Globalization and Culture

Globalization and Culture

• Globalization changes cultures due to connections between different groups.
• Diffusionists studied the spread of cultural attributes between societies in the early 20th century.
• 1950s Marxist anthropologists like Eric Wolf viewed non-Western societies within a global capitalist system.
• Mainstream anthropology was locally focused on face-to-face village research until the 1980s.
• Interconnections in globalization do not imply equality.
• Transnational relationships extend beyond nation-state boundaries but don't cover the whole world.
• Cell phones and the internet facilitate rapid global communication.
• Wealth significantly affects participation in global communication.
• Changing scales of globalization are dependent on human mobility.
• Migrants leave their country temporarily.
• Immigrants leave to stay permanently.
• Refugees flee their country.
• Exiles are involuntarily expelled.
• Post-WWII decolonization reversed colonial flows, leading non-Europeans to move to Europe and the US.
• Today, most migrants stay within their major region of birth.
• Decreasing air travel costs drastically impact mobility.
• Beginning in the 1870s, reduced tariffs and international trade accelerated a global economy.
• This results in exploitation of poorer countries with cheaper costs for corporations
• Globalization may lead to peace, but interconnectedness also benefits some at the expense of others.
• World Systems Theory divides the world into a dominant "core" and dependent "periphery."
• Core nations develop at the expense of periphery nations, which provide labor and raw materials.
• This dynamic results in the periphery's poverty, underdevelopment, and dependency on the core.
• Cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism help anthropologists understand linkages between local and global political-economic activity.
• Eric Wolf's "Europe and the People Without History" challenged stereotypes of Indigenous people as isolated victims.
• Resistance at the periphery ranges from open rebellion to subtle protest.
• In a Malaysian factory, women protested working conditions through disruptive spirit possession.
• Localization (or 'Glocalization') is reflected in consumption patterns.
• Clothing is used to convey messages in different cultures.
• People simultaneously engage in global and local communities, but rarely on equal footing.
• Colonial governments sought to bring civilization to the "uncivilized" world.
• In 1949, Harry Truman aimed to help the underdeveloped world.
• Development's goal: improve material conditions while maintaining diversity, or eliminate diversity to make everyone the same?
• Development can be exploitative if the goal is solely to profit off the community.
• Developmental Anthropologists guide development projects to benefit local populations.
• Cultures often modify other cultures rather than completely adopting them = cultural convergence and hybridization to exist
• Cultures take what they want and match them to their own desires, expanding, but not homogenizing, their practices.
• Ernest Gellner (1983) suggested local traditions fade as Western ideas replace them in non-Western communities.
• McDonaldization is a model of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and tight control over production.
• Multisited Ethnography holistically studies culture in multiple places for a greater understanding.

