

objective:

--'"the black power we wear": the complex politics of consuming and imitating "black America" -- tourism and the elusive value of culture

"Sociedad cultural Lincoln"

--1st major Garifuna organization, founded in 1958 --founders involved in Honduran labor movement --struggled to end segregation and promote Garifuna civil rights --dissolved due to repression resulting from military coup (1963) --former members helped create the organization fraternal negra de Honduras (OFRANEH)

Early Garifuna History

--Garifuna are a people formed out of the encounter between a group of native peoples of the Caribbean (Callinago-whom the British called Caribs)- and west Africans from various groups who had escaped slavery in other parts of the Caribbeans, on the island of st. Vincent --British take possession of part of the island in 1763 --After 2 wars with Garifuna, British deport Garifuna to central america in 1797 --British officials and planters called Garifuna "Black Caribs" and used the African origins and "blackness" of Garifuna to deny them native status on the island

the sublime

--In 18th century romanticism, certain types of places (mountain top, waterfall, thundercloud, rainbow) became associated with the experience of god; inspired awe and dismay more than joy or pleasure --by the late 19th century, the sublime experience if wilderness became more pleasurable, contemplative, relaxing, tame; wilderness is domesticated as tourist spectacle

Common Image of Hunter-Gatherers (Foragers) in Economic Textbooks (as reflection of what human life was like before agriculture)

--Life of deprivation and poverty --Life as constant struggle for survival --With no time to 'build culture'

The Bourgeoisie (Capitalist Class)

--The bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, are the owners of the means of production in capitalist society --As owners of capital, capitalists dictate what is going to be produced, how much, at what pace, etc.. In other words, ownership of capital gives capitalists the power to control the process of production. --Classical Political Economy thought that "Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are utilized in order to produce new raw materials, new instruments of labour and new means of subsistence" (WLC 207). --But for Marx, capital is a social relation specific to bourgeois society. "In production, men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce only by co-operating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities. In order to purchase, they enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connection and relations does their action on nature, does production, take place" (WLC 207).

The Proletariat (Working class)

--The proletariat, or working class, are the owners of labor power in capitalist society. They lack capital --Labor power is the capacity to labor. In capitalist society, labor power has a price. It is exchanged on the market like there commodities. Workers compete with one another for jobs-hence the term, labor market --Because commodities are produced for exchange in capitalist society, so too must the labor that produces those commodities be made exchangeable. Thus, labor power sinks to the level of a commodity --"Labor power is, therefore, a commodity which its possessor, the wage-worker, sells to capital. Why does he sell it? In order to live" (WLC 204). --"Thus capital presupposes wage labor; wage labor presupposes capital. They reciprocally condition the existence of each other..." (WLC 209-10).

A quick, working definition of race:

--a concept/idea that attempts to classify and differentiate human beings into categories and groups based on perceived physical appearance, biological difference, and/or ancestry --that typically involves a worldwide, a body of prejudgement (stereotypes) about the qualities or characteristics of members of different groups most social scientists view race as: --a social, historical construction involving a set of myths or illusions about biological differences among humans --that nonetheless has a social reality with real effects such as the power to shape perceptions of self and other and to define people's identities and opportunities within unequal relations to power

Lessons that Holme's draws from abelino's case

--abelino's pain is a product of structural violence (the work he does and the limited options available to him) --his frustrated experience with health care is a product of the structure of health care, "the likely outcome of an impossible hectic, understaffed and impersonal health care system" (124) --clinician's observations and bio technical testing are clued over the patient's account --clinicians may engage in symbolic violence and "inadvertently blame their patients for their suffering" --"structural violence not only victimizes the poor and the patient but also, though in a different fashion, the professional, the physician"

on why we (critical thinkers of race and racism) need to take racial paranoia seriously:

--as important feature of US social reality of race/racism: "What I am calling racial paranoia delineates something essential about how all Americans confront social differences in their lives, a racial paranoia constituted by extremist thinking, general social distrust, the nonfalsifiable embrace of intuition, and an unflinching commitment to contradictory thinking" (7) --as pointing towards a way of seeing: "Racial paranoia isn't about seeing racism where it doesn't exist. It is a rudimentary and imperfect recognition that spotting racism at all these days demand new ways of seeing altogether" (22) --helps us realize "At some level, race talk is always paranoid talk" and comprehend "the lingering impact of America's history" (96)

Transnational

--as used by anthropologists, the term refers to processes of movement (of people, goods, money, capital, ideas, ideologies, etc) across nation-states Transnational Migration: "a process of movement and settlement across international borders in which individuals maintain or build multiple networks of connection to their country of origin while at the same time settling in a new country" (Georges Fouron and Nina Glick Shiller, Georges Woke Up Laughing, 2001, page 160)

nature/culture

--attributions of moral and political responsibility --configure society

Capitalist Competition and Economic Development

--capitalist social property relations produce a from of economic competition, where privately owned businesses compete with one another on the market --whoever produces at the lowest cost and sells at a lowest price wins. Businesses that cannot profitably sell their goods at the market rate tend to go out of business --Because capitalists relentlessly try to cut costs, they tend to invest in the most productive and efficient means of production (machinery) whenever possible, employing the latest techniques, etc. --this gives rise to a technological dynamism not seen in any other form of class society

