Untitled Flashcards Set

Section 1

Haviland Readings:

• Becoming Human:

- Humans, Homo sapiens, Primates

• Species: Smallest unit in biological classification; reproductively isolated populations capable of interbreeding to produce fertile offspring.

• Human Species: A type of primate, part of the subgroup that includes apes, monkeys, tarsiers, lorises, and lemurs.

• Genome: The genetic blueprint of a species, containing its complete set of DNA.

• Chimpanzee: The Angolan term for chimpanzee means “mock man.”

• Orangutan: Translated into Latin as Homo Sylvestris.

- Linnaeus Orders the Natural System:

• Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish botanist, believed humans were created by God and endowed with reason and wisdom.

• Published The System of Nature (1735) and introduced Binomial Nomenclature in 1758, giving each species a two-part Latin name (e.g., Homo sapiens).

- Darwin as Father of Evolutionary Theory:

• Charles Darwin (1809-1882) developed the theory of natural selection based on observations made during a five-year voyage (1831-1836).

• Published in The Origin of Species in 1859, explaining how organisms better adapted to their environment survive and reproduce.

- Mendel as Father of Genetics:

• Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), a monk, conducted experiments with pea plants from 1856-1863 and discovered genetic inheritance.

• These findings were introduced in 1865, coining the concept of genes.

- Microscopic Perspective on Biological Evolution:

• Early 1900s: Discovery of chromosomes linked Mendel's and Darwin's theories.

• DNA discovery furthered the theory of gradual evolution driven by environmental factors.

- Molecular Clock:

• Mutation: A sudden change in DNA affecting genetics.

• Molecular Clock Hypothesis: Dates divergences between species by examining genetic mutations.

• Out of Africa Hypothesis: Claims modern humans originated in Africa, challenging the multiregional hypothesis.

- Genetic Mapping:

• Monogenic traits like blood types involve a single gene, while traits like hair, skin, and eyes are polygenic.

• By 2011, scientists had mapped the genomes of chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, and two extinct human species.

- Evolution through Adaptation:

• Adaptation is central to evolution by natural selection, referring to genetic changes in populations over time.

• Changes occur due to mutation, gene flow (gene movement between populations), and gene drift (random changes in gene frequency).

- Primate Anatomical Adaptation:

• Primates possess specialized teeth, binocular color vision, and an advanced brain.

• Their skeletons are adapted for movement, with opposable thumbs and big toes allowing them to grasp objects.

• Modern Human:

Chapter 1: Anthropology in a Global Age

• Franz Boas (1858-1942), played a significant role in early 20th-century debates on U.S. immigration when many viewed European groups as biologically distinct races. 

  • Immigration policies favored northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern Europeans and Boas challenged these perspectives by conducting studies highlighting physical diversity within national groups.

• Audrey Richards (1899-1984) was an anthropologist who studied the Bemba people in the 1930s in present-day Zambia, and focused on health and nutrition among women and children, elevating food as a key area in anthropology. 

  • Her ethnography Chisungu (1956) was a detailed study of Bemba girls' coming-of-age rituals and set new standards for anthropological research. 

  • Richards is credited with pioneering the study of women's and children's health and food and nutrition within anthropology.

• Both Boas’ and Richards’ techniques are used today in modern anthropology

• Ethnocentrism: the impulse to use our cultural norms to judge the cultural beliefs and practices of others.

• Cross-cultural and comparative approach: The approach that compares practices across cultures to explore human similarities, differences, and the potential for human cultural expression

• Four-field approach: The use of Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, Linguistic Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology to study humanity 

• Holism: The anthropological commitment to look at the whole picture of human life- culture, biology, history, and language - across space and time

• 5 key dynamics of globalization: time-space compression, flexible accumulation, increasing migration, and uneven development

• Time-space compression: The rapid creation and improvement of communication and transportation technologies associated with globalization

• Flexible accumulation: flexibility of companies to be able to move around their production facilities and activities in search of cheaper labor, lower taxes, and fewer environmental regulations

• Anthropocene: The current historical era in which human activity is reshaping the planet in permanent ways.

Chapter 2: Culture

• Culture: a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created learned, shared, and contested by a group of people

• Enculturation: the process of learning culture

• Culture is a shared experience developed as a result of living as a member of a group

• Norms, values, symbols, and mental maps of reality are four elements that an anthropologist may consider in attempting to understand the complex workings of a culture

• Exogamy: marriage outside one’s “group” 

• Endogamy: marriage within one’s “group”

• Symbols: Cultures include complex systems of symbols and symbolic actions—in realms such as language, art, religion, politics, and economics—that convey meaning to those who share the culture

• Mental maps of Reality: human constructs of what kinds of people and what kinds of things exist.

• Mental maps have two important functions: 

  • mental maps classify reality (ex. Binomial nomenclature)

  • mental maps assign values and meaning to what has been classified ( ex. Infants, children, teenagers, adults, etc.)

• Diffusion: the movement of cultural forms, practices, values, and technologies from one setting to another

• Acculturation: the mutual influencing of two unequal groups that have come into continuous firsthand contact

• Assimilation: a powerful group’s imposition of its cultural practices upon an economically, politically, or demographically weaker target group.

• Cultural appropriation: the unwanted taking of an important cultural practice or body of knowledge from one group by another, the more dominant group

• Unilineal cultural evolution: The theory from nineteenth-century anthropologists that all cultures naturally evolve through the same sequence of stages from simple to complex. (ex. savage, barbarian, and civilized)

• historical particularism: Franz Boas’ idea that cultures develop in specific ways because of their unique histories.

• structural functionalism: A conceptual framework that each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium.

• interpretivist approach: A conceptual framework that sees culture primarily as a symbolic system of deep meaning.

• Stratification: The uneven distribution of resources and privileges among members of a group or culture.

• Hegemony: The ability of a dominant group to create consent and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force.

• Agency: The potential power of individuals and groups to contest cultural norms, values, mental maps of reality, symbols, institutions, and structures of power.

• Epigenetics: An area of study in the field of genetics exploring how environmental factors directly affect the expression of genes during one’s lifetime.

• human microbiome: The complete collection of microorganisms in the human body’s ecosystem.

• Culture is learned and taught through the process of enculturation over time

Chapter 3: Fieldwork and Ethnography

• Salvage ethnography: Fieldwork strategy developed by Franz Boas to collect cultural, material, linguistic, and biological information about Native American populations being devastated by the westward expansion of European settlers.