Sustainability: Environment and Foodways

• People conceive of nature and their relation to it in very different ways, which is reflected in other parts of culture
• Indigenous peoples of Southern Mexico/Central America vs Spanish who arrived in the 1500s is an example
• Natives retreated to tropic lowlands, while the Spanish found this environment oppressive and wondered why the forests were not just cleared.
• This reflects different worldviews: part of nature vs. dominant over nature.
• Foragers use marital/familial metaphors to describe human-nature relations.
• Four major modes of agriculture: Foraging, Horticulture, Pastoralism, and Intensive Agriculture.
• Foodways are permeated by cultural beliefs governed by systematic rules and etiquette.
• Rules regulate hunted animals, grown plants, sharing, preparation, and eating.
• Eating practices may mark gender, ethnic, regional, professional, or class differences.
• Food communicates social class, division, and unequal power relations.
• "Sumptuary Laws" restricted certain foods to preferred social classes.
• Mary Douglas suggested food is like language as a form of symbolic communication.
• She noted formal English dinners have a precise, sentence-like serving order.
• Douglas (1966) also concluded that food taboos, like Jewish dietary laws, symbolically communicate religious piety.
• Gerd Spittler observed that varied diets are seen as poverty in some cultures, as people are forced to eat anything available.
• Foodways may change due to environmental availability, perceived healthiness, technology, affordability, or social motivations.
• All systems of knowledge about nature are culturally based, including science.
• There was controversy over suggestions that Western culture included nonscientific elements and that non-Western societies had elements of science.
• Ethnoscience aims to describe and understand the conceptual models and rules by which a society operates.
• Indigenous peoples have been shown to possess ecological knowledge unknown to Western science.
• In the 1700s, Thomas Malthus argued that populations grow exponentially, overexploiting resources and crashing the environment.
• Paul Ehrlich revisited "Malthusian" overpopulation in his 1968 book "The Population Bomb."
• Industrial agriculture is based on limitless productivity and profit accumulation.
• Global industrialization continues to harm rural populations; family farms in the US have been declining for decades due to policies favoring industrial agriculture.
• Requirements for successful modern industrial agriculture such as chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and lots of water, are incredibly damaging to the environment
• Ethnographic fieldwork focuses on the social complexities surrounding knowledge production about climate change.
• Ethnography has also shown that different societies conceptualize and deal with climate differently.
• Indigenous peoples are susceptible to overexploitation as any other human group.
• They are often associated with closeness to nature because of their 'primitiveness,' something 'civilized' people cannot be
• Most 'natural' landscapes Westerners want to preserve result from Indigenous involvement and manipulation.
• Fortress Conservation is the Western idea that nature must be empty of people to be pristine.
• Such approaches fail to see beyond the idealized form of natural beauty for the now
• Game reserves: Enclosures of land to keep them ‘natural’ and untouched.

Economics

• Culture and economy interpenetrate; some things are 'priceless.'
• There's a difference between monetary worth and value, as defined in anthropology.
• Anthropologists study economics cross-culturally.
• Neoclassical Economics studies how people make decisions and allocate resources to maximize personal benefit.
• Adam Smith wrote about value creation in "The Wealth of Nations."
• To Smith, the invisible hand of the market channeled competitiveness and self-interest into human wealth and satisfaction.
• Division of Labour is when individuals complete one step of the production of a complete object.
• Exchange is the transfer of objects and services between social actors
• Market is a social institution in which people come together to buy and sell goods and services.
• Karl Polanyi wrote about capitalism in "The Great Transformation."
• He argued that capitalist market economies weren't inevitable but a product of historic and cultural circumstances.
• Substantive Economics studies daily transactions, which can’t be separated from other social institutions like religion, kinship, etc., and how these institutions shape redistribution and economic systems.
• Formal Economics focuses on the underlying logic and rules that economic exchanges depend on, such as self-interest and rational thought.
• Cultural Capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that demonstrate cultural competence and social standing.
• Social Capital is the resources available to a group due to their social standing.
• Maya Cofradia System: politico-religious system that requires men to share generously with the community to maintain prestigious position in the local hierarchy.
• It converts labour, generosity, and money into prestige.
• All approaches covered accept sociocultural relationships and processes play a primary role in creating value, and economic systems cannot be considered independently of culture.
• The Tiv of Nigeria traditionally used cattle as limited-purpose money for bride price, and brass rods as limited-purpose money to purchase cattle.
• The Tiv have three separate spheres of exchange: ordinary substance goods, prestige goods, and rights in people.
• Debts need to be repaid, where does this notion come from?
• Commodity money ties closely to the creation of debt, violence, and control over others.
• Gift Exchange includes many economic aspects, including the expectation of reciprocity.
• Malinowski focused on how gift giving generates individual status and obligation.
• Mauss focused on how gift exchange generates and sustains social relationships and obligations.
• Marcel Mauss wrote a comparative study of gift exchange in non-western societies.
• Marshall Sahlins and Reciprocity identifies types of relationships that gifting generates
• Generalized Reciprocity involves gifts to any person for no reason and for no benefit
• Balanced Reciprocity involves reciprocal transaction
• Negative Reciprocity: Trying to profit from an interaction of gift giving.
• Market Economics: Implicit rules guide exchanges.
• Personal gifts fall on a personal-impersonal spectrum.
• Giving commodities can generate moral dilemmas
• Owning something is not simply a matter of individual possession or occupation of an object or piece of land but rather a matter of interactions between people
• Declarations and claims about ownership are rooted in culturally specific forms of communication.
• Appropriation: To appropriate a phone, one must have money, indicating socioeconomic status.
• Meanings and Relationships: Consumption is an avenue through which people continuously recreate and modify cultural meanings and social relationships.
• In Aitape of Papua New Guinea, the constant exchange of objects from afar indicates a wide circle of friends.
• Capitalism differs from place to place.
• According to Richard Robbins, capitalists invest, workers work, and consumers consume, and the state ensures that each fulfills its role.
• These basic roles are held constant across capitalist systems, but there is variety between cultures
• Wall Street: Karen Ho studied Wall Street investment banks using participant observation.
• Wall Street shifted from benefitting investors, workers, and consumers to aiming at limitless investor profits.
• Successful transactions require personal relationships and local knowledge in any context.
• Malaysian Entrepreneurs see capitalism as a self interested enterprise but that must also adhere to Islamic values, family, and community obligations

