Introduction to Cultural Anthropology PDF

# Introduction to Cultural Anthropology ## Learning Objectives In this chapter, students will learn: * about the field of cultural anthropology * about the concept of culture * how cultural anthropology is situated within the larger discipline of anthropology * that food and sustainability are e...

# Introduction to Cultural Anthropology ## Learning Objectives In this chapter, students will learn: * about the field of cultural anthropology * about the concept of culture * how cultural anthropology is situated within the larger discipline of anthropology * that food and sustainability are essential topics within cultural anthropology * about using frameworks to study culture * a brief history of anthropological thought * how cultural anthropology is relevant today ## Introduction: The Lens of Cultural Anthropology Anthropologist and medical doctor Seth Holmes traveled with a group of undocumented Triqui migrant laborers from the state of Oaxaca across the Mexico-US border as part of a long-term study on the lives of farm workers. The group crossed the desert from Sonora into Arizona, led by a “coyote” who is paid to move people. He recounts the harrowing experience of crossing and their eventual arrest by the Border Patrol: The coyote tells us to duck down and wait. He walks ahead, then motions down low with one arm, and we all run fast as we can to and through – mostly under – a seven-foot barbed-wire fence. We run across a sand road and through another barbed-wire fence and keep running until we cannot breathe anymore.... Though I am a runner and backpacking guide in the summers, we move faster than I have ever moved without taking breaks.... After we have hiked through blisters for many miles and I have shared all my ibuprofen with the others, we stop to rest in a large, dry creek bed under the cover of several trees.... Two of the men try to convince me to drive them into Phoenix, past the internal Border Patrol checkpoints. I tell them that would be a felony and would mean I would go to prison and lose the ability to work. They seemed satisfied by my response, respecting the need to be able to work.... Suddenly our coyote runs back speaking quickly in Triqui. Two Border Patrol agents – one black and one white – appear running through the trees, jump down into our creek bed, and point guns at us. (2013, pp. 19-21) In Holmes's book *Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies* (2013), the story of their border crossing begins an examination of the everyday lives of Indigenous Mexican field workers, the reasons they choose to risk crossing (it is riskier to stay at home and starve or die), and the responses of others in the community to their roles as fruit pickers. As a medical anthropologist, Holmes is especially interested in how social structures create and maintain the laborers' position at the bottom of the social ladder and how this impacts their health. By participating in the border crossing, living with them in crowded apartments, and working in a bent-over position picking strawberries, he comes to understand not only in an academic sense, but also in a physical sense, how the Triqui come to embody their lives as farm workers. Every cultural anthropologist has stories about how their interest in anthropology developed, which field sites attracted and hosted them, and what issues called to them over the course of their career. Holmes is a cultural and medical anthropologist who focuses on the way hierarchies and injustice are reproduced in health care and food systems. He is interested in structural violence, or the way that larger systems reproduce and justify poor treatment of some and not others. Of course, not all cultural anthropologists seek out dangerous and difficult experiences, but all hope to understand the lives of other people and, in many cases, support their self-determination. I begin with this story because it brings together several important elements of the field of cultural anthropology. First, it illustrates the relationship of the anthropologist and their study participants: more friends than lab subjects, they are people with whom the anthropologist often forges deeply trusting relationships. Second, it highlights the importance in cultural anthropology for many of its practitioners not only to understand but also to collaborate with the people they study in order to seek solutions. Finally, it brings together several important aspects of this book that are all tied together: the production of food, sustainable environments and lifestyles, social inequity, and the practice of cultural anthropology. This book focuses on cultural anthropology, emphasizing the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, behaviors, and products of human societies – that is, culture. Cultural anthropology tends to focus on living cultures, since the main way that cultural anthropologists learn about people is by living and working among them. ## The Culture Concept So, what is culture? Much more than a concept of being “civilized,” culture is all of the understandings that people share as members of a community, whether physical, virtual, or diasporic (spread across the world). There are nearly as many definitions of culture as there are people who write about it. ## The Field of Anthropology Anthropology is a broad discipline of study. It has to be, considering anthropologists