Global Studies 104 Midterm

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Anthropological Approach(is what? and what does it study?)

• Human communities are full of people, the institutions we

have created for managing life in organized groups, and

the systems of meaning we have built to make sense of it

all.

• Anthropology studies both people and the larger

structures of power in which we live—families,

governments, economic systems, educational institutions,

militaries, the media, religions

Geography (what are they interested in?)

Geographers are interested in people’s relationships to their environment (both “natural” and “built”). Why does the world look the way it does? How do we transform our environment through the things we do every day?

Cultural Geographers

Cultural geographers are interested in how social

life and cultural practices shape people’s

relationships to the world around them, and how

our environments shape our social and cultural

practices.

Politics of Positioning

What is at stake in how we are positioned in relation to

others on account of a number of different factors, including

gender, race, sexuality, class, citizenship, able-bodiedness,

history, and geography; how and why this positioning

matters in our lives

Culture(relies on both anthropology and geography)

a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, unevenly shared, and often contested by groups of people

What is an example of culture we discussed in class?

•  College classroom(how did we learn how to act?)

  • Shared understanding of when to arrive, when to leave, what to wear, where to sit, and how to communicate with the professor 

  • Sometimes we violate shared norms such as sleeping, yelling, and going off task

    • Violating these norms is possible but often comes with consequences 

  • Class culture has been communicated to us through years of schooling

    • Although all of us share it unevenly, from international studies to state students, which positions differently 

What are the subcomponents of culture?

norms, values, symbols, mental maps of reality,

material objects and structures of power (the media,

the state, the market) through which we come to

understand and act in the world

What are the two things culture constantly does?

both shared understanding among people and enforcement(contestation)

Golden statement of culture

Culture is never uniform; it is unevenly shared, constantly changing, contested, and negotiated. Culture is never static.

What is an example of culture/norms reinforcing our behavior without norms?

• US 1967 Supreme Court Case: interracial marriage between blacks and whites was illegal, which was a product of white supremacy 

  • This law is gone, but why is interracial marriage still rare?

    • Shows that cultural norms and history are still very powerful and continue to inform and enforce our behavior, even in the absence of a law

What are the four cultural forms?

Norms

• Values

• Symbols

• Mental maps of reality

Norms(+ example)

Ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward certain other people both consciously/unconsciously (who you can marry)

Values(+ example)

Fundamental beliefs about what is important, what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful (U.S. value of privacy vs security)

Symbols(+ example)

Anything that represents something else(such as flags that are so much more than just a piece of cloth)

Mental Maps of Reality(+example)

Cultural classifications of what kinds of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications (such as Gregorian calendar/time zones, when you can drink/vote)

Ethnocentrism

the strong human tendency to believe one’s own way of life is normal, natural, and superior to the beliefs and practices of others

What is the relationship between culture and power?

Stratification

Power

the ability or potential to bring about change through action or influence

Stratification

the uneven distribution of resources and privileges among participants in a group or culture 

What is an example of ethnocentrism/stratification? And what is proposed instead of this?

• Ex) Mercator Projection Map (since the 1500-1600s)

  • Issues: the land masses aren’t created to scale, and land masses closer to the poles look bigger than those closer to the equator(making the Global North look bigger; Africa is 14 times bigger than Greenland)

• Ex) Equal Earth Projection (2018): make the map more realistic and proportional sizing of the Earth

What’s another way we understand ethnocentrism and power dynamics?

• Professor Lila Abu-Lughod(Columbia Professor): Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

• She thought that most of these questions would not happen for other religions, especially considering how diverse Muslims are, and you can’t group them up into one 

Professor Lila Abu-Lughod(Columbia Professor): Do Muslim Women Need Saving is about…

• Laura Bush delivered a speech: the US invasion of Afghanistan was for the freedom of veiled women

• Abu-Lughod is drawing our attention specifically to women in question on things like war, especially its justification of often being the liberation of Muslim women

What is the problem with the ethnocentric option that women need to be liberated from the Burqa or hijab? (2 parts)

1) people wear the appropriate forms of dress for their social communities and are guided by socially shared standards, religious beliefs, and moral ideals

2) we cannot reduce the diverse situations and attitudes of millions of Muslim women to a single item of clothing