• participant observation: A key anthropological research strategy involving both participation in and observation of the daily life of the people being studied.

• engaged anthropology: Application of the research strategies and analytical perspectives of anthropology to address concrete challenges facing local communities and the world at large.

Chapter 4: Language

• Look at keys terms in the toolkit part at the end of chapter 

Case Study #1: Jardin Columbia in a Personal Account:

• In 1984, a man takes a bus down to Jardin, Columbia, which he had not been to in years, since his Boy Scout troop visited the area 28 years ago.

• Jardin means garden in Spanish.

• The effect of homogenization was apparent considering that since he had last been in Jardin, there were radios, and televisions, where many of the coffee growers had absolutely nothing before.

• A loss in the tradition of dancing at the cantinas and listening to Colombian renditions of American music.

• Drug cartels controlled this area, and locals blamed the American drug need for the loss of traditions.

• The view of Colombians on American television programs was as dirty drug dealers. 

• People in Jardin use modern technology as a means to try to remember their culture, but it is mainly lost. 

• The coffee growers use computers to research their products, and televisions to advertise their products. 

• Homogenization is negatively affecting rural Colombia, because media culture is taking over parts of daily life.

• Globalization is not negatively affecting the coffee growers, because it is allowing them to do additional research on their product, and advertise & export their product to more people. 

Handout #1: Anthropologists and Their Theories:

Unilineal Cultural Evolution:

• All societies pass through different stages of development. The differences in culture are a result of different evolutionary stages.

• Anthropologists: 

• Edward Burnet Tylor 

• Lewis Henry Morgan 

• Herbert Spencer

Historical Particularism:

• Different societies develop different cultures, therefore undergoing different cultural processes. 

• Anthropologists:

  • Franz Boas

  • Alfred Kroeber

  • Edward Sapir

  • Margaret Mead

  • Ruth Benedict

Functionalism:

• Culture is shaped by social and psychological needs.

• Anthropologist:

  • Bronislaw Malinowski

Cognitive Anthropology:

• Culture operates through mental models and logical systems.

• Anthropologist:

  • EE Evans Pritchard

Cultural Materialism:

• Culture is shaped by the material world.

• Anthropologists:

  • Marvin Harrist

Structuralism:

• Culture is fueled by binary oppositions, which affect language, kinship, and math.

• Anthropologist: 

  • Claude Levi-Strauss

Interpretive Anthropology:

• It is a shared sense of meaning, and people make sense of the world through symbols and symbolic actions.

• Anthropologists:

  • Clifford Geertz

  • Victor Turner

  • Mary Douglas

Post-Structuralism:

• Rejects the underlying structures that represent culture. 

• Anthropologists:

  • Renato Rosaldo

  • George Marcus

Case Study #2: Eating in the Rain:

• Small Panamanian town of San Felix, the man received a message from Jaciento to meet him, which they could possibly do so in the mountains. 

• When he arrived at Cerro Mamita (the mountains), during a tropical rainstorm. 

• While he ate inside, Eduardo (the man who brought him to Jaciento’s), sat on a big rock and ate in the rain. 

• As he began his research in the mountains, he found out that Eduardo and Jaciento were related through marriage, and that when the mother is present the son-in-law must leave. 

• The Ngome have special traditions in regard to family. 

Ethnography #1: Portrait of Himalayan Healer:

Ethnography #2: Body Rituals Among the Nacirema:

• The Nacirema generally have wild beliefs regarding the human body, and they spend most of their time in ritual activity.

• They believe that the human body is ugly and that rituals are the only way to counteract this. 

• Each family will have charms, shrines, and charm boxes/chests to assist them in performing rituals. 

• There are more extensive rituals to the mouth, where the evils are cleared from the mouth. The people must seek a holy mouth man once or twice a year.

• Medicine men have an imposing temple (latipso), which is used for rituals on incredibly sick patients. The rituals here are excruciatingly painful and they are the equivalent of an exorcism. 

• There is also a listener who listens to the patient’s troubles and fears. They also believe that parents corrupt their children.

• Sex is scheduled, and considered taboo. 

Ethnography #3: Shakespeare in the Bush:

• Laura Bohannan visited villages in Nigeria, where they all sit around day drinking, doing rituals, and telling stories. 

• She decided to tell Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, which one of the main concepts of inheriting children and marriage was immediately thrown out because the people in the village did not view it the same way. 

• They asked about who may be plowing the fields after the husband died, which is a common practice in the village, but not in royal life. 

Notes

SECTION 1 ANT 08/29

• Species

Primates 

-Smallest working units in biological classificatory systems 

-Reproductively isolated populations capable of interbreeding to produce offspring

- Genome - genetic design of a species with a complete set of DNA 

- Culture, learned behavior.

- Humans and Chimpanzees share 98.3% of DNA 

- Chimps also use tools, indicate intelligence and manual sharpness

• Jane Goodall witnessed chimpanzees using tools 40 years ago

• Classification 

- Carolus Linnaeus - The System of Nature, 1753

- Binomial nomenclature

- Homo Sapiens (“wise men”)
- Homo Troglodytes (“Cave dwelling man”) / (“Primitive savages”)

• Culturally problematic

• Evolution and Genetics 

- Charles Darwin

• Natural Selection, 1859

- Gregor Mendel, 1856-63

• Genetics

-Chromosomes - cellular structures containing genetic information, 1900s microscopes

• Evolution is gradual, based on environmental adaptation and small genetic changes within geographically separated populations after many generations of NATURAL SELECTION.

• Molecular Clock

- Rate of change between 2-4% every mission year 

-During the molecular clock period, there could be a random mutation that increases the variation of the gene pool of that particular species

- Random mutation → Increase variation

- Homosapein's common ancestor ~ 200,000 years ago in Africa 

- Out of Africa hypothesis — multi-regional hypothesis

- Evolution refers to change through time. Evolution takes place through a number of processes, including adaptation a series of beneficial adjustments to a particular environment

• Anatomically Modern Humans 

- Homo Sapiens, Upper paleolithic 20,000 years ago

- Adaptation became more widespread and species survival increased in multiple environments

- Period of innovations: tool techniques: fishing nets, atlatl (spear-thrower) -easier to hunt from a distance-, spears, art -intelligence-, bow and arrow, harpoons -fishing-, needles -clothes-

-cave art, mapping out a hunting strategy

• Human migration 

- Siberia to america 15,000 - 18,000 YPB

- Some hunting bands inhabiting southern Siberia journeyed east towards Beringia, crossing into North America. These Siberian hominid nomads also carried some Neanderthal DNA. This is known as the early ancestors of American Indians. 

