Cultural Anthropology Final Exam

Politics

"For my purposes, politics refers to a diverse range of social practices through which people negotiate power relations. The practice of politics involves both the production and exercise of social relationships and the cultural construction of social meanings that support or undermine those relationships."

Disability rights movement

-Political intervention- problem is not with disabled people, the problem is with society that discriminates against disabled people

-Disability as an institutionalized source of oppression, comparable to inequalities based on race, gender, and sexual orientation

Social Model of Disability

Focus:

Views disability as a result of societal barriers and discrimination, rather than individual impairments.

Goal:

To create a more inclusive and accessible society by removing these barriers.

Perspective:

Disability is a social construct, and the environment and attitudes are the root cause of exclusion.

Medical Model of Disability

Focus: Views disability as a consequence of a health condition, disease, or injury.

Goal: Focuses on identifying and treating the underlying condition to restore functionality.

Perspective: Disability is an individual problem that needs to be "fixed"

Medical anthropology

-uses a variety of analytical perspectives to examine the wide range of experiences and practices that humans associate with disease, illness, health, well-being, and the body- both today and in the past

-Medical anthropologists study the spread of disease and pathogens in the human population through the lens of

medical ecology

interaction of disease with the natural environment and human culture

Interpretivist approach in medical anthropology

study health systems as system of meaning: how do humans across cultures make sense of health and illness? How do we think, talk, and feel about illness, pain, suffering, birth, and morality?

Interactive vs. Indifferent kinds

-Interactive kinds (categories)- 'classifications that, when known by people or by those around them ... change the ways in which individuals experience themselves'

--Entity classified take up a stance or respond to the manner in which they're classified

-Indifferent kinds (categories)- classifications that do not affect what they classify

--Entity or individual falling under the kind is indifferent to the categorization that, for lack of a better word, names the entity

Idioms of distress

-Patient's description of mental distress

-Individual idioms situated in larger cultural discource and orientations

-"The term 'idioms of distress,' as used in medical anthropology, directs attention to socially and culturally mediated ways of experiencing and expressing distress

Anthropology of Mental Distress

-Medical anthropologists try to use neutral, open-ended language

--Such as "experience", "distress", "social suffering", "interiority"

-Medical anthropologists try to avoid "disease", "pathology", "disorder"- some anthropologists even avoid the term "illness" itself

--Diagnostic labels with origins in US or Western culture context

Validity

"A given classification possesses intrinsic unity: it is neither a random phenomenon nor an artifact of the techniques through which it is detected, treated, experienced, and studied"

The "South Asia Puzzle" of Mental Health

puzzle of schizophrenia (have more positive symptoms- don't see it negatively)

-There are higher proportions of people like Sita in India—and possibly in non-Western countries more generally—than there are in US and the West. Yet more people seem to recover spontaneously and more people (who never quite recover) hold down jobs and care for families more effectively

-World Health Organization: far more patients in "developing countries" experienced significantly longer periods of unimpaired functioning and complete clinical remission

Language and culture

-Language is social action; language does something in the world

--It creates the world instead of just reflecting a pre-existing world

--Involves the invention or performance of self/selves

-How, when, where, and with whom one speaks is as important as what one says

--Most of language's meaning comes from context

-Humans are incredibly diverse in their practices, beliefs, histories, and societies; however, all human societies have language

Taboo language

-Just like silence, it is both universal and extremely culturally and contextually specific

--Encodes or reflects social relationships, marks identity, or serves specific sociocultural functions

-Taboos tell us about how societies are organized

--Kinship circle (avoidance registers)

--Signal membership to subcultural groups

--Generational cohorts and other social organization

--Critical notions about personhood

--One's place in the social matrix

--Political yardstick

-Taboos, like societies, are constantly changing over time

Language ideologies

-Attitudes, opinions, beliefs, or theories that we all have about language which people are often unaware of

-Ideologies about language are ideologies about speakers

-Almost always serve interests of a specific social or cultural group

-Language ideologies in any given society are best conceived of as multiple because all societies consist of many different divisions and subgroupings

-People may be more or less aware of their own or others' language ideologies

-People's language ideologies mediate between social structures and forms of talk

Indexicality

-Meaning and effect of language closely bound to context; meaning produced through contiguity or casualty

-Indexes point to something else, which is their meaning

--An accent points to where you come from

--Your tone of voice can point to your emotional state

-Not just what we say, but how and where we say something holds meaning

Multifunctionality

-Through language, people accomplish much more than simply referring to or labeling items and events; instead, they convey emotions, display or hide attitudes, reinforce or sever social bonds, and talk about language itself.

