In her book Around the World in 30 Years Barbara Gallatin Anderson presents a convincing and precise representation to the many aspects that go into the being a cultural anthropologist. Her visually impacting story follows her around the world throughout her personal career. The attention to detail and thorough explanations make the reader feel as though they too are an anthropologist. Anderson uses a unique structure of information throughout the chapters of her book. An example of this is found towards the beginning: “In this, as in many other anthropological issues, fieldwork is to theory as air is to fire, illuminating the enticing scope of culture 's complexity… at least is was for me, in the context of a summer of work in India (44).” Her attention to the most miniscule detail and her grand explanations of spaces impacts her writing style and her reader’s reactions. This particularity is seen in this example: “I woke to a room of sunshine. A wispy-thin curtain veiled a multi paned sliding door of glass...The windows needed washing but slid easily apart and I stepped out onto a tilted balcony, a string mop on a hook to the left of me, and a half-missing board where I had planned to put my right foot. The breath went out of me...About 200 feet below was the sea… (151).” The authors account of this event could have been dull and simple as “There was a hole in the floor of the balcony”, but instead she chose to use detail and descriptors to engage the reader to imagine seeing the strange hotel room that almost turned her relaxing morning into a 200 foot Anderson takes advantage of the “Notes” section at the end of each chapter to add credibility to any information that she did not receive directly: “Half a century ago, H. A. H. Gibb ventured a brief but cogent definition of the Arab. ‘All those are Arabs,’ he wrote, ‘for whom the central fact of history is the mission of Muhammad and the memory of the Arab Empire… (88)”. At the end of the chapter, Anderson cites this in the Notes section as “Bernard, Lewis, The Arabs in History, 9 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1950). (105)”. This information not only adds credibly to the author, but it doesn’t overwhelm the reader with a lot of material at once, allowing them to enjoy the content. In the book titled Around the World in 30 Years, Barbara Gallatin Anderson’s makes a precise and convincing argument regarding the acts of being a cultural anthropologist. Her humor, attention to detail, and familiar analogies really allow for a wholesome and educating experience for the reader. Her credible sources and uniform writing structure benefits the information. Simply, the book represents an insider’s look into the life of a cultural anthropologist who is getting the insider’s look to the lives of everybody
Robbins, R. H. (2014). Cultural anthropology: a problem-based approach (Second Canadian ed.). Itasca: F.E. Peacock.
Ethnographic fieldwork in Anthropology certainly requires anthropologies to understand the limits and biases they will be exposed to while preforming their research. Through the text “Ethnography and Culture”, James P. Spradley discusses some of the concepts anthropologies must be aware of just as “naive realism”, “explicit culture” and “tacit culture”. These three concepts can be appreciated when reading Richard B. Lee’s selection “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”.
Anthropology is the study of the development of humankind within their different cultures. When one looks inside a culture, they can see the true aspects and meanings behind a societies behavior and traits. By following the principle that is cultural relativism, one can also determine that no culture truly surpasses another culture, and that each society has key differences that are important to its culture and location. This is a method that can also be seen in many intriguing films from this semester, one in particular being The Emerald Forest. Throughout this essay, this film will be analyzed around one character who greatly represents what it means to truly immerse oneself into a different culture to gain a new perspective, and many key terms in anthropology will be explored through 4 different films from the semester.
Historically, anthropologists have focused their research on foreign cultures, often considered exotic to westerners. Yet, globalization has created a continuously shrinking world and is increasingly providing sovereignty for developing nations, which may impede research opportunities for modern anthropologists. In their book, “The Cocktail Waitress,” James Spradley and Brenda Mann explain how this recent issue threatens trust and acceptance in these foreign communities and obstructs research funding. Luckily, there are countless subcultures in America’s back yard, in which most are eternally evolving, providing a multitude of research opportunities for anthropologists.
