Intro to Cultural Anthropology Final

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

The political intervention- the 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.

What are the two models of disability?

Social model and Medical Model

Social model of disability

People are ‘disabled’ by the barriers- badly designed buildings, no ramps, poor job prospects, special schools, inaccessible transport and public venues, few sign language interpreters, isolation, no lifts.

Medical model of disability

People are ‘disabled’ by medical condition: can’t hear or see, looking for a cure, can’t walk, dependent, can’t work, need help and carers.

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 ecology

The interaction of disease with the natural environment

Interpretivist approach in medical anthropology

Study health systems as systems 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?

What are the two kinds of critical medical anthropology?

Interactive kinds (categories) and Indifferent kinds (categories)

Interactive kinds (categories)

Are classifications that, when known by people or by those around them… change the ways in which individuals experience themselves (Hacking). The entity classified take up a stance or respond to the manner in which they’re classified.

Indifferent kinds (categories)

Are classifications that do not affect what they classify. The 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 discourse 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” (Nichter)

Anthropology of mental distress

Medical anthropologists try to use neutral, open-ended languages

• such as “experience, “distress”, “social suffering”, “inferiority”

• Medical anthropologists try to avoid: “disease”, “pathology”, “disorder”- some anthropologists even avoid the term “illness” itself

• Diagnostic labels with origins on the 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” (Allan Young)

The “South Asia Puzzle” of Mental Health

There are higher proportions of people like Sita in India- and possibly in non-Western countries more generally- than there are in the 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 a 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, taboo language is both universal and extremely culturally and contextually specific, encodes or reflects social relationships, larks identity, or serves specific sociocultural functions

Taboos tell us about how societies are organized: kinship circles (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

Indexicality

meaning and effect of language closely bound to context; meaning produced through contiguity or causality

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 develop in response to external influences over a lifetime that shape one’s conception of the world and where one fits into it.

Linguistic Relativity

how our language is structured helps shape our thoughts and behavior (but this is not absolute)

Edward Sapir- all languages are perfect and complete, having their own internal logic

Benjamin Whorf- the structure of any language contains a theory of the structure of the universe

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”

“The totality of dialectical and superposed variants regularly employed with in community make up the verbal repertoire of that community”

All speech varieties in a speech community abide by a shared set of verbal behavior

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

Diaspora

the movement, migration, or scattering of a group of people away from their ancestral or traditional homeland.

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

The extensive exchange of enslaved people, sugar, cotton, and furs between Europe, Africa, and the Americas that transformed economic, political,, and social life in both sides of the Atlantic

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”

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 sigh”

Laurence Ralph’s “What Wounds Enable”

explores how violence, trauma, and injury- especially in marginalized Black communities-are not just sources of pain but also sites of political consciousness, community-building, and activism

He focuses on Chicago, particularly young Black men who have experienced gun violence, showing how their injuries (or “wounds”) become central to their identity and social role

Crip Camp (film)

Tells the story of how a summer camp for teens with disabilities- Camp Jened, in the 1970’s sparked a nationwide disability rights movement. Challenges what society sees as “normal” and “productive”. It is a story about marginalized voices reclaiming space, reshaping identity, and transforming systems.

Shadows & Illuminations (film)

focuses on Pak Kereta, a Balinese man in his 50s living with schizophrenia, and explores how mental illness is experienced, interpreted, and managed in a specific cultural context. Discusses cultural context of mental illness, embodiment of distress, family and community roles, spiritual and biomedical healing, stigma and compassion, critique of Western Psychiatry.

Luhrmann & Padmavati’s “Voices that are More Benign:”

explores how people with schizophrenia in different cultural contexts experience auditory hallucinations- especially hearing voices- in radically different ways.

Laura Ahearn, Living Language

anthropological study of language, focusing on how language and culture shape each other. Language and social action, concept of “agency”, language ideologies, indexicality, language and power, multilingualism and code-switching, ethnography of communication.

Star Trek Darmok episode (film)

Tamarian language does not operate through normal linguistic meaning, rather through metaphors and cultural understanding. Without the cultural context they all seem to have, it is difficult to understand.

Their language is more than just putting words together, but rooted in shared experiences and a deeper cultural context. It raises concepts of cross cultural understanding and how difficult it can be to learn another language without understanding the culture as a whole.

High Voltage (podcast)

emotions are not universal- they are shaped by culture and historically constructed, the cultural construction of anger- in a culture where there is not a word for anger

Susan Harding’s “Speaking is Believing”

explores the power of language in religious conversion focussing on American Christian fundamentalism. Linguistic and symbolic anthropology. Language can create belief, meaning is created through shared stories, metaphors, and symbols.

Keith Basso’s “Stalking with Stories”

how language, morality, and place come together in the lives of the Western Apache people in Arizona. How naming and storytelling function as forms of social action. Stories and place-names are cultural symbols rich with meaning. Shows how cultures transmit values, not just through rules, but through narratives embedded in daily life. Ties human relationships and ethics to the physical environment. Knowledge and morality are enacted through repeated practices.

Saidiya Hartman, “Lose Your Mother”

blend of memoir, history, and ethnography. Exploring the legacy of slavery, diaspora, and the search for identity in the aftermath of unimaginable loss.

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

looks into diaspora, identity, and the politics of belonging- especially in the context of African spiritual traditions like Yoruba religion being practiced and reshaped in the Americas.

Lake of Betrayal (film)

environmental justice, indigenous sovereignty, and the long-term impact of government betrayal- focusing on the Seneca nation of Indians and the construction of the Kinzua dam.

Julie Livingston’s Self-Devouring Growth

how modern development models- based on endless growth- are actively undermining the very conditions for life. Using Botswana as a focal point, she shows how development can be self-defeating, even self-destructive.

Amara Lakhous, Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio

explores immigration, identity, racism, and multiculturalism in contemporary Italy, particularly through the lens of urban life in Rome. Critiques the idea of a homogeneous Italian identity