Cultural Anthropology: Definition and Methods

Introduction

• The American tradition of anthropology includes at least four subfields: archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology.
• The book serves as a resource for scholars and the public, providing an update and assessment of the discipline's core ideas and developments.

Cultural Anthropology

• Contemporary definition: the study of human societies and cultures across time and space, including social and material relationships and patterns of meaning.
• Ethnographic methods involve sustained immersion, systematic inquiry, and interviews in a local language, using humanistic and scientific approaches.
• Cultural anthropology seeks to understand human diversity holistically before making generalizations, attending to power relations, symbolic meaning, and structural frameworks.
• Anthropologists challenge established categories and recognize instability, including key constructs within the discipline.

Cultural Anthropology in Practice

• Cultural anthropology helps make sense of developments in a rapidly changing world.
• An anthropologist would consider the unhomed by examining the structural systems that produce financial precarity and health insecurity, also spending time with individuals in camps and shelters.
• Anthropologists triangulate data from multiple sources, conduct in-depth interviews, maintain direct communication with interlocutors, and commit to sustained engagement.
• Ethnography is algorithmically complex, requiring more than simple survey questions.
• Pamela Reynolds' work in Zimbabwe exemplifies how anthropologists approach work in a specific area over time and produce collaborative works.
• Reynolds utilizes various data collection methods, including genealogies, income records, and nutritional measures, and analyzes data through interviews and observations.
• Collaboration with the community ensures local interpretations shape the research.

Cultural Relativism and its Critiques

• It's the idea that a culture should be understood on its own terms, not by the standards of another culture.
• Siwila critiques Reynolds for not adequately employing cultural relativism, seeing gendered labor and patriarchy as normal aspects of Tonga culture.
• The anthropological community acknowledges that both 'Native' and outside researchers can have biases that influence interpretations.
• Multivocality, the recognition of multiple voices within a community, is a key tenet.
• Anthropologists engage in discussions about universal human rights, particularly regarding vulnerable populations' health and well-being.
• While cultural relativism influences understanding, anthropologists may advocate for the most vulnerable.
• Anthropologists invest time and use varied methods to capture diverse voices, contrasting with short 'field stints' and authoritative approaches.

Holistic Approach

• Reynolds' books show this concept by being attentive to history, structural pressures, people's agency, and the meaning of 'life lived'.
• Anthropology informs policy and practice through diversified understandings of stories and place, influencing engagement in education, advocacy, aid, and policy.
• Reynolds' work addresses children's recovery from violence, adolescent girls with HIV, local activism, agricultural extension, and health.
• Reynolds' positionality as a Zimbabwean of European ancestry is complex, but she is committed to addressing injustice and colonial legacies.

Cultural Anthropology Today

• Anthropologists are open and continuously re-inventing themselves, with ethnography at the center and one inquiry leading to another.
• Veena Das focuses on violence and social suffering, influencing views on disruptions to everyday life and emphasizing concepts grounded in people's experience.
• Steve Lansing addressed problems in Balinese rice production by working with farmers and collaborators, using ecological modeling, and communicating with policy experts, which decolonized assumptions and highlighted local agro-ecological management.
• Carolyn Rouse focuses on dynamics of race and racism, demonstrating how powerful concepts play out in different contexts and in different subfields.

Anthropology in Practice

• Chapter 6 and 7 in the SAGE handbook speak to research and examples of holism from longitudinal studies.
• Examples of long-term, multi-generational projects that illustrate the holism that emerges from exploring community life over time include The Ju/'hoansi!-!Kung research project, Tzintuznuntzan project, the Harvard Chiapas project, Gwembe Tonga Research Project, and the Navajo research project
• These projects evolved to consider various topics due to the changes researchers and communities witnessed over time.
• Collaboration with community partners and new generations of anthropologists increases insights into various issues and specificities of life.

Core components of the volume

• This includes "Foundations", "Focal Areas", "Urgent Issues", and "Short Essays: Contemporary Critical Dynamics".
• 'Foundations' covers cultural anthropology's core ideas, dimensions of analysis, methods, key theories, and concepts like culture, kinship, race, and gender.
• 'Focal Areas' highlights dimensions of human life demanding in-depth attention, modified by anthropology, like economy, law, religion, environment, and medicine.
• Scholars are asked to consider the specialty's major contributions, current issues, influence on practice and policy, and future directions.
• The volume aims to review classic and contemporary approaches, engage theory and method, take a global perspective, and address applications.

Key themes

• Includes an openness to mixed methods and interdisciplinary collaboration.
• There is a dedicated focus on anthropology's growing emphasis on engaged work and concern with ethics and representation.
• 'Foundations' includes chapters on 'Structure and Agency', 'Systems and Complexity', humanistic approaches, and personhood.
• Reviews aim to give the reader a clear idea of key anthropological theories and approaches.
• Reviews aren't designed to be exhaustive.

Urgent Issues and Critical Dynamics

• Anthropologists address concerns like wealth distribution, health, environmental dynamics, climate change, and expressions of xenophobia and racism.
• There are chapters presented on 'Inequality and Precarity', climate change, 'Food Systems', 'Governance and Democratization', 'Mobility', and global health.
• Chapters present the state of the world in regard to the issue in question, asking how to understand these issues anthropologically.
• A selection of shorter essays on 'Contemporary Critical Dynamics' addresses late-breaking themes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-racism protests.
• Essays discuss topics like indigeneity, anti-Black racism, collaboration between anthropologists and conservationists, and human rights.

Alternative Rendering

• There are recognized omissions, such as chapters on the Anthropology of Education, Childhood and Youth, or Psychological Anthropology, while key chapters address them
• Linguistic anthropology is covered substantially to address language.
• Recruiting authors was challenging, specifically on symbolic and interpretive anthropology; this field of study has since been effectively wrapped into a range of work, that incorporates constructivist approaches with critically aligned inquiry.

Chapter Themes

• Equal rights themes feature centrally with chapters on inequality, precarity, economy, development, and food systems.
• Social justice is key to the promise, and failed promise, of democratization.
• There is an argument from Crane et al., that climate change cannot be solved independently of the other pressing issues that affect everyone.
• Structural and police violence is a key essay topic for the volume.

The Authors

• Focus on recruiting a diverse selection of scholars across different global locations, gender identifiers, race etc.
• Each chapter by each author was subject reviewed rigorously
• Written for policy makers to establish and refine, practices, policies, legislation or interventions.

Explore cultural anthropology's contemporary definition, emphasizing the study of human societies and cultures across time and space. Learn about ethnographic methods, involving immersion and interviews in a local language. Discover how anthropologists challenge established categories and address power relations.