Anthropology is a study in which people study human beings and their culture. Anthropologists can study human beings’ social life through different methods such as participant observation. Laura Bohannan (Elenore Smith Bowen), the author of Return to Laughter, exercised this method by spending time in the African bush living with and studying Tiv tribe. She not only observed the locals’ daily routines and the function of their society, she also participated as one of the members of their society. In the beginning, she still distinguished herself as a European with different cultural living standard. Slowly,
Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 14th Edition William A. Havilland; Harald E. L. Prins; Bunny McBride; Dana Walrath Published by Wadsworth, Cengage Learning (2014)
Nigel Barley’s The Innocent Anthropologist explores the lives and culture of the Cameroonian Dowayo tribe. The book follows Barley’s fieldwork gathered during his stay amongst the tribe, affording insight into their ceremonies, language, social norms, and beliefs. Barley’s book stands out in the highly personal tone with which he recounts his time spent with the Dowayo, acknowledging bureaucratic troubles and, oftentimes humorous, misunderstandings. With a translator, Barley embarks on his attempt to immerse himself into the culture of the Dowayo, not hesitating to participate in their festivals (to a certain degree) and incorporate himself in their daily lives. Barley regals the audience with the entire experience of his fieldwork in West Africa, making sure to include how more modern technological and political inventions, such as voting and refrigerators, are regarded by the Dowayo. Barley writes with emphasis on the difficulties of the language, which is tonal and consists of multiple dialects, the Dowayo’s fondness for
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
As opposed to unearthing the truths about the skills possessed by the native communities, organizations that put on these shows tend to commercialize these civilizations for their own ends. According to the author, most museums tell teleological stories that progress from periods of barbarity to the modern era (Emberley 388). In addition, museum exhibits tend to approach these subjects with a colonial mindset, bringing along the notions of hierarchical politics and practices associated with mainstream Western society. In the case presented in the article, the analyst of the artifacts depicted the indigenous kinship families in a way that reflected the views and beliefs of non-indigenous people rather than those of the Aboriginals. For example, Aboriginals have kinship societies with a division of labor based on gender lines. For the colonialists, on the other hand, the father is always head of the family and serves as a model of proper governance. Ultimately, such exhibits subtly imply that primitivism—a primary characteristic of the Aboriginal—is a threat to civility that the colonist should
The Return to Laughter is a fictionalized account by Elenore Smith Bowen about her experiences with the Tiv culture in Africa. It describes her struggles to learn and understand the local culture and beliefs, and juxtaposes her own conflicts, morals and beliefs. Bowen engages in what anthropologists termed participant-observation. The anthropologist made a few mistakes that provided revelations about herself and the Tiv people. Language difficulties provide the greatest barrier: as when the researcher is trying to understand the context of the conversation, while still struggling with the intricacy of a difficult language. Secondly, like most anthropologists Bowen knew that social relationships are a research requirement: informants are needed, yet she quickly realized that identification with one family, status or group in the society could hinder other critical relationships. These lessons are among a few that the anthropologist seeks to overcome. This essay will discuss that culture and language are dependent on each other and how forming social relationships can propel research and reveal insightful knowledge into a culture, while possibly hindering other useful information.
“The anthropologist is a human instrument studying other human beings”. This quote can only be described as extremely relevant when reading McHugh’s ethnography, a detailed analysis on the Gurung people of Nepal. She involved herself emotionally, physically, and mentally during her stay, portraying what it’s like and what it takes to study other people from an outsider’s point of view. The relationships McHugh created throughout her stay deepened her understanding and paved the way for her fieldwork as she dived into the unknown.
The American Anthropological Association 's (AAA) aim is to offer guidelines and promote education and discussion. American anthropologists do this often by speaking and interacting with individuals living and experiencing the culture. Truly understanding, learning, and becoming accustomed to a new cultural environment takes a significantly long period of time, perhaps even years of exposure to the culture in order to truly understand traditions, morals, and customs. For instance in the Shostak`s study on the !Kung people, it was important for the researchers to say words correctly, at appropriate times, and in a culturally accepted manner, in addition, in order to interview individuals, specifically women, the anthropologist would ask one to “enter work” with her and they would talk for an hour or a day, or over a long period of time, perhaps two weeks. When studying another culture, American anthropologists include host country colleagues in their research planning and when requesting funding, establish true collaborative relationships, include host country colleagues in dissemination, including publication, and they also ensure that something is given back to the host. When studying other countries, the process is done carefully and thoughtfully, in order to end the study with new information on a culture and to establish new connections
In the “Innocent Anthropologist” by Nigel Barley, he starts his tale from the very beginning of his journey in west Africa’s Dowayo, a place in the mountains of Cameroon. He writes this book so the reader or aspiring anthropologist can get a better understanding of his own very first field work and how culturally different other places are outside of what we do in our own cultures and ways of life. His main point in this book, so far, is to educate the readers on various ways of different lives and to teach the reader a little more about countries, villages and tribes we never knew existed and go into detail that’s there is so much more to life than the lives we live. As far as I have read, right now, Barley, from my understanding, is giving us information which forms a comparison to our minds as to the way his culture, or any other cultures does things, and theirs do things, from the cultural practices, the food they eat, the jobs they have, etc. His main points to us are generally to go
Boas, F. (1930). Anthropology. In, Seligman, E. R. A. ed., Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences. Macmillan: New York.
Anthropologists research and write. They participate and observe in order to produce ethnographies. While some anthropologists venture to “exotic” lands to study the “natives,” others conduct ethnographic research within their own culture. Despite the diverse cultures they examine and the use of a tape recorder instead of a pen and a notebook, the ethnographic process is virtually the same. Or is it? Although similarities between ethnographies exist, when it comes down to it, ethnographies differ from one anthropologist to the next and one culture to the next based on the writing techniques applied by the ethnographer, the position of the anthropologist (age, gender, class, culture), and his or her life experiences. Some ethnographers use reflexivity, a writing tool that personalizes ethnography as the anthropologist writes about his/herself in the work. In a reflexive ethnography, the anthropologist positions his/herself in relation to the examined culture and writes about his/her ethnographic experience, an experience which hopefully bridged the gap between the anthropologist’s culture and studied culture, converting the “outsider” status of the anthropologist to an “insider” position. Reflexivity allows the ethnographer to show how and why it is that he/she empathizes with a culture and to allow the audience an opportunity to identify with a culture that is not his/her own. Ultimately, reflexivity conveys the importance to acknowledge the similarities and differences that exist between cultures.