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Context

The Danger of a Single Story Video

• Starting reading/writing at a young age and writing exactly what she was reading, such as white, weather, ginger beer, 

• Went through a mental shift in literature through a local author and saw herself(saved her from having a single story of what literature should be)

• She did not know that people like her would be in literature 

• Her roommate in Africa had a single story of Africa, and thought she would be tribal, too such as her music but she listened to mariah carey

The Danger of a Single Story Video Main Theme

The single story: creates stereotypes that make one story the only story and ignore the other stories that are not about catastrophe(or do not come from America). As much as these stories can break dignity, they can empower, humanize, and repair.

Happy Meal Example of Culture Significance

By the time it reaches our table the Happy Meal has been shaped by ideas of the American diet, government regulation, industrial agricultural production, the environment, social movements, health concerns, labor practices, gender norms, and connections to workers and consumers across the globe.

How does eating vary widley across cultures?

What you eat, how you eat, and even who you eat with are shaped by culture, including ideas about religion, gender, race, ethnic identity, immigration, class, and age.

Guest Chapter 2 Culture

Applying an anthropologist’s viewpoint to culture and consider its crucial role in shaping how we behave and what we think

The culture we learn has the power to do what?

shape our ideas of what is normal and natural, what we can say and do, ad even what we think

Enculturation

The process of learning culture

What does it mean that culture is shared yet contested?

Although culture is shared by members of group, it is also constantly, negotiated, and changing. Culture is never static.

Powerful cultural institutions(+ example)

Structures for promoting enculturation, and arenas for challenging, debating, and changing core beliefs and behavior. (Supreme Court: Birthright Citizenship)

Exogamy(cultural norm)

marriage outside one’s group

Endogamy(cultural norm)

marriage within one’s group

Why are values powerful cultural tools for?

clarifying cultural goals and motivating people to action

What are the two important functions of mental maps?(with examples)

they classify reality(like time) and assign meaning to what has been classified(life span categories —> alcohol limit)

When do mental maps become a problem?

When people treat cultural notions of difference as being scientifically or biologically “natural” like race

Categories that seem completely fixed and “natural” are in reality flexible and variable…

showing the potential role of culture in defining our fundamental notions of reality

What did anthropologists originally focus on and what are they focusing on now for culture?

Originally focused primarily on culture as a system of ideas but more recent scholarship has pushed anthropology to consider the deep interconnections between culture and power

How can we use culture as a conceptual guide to power and its workings?

By examining the way access to the resources, privileges, and opportunities of a culture are shared unevenly and unequally

Hegemony

The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force(Gramsci's material power and second one is this)the

What does hegemony enforce?

self-discipline mechanism

Hegemony example

Even with laws banning it now, many in the U.S. see interracial marriage as unthinkable or undoable

Agency

The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of behavior, symbols, institutions, and structures of power(The Danger of A Single Story Video)

Nature vs Nurture

Biology vs learned culture

Despite similar bodies that seem to have inequality, instead…

cultural variations occur in all people(like napping times)

Epigenetics

An area of study in the field of genetics exploring how environmental factors directly affect the expression of genes in ways that may be inherited between generations

Human microbiome

The complete collection of microorganisms in the human body’s ecosystem

Instead of viewing ourselves as human beings shaped long ago by a completed evolutionary process (Ingold and Palsson)…

we should view ourselves as human becomings who are continually evolving and adapting, both on the species level and within the individual lifespan

Ultimately, it is culture that did what?

made us human, enabling us to evolve physically and in our patterns of relationship with others

How is culture created?(+example)

Culture does not emerge out of the blue. It is created over time, shaped by people and the institutions they establish in relationship to the environment around them. Culture is not fixed. It is invented, changed, contested, and negotiated. Nor is it bounded. It moves and flows across regions and between people.(culture of consumerism from financial backed capitalism)

What is key in arousing our desires for goods and services as well as a powerful tool of enculturation?

The advertising industry(40k commercials a year by children)

What are the three key interrelated effects of globalization on local cultures?

homogenization, the global flows of culture through migration, and increased cosmopolitanism

Why do East Asians go to McDonald’s?

to align themselves with the Western middle-class norms and values to which they aspire