are interested in all aspects of being human. Anthropologists do research with people from every part of the world, and on topics throughout all of human history. Because the discipline is so large, it is separated into four main fields: * **Cultural anthropology**, which you'll learn about in this book; * **Biological anthropology**, which looks at humans as biocultural organisms and includes the study of inheritance, primates, hominins (early humans and human-like species), and human biological diversity; * **Archaeology**, the study of past cultures as represented by what is left behind; and * **Linguistic anthropology**, the study of the relationship between language and culture. Sometimes the field of applied anthropology is considered a fifth field, since it uses the methods and skills of anthropology to work with communities to help solve problems. ## Types of Cultural Anthropology In North America, our field of study is referred to as cultural anthropology or, sometimes, sociocultural anthropology. In the UK, it is called social anthropology. There are many subfields, which include those listed in Table 1.3. Because there are about as many subfields in which people specialize as there are aspects of culture, any list like this one is going to be incomplete. The **American Anthropological Association (AAA)** and **Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA)** are two large anthropology organizations with sections devoted to these subfields and more. Their websites can be great resources for exploring the issues that anthropologists are interested in. Many of the basic concepts of these subfields will be covered in this book. ## The Connections between Anthropology and Sustainability Scientists have known decades that life on our planet is unsustainable unless humans make major changes in how we use resources. The UN created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide data to governments who signed on to the international climate treaty, called the Paris Agreement. Every year since 2014, the IPCC has published assessments of climate change risks. These reports state bluntly that governments must act now to cut carbon pollution. Otherwise, there will be “irreversible impacts” that will hamper our ability as a species to survive. ## Frameworks Anthropologists and other social scientists use frameworks to guide their research. By a framework, I mean a set of ideas about how the world works. Social scientists also refer to a framework as a theory. Researchers use many frameworks to guide their lines of inquiry. A scientific framework is one in which scientific understandings of the world are primary, and objectivity in pursuing one's research questions is important. A religious framework is one in which people's belief systems guide their thoughts and actions, beyond what is observable in nature. A humanist framework emphasizes the agency of individuals to make ethical decisions that benefit themselves and others. ## Frameworks Included in this Book As you read this textbook, it will become clear that I use certain frameworks more than others. In fact, every textbook has a framework, whether it is directly stated or not, just like every news program, documentary, and museum exhibit does. Someone decides what will be presented, how it will be presented, and what will be left out. There is no neutral source of knowledge. It's deliberate, but (usually) not malicious! It's just important to remember that every source has a perspective. My thoughts and writing tend towards a biocultural perspective. That is, I see connections between culture and human biological needs. Perhaps this is because I have taught both cultural anthropology and biological anthropology courses for many years. It would feel strange for me to leave out the connections that, for me, link these two fields. This is especially true in the two subfields that this book emphasizes: food and sustainability. Let's take food as an example. Food is a biological necessity. Humans need to eat to survive, and to eat foods with a variety of nutrients in order to support health. This is a biological approach to food. However, what we eat (meat/plants/insects/clay), how we eat (forks/chopsticks/hands), and with whom we eat (family/friends/,coworkers/alone in the car) are all cultural questions. How we get our food (forest/garden/farm/supermarket) and what foods we can afford to buy (organic/conventionally farmed/processed) are cultural and economic questions. One question is not separate from the other, but they are intertwined in human life and experience. I encourage you to explore these and other connections you make between fields of study as you think about anthropology. Anthropology is comfortable with a holistic perspective in which the connections are emphasized. ## Food Matters: The Anthropology of Food Food as a serious topic of academic inquiry is only a few decades old. Nevertheless, within that time, it has exploded as a means to understand culture. Counihan and Van Esterik (2013) suggest three reasons for the proliferation of food research: a more recent focus on feminist research that privileges women's work (such as food preparation); an interest in how food is related to power, especially in terms of production and consumption; and the many ways that food connects to issues of identity, gender, the body, and the symbolism of cultural life. This surge