Politics: Cooperation, Conflict, and Power Relations

• For anthropologists, politics is how people manage everyday social relations through persuasion, force, violence, and resource control, not just formal state institutions.
• Some societies have government, others are acephalous.
• The !Kung historically made decisions by group consensus, with food sharing as the major organizing structure.
• !Kung hunters avoided appearing arrogant.
• Informal social controls regulated !Kung behavior without need for laws.
• According to Thomas Hobbes, life without formal political control is "nasty, brutish, and short," requiring an absolute monarch.
• John Locke argued for the necessity of a "social contract" and "rule of law."
• A negative consequence of exploration outside of Europe was the assumption that similar forms of government should be forced on the people of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Pacific via colonialism
• Colonial governance presented anthropologists with opportunities to study the maintenance of order in societies without formal government or leaders.
• Religious Ritual reinforces political power, maintains solidarity within groups and unity against other groups, and resolve local dispute
• Belief in witchcraft operated as a rudimentary criminal justice system.
• Considering who controls food and other resources, Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service defined four types of society: Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, and State.
• Beginning in the 1960s anthropological emphasis shifted from the large-scale ordering of societies to exploring how individuals acquire and use power within societies
• Political power must be based on a culturally accepted source: deities, ancestors, hereditary transfer, legal inheritance, or elected office.
• Power may also be drawn from material resources, human resources, symbolic resources or ideological resources
• People gain and manage political power through a combination of decision-making, cooperation, opportunism, compromise, collusion, charm, gamesmanship, strategic alliances, factionalism, resistance, conflict, and other processes
• Action theory emerged in the 1960s.
• Normative Rules are the generally stable and explicit ethical norms by which players must play the game
• Pragmatic Rules are the creative manipulations needed to win the game
• Anthropologists recognized the additional need to investigate structural power during the 80's and 90's
• David Horn used the concept of structural power to trace a rise in Italian acceptance of state intervention in healthcare decisions
• Global capitalism is a primary source of structural power today because it constrains, inhibits, and promotes economic and political choices.
• In Papua New Guinea, an abused or shamed woman’s act of ‘shame suicide’ shifts the burden of shame to her abuser and can even motivate the victims relatives to seek violent revenge
• Weapons of the Weak = resistance done when violence is not an option
• In nonstate societies, leadership tends to be temporary, informal, and based on personal attributes.
• “Big men” cannot transfer their status and power through inheritance when they die
• Power in states and chiefdoms is controlled by officials and hierarchical institutions.
• States employ forms of control over their populations, from surveillance to terror and genocide.
• Many of the world’s peoples live in nation-states formed by conquest and colonialism
• Like Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, and Amazonian Natives, these conquered people often become ethnic minorities of their own territory
• Every society will have multiple forms of power deployed by different groups in different circumstances
• Violence is rooted in cultural processes and meanings.
• Culture shapes what people consider “legitimate violence” and how, why, and when they use it.
• Contrary to Hobbes view, which believes that violence is part of human nature, violence tends to follow cultural patterns, rules, and ethics
• The potential for violence and nonviolence exists within all cultural groups
• Interethnic violence is not inevitable, and violence is a calculated political strategy.
• Formal Dispute Managements include Adjudication, Negotiation, and Mediation.
• Harmony may not always be the best result.
• Laura Nader suggests that many disputants prefer fairness, justice, and rule of law to harmony
• Conflict may be the only way to promote change in certain scenarios