• Human adaptation

- Environment

- Climate warming and rising sea levels changed global landscapes 

- Animal migration shifts and human subsistence activities shift to accommodate available resources

-11,000 YPB (years before present) domestication of animals and plants provides a stable food source. Neolithic Revolution

- Humans are adapting to their new environment and thriving

• Biological variation 

• The problem of race

- Race ( biological concept) - a discrete biological division within a species.

- Human populations are genetically “open” ( genes flow between them) Ex. Blood type

- Race is a cultural category and a social concept than a biological category

- Race/Species terminology confusion

• Skin Color 

- Melanin production varies among humans; which is activated by UV rays from sunlight, inducing production of Vitamin D

- through natural selection human body has adapted to UV variations as per associated environment,

• Lighter skin is beneficial in northern latitudes (less sun exposure)

• Darker skin is beneficial in southern latitudes (more sun exposure)

• Race as a social construct 

- Racial hierarchy created by 18thC. Europeans: Linnaeus taxonomy categories 4 “varieties” of human species; based on geographical populations and skin color: Europe, America, Asia, Africa 

- Ethnocentric bias. Scientific racism, 

- Linnaean classification became popular among other like minded White European scholars: Blumenbach and Rober Knox

- These ideas gained ground historically during industrialization, capitalist expansion, and colonialism

• “White superiority complex”

• Challenging Racism

- Mid- 1900’s (1950) scholars and UN took a stand against racist ideology

- UNESCO “to lead the campaign against racial prejudice and to extricate this most dangerous of doctrines. Race hatred and conflict thrive on scientifically false ideas and are nourished by ignorance. (1953) 

- Teddy roosevelt statue removed in 2022 

ANT 09/03

• Chapter 1 what is Anthropology Ken Guest Anthropology in a global Age

• Anthropology Intro

  • Anthropology is the study of the full scope of human diversity, past and present, and the application of that knowledge to help people of different backgrounds better understand one another.” - Ken Guest

• Colonial roots of anthropology (paragraphs from Yale University, ANthropology Dept.)

  • Anthropology began as a colonial science, the product of a settler colonialism uniquely focused on the study of the languages, history, culture, and biology of non-European peoples seen as ‘primitive,’ or ‘ancient’ all around the world

  • Anthropology was, until recently, primarily the study of the exotic ‘other’ in space or time, an orientation that presumes an unmarked normative ‘self’ –, ero-american, and often male – positioned as the distanced and ‘objective’ observer

  • In the last few decades, we have seen intensive scrutiny of the discipline’s colonial roots, reimagined forms of ethnographic research, strengthened institutional controls on informed consent in ethnographic, biological, and archeological studies of contemporary communities, and have established new regulations and practices surrounding the acquisition, display, and disposition of human remains and other cultural materials

• The anthropology of colonialism; culture, history, and the emergence of western governmentality

  • This article ends by saying “if we are ever going to be capable of disengaging anthropology from colonialism, we first need to reflexively blur the boundaries between colonialism and our present anthropology” 

• What is Anthropology?

- The study of humans 

- Anthropology is a holistic science that studies the human conditions past, present and future. Anthropology is a social science at the intersection of science and humanities 

- There are four fields in Anthropology

• Physical Anthropology 

  • Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a social science discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly from an evolutionary perspective.

• Archaeology 

  • Archaeological anthropology is the study of past humans and cultures through material remains. It involves the excavation, analysis and interpretation of artifacts, soils, and cultural processes.

• Cultural Anthropology

  • Cultural anthropology is the study of human ways of life in the broadest possible comparative perspective. Cultural anthropologists are interested in all types of societies, from hunting and gathering bands to modern industrial states.

• Linguistics

  • Linguistic anthropology studies the nature of human languages in the context of those cultures that developed them.

- Anthropology studies human adaptation:

• The process by which organism cope with environmental stress in order for gene survival

• Colonial roots of anthropology: 

• Anthropology began as a colonial science, the product of a settler colonialism uniquely focused on the study of the languages, history, culture, and biology of the non-European propose seen as ‘primitive,’ or ‘ancient’ all around the world

• Anthropology was, until recently, primarily the study of the exotic ‘other’ in space or time, an orientation that presumes an unmarked normative ‘self’ – white, Euro-American, and often male – positioned as the distanced and ‘objective’ observer. They thought the cranium was smaller in ‘others’ than ‘normal Europeans’

• In the last few decades, we have seen intensive scrutiny of the discipline’s colonial roots, reimagined forms of ethnographic research, strengthened institutional controls of informed consent in ethnographic, biological, and archaeological studies of contemporary communities, and have established new regulations and practices surrounding research and patients.

• Anthropologist methods

- Contemporary anthropology uses methods established during its origins but with a focus on ‘understanding’ others and their needs.

• Contemporary anthropologists usually help the community and try to make people comfortable

- Focus is on increasing awareness of Others and sharing information of their cultures

- Ethnographic fieldwork

• We read an ethnography about the end result every week 

• FOUR FIELDS IS ALWAYS ON AN EXAM

- Physical anthropology/Biological anthropology

• The study of human biology and human evolution

- Archaeology 

• The study of human material culture from the past

- Linguistic anthropology

• The study of human communication

• For the reading 

- Time-space compression 

- Flexible accumulation 

- Increasing migration 

- Uneven development 

- Climate change

• Globalization: 

• The world wide coming together as a globe, exchanging goods, etc.

  • Time space compression

    • The fact that in modern times it is easier to travel distances and communicate long distance

• Flexible accumulation 

  • Valuing profit: using cheap labor

• Uneven development

  • Third world countries aren’t as developed as first world countries

• Climate change

  • Due to increased transportation and modern technology, impacted climate

ANT 09/05

• Anthropocene Epoch

- Our current time is known as the Anthropocene Epoch

- Anthropocene means human activity  is profoundly changing our environment 

- Due to the huge effect we had on other species, the world, etc. 