Hunter Gatherers and Work Time

-according to Sahlins, hunter gatherers spend roughly an average of 3-5 hours a day on getting and preparing food -they are not necessarily engaged in a consistent struggle for survival -they do not hoard or save, trusting they can acquire food anew when they need it

Class Antagonism, Class Struggle

--capitalists and workers have antagonistic interests --capitalists want to keep wages down while workers want to raise them. Because wages are a cost to capital, the more paid out in wages the lower the profits. This antagonism is also present regarding the intensity of work. Class struggle often takes place over wages, benefits, the intensity of work, etc. --Capitalists do not try tom keep wages down and productivity up because they are immoral or "selfish." Competition compels them to keep costs low so they can sell their commodities at the lowest price to beat their competitors

Class Structure

--class societies, by definition, are societies that produce surplus. All class societies are composed if both producing and appropriating classes --In feudal societies, serfs are the producers and lords are the appropriators. Serfs are legally bund to plots of land, where they produce their own means of subsistence. Their surplus is appropriated through coercive force and heavy taxation. Some of their time spent laboring upon the feudal lord's land. If they have any surplus left over, it might be sold at a local market. --In capitalist society, proletarians are the producers and capitalists are the appropriators. Proletarians and capitalists are legally free and equal individuals. Proletarians contract out their labor power to capitalists in exchange for a wage. Capitalist society is characterized by market dependence.

Capitalist Competition and Economic Development II

--competition compels capitalists to introduce a complex division of labor. Specialization of tasks increases worker productivity --capitalist competition encourages growth to receive return to scale. returns to scale lower the cost per unit of output --"the greater the labor army among whom labor is divided, the more gigantic the scale on which machinery is introduced, the more does the cost of production proportionately decrease, the more fruitful is labor. Hence, a general rivalry arises among the capitalists to increase the division of labor and machinery and to exploit them on the greatest possible scale" (WLC 212).

why take consumption (in this case style, fashion, dress) seriously as a cultural practice

--consumption is a medium of communication --it conveys meanings about social identity and status --not just a means of "expressing" one's self but a way of making or "fashioning" one's self --clothing particularly significant because it's visible and portable

Marx's method

--denaturalization: to historicize social phenomena rather than take the appearance of the world as an essential or eternal human truth --when we denaturalize something, we realize that we can transform it --marx is a relational thinker. Categories do not stand on their own, but exists within a constellation of concepts and categories that give one another meaning. A concept will have some kinds of core-meaning, but recall that it always exists and must be understood in relation to others --for Marx, things are conceived of as relations. A thing is not merely the sum of its qualities but also an expression of the social whole. This is why Marx's analysis of capitalism begins with the commodity. A Commodity is a good produced for exchange on the market

the structure of farm labor and ethnic-citizenship segregation and hierarchy on the tanaka farm

--farm executives (10) tanka family and white professionals --crop managers (3) white men --supervisors (10) mostly US latinxs, a few white citizens, a few mestizo Mexicans and one indigenous Mixtec Mexican; mostly men --Administrative Assistants (10) women: mostly whites, a few latinx US citizens --checkers (20) local white teenagers --field workers paid hourly (60) latinxs from Texas, Mestizo Mexicans, a few Mixtec-Oaxacans --field workers paid by weight (300) ."the white crew" (local teenage whites) ."the Mexican crew" (mostly indigenous triqui Mexicans, some Mixtec Mexicans, some mestizo Mexicans in better paying apple picking jobs)

elements of "racial paranoia" as a cultural-psychological phenomena in US society

--fears: "fears people harbor about other groups potentially hating or mistreating them, gaining a leg up at their expense" (4) --"hard" versions: "distrustful conjecture about purposeful race-based maliciousness" ; "Soft" versions: "the 'benign neglect' of racial indifference" (3) --involves forms of extremism --emphasizes lack of social trust --felt, intuited-hard to argue against it --characteristic of post-civil rights era, in which public expressions of racism are condemned but racism persists

promoting alternative ways of thinking about humans and nature (continued)

--finding a "middle ground" between the responsible use and non-use of nature: "...we need awn environmental ethic that will tell us as much about using nature as about not using it" (21) --learn to respect, care about and care for the less spectacular nature of the immediate landscapes where we live and work [and the humans that live their too!] "...we need to embrace the full continuum of a natural landscape that is also cultural, in which the city, the suburb, the pastoral, and the wild each has its proper place, which we permit ourselves to celebrate without needlessly denigrating the others." (24)

The contradictions of capitalism

--for Marx, capitalism is contradictory because people relate to one another upon the basis of the commodity they own, rather than on the basis of their humanity or personality. For example, owners of capital relate to owners of labor power --capitalism is irrational because it generates the immense technological capacity and economic development, but still produces poverty --the introduction of new technologies displaces the need for workers --in a rational society, technological development would reduce labor time, but capitalist social relations and competition ensure this does not happen --periodic crises reveal capitalism's irrationality: there is an abundance of goods, but few can purchase them --the bourgeoisie creates its own "gravediggers." By concentrating on exploited class in factories, it makes possible forms of social organization that the exploited class can use to overthrow the approaching class. Marx argues that as the exploited class, the proletariat has an interest in abolishing the capital-labor relation and class society as such