in academic interest reflects, as well, a larger popular interest in where our food comes from - especially for those of us living in urban environments - and the largely invisible processes that take our food from farm to fork. Cultural anthropologists interested in food may research the ties between food and nearly any other subject. Indeed, the study of subsistence, or food-getting strategies, is one of the foundations of anthropological inquiry, because how people procure their food structures much of their social life. It is also linked to nutrition, health, land use, sustainability, and human cooperation and interaction. The study of food connects all aspects of anthropology - cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeological - in a truly multidisciplinary way. Anthropologists may choose a specialized subfield in which to anchor their research. There are many subfields, such as nutritional anthropology, which takes a biocultural approach; food studies, which focuses on issues of culture, history, and identity; ethnoecology, which examines traditional foodways; and gastronomy, which combines cooking, food science, and the cultural meanings of foods. ## A Brief History of Anthropological Thought Anthropology is a fairly recent discipline, only about 150 years old. The hard truth is that this field, which today produces advocates for justice and autonomy for all peoples, has deep roots in colonial practices. Early practitioners used their knowledge of small-scale societies to stereotype people, leading to governmental control and oppression in some cases. In particular, early ideas about racial divisions and “savage” peoples in exotic lands led to Eurocentric and White supremacist thought. The next few sections of this chapter may feel discouraging, as they emphasize some of the outdated ideas and strong critiques of the theories and methods of anthropological inquiry. I include them not to make you wary of the field as a whole, but to begin our discussion by grounding it in its historical context. Although the discipline still struggles with its colonial roots, discussions among anthropologists make clear that the voices of underrepresented peoples must be privileged as the field moves forward. Some of the first anthropological writings can be traced to the early European voyages of exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The “discovery” of peoples inhabiting other areas of the world was shocking. It sparked debates over whether the “savage” and “primitive” Native peoples were in fact fully human. ## Contributions of African American Anthropologists Histories of anthropological thought often overlook the contributions of African American social scientists. There have been many Black anthropologists, historians, and sociologists who have contributed greatly to the development of anthropological theory and the body of ethnographic literature. ## Anthropology and Colonialism It's clear from the beginnings of anthropological thought that the discipline showed some serious ignorance. Many of the first ethnographers suffered from a colonial mindset, in which the powerful actors in the field considered themselves to be superior to the subjects of their studies. Some of this is transparent, for instance, in the posthumously published diaries of Bronislaw Malinowski when he refers to his Trobriander study participants as “neolithic savages” (1989) while alone and unhappy in Papua New Guinea in 1915. ## The Importance of Cultural Anthropology Today When we hear the phrase “the world is getting smaller,” it seems to make sense. But what does it mean? We might think of the world getting smaller in terms of transportation, in that a person can get from continent to continent in less than one day on an airplane. We might think of it in terms of technology because we can now text or video chat in real time with almost anyone in the world, making the distance between us seem less. People in areas across the globe watch the same movies, wear the same denim jeans, and can eat at a fast-food restaurant. We can also get to know people online - and know them as well as anyone in our physical community - no matter where they are, making the cultural distance seem less as well. But decreasing cultural distance also brings its challenges. ## Summary This chapter has introduced the field of cultural anthropology. Mirroring the learning objectives stated in the chapter opening, the key points are: * Cultural anthropology is one of four academic fields in the larger discipline of anthropology. * Cultural anthropology focuses on the study of culture, or the things that people think (beliefs), do (behaviors), and have (material culture). * There are many subfields of cultural anthropology in which people specialize, such as digital anthropology or the anthropology of education. * Questions of the relationships of people to food and their environments are essential to understanding culture. This book will emphasize these topics. * There are many frameworks that may be used to guide one’s research in order to approach an issue from different perspectives. * The history of anthropological thought has many different ideas about how to study culture. Not all of them have been free of racist or Eurocentric ideas and practices. * Cultural anthropology is important today in order to live in a global community that fosters understanding and objectivity.