• Applied anthropology or practicing anthropology

- Political anthropology

• Anthropologists that are used to help shape laws

- Forensic anthropology 

• Can be used to help identify skeleton 

- Business anthropology 

• Businesses hire anthropology due to their knowledge of people and culture

- Climate anthropology 

• Environmental scientists

• How do you think anthropological research is affected by the anthropocene area?

- What can you learn about yourself, your culture, or globalization from a cup of coffee?

• What's in it?

• Where did the ingredients come from?

• Who grew the coffee beans?

• What is the life of those framers like?

• How is climate change affecting coffee growing?

• What are the labor costs?

• How did the coffee beans get there?

• What is the environmental impact of the materials?

ANT 09/10

• What is ethnography?

- What is unique about ethnography, and why do anthropologists conduct this kind of research?

• End result of fieldwork

• Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday LIfe in Brazil (1992) by Nancy Sheper-Hughes.

• Conducting fieldwork

- Participant observation

• Participating in the community and becoming part of the community 

• Conversations

• Consultants/informants 

• Establishing rapport

• Zeros/Body language

  • Nonverbal communication, body language, etc

- Interview 

•  Life history

• Genealogy (kinship relationships)

- Strategies

• Quantitative (statistical data)

• Qualitative (non-statistical data)

- Problem oriented research 

• Longitudinal research 

• Team research 

• Multi-cited research

- Beliefs and perceptions

• Emic and etic perspectives

• Emic: Locals 

• Etic: Anthropologist

• Ethics in Anthropology

- Obtain informed consent

- Community and colleagues participation

- AAA Code of Ethics: obligation to scholarly field, wider society, culture, humans, all species, and environment

- Take stand on issues when ethical appropriate

- Observer and participant 

• Observer: see something happen and you just watch 

• Participant: you actively participate in the community

• History, Anthropological Trends, associated ethnographers

- Know the history of the community and understand the timeline

- Primitive

• Franz Boas: Historical particularism, cultural relativism

- American anthropologist 

- Father of American Anthropology

- Cultural Relativism

• One culture isn't better or worse than another but they simply live different lifestyles

• Bronislaw Malinowski

- Observer Participation

• Believed that anthropologists should live in the community rather than observing from afar

• Margaret Mead

- Had the idea that primitive people had to be studied because they lived like the olden days and that's something we cannot get back

- She was controversial

• Writing ethnography in contemporary society 

- Polyvocality 

• Many voices come through in the writing

- Tone and style 

• Different tones and styles such as first-person or third-person

- Ethnographic authority: objectivity vs subjectivity 

- Reflexive

• The voice of ethnographer reflects on their experience

- Film 

• Movies etc. becoming more popular

- Native writer and filmmakers 

• Many native writers who study their own culture rather than getting a complete stranger

- Experimental writings (fiction, field notes, anthropology articles)

• Portrait of a Hilalayan Healer, Sienna Craig 2012

- Conducting anthropological fieldwork - a days journey 

- Written like a field work journal, Craig's entries take the reader from an early morning conversation, a visit to a school, a monastery , a royal palace, village health clinics, farms, and returning home for the evening. 

• Culture

• Ethnography Body Ritual among the Nacirema

- As you were reading about the Nacirema did they sound familiar to you 

- Who are the Nacirema and why did miners write about them? Is Miner’;s writing ethnocentric or culturally relative to the Nacirema? 

- Nacirema is American spelled backwards

- The point of the reading is to show what American culture would look like for someone who has never experienced it before. 

- What makes a culture ‘strange’? Consider the patient's treatment ritual in the film: a Year in Tibet? 

• A culture is strange 

- “Culture is a system of knowledge, beliefs, patterns of behavior, artifacts, and institutions that are created, learned, shared and contested by a group of people.”

• Aspects of culture

• Culture

- Adaptive

- Symbolic

- Instrumental

- All-encompassing

- Maladaptive

- Shared

- Learned

- Integrated

- Cultural classification of what kidneys of people and things exist, and the assignment of meaning to those classifications/ *p. 45

- Shaped through enculturation, but are not fixed

- MMR - classify reality

• Ex: time

• Assign meaning to classifications

  • Ex: age expectations and rights 

• Influences cultural values and what is regarded as normal

• Belief in MMR can risk misunderstanding of other cultural values

• Cross-cultural communication

- Ethnocentrism

• Using one culture to judge/reference another culture

- Cultural relativism

• Culture should be judged based off its own culture not based off other beliefs and cultures

- Human rights

• Cultural appropriation

• How culture concept developed in anthropology 

- Edward Burnett Taylor (1871) - understood culture to be a unified and complex system of ideas and behaviors passed down over generations by members of particular groups

• Unilineal cultural evolution

  • Continuum: savage, barbarian, civilized. 

    • Implies hierarchy

• Culture and systems of power

- Power: the ability to bring about change through action (force) or influence

• Reflects stratification. *Eric Wolf: power is an aspect of all human relation/ 

• Ex: colonialism, Missions, Military dictatorship, etc. 

- Hegemony: Antonio Gramsci, 1932. Creation of consent and agreement within a population. *power of culture to influence human behavior. Michel Foucault describes hegemonic power as the ability for people to discipline their own behavior. 

• Set rules for what is considered “normal”

  • Ex: king and is subjects 

- Agency: individuals and groups have the power to consent cultural hegemonies and norms

• Protest movements call attention to issues and help enact change. 

ANT 09/19

• Biology - Culture

- How much of who you are is shaped by biology? 

- How much of what you are is shaped by culture?

-Bioculture is the combination of biological and cultural factors that affect human behavior.

- Evolutionary basis of biological culture 

- Hominids and hominins

• Manual dexterity (prehensile  hand grip) - depth and color vision - large brain - bipedalism - limited offspring - sociality - cooperation

• Nature - Culture

- NATURE is biological

- Evolutionary adaptation develops for species survival 

• Example: Human skin color, manual dexterity, bipedalism, ect.

- CULTURE encompasses society - human become enculturated

- Cultural adaptation is learned from others and is applied in society. Mental Maps of Reality

• Example: Kissing someone on both cheeks when meeting people in french culture 

- Culturally specific

• Genetics; Epigenetics and Microbiome

- Epigenetics:: explores ways that environmental factors directly stimulate genes

• David Good (Yanomami) - examines environment and gut microbiome 

• Biology, Hormones, Gender and Culture 

- Aggression: Is it biological or cultural? Is it gender related? What is the role of testosterone in aggressive behavior? What is the role of cultural acceptance/expectations in male aggressive behavior.