OFRANEH

--founded in 1977 --continued earlier anti-racist struggles --in 1980s. began to embrace language of indigenous rights --helped create federation of "ethnic autochthonous peoples" (included organizations representing Garifuna, Miskito, Lenca, etc.)

the examples of Sean Jean

--founder/owner Sean Combs (aka Puff Daddy, P. Diddy); makes clothes with "urban sensibility and style" --subcontracted for production of clothes to Honduran factory --brief scandal erupted when hyper-exploitative and repressive labor conditions were exposed by labor activists --my friend Milton had some Sean Jean apparel sent to him by relatives in the US --my friend Larissa, Milton's cousin, worked for awhile in the same kind of factory that makes Sean Jean apparel

why did OFRANEH turn to indigenous rights in the 1980s?

--honduran government refused to recognize existence of racism --indigenous rights and indigenous movements receiving increased attention in the americas, and internationally --international law and conventions provided arena where activists could put pressure on the Honduran government --indigenous rights provided a language to address a series of problems affecting Garifuna communities indigenous rights (examples) -recognition as legitimate, distinctive peoples -rights to bilingual/intercultural education -rights to collectively owned land and territory -rights to prior consultation on projects affecting communities

Abelino's Case, in a nutshell (pg. 117-125)

--hurt his knee picking berries; can't bend to pick --remedeies to alleviate the pain largely ineffective; communication with doctors difficult due to language barriers and short appointment times --claim with Washington state department of labor for worker's compensation but the claim under-reports his wages --request to do "light duty work" on the farm denied --specialist tells him he should exercise his knee by picking berries --in meeting with department of labor, asks that they support him in getting :light duty work" on the farm the following season. Denied. --his compensation case is closed; the above specialist signs form says he can return to work --following year he tries but can't. His compensation claim is denied on the basis of an x-ray that is interpreted as showing his knee did not get worse

global politics of climate change

--in global south, there is a concern with equitable participation in carbon-based economies (and reduction of CO2 emissions) that acknowledges global disparities and disproportionate role of west (particularly US) in fomenting climate change --in the "Anglosphere" (US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand), there is polarization between: ->climate change activism / science ->climate change denialism US military views climate change as a security threat. --A possible scenario: "the politics of the armed life boat"

When anthropologists began studying Garifuna

--in the 1940s --they focused on Garifuna as having non-western cultural practices (and language) and argued over whether the origins of Garifuna culture should be traced to Africa or indigenous peoples of the Caribbeans --when I started my research on Garifuna in the 1990s, I was interested in how Garifuna understood and represented their own cultural origins and "racial" identity, and their relationship to others within Honduran society

insights from china blue

--largest migration in history happening in contemporary china (130 million rural Chinese moving to urban areas in early 2000s) - many are teenage girls/women --play key role in production of goods for global markets ]focus of film is blue jean factory] --working conditions hyper-exploitative -make equivalent of $1-2 a day -work long hours, few breaks symbolic violence: --rural migrants represented as backward, lazy, lacking discipline, and as criminal --working conditions in factories not simply a product if Chinese state policy but of global market structures. quotes from film: "the major brands demand such low prices that factories are often forced to violate international labor standards." "A factory that allowed its workers adequate rest and paid minimum wage would not be able to compete"

Exploitation

--marx argues that a worker produces more value than its reflected in their subsistence wage. This differed is a capitalist's profit. It is essentially unpaid labor, but this is obscured by the wage. Marx calls this process exploitation. --thus, for Marx, because this is where profit comes from there is no such thing as a fair wage. All wage labor is explored labor. --"the worker receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labor power, but the capitalist receives in exchange for his means of subsistence labor, the productivity activity of the worker, the creative power whereby the worker not only replaces what he consumes but gives to the accumulated labor a greater value than it previously possessed" (WLC 209).

exclusions and contradictions of the frontier myth

--masculinist --white --bourgeois settler colonial: --the idea of frontier wilderness as "unsettled" or "virgin" erased the indigenous presence; frontier expansion was a violent process of Indian removal --persisting indigenous peoples forcibly removed from and kept out of lands defined as national parks --"the removal of Indians to create an 'uninhabited wilderness' - uninhabited as never before in the human history of the place - remind us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is. To return to my opening argument: there is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness" (16)

characteristics of Holme's Framework

--multi-sited: doing participant observation more than one place (Washington State [Skagit County], California [Madera], Oaxaca ]San Miguel]) --holmes, shared, to a greater extent than most researchers do, the living conditions of the people he studied --Activist anthropology: fieldwork and writing explicitly designed to raise social awareness and promote social change

what wilderness meant in the late 19th century

--places of beauty requiring protection and preservation --likened to the garden of eden --places people can go to escape the modern, urban, industrialized world

the temporal and spatial separation of production and reproduction of Mexican migrant labor force in the US (pg 12-13)