Race, Ethnicity, and Class: Understanding Identity and Social Inequality

• Stratified societies have long used the categories and strategies of difference to uphold the social order

• The medication BiDil, developed and tested on African Americans, had shown there are no different "types" of hearts among races, and that the medication is effective on anyone

• Since the 18th century, European and American scientists have attempted to divide human variability into subspecies or ‘races,’ much like zoologists would do with any other animal

• There are no diagnostic genes or genetic traits that belong to only one ‘racial’ group and no others

• Adaptational approach to race links physical traits with environment

• There is general correlation between latitude and and skin pigmentation

• Any lines meant to designate where one race ends and one begins are arbitrary

• Belief in race and its biological implications have cultural consequences

• Discrepancies in rates of disease and average life span between different racial groupings in the united states and canada can be attributed, at least partially, to racism and discrimination

• Africans were not viewed as racially inferior in the earliest days of European colonies in North America

• In 1676, a class rebellion was spurred by poor workers and indentured servants, among them Africans

• Leaders began to divide people along colour lines as a means of controlling people and preventing future rebellions; by dividing poor people among races, anger could be directed toward each other, rather than toward the wealthy elite

• Any male and any female from anywhere on the planet can mate and potentially produce viable offspring

• Racial categories are constructed differently in different cultures

• Latin America was colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese, living among natives without boundaries to sexual contact

• There have been a much greater number of races in Latin America, where they were more fluidly constructed

• Racial groupings come with discrimination, exploitation, stigma, and negative biological outcomes for some and privilege for others

• Race is not a stand-alone concept – wealth, ability, intelligence, ‘fitness’

• Race and Ethnicity are often used interchangeably

• They have distinctly different meanings though

• Race relies on genetic heritability

• Ethnicity is a choice, taken on through culture, religion, etc.

• Primordialism states National or ethnic identities are fixed, natural and heritable, and ancient

• Instrumentalism states National or ethnic identities are constructed to serve power structures

• Until recently, the census gave a limited number of ‘racial’ categories and were exclusive

• The Canadian census lists several ethnicities and individuals can choose as many as they feel part of

• ‘Hispanics,’ ‘Latinos,’ and ‘Latinas’ do not fit neatly into preexisting American racial social order

• These terms try to encompass a huge diversity of national origins tied together by geography

• Hierarchical distinctions between social groups are usually based on wealth, occupation, and social standing

• The socioeconomic ‘accident of birth’ has profound consequences for education, occupation, etc.

• Although meritocracy was used to show wealth as a form of power and respect, it has turned into a luck of the draw – still reinforces preexisting racial hierarchies

• Westerners use the term ‘Caste’ to refer to the Indian system which, internally is split into Varna and Jati

• Based on Hindu texts, varna is the hierarchy of Brahmans, Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), vaishyas (traders), and shudras (artisans and servants)

• untouchables’ who are ‘polluted’ because they do the metalwork, garbage collecting, etc.

• Many Indians, especially those in urban settings, are promoting the decline of the caste hierarchy via democracy and affirmative action

• Legislation against discrimination differs from the actual end of the everyday discrimination

• Unearned Privilege: the most disguised and unrecognized aspect of discrimination

• Relatively light skin pigmentation in the United States is an unearned privilege

• Most forms of prejudice are acquired as part of our enculturation – from trusted elders, authority figures, media, and peers

• Explicit v. Implicit Discrimination: explicit discrimination is easy to confront and oppose even through legislation

• Disguised discrimination may live well beyond the ‘official’ end of its explicit source