- Because of widespread beliefs in a direct biological connection between aggressions and maleness (and not femaleness), when young men fail in their military tours it is more often a sign of a man coming up short, while for a young woman it is more easily understood as someone trying to fit where she does not belong. 

• Matthew Gutmann, Are Men Animals?

• How is globalization transforming culture? 

- Globalization and culture

• Due to globalization ideas/culture for dominant groups are being transferred to others

• Tnsions: Homogenizing/Diversity

  • Ex) Capitalism and Consumerism 

• Tensions: Homogenizing/Diversity

• How is globalization transforming the way anthropologists study cultures?

- If this is an example of enculturation, to what are the people of Papua New Guinea being encultured into?

- Do you see this as a part of a global “homogenizing effect”? How is “power” involved in this dynamic? Would you describe it as hegemonic?

- How might the introduction of the products promoted by the troupe of actors affect Alugo? Do you see this as a positive or negative?

• Types of Culture - Levels of Culture - Culture Practices 

• Cultural terminology 

  • Types of culture

    • Popular culture

    • Civic culture 

      • Being a citizen, such a paying your taxes

    • Public culture

      • Such as something you would share with the public rather than at home 

  • Levels of culture

    • Subcultures

      • Such as a political group 

    • National culture

      • Different cultures within a country 

    • International culture 

      • Cultures around the world

  • Cultural practices

    • Ethnocentric 

    • Cultural relativism

    • Human rights 

    • Cultural rights

ANT 09/24

• Language

- A system of communication that uses symbols - words, sounds, gestures - organized according to certain rules, to convey information

- Kinesics: the study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and expressions Ex. raised eyebrows, 

- Paralanguage: extensive set of noises and tones of voices that convey information. Ex. Laughter, Ah, etc

• Communication

- Kinesics

- Verbal

- Call systems, ASL

• How did human language capacity evolve?

- Genetic evidence: FOXP2 gene variant

- Archaeological evidence: Neanderthal skulls reveal neurological and anatomical features necessary for speech, 2,000,000 B.P.

- Cultural evidence: Rock art and tool making, 50,000 B.P.

• Linguistics

- Descriptive linguistics - the scientific study of a spoken language 

• Phonemes, Phonology, Morphemes, Morphology, Syntax, Grammer (*p.122)

• The study of the grammar, classification, and arrangement of the features of a language at a given time, without reference to its history or comparison with other languages

- Historical linguistics - the study of the history and development of languages

- Socio-linguistics - the study of the relationship between language and society. And examining how social categories influence the use of distinctive speech

• Language, thought and culture

- Norm Chomsky hypothesis: all humans have similar linguistic abilities and thought processes. Universal Grammar. Ex. Creole

- Sapir - Whorf hypothesis: Different languages produce different ways of thinking. Ex. Hopi

- Focal Vocabulary: terminology that describes unique cultural realities. Ex. Inuit snow, Aymara potato, Neur cattle, American color

• Western Apache Worldview 

- Keith Basso, 1996, Wisdom Sits in Places.

- Names of Places - relate cultural meaning and values

- The story of the forgetful Apache policeman who behaved to much like a white man

• Socio-Linguistics

- Investigates relationships between social and linguistic variation

- How do different speakers use a given language?

- How do linguistic features correlate with social diversity and stratification?

• Socio-Linguistics Variations

- Negative differentiation: in English it has been observed that more varied and elaborate words are used to express negative reactions. Ex. Internet reviews.

- Style variation such as diglossia (high and low). Ex. scholastic language vs colloquial language

- Gender Variations: men speak more in public, women speak more in private

• Sociolinguistics Stratification

- African American English - Socially stigmatized (slang). From a linguistic perspective AAE is a complete variation of English with coherent pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar

- Spanish and English stratification in America: bilingualism accepted within ethnic group, but spanish speakers are stigmatized in public

• Dichotomy: Hispanic speakers are marginalized in American society. While, white english speakers are celebrated when using Mock Spanish 

- Gender stratification in language

• Why are there language misunderstanding in rape cases? Does “No means No” means “NO” only to women

• In a male dominated culture women are supposed to say yes to men, therefore a “no” seems incomprehensible to certain men

• Globalization

- Internet communication 

• Digital natives and digital immigrants

  • Our generation that grew up with technology

• Digital activism 

  • Online protests, news traveling, spreading word

• Digital divide

  • Not everyone as access to the internet

Section 2

Subsistence

Reading: Kottak, Making A Living (B)

• Adaptive strategies - the term used to describe a society’s system of economic production 

  • Similar economic causes have similar sociocultural adaptive strategies

  • Cohen developed a typology of societies based on the correlation between their economies and their social features

  • These typologies include 5 adaptive strategies: foraging, horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, and industrialism

• Foraging 

  • People in the Ice Age were big-game hunters

  • People in the Artic today still hunt mostly large animals and herd animals and have much less variety and vegetation compared to tropical foragers,

  • Tropical foragers typically hunt AND gather a wide range of plants and animals.

  • People who live near water or coastal areas rely heavily on fish and berries. 

  • All people rely on nature to make their living, no matter the environment

  • Animal domestication and plant cultivation began 10,000-12,000 years ago in the Middle East

  • Food production

  • Many societies were exposed to food production but never needed to develop it because their economics already provided them with enough

  • All modern foragers live in nation-states and depend to some extent on government assistance

  • Recent foraging: 

    • The Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, home of the San (bushmen)

    • The equatorial forest of central and eastern Africa, home of the Mbuti, Efe, and other ‘pygmies’

  • Subsistence foraging still happens in remote forests in Madagascar, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and certain islands off the Indian coast

  • Recent foragers and well-known hunters in the Western Hemisphere:

    • The Eskimos

    • Inuit, of Alaska and Canada

  • Foraging survived in environments that posed major obstacles to food production.