--production = the work of the labor force; happens in U.S. --reproduction = the process of raising and educating the migrant labor force in the U.S.; this happens in Mexico --U.S. society does not "pay" for the reproduction of the labor force (or, in many cases, the convalescence of people no longer able to work) --the absence of citizenship rights for many Mexican migrant workers in the U.S. creates the possibility for intensive economic exploitation while deferring costs of social reproduction

examples of solidarities

--promote "fair trade" practices to ensure fair treatment of workers --lobby to change immigration policy and border practices --reformulate trade agreements that contribute to the devastation of rural communities in the global south --reform international financial institutions (international monetary fund, world bank)

racial paranoia according to Jackson

--racism involves more than individual beliefs and actions; it involves collective meanings (culture, discourses) and the production of collective hierarchies (structures of power, privilege and inequality) --given that overt expressions of racism are publicly unacceptable, "How do Americans experience this contemporary versions of racism, a kind that can't safely speak it's own name, a kind that must deny the accusation (even if it's secretly true)" (22?)

what does Jackson suggest we need to do to think/act critically about race and racism

--recognize that gains of civil rights era have not meant the elimination of racism --recognize that "political correctness" in the post-civil rights era may help fuel racial paranoia (because racism is not acceptable as public discourse) --go out of your own way to build friendships across racial/ethnic distinctions; to create diversity in your social life and living situation --teach yourself (and your kids) to see race, not to try to be oblivious to it --listen to other peoples' positions; interrogate your own beliefs and assumptions --promote policies and politics that address "continued structural differences in racial realities" (206) --face up to your own fears --be a "vulnerable observer"

promoting alternative ways of thinking about humans and nature

--recognize, respect and be responsible to the "autonomy" and "otherness" of non-human nature(s), in which we humans are entangled humans must use nature: "but if we acknowledge the autonomy and otherness of the things and creatures around us - an autonomy our culture has taught us to label with the world "wild" - then we will at least think carefully about the used to which we put them, and even ask if we should use them at all" (24)

Holme's suggestions for change (conclusion)

--rethink the terms used to describe immigration and migrants; challenge idea of "voluntary" versus "forced" migration --promote micro-level changes on farms --develop "critical public health and liberation" medicine --solidarities: promoting policies and initiatives to work towards transforming structural conditions

for young Garifuna men I knew, styles (and brands) associated with "Black America" can signify

--self-affirmation --resistance to racism --being modern, cosmopolitan --economic and social status --having transnational connections the power of Garifuna consuming "Black America" in Honduras derives both from its associations with Black pride and resistance and its associations with the power and status of the US in the world order

two concepts

--structural violence: "the violence committed by configurations of social inequalities that, in the end, has injurious effects on bodies..." Structural violence in the U.S. is "organized along the fault line of class, race, citizenship, gender, and sexuality" (pg 43) --symbolic violence: misrecognition of the inequalities resulting from social-cultural-political-economic structures as natural or normal, leaving those structures invisible

The Promise Tourism offers Garifuna, according to the tourist industry and Honduran government:

--tourism "adds value" to Garifuna communities by providing jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities and valorizing Garifuna )traditional) "culture" Anderson's counter-perspective: Tourism extracts value from Garifuna communities by: --appropriating the image if Garifuna people to promote tourism --commodifying and undervaluing Garifuna culture --exploiting labor meanwhile, land prices rise and there is even-increased pressure on Garifuna lands

Overt Segregation in the past

--until the last 1950s Garifuna and others identified as Black were forbidden entry into social clubs and restaurants and even the Central Park of la ceiba --US based fruit companies enforced segregation. Garifuna were relegated primarily to the most menial jobs in the local economy. "Harmonious Racism" in the late 20th and early 21st century --within samba creek, most people (mestizos and Garifuna) share similar class positions (there are few "elites") and everyday social interactions is frequent, and friendly --stereotypes and prejudices about Garifuna persist --Garifuna reported instances of discrimination and mistreatment, especially outside the community

Hunter Gatherers and their Material Possessions

--what hunter gatherers possess they make themselves --typically have only what they can carry to a new place "want not, lack not": they do not lack what they do not want or need -just because a society doesn't have a lot of things, it doesn't necessarily mean they are poor

Garifuna history continued...