Practice

structures (both linguistic and social) simultaneously constrain and give rise to human actions, which in turn create, recreate, or reconfigure those same structures - and so on, with structures and actions successively giving rise to one another

Habitus

self-perceptions, sensibilities, and tastes developed in response to external influences over a lifetime that shape one's conception of the world and where one fits in it

Linguistic Relativity

-A language requires/obligates speakers to pay attention to certain things about the world but ignore other things

-For Whorf and Sapir, the structure of language directs speakers to different observations of the world, including...

--Grammatical categories like whether nouns have a gender; or use of active/passive voice

--Semantic domains, "specific areas of cultural emphasis" like the color categorization

--Most of this happens beyond our awareness

--This is controversial, and only one way to thinking about language

Speech Community

-"any human aggregate characterized by regular or frequent interaction by means of a shared body of verbal signs and set off from similar aggregate by significant differences in language use" (Gumperz 1968, p. 66)

-"the totality of dialectal and superposed variants regularly employed with in community make up the verbal repertoire of that community" (p. 72)

-All speech varieties in a speech community abide by a shared set of social norms, and compose a system of verbal behavior

-An individual's choice among permissible alternatives may reveal aspects of their social identity

Diaspora

any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland, especially involuntarily, as Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade

Heritage Tourism

refers to experiencing and understanding cultural heritage, both past and present, through various means such as visiting historical sites, museums, archaeological sites, and participating in cultural events

Triangle Trade

a transatlantic trade route connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas, primarily for the exchange of goods and enslaved people, with enslaved Africans being transported to the Americas, raw materials from the Americas to Europe, and manufactured goods from Europe to Africa

Commodification

The process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things (objects, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals) into commodities, or objects for sale

Self-devouring growth

-"the ways that the super-organism of human beings is consuming itself...Wherever you sit reading this you are in a world organized by self-devouring growth. It is so fundamental as to be unremarkable, and yet it is eating away at the very ground beneath our feet" (1)

-Parables: "have larger meanings that are revealed through their structure of 'illustrative parallel' or extended metaphor...Parables reveal urgent and sometimes uncomfortable truths that are hiding in plain sight" (2).

Laurence Ralph's "What Wounds Enable"

-The article examines how wounds—particularly those resulting from gang violence—shape identity, community engagement, and activism within disabled ex-gang members in Chicago. Ralph explores the intersection of disability, race, and violence, arguing that these individuals strategically use their impairments to advocate against gang-related violence.

-Experiences (like disabilities) are used in different ways- used as social currency to discourage kids from participating in gangs

Crip Camp (film)

Camp for disabled children was created- allows these kids to form connections and some of them join the disability rights movement to advocate for legislative changes and inclusivity

Shadows & Illuminations (film)

Man has auditory and visual hallucinations that are seen as spiritual hauntings in his culture- interpreted in a way outside of western medicine

Luhrmann & Padmavati's "Voices that are More Benign:"

-This chapter, from Our Most Troubling Madness: Case Studies in Schizophrenia across Cultures, examines the experience of auditory hallucinations among people with schizophrenia in Chennai, India.

-The study suggests that voices heard by patients in India tend to be more benign compared to those reported by patients in the U.S.

-The cultural and familial context plays a crucial role in shaping the experience and outcome of schizophrenia in India.

-The course of schizophrenia appears more manageable in India due to cultural attitudes, strong familial involvement, and flexible interpretations of illness.

-Patients like Sita demonstrate how cultural frameworks can influence psychiatric experiences and potentially lead to better long-term outcomes.

-Understanding these cultural differences can inform more effective, globally relevant approaches to schizophrenia treatment.

Laura Ahearn, Living Language

-Language does not rigidly determine thought, but it shapes habitual patterns of perception and reasoning.

-Research continues to explore how linguistic structures influence cognition in domains like time, space, and categorization.

-Understanding linguistic relativity requires careful empirical research and cross-cultural comparisons.

-Language serves as a mediator of social norms and practices, alongside other semiotic elements like gestures and material goods.

Star Trek Darmok episode (film)

-Tamarians' language is structured similarly to English but they communicate through cultural metaphors and mythology which makes communication difficult

-Language is culturally based and can affect people's was of thinking and understanding

High Voltage (podcast)

The episode also features a young woman who, despite societal pressures to maintain happiness, grapples with anxiety that manifests physically during dates. Her journey highlights the challenges faced by individuals raised in environments emphasizing constant positivity, leading to difficulties in processing and expressing negative emotions. ​

Susan Harding's "Speaking is Believing"

-Harding concludes that belief and disbelief are not as separate as they seem.