  • In southern Africa, the Dobe Ju/’hoansi San area studied by Richard Lee and others is surrounded by a waterless belt 43-124 miles

• Adaptive strategies based on food production

  • Horticulture

    • The cultivation that makes intensive use of none of the factors of production: land, labor, capital, and machinery

    • Simple tools like hoes and digging sticks are used to grow crops

    • Slash and burn techniques: clearing forest and bush, breaking down vegetation, killing pests, and fertilizing soil

    • The plots cannot be used for more than a year or two

    • Shifting cultivation 

  • Agriculture

    • Land-intensive and continuous cultivation

    • Domestic animals 

      • Used for production, transportation, cultivation, and fertilizing land

    • Irrigation 

      • Water system for watering plants

      • Irrigation makes it possible to cultivate a plot year after year 

      • An irrigated field is a capital investment that increases in value

      • In some agricultural areas salts carried in irrigation water can make fields unusable after 50 or 60 years

  • Agricultural Intensification: People and the Environment

    • This refers to increasing the productivity of agricultural land through various methods (like irrigation or fertilization) to support larger populations, often impacting environmental resources and ecological balance.

  • Pastoralism 

    • A form of subsistence agriculture where people rely primarily on domesticated animals for their livelihood. It typically involves herding and is common in regions where farming may not be feasible.

• Economic systems 

  • The structure through which a society organizes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Types include market economies, planned economies, and mixed economies.

    • Production in Nonindustrial societies 

      • In these societies, production is usually community-oriented, with people producing primarily for local or household use rather than for exchange in large-scale markets.

    • Means of production 

      • The tools, resources, and facilities used to produce goods, including land, labor, and capital.

    • Alienation in duncstrial economies

      • The concept is that in industrial economies, workers may feel disconnected or alienated from the products they create, often due to repetitive tasks, large-scale production, or lack of control over production.

• Economizing and maximization 

  • Economizing involves the allocation of scarce resources to maximize benefits, while maximization refers to striving for the greatest possible profit or benefit from available resources.

    • Alternative ends 

      • These refer to the different goals people may prioritize in allocating their resources, such as survival, wealth, leisure, or social prestige.

• Distribution exchange 

  • How goods and services are distributed within a society and exchanged between individuals or groups. Common types include reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange.

    • The market principle 

      • An economic principle where goods and services are bought and sold based on supply and demand, with prices determined by market conditions.

    • Redistribution 

      • A system where goods or wealth are collected by a central authority and then distributed back to individuals or groups, often used to ensure a degree of equality or support communal needs.

    • Reciprocity 

      • An exchange principle in which goods and services are given and received without immediate or exact payment; it includes forms such as generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity.

    • Coexistence of exchange principles 

      • Many societies use a combination of exchange types (market, redistribution, reciprocity) simultaneously, depending on social context and relationships between people.

    • Potlatching 

      • A ceremonial event practiced by some Indigenous groups in the Pacific Northwest, where wealth and goods are given away or destroyed to display wealth, achieve social status, or fulfill cultural obligations.

Ethnography: Socio-Cultural Importance of Dogs in Maya

• Plata et al. (2019): Background + objectives 

  • Batida - Group hunting 

    • Involvement of dogs 

    • Tiradores - shooters 

    • Pujeros - beaters 

  • Main objective: 

    • Provide ethnography on the importance of dogs in Maya Subsistence hunting

• Study Area and Data 

  • Los Petenes, Yucatan, Mexico

    • Population 885 (133) 

  • Interviews 

    • Audio/video recordings 

  • Community workshop 

    • Focus groups 

  • 3 sociocultural dimensions of batida: 

    • Dog characterization 

    • Dog-hunter relationship 

    • Interaction: hunter and dog during batida

• Main finding

  • Batida hunting assisted by at least two dogs on a hunting trip 

  • Batida dogs benefit depending on their role: 

    • Roles: maestros vs secretarios 

    • Breeds: sabuesos vs malix 

  • Importance goes beyond utilitarian: a sociocultural perspective

  • Dogs who participate 

    • Reward 

      • Differences in reward

      • Maestros → same portions as human hunters 

      • Secretaries → scraps and remains 

• Mal Viento, and how to treat it:

  • Clipped the ears and tail to remove ‘bad wind’ 

  • Rubbing herbs and oils on the dog's body 

• Discussion points 

  • Similarities between biological and cultural anthropology data collections?

    • Fieldwork 

    • Collaborations with local people 

    • Record keeping 

• What is the difference between biological and cultural anthropology data collection?

  • Quantitative vs qualitative data 

  • Analytical differences 

  • Solitary vs social work 

Subsistence Hunting (B)

• The action of maintaining or supporting oneself

  • Adaptive strategies for nonindustrial societies 

    • Foraging 

      • Foraging/Hunters and Gatherers

        • Reliance on nature for subsistence 

        • Before 12,000 yrs. BP all humans were foragers 

        • Environmentally influenced: desert, rainforests, polar ice areas, etc

        • Substantial Diet - Healthy Physiology (adaptation)

        • Endangered Lifestyle 

      • Correlated Variables 

      • Foragers - society 

        • Small social groups: Kinships BANDS (microband and macro band)

        • Mobile settlement patterns/nomadic 

        • Sharing of resources

        • Immediate food consumption

        • Egalitarian society ~ mutual consent 

• Food production for strategies for nonindustrial societies

  • Horticulture 

    • Non-intensive, multi-crops 

    • Shifting plant cultivation - fallow land/planted land 

    • Slash and Burn Technique - Forest cultivation 

    • Semi-permanent dwellings - Tribe society

    • Simple tools: hoe, digging sticks 

    • Conservation of ecosystem

    • Age and Gender division of labor 

  • Agriculture 

    • Intensive and continuous plant cultivation

    • Domesticated animals - irrigation - terracing

    • Permanent settlements

    • Specialized crops - mono-crop

    • Disruption of ecosystem

  • Correlated Variables 

    • Horticulturist and agriculturalist - Society 

    • Low-labor and shifting plot (multi-crop), Intensive labor and permanent plot (mono-crop)

    • Social consequences - hierarchy society 

    • Political consequences - tribal leaders and chiefdoms

    • Environmental consequences - Disruption of ecosystems 

  • Pastoralism 

    • Domestication animals: cattle, sheep, goats, camels, yak, reindeer

    • Herds used for food: meat, milk, blood

    • Supplemental diet and trade with agriculturalist

    • Nomadism: move with the herd

    • Transhumance: part move/part stay  

    • Ex. European Alps

• Consequence of Agricultural Revolution 

  • Changes in workload and physical activity 

  • Increases in food variety and quantity 

  • Increases in population size 

  • Easier transmission of infectious diseases 

  • Reduction in general health

• Changes with agriculture 

  • Diet 

    • Softer foods 

      • Less mechanical strain 

      • Gracile, short skull 

      • Less tooth wear 

  • Workload (varies over populations)

    • Lower activity 

    • Less robust bones 

  • Adaptability vs adaptation? 