--when Garifuna arrive to Central America, the Spanish first saw them as "dangerous blacks" but allowed them to settle on the mainland --over time, Garifuna establish communities on the north coast of the territories that become Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua (became independent in 1840) and Belize (under British authority until 1981) --in the 19th century (and beyond), state officials understood Garifuna as a racially black population, lacking in civilization, with a "primitive" culture. In these ways, Garifuna were compared to Indians --In the late 19th and early 20th century, the growth of a banana industry dominated by US based companies brought many more people to the North Coast of Honduras

the structural context of migration

--why do Triqui come to work in the US at tremendous personal risk in crossing the border? --complicating the distinction between the voluntary, "economic" migrant and the political refugee --conditions in Mexico connected to the global economy and US trade policy --US agriculture heavily dependent on Mexican workers

Benedict's view on culture

-Culture as mediating perception, understanding, judgment -"No man [Mark: better to say human or person] ever looks at the world with pristine eyes" (Benedict, page 2) -Benedict highlights the "immensely important role of culturally conditioned behavior" in human life (page 20) -"In culture . . . we must imagine a great arc on which are ranged the possible interests provided either by the human age-cycle or by the environment or by man's various activities. One culture hardly recognizes monetary values; another has made them fundamental in every field of behavior . . . One builds an enormous cultural superstructure upon adolescence, one upon death, one upon after-life" (Benedict, pg. 24) -adolescence example: comparing Somoa to US primitive cultures: -Primitive cultures are now the one source to which we can turn...they are a laboratory in which we may study the diversity of human institutions -Primitive man never looked out over the world and saw 'mankind' as a group and felt his common cause with his species

Republic

-a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2): a political unit (such as a nation) having such a form of government" -"a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law -in France, republicanism places a great deal of emphasis on the idea that a citizen should first and foremost identify with the French nation and republic, above and beyond any religion, religious, ethnic or other "communitarian" identification

Witnessing

-a practice of "speaking the gospel" intended to bring an unsaved listener "under conviction" (into a space or belief). this happens in conversation and is more informal than preaching (speaking to a congregation) "witnessing aims to separate novice listeners from their prior given reality, to constitute a new, previously unperceived or indistinct reality, and to impress that reality upon them" (169)

Critiques of anthropology from the late 1960s and early 1070s (Lewis)

-anthropological work has political implications but anthropologists have not taken responsibility for the political consequences of what they do -in practice, it was the study of non-white peoples by mostly white Westerners, for the benefit of western societies and anthropologists, but not the people they study -anthropologists largely ignored the effects of colonialism and imperialism and structures of power on the people being studied (they unconsciously justified the colonial system) -anthropologists argued against biological racism but, through the culture concept, simultaneously perpetuated notions of fundamental differences between westerners and non-westerners. culture could be used explain the condition of oppressed peoples, ignoring their oppression

Lewis: suggestion for anthropology

-anthropologists should include "insiders" as well as "outsiders" -embrace idea of "perspectivistic knowledge" and a "multidimensional view of reality" -activist anthropology

objectives:

-anthropology in crisis - 1960s and 1970s -critiques of anthropology -rethinking the "objectivity" of the anthropologist as "outsider" -proposals for a decolonized anthropology -critiquing the culture concept

Cricket as a Conflict Resolution ritual in papua New Guinea - Trobriand Cricket movie notes

-chants and dances -they were taught the "white mans game"- which was rough on the villagers -made it a competition against the white men -competition became ritualized and political -the chants are controversial (ridicule people)-->taunting -

Anthropologist's critiques on these distinctions

-critique jugements of futures as more or less advanced -critique ideas of racial superiority/inferiority

objective

-critiques of culture concept (Lila Abu-lughod) -"culture Talk": critiquing certain understandings of Islam, the West and "culture conflict" (Mahmood Mamdeni -critiquing the idea that Muslim Women need "Saving" )Lila Abu-lughod

Mayanthi Fernando

-cultural anthropologist at UCSC -works on secularism, religion, sexuality

Renato Rosaldo

-cultural anthropologists (and poet) -taught at Stanford for many years, now at New York university -wrote a book on the practice of headhunting among the ilongot people of the Philippines. but he had no way to really understand what ilongot said when they told him about the intense rage they felt when they lost a loved one...

Economic Crisis

-economic crises are regular occurrences under capitalism. They are built into the logic of the system and serve to get rid of inefficient businesses. The losers either go bankrupt or are bought out by other businesses. --Crises are characterized by mass unemployment, low levels of consumption, low levels of investment, and a low rate of profit. --"Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he had called up by his spells" (CM 478).

Situations in which Apache deem silence appropriate

-meeting strangers -courting/dating -children coming home -getting cussed out -being with people who are sad -being with a person undergoing a curing ceremonial

factors contributing to Garifuna organizing against racism and proudly affirming blackness in the 1950s

.transnational / international --beginning of migration to the US --civil rights movement in US / anti-colonialism in Caribbean and africa .in Honduras --democratic openings and decline if dictatorship --rise of Honduran labor movement that included Garifuna and West Indians --election of president Ramon Villeda Morales (1957)

Racial Paranoia, Subtitles

1) "The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness" A definition of "political correctness": avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize or insult groups who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against" (from google) 2) "The New Reality of Race in America" in the post-civil rights era, explicitly racist speech is socially constructed by racism persists

as the International indigenous movement developed, indigenous became an international legal category, referring to particular kind of people who:

1) are minority peoples with "traditional" cultures distinct from that of majority 2) were present in a territory before the formation of current nation-state boundaries 3) occupy a marginal position in the nation-state in which they live --Garifuna could readily represent themselves as a people with distinct cultural practices who lived in the territory that became Honduras before Honduras became a nation-state (in 1821/1840) --and the Honduran state, by and large, has agreed that Garifuna have indigenous rights, even it does a pretty awful job of defending these rights

biological science arguments against the idea that races are "natural and separate divisions within the human species" -from the AAA statement:

1) genetic variation is as significant, or more significant, within a so-called racial group Tham across racial groups. According to AAA statement, of all the genetic variation among humans, 94% can be found within members of different "races." Only 6% of variation can be found across "conventional, geographic, 'racial' groupings" 2) throughout human history, different groups of people have interbred, sharing genetic material 3) physical traits are inherited independently from one another 4) there is no single gene or trait (or sets if genes and traits) where one can say that one "race" stops and another begins

justifications for the Headscarf ("veil") ban in public schools (pg 147)

1) the headscarf "violates the avowedly secular, neutral space of the public schools 2) the headscarf "represents an unacceptable form of communalism and is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger islamic threat" 3) the headscarf symbolizes the submission of women to patriarchal religious authority"

Jefferey Fish "Mixed Blood": Comparing racial classification schemes in the U.S. and Brazil

1) the racial categories are different --Brazil has a continuum of racial or color categories between "black" and "white" [e.g. pretax ("black"), moron, mulata and branch ("white") and many others] while the U.S. has a binary distinction between "black" and "white" --how an individual is classified racially could very well change if they move from one country to another 2) the principles of how individuals are classified are different --in Brazil classification is based primarily on physical appearance [also, how people classify each other in racial or color terms can depend on other factors such a social status and wealth] --in US classification is based primarily on perceived ancestry "hypodescent" (the "one drop rule")

two dilemmas facing muslim French

1) to be muslim in France, to be muslim French, is to be positioned (represented by other French) as not French 2) bench secularism makes it very difficult, perhaps impossible, from muslim French to take legible or comprehensible their adherence to republican values as modern, individual citizens and as practicing muslims

Ethnography: Two Meanings

1)The Practice of Fieldwork 2) The Product (usually written, e.g. a book or article) of Fieldwork --typically (invariably?) involves not only the presentation of data but also its interpretation and analysis

from convention 169(indigenous and tribal peoples convention) of the International labor organization

1. This convention applies to: - (a) tribal peoples in independent countries whose social cultural and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or regulations - (b) peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions 2. self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a fundamental criterion for determining the groups to which the provisions of this convention apply

Diane Lewis

1931-2015 -cultural anthropologist -author of "anthropology and colonialism" - 1973 -taught at San Fransisco State and UCSC

Linguistic Anthropology

A sub-field of anthropology that involves the study of the relationship between language and social life. This includes topics such as the relationship between language and social identity or the relationship between language use and social context

some historic schemes of racial classification

Bernier (1684) -Europeans -Far Easteners -Negroes -Lapps Carolus Linnaeus (1758) -Americanus -

largest contributors to CO2 emissions, 2017

China: 23.43%, 1.371 billion U.S.: 14.69%, 321.4 million India: 5.7%. 1.311 billion

On changing forms of identification among Honduran Garifuna

Did Garifuna always identify as black? Did Garifuna always identify proudly as Black? Did Garifuna always identify themselves as African in origin? Did Garifuna always identify with peoples of African descent? Anthropologist Nancie Gonzalez argues that until the post world war II period Garifuna "persisted in identifying themselves as purely Indian." Before then, Garifuna "emphasized their South American origins, pointed out their ancestors never been enslaved and carved out a distinctive heritage that denied any African heritage."

Different views on culture

Edward Bennett Tylor (1871): "Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." Ruth Benedict (1934): "A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action". Clifford Geertz (1973): "Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning". Lila Abu-Lughod (1991): "I will argue that 'culture' operates in anthropological discourse to enforce separations that inevitably carry a sense of hierarchy. Therefore, anthropologists should now pursue... a variety of strategies for writing against culture".

Cultural Relativism

Ex from Benedict: "To the anthropologist, our customs and those of a New Guinea tribe are two possible social schemes for dealing with a common problem, and in so far as he remain an anthropologist he is bound to avoid any weighing one in favour of the other" (pg. 1). -If you want to learn about other cultures, you can't start off by assuming that your culture is the superior culture ex: the western civilization believes their culture is the dominant one -particularly insensitive to other cultures because of their power From the Blackwell Definition of Anthropology: "Cultural relativism expresses the idea that the beliefs and practices of others are best understood in the light of the particular cultures in which they are found. The idea is predicated on the degree to which human behavior is held to be culturally determined. This often joined with the argument that because all extant cultures are viable adaptations and equally deserving of respect, they should not be subject to invidious judgments of worth or value by outsiders." The basic principle: understanding other cultures requires suspending as far as possible, negative assumptions and judgments based on one's own culture.