-Simply engaging with the rhetoric of fundamentalism can subtly reshape one's perception.

-The process of conversion is gradual, and it begins with the willingness to listen

-Conversion involves adopting a religious language, which restructures inner speech and shapes perception

Keith Basso's "Stalking with Stories"

-explores the Western Apache tradition of storytelling, emphasizing how stories are used to instruct and correct social behavior. The chapter highlights the deep connection between language, landscape, and morality within the Apache community

-Basso's study underscores the profound ways in which stories shape social life for the Western Apache. More than mere folklore, Apache storytelling is an active force that molds identity, enforces cultural norms, and strengthens the bond between people and place

Saidiya Hartman, "Lose Your Mother"

Key Themes and Ideas

-Disillusionment with the "Motherland"

--Hartman arrives in Ghana with high expectations but quickly faces the harsh realities of life there, including poverty, political instability, and cultural alienation.

--The romanticized idea of Africa as a "homecoming" for African Americans is challenged by the actual experiences of exclusion and exploitation.

-Memory and the Legacy of Slavery

--Hartman's research focuses on the "popular memory of slavery" and the physical remnants of the slave trade in Ghana.

--She contrasts the historical brutality of slavery with the present-day indifference or commercialization of that history (e.g., "slavery pimps").

-Identity and Belonging

--African Americans in Ghana struggle with their status as outsiders, neither fully accepted by Ghanaians nor able to fully claim an African identity.

--The tension between being seen as "African" versus "obruni" (foreigner/white) highlights the complexities of diasporic identity.

-Political and Social Realities in Ghana

--The chapter critiques postcolonial Ghana, where independence has not delivered the promised liberation.

--Coups, corruption, and economic struggles undercut the utopian vision of Pan-Africanism.

-Utopia vs. Dystopia

--The dream of Africa as a "promised land" is contrasted with the harsh realities of poverty, neocolonialism, and social inequality.

--Hartman references Thomas More's Utopia, noting that even ideal societies have underclasses (e.g., slaves in More's vision, the poor in Ghana).

Kamari Clarke, "White Man Say They Are African" in Mapping Yorùbá Networks

-In this chapter, Kamari Clarke explores the complexities of identity, race, and cultural belonging through the lens of transnational Yorùbá religious practices. She focuses particularly on white practitioners—mostly in the Americas and Europe—who identify with Yorùbá traditions and even claim African heritage through spiritual affiliation.

-Clarke critically examines how these individuals navigate and often blur the lines between biological descent and spiritual or cultural belonging. The title, "White Man Say They Are African," reflects both the confusion and tensions that arise when people of European descent claim African identity through Yorùbá religious participation.

She discusses:

-The strategic appropriation of Africanness by white practitioners.

-The negotiation of authenticity in religious and cultural practices.

-How global Yorùbá networks are formed and maintained across race and geography.

-The tension between spiritual lineage and racialized cultural ownership.

-Clarke shows that while these transnational connections create new spaces for identity and religious expression, they also raise important questions about power dynamics, cultural authority, and the politics of belonging. The chapter illustrates the global flow of Yorùbá culture but also highlights how these flows can sometimes reinforce rather than dismantle historical inequalities

Lake of Betrayal (film)

The land and water were "the bloodline" of the Seneca people. They had grown up feeling that the river was a being, had power, and purpose. The river was full of life and they connected with the spirit there. The Senecas peoples sovereignty was based on the land they had, as it had always been theirs. When land gets taken away, the land's spirit also gets taken away. These commodities were not private property but looked at as a mother to the Seneca people, and taking their land and using it for dollar value was like taking a mother away from a child. The land and water meant economic prosperity which embodied the American dream. The United States leaders were afraid of the economic depression that happened before the war, so to combat this, the economy needed to be good. Exploitation of native american land and resources is how they were going to build the economy. When we prioritize growth and reduce people and land to economic variables, geography is not the only thing that is lost. The heritage and language connected with that land is lost. Although the Kinzua dam was presented as a solution for flood control it came with many other problems: violations of treaties, displacement of native people, and destruction of ecosystems.

Julie Livingston's Self-Devouring Growth

-The commodification of cattle and water changed the relationships that people had with these things from communal and sustaining to a more individualistic and commodified approach. In a way they lost touch with the cultural and spiritual aspect of the land and environment as well as each other. Water and cattle became things to be owned instead of things that had significance, and people shifted away from a communal society towards an individualistic society.

-Cattle and other animals played large and important roles in African cultures. They were used for food and trade but also as symbols of wealth and power. Some domesticated animals also allowed more movement and dispersal of people. Cattle and animals have historically been at the center of African cultures throughout history.