    • Genetic components

• Morphological changes in the environment 

  • Novel/toxic food 

  • Disease 

  • Extreme cold 

  • High altitudes 

  • UV rays 

  • Extreme heat 

Political Systems

Reading: Kottak, Political Systems (B)

•  The exercise of power and the regulation of social relationships: 

  • Decision-making, dispute management, conflict resolutions

• Political science: studies nation-states with established governments and public policies

  • Monarchy, Authoritative Regimes, Military States, Democracy, Social Welfare States, Socialism, Communism

• Anthropology: Includes non-states 

  • Four levels: BANDS - TRIBES - CHIEFDOMS - STATES 

  • Globalization: all exist within nation-states and are subject to state control

• Bands

  • Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers 

  • Relying on cultural norms to order society. Lack of formal “law” or political enforcement. Egalitarian societies.

  • BANDS: Based on kinship groups, subsistence activities are environment-dependent and centered on gender roles

  • Ex INUIT - ‘Song Battle’ a means to resolve conflicts through society's shame (wife stealing, adultery, jealousy)

• Tribes 

  • Economies based on horticulture and pastoralism 

  • Live in villages and organize into kin groups. No formal government and lack of socio-economic stratification 

  • Tribal societies have more effective regulatory mechanisms than Bands but have no reliable means of enforcing political decisions. 

  • Main regulatory officials: VILLAGE HEAD (smaller tribes) and BIG MAN (larger tribe). “A first among equals”. Can be ascribed (birthright) or achieved (chosen by group) status 

  • Society tends to be egalitarian, although some tribes have marked gender stratification. Egalitarianism diminishes as village size increases.

• Yanomami - Venezuela and Brazil (rainforest) 

  • Horticulturalists who also hunt and gather, Banana and plantain crops 

  • Social groups: Families, Village, Descent groups, patrilineal and exogamous 

  • VILLAGE HEADMAN: a limited leadership position. His authority lacks the right to issue orders. Influences groups by persuasion, oratory skills, generosity, leading feasts, and cooperation of co-villagers. Called upon to mediate conflicts, but is merely an equal among others. Represents villages in dealing with outsiders.

  • If villagers are dissatisfied with the headman, the members leave and find a new village - Village Fissioning. 

• Pantribal sodalities 

  • Groups that extend across the whole tribe, spanning several villagers. Such sodalities developed in situations of warfare and competition over hunting areas. 

  • Great Plains - Warrior societies that united in carrying out horse raids and hunting societies united for communal bison hunt 

  • Age and gender-related, Plains ex. Young men

  • Required leadership position for organization and policing the hunt; imposed penalties to those that broke the rules seizure of  wealth and possibly banned from the communities

• Chiefdoms

  • A form of sociopolitical organization between TRIBE and STATE. Social relations are based on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender.

  • Chief: regulates the society (society order) and economy (redistribution centers). Unlike ‘Big Men’ they are exempt from labor.

  • Status Systems - Based on gender (men) and seniority of descent (oldest son). Descended from ancestral founders - direct lineage to ‘creators’ Ex. Kwakiutl Chief of the Wolf clan is of direct descent from Wolf.

  • Associated with agriculture, but exceptions exist. Ex, Kwakiutl - Foraging society with a Chiefdom 

• State

  • Unlike Chiefdoms, STATES bring non-relatives together and oblige them all to pledge allegiance to a government. 

  • Autonomous political units with social strata and a formal government 

    • Population Control: boundaries, citizenship, census 

    • Judiciary: Laws, legal procedures, judges

    • Enforcement: military, police - punishment and protection

    • Fiscal Support: taxation, Production - Distribution - Consumption. Although there is redistribution, less goes back to society (Bureaucracy)

• The Emergence of Stratification 

  • The transition of CHIEFDOM to STATE. Archaic states separated elites from commoners - Stratum endogamy 

  • Creation of Social Strata: unrelated groups that differ in access to wealth, prestige, and power 

  • Max Weber (1922/1968), Sociologist: 

    • Wealth - Material assets: income, lang property. Economic Status

    • Power - ability to exercise one’s will over another. Political Status 

    • Prestige - esteem, approval, respect for exemplary quality. Social Status

  • Relationship of power and control: Superordinate - Subordinate

• Social Control 

  • Hegemony 

    • Hegemony - subordinates comply with domination by internalizing rulers’ values (natural order). ‘The Right to Rule’. Superordinates curb resistance and maintain power. 

  • Resistance 

    • Public Transcript/Hidden Transcript (James Scott, 1990) - Public acquiescence and hidden resistance. 

      • Small acts of noncompliance “nibbling strategies” 

      • Carnaval - Haitian Rara Bands during Lent.

  • Informal Social Control 

    • Shame and Gossip 

      • Igbo Women’s War, Nigeria 1929 (p. 126)

      • Historically in Igbo society women were influential in leadership positions.

      • Integration of political system and gender roles

Ethnography: Warfare is an Invention (Reader: p. 287-293)

• Conflict is everywhere 

• Violent conflict is not sporadic but permanent, we are in a time of continuous war 

• Are humans naturally violent or peaceful? 

• Is there something in the human evolutionary past that predisposes modern humans to behave in a particular way when confronted with conflict?

• Is war a biological necessity, a sociological inevitability, or just a bad invention?

• Margaret Mead’s Argument:

  • Mead, a leading anthropologist, argued that warfare is not biologically inherent to human society but is instead a cultural invention.

  • In her 1940 essay, "Warfare is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity," she suggests that while humans can engage in conflict, warfare is a unique, organized method that societies have developed.

  • Mead asserts that because warfare is culturally constructed, it can be replaced with other forms of conflict resolution if societies choose to develop them.

• Warfare as a Learned Behavior:

  • Mead contends that understanding warfare as a learned behavior challenges the belief that violence and organized conflict are natural parts of human nature.

  • She suggests that seeing warfare as a social choice opens the possibility for societies to pursue peaceful alternatives by reshaping cultural norms.

• Warfare as an "Invention":

  • By calling warfare an "invention," Mead emphasizes that it is a social construct—a way of organizing conflict created by humans, much like other societal customs or technologies.