Diaspora: the dispersal of people from an original homeland

Garifuna can be seen as belonging to several diasporas: --the African or Black Diaspora (dispersed/displaced from Africa) --The St. Vincent Diaspora (dispersed/displaced from St. Vincent) --For Garifuna in the US, the central American diaspora (dispersed/displaced from central america) Anderson's interest: Garifunas' diaspora identification as Black or African: the ways people identify themselves as part of an African diaspora, and with certain parts of the African Diaspora

Further reflections

Garifuna, even those invested in consuming "Black America," can be quite critical of those practices as: --"falling fir the vanity of the North American" --misuse of limited economic resources --activists worry over cultural loss --community members can criticize perceived arrogance of transmigrants; this reinforces values of maintaining community and Garifuna identity --Consuming "Black America" does not mean Garifuna are abandoning their particular culture or don't see themselves as a "traditional" people or don't participate in Black indigenism and activism. It's one way of fashioning identity that co-exists in tension with other modes of identity formation

Key population distinctions in Honduras

Mestizos (also sometimes called Ladinos, as well as "Blancos" and "Indios"): considered to be predominantly of European (especially) Spanish origin and "Indian" origin Etnias (Ethnic Groups) --Miskitos, Tahwakas, Pech, Lenca, Chortis, Tolupanes, Garifuna (also called Caribes (in the past) Morenos, Negros), Negros de Habla Inglesa (English Speaking Blacks, also called Creoles or Islenos)

Distinctions in How Humans are sometimes Conceptualized

Nature/Biology: race, genetics Culture: religion, economy, technology -some cultures seen as "more advanced" -judgements on who is "more advanced have been tied to ideas about racial differences

how muslims are rendered not French even when they are being "recognized" as part of the country

Nicolas Sarkozy (president of france) speech to the Muslim french: -"the national community holds out its hand to you. It is watching you. You are from now on accountable for the image of each and every muslim in France. Take this hand held out to you by the republic. Do not disappoint it, for the consequences would be enormous. (65) notice in the speech: --the "national community" does not include the muslim audience. he speaks from a position of a French "we" to a "you"/"them" --it implies that the "national community" (non-muslim French) have the right to surveil and judge you/them. --it treats muslim-french not as individual citizens but as members of a group responsible for the image of the group and all its individual members -it threatens muslim French

Proposed questions from Lewis

The questions may be posed: Is anthropology a truly universal discipline? Can it be utilized for explicit self-study and self-knowledge by all peoples? Is it able to meet the challenge of oppressed people who seek solutions to their prob- lems? Or is it useful only in providing information about powerless peoples to those in power? Is it to remain an adjunct to Western exploitation and ma- nipulation of Third World peoples?

Humans as "cultural critters" and "social beings"

What many anthropologists argue is that there is "no place outside of culture where you can go study the 'naked ape' stripped of his or her culture. People are molded by culture from the moment of birth, and probably even before that due to the cultural prescriptions for pregnancy and birth and the expectations that people have about the child" (Delaney, 10-11) -rather than thinking of us as individuals, first think of us as social beings •We grow up in communities of people and to survive and thrive we learn the language, modes of thought, values, technologies, habits, and so forth—the culture—of a particular society. •All humans by necessity develop in culturally particular ways. •We have no place "outside" of society and culture to investigate culture, and no humans living outside of society and culture to investigate. •And just as importantly, as human beings, our culture molds our perceptions, our judgments, our understanding. Of what? Everything: of other people, of our environment, of ourselves...

The status and expected social role of the individual is ambiguous either because:

a) he or she is unfamiliar; b) his or her status has changed temporarily due to a recent event --meeting strangers = a) person unfamiliar --Courting/Dating = a) Person unfamiliar --Children Coming Home = b) Status Change --Getting Cussed Out = b) Status Change —potential danger --With people who are sad = b) Status Change—potential danger --With a person undergoing a curial ceremonial = b) Status Change—potential danger

critiques of culture talk

culture talk is reductionist: 1)ignores diferences in enormously complex religious traditions that is Islam 2) ignores histories of colonial domination and European / U.S. involvement in Middle East and Africa 3) reduces politics to a reflex of religion 4) reduces people's complex cultural identities that may refuse binaries like modern/non-modern culture talk is essentialist: --uses notion of a cultural essence to assert that muslims are radically different from the west and that their culture is incompatible with the west culture talk, in suggesting cultural difference is inevitable source of conflict, prepares for war

Week 9 May 30: Wilderness as a Cultural Construct

environmental anthropology - now a major field within anthropology; reflections from Jerry Zee's lecture William Cronon on wilderness: -critical history of the wilderness idea -critical implications for environmentalism and thinking about humans and nature -suggestions for thinking differently

Initial Rules: Basic Stages (to an initiation ritual)

ex: orientation for incoming college students or someone joining the army •Separation: symbolically detached from social position or social group •Liminal (transitional): "betwixt and between" one position and another •Reaggregation: integration back into society or group with new position (adapting to a new character)

what environmental anthropologists do

explore the relationship between humans and environment, between humans and non-human life and non-living things as well from professor zee's lecture: --study human entanglements in "more than human" worlds --critically analyze ideas about nature --study relationship between environment and politics. What does politics look like if we center human life in environmental relations? --analyze "naturecultures," how culture (made by humans) and nature (in sense of environment) are not opposites but. entangled and emergent (humans change how nature works, and nature changes us)

Objectivity

expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations Lewis raises 2 questions: 1) is being objective (in sense of completely free of all biases) possible? 2) is being objective (in sense of detached, outside observer) desirable?

Andersons modified account

in the pre-world war II period, a period of intense anti-black racism in Honduras, Garifuna tended to: --emphasize their distinctive and particular identity and heritage as a group --differentiate themselves from other people identify as Black ("negro" in Spanish) --distance themselves from associations with slavery and Africa but this did not mean they did not see themselves as black or represented themselves as "purely Indian"

Concepts AGAINST which culture is often understood:

nature, biology, race (culture is learned, not innate)

Amitav Ghosh

novelist, essayist, historian -has a phd in anthropology -grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

Big Point: -seth holmes' ethnography of Triqui Mexican migrant farmworkers across U.S-Mexico

rather than think of the U.S. and Mexico as separate societies, imagine them as co-dependent and co-produced in relation to each other in a single political-economic-soical system.

wilderness as a construct that has no place for people, expect as tourists. The human us seen as opposed to / outside "Nature"

some problems: --leaves no place to consider what an honorable, responsible human role in Nature could look like (beyond protected areas) --allows us to "evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead" --the ultimate paradox: if there is no place for humans in nature the ultimate logical solution for protecting nature is...the suicide of humanity --can minimize issues of environmental justice for humans: ."if we set too high a stock on wilderness, too many other corners of the earth become less than natural and too many other people becomes less than human, thereby giving us permission not to care much about their suffering or fate" (20)

Andersons Fieldwork, main aspects:

studying Garifuna activism: --interviewing activists (garifuna and other indigenous peoples) --attending events, meeting, etc --interviewing government officials studying identity practices in everyday life: --participant observation, particularly with young men --semi-formal recorded interviews with men and women historical inquiry (relationships between Garifuna and the state, Garifuna and mestizos, especially from the early 20th century; histories of racism and exclusion; the emergence of Garifuna activism; how did Garifuna in previous eras identify themselves in 'racial' terms) --oral histoires --archival investigation

On the Transnational Political Economy of Brands and Blackness

the example of nike: --nike extremely popular brand in Honduras --Garifuna saw it as a "Black" brand, and a US brand --Nike "built" the brand in good part through associations with black male athletes and African American urban culture --Nike, like most clothing and shoe companies, subcontracts production to other companies that fun factories in the global south -Blackness is appropriated as source of value by the corporation, packaged in a commodity made by workers in the global south, and some of those commodities are consumed in the global south

culture shock

the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone who is suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes.

the frontier myth

the historic process of westward expansion became viewed through a nostalgic sense as the frontier was declared closed in this myth, "easterners and European immigrants, in moving to the wild unsettled lands of the frontier [Mark: they weren't unsettled], shed the trappings of civilization, rediscovered their primitive racial energies, reinvented direct democratic institutions, shed the trappings of civilization and thereby reinforced themselves with a vigor, and independence and a creativity that were the source of American democracy and national character." (13) frontier wilderness viewed as: --"last bastion of rugged individualism" (think cowboys) --place where real men escaped the confines of urban-industrial civilization

Professor's viewpoint on both articles

the lesson I draw from both articles: the study of humans by humans will only get so far if we imagine that study as being done exclusively by a "detached observer." if we want to have an understanding of the subjective experience of people as they live in the world, however partial that understanding may necessarily be, the researcher needs to be open to what they can learn from their own subjective experience in their encounters with other people

forms of symbolic violence

the naturalization, normalization, and/or rationalization of inequality and the misrecognition of the causes of inequality --racism, stereotyping, scapegoating --normalization: how social inequalities and suffering become viewed as "normal" --naturalization: tactic justifications of inequality and hierarchy that appeal to ideas of nature, such as "racial" differences --internalization: those in the lower positions of a social hierarchy can internalize ideas that reinforce and justify their position

tracing the transformation in the meaning of wilderness through two cultural constructs

the sublime: wilderness as awe-inspiring and sacred the frontier myth: nationalist nostalgia for untamed Nature, and the (white) men who supposedly tamed it

Continuation of #3

this takes 2 forms: 3A) girls wear headscarfs because they are forced to by fathers, brothers, or muslim leaders. The ban was emancipating women 3B) the headscarf, "even if worn as a matter of choice, perpetuates normative religious authority, polices female sexuality and prescribed gender roles, and reinforces patriarchal communal norms but not only on the veiled woman in question but on all muslim women around her" 3B relies on a stark opposition between freedom and acceptance of religious authority

Anthropology until the late 60s primarily focused on:

•non-Western so-called "primitive" or "pre-modern" peoples • living in "exotic" places • with "cultures" conceived as timeless, outside history • composed of "underlying beliefs and values" & expressed in practices, rites, material objects, behavioral patterns, • studied first-hand in a systematic and scientific manner ("fieldwork") • and written up in an "ethnography," an account of a particular culture/people

What do anthropologists do "in the field"? How do they gather data?

•talk to people (from casual conversations to formal interviews) •participant observation (do what the people they study do)"deep hanging out" •take field notes •record conversations and/or film events •may take surveys or make maps