  • Mead argues that warfare is one of many ways societies have addressed competition, resource distribution, and social organization.

• The Possibility of Alternatives:

  • Mead believes that just as societies invented warfare, they could also create alternative systems for managing conflict without violence.

  • Her perspective implies that if warfare is not intrinsic to humanity, new social inventions focused on cooperation and peace are possible.

• Absence of Warfare in Some Societies:

  • Mead points to societies that have existed without warfare to illustrate that organized conflict is not a universal or inevitable aspect of human life.

  • She argues that this absence, along with humanity’s capacity for invention, indicates that societies can replace warfare with nonviolent conflict resolution strategies.

• Cultural vs. Biological Imperatives:

  • Mead believes warfare is sustained by cultural factors, not biological drives, making it a choice that societies can consciously unlearn.

  • Framing war as an invention highlights that it can be replaced if societies adopt new practices and values that prioritize peace.

• Conditions for Replacing Warfare:

  • Mead suggests that replacing warfare requires societal willingness to innovate and redefine traditional values around power and conflict.

  • This shift would depend on education, intentional effort, and a focus on values like human rights, sustainability, and collective well-being.

• Possibility of a World Without War:

  • A world without warfare is challenging but possible with commitment to peaceful innovation and cultural change.

  • History shows that societies can evolve toward peaceful solutions, especially as they embrace cooperative values over conflict.

Sexuality

Ch. 8: Sexuality

• Anthropologists consider sexuality to be a central aspect of human social organization that influences, and is influenced by, various other aspects of society such as food-getting, family structure, and religious belief.

• Sexuality involves more than personal choices about who our sexual partners are and what we do with them. 

• It is a cultural arena.

• People debate ideas of what is moral, appropriate, and natural, and use those ideas to create unequal access to society’s power, privileges, and resources.

• Conflict about sexuality often shows the intersections of multiple systems of power, like gender, religion, race, class, and kinship. 

• Mid-1980s

• Influenced by the women’s movement and the emergence of gay and lesbian studies in the 1980s and queer theory in the 1990s 

• There are diverse expressions of sexuality in cultures worldwide and the way those expressions are being shaped by the intersection of local practices and globalization. 

• What do certain sexual behaviors mean to different cultures? 

• Sexuality is more than an expression of individual desires and identities. 

• It is also a highly contested arena in which appropriate behavior is defined and relations of power are worked out.

• Americans often struggle to find a common language to discuss sexuality and often lack theoretical and analytical frameworks to add depth to emotionally heated conversations.

Ethnography: From Under Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene (Reader: p. 191-201)

• Benedicto uses the term "scene" to capture the fluid and interconnected social spaces that make up gay life in Manila. Rather than a single, contained location, the "scene" refers to a network of spaces and experiences that are dispersed yet interconnected, often transcending physical boundaries. By calling it a "scene," Benedicto emphasizes the performative, ever-changing, and socially constructed aspects of gay identity and nightlife in Manila.

• The "bright lights" landscape includes nightclubs, bars, upscale malls, and other public or semi-public spaces where Manila’s gay community gathers. These sites are not confined to one neighborhood but are spread across the city, often in affluent or cosmopolitan areas that cater to a specific lifestyle and aesthetic. This landscape also extends to online spaces and social media, which connect people beyond Manila's physical geography.

• Benedicto's concept of a "scene" applies to any community that is bound by shared interests, aesthetics, or social practices but is not tied to one location. Examples include global subcultures, such as the online gaming community, the global K-pop fanbase, or digital activist networks. These "scenes" are defined more by shared experiences, online platforms, and events than by geographic proximity.

• Moving through the city represents the way gay men in Manila navigate different social worlds, negotiating both visibility and safety. It reflects the fluidity of identity, as individuals move between various social spaces and adapt to changing norms. This movement also highlights how gay men engage with, claim, and transform urban spaces in ways that allow them to express themselves within the constraints of a conservative society.

• Movement and mobility allow gay men in Manila to access and participate in a global gay culture, which influences their sense of identity and community. Mobility enables them to connect with like-minded individuals, explore diverse lifestyles, and find a sense of belonging that may not be available within their immediate social or familial networks. Mobility across physical and social spaces thus plays a key role in shaping a modern, globally-informed gay identity.

• Benedicto argues that the bright lights scene often mirrors Manila's existing social hierarchies. Access to the scene is often limited by economic means, as participation in high-end clubs or trendy spaces is costly. Additionally, the scene often glorifies Western beauty standards, privileging lighter skin and Westernized aesthetics, which reinforces racial and class hierarchies. By replicating these norms, the scene reinforces social structures that marginalize those who cannot meet these standards or afford the lifestyle.

• Benedicto connects movement with the pursuit of freedom, self-expression, and acceptance within Manila's constraints. Queer individuals in Manila often move toward spaces that provide a sense of community, escape from judgment, or the possibility of a life that aligns more with global queer ideals. This movement symbolizes a journey toward greater visibility, personal authenticity, and the pursuit of dreams often shaped by global representations of gay life, even if these ideals may be limited or complicated by local realities.

Defining Gender

Ch. 7: Gender

• Gender - characteristics associated with being a woman or man in a particular culture and the ways those characteristics interact with dynamics of power.

• Gender Studies - The analysis of gender identity and gender representation, understanding who we are as men and women. 

• Why is gender important to culture?

• How is gender constructed to be so important in culture, health, economics, politics, sports, and individual identity formation?

• Most things that are considered to be ‘natural’ male or female behavior - driven by biology - are actually driven by cultural expectations of how men and women SHOULD behave.

• Sex and gender are different. Sex is biological and physical factors and gender is behavioral factors–learned behavior. 

• Being a woman or man is learned 

• The cultural construction of gender-learned behavior

• Gender is an invisible framework that shapes our societies with dating, mating, parenting, and loving that reinforces the ideas of learned masculinity and femininity. 

• Gender roles → gender performance 

• Gender Performance - The way gender identity is expressed through actions.

• Gender roles can mistakenly be seen as reflecting stable, fixed identities that fall in one of two opposite extremes –male or female.

• Gender is a set of behaviors that range between masculinity and femininity

• How does culture contribute to gender? 

• Gender Stratification - Refers to the social ranking, where men typically inhabit higher statuses than women. 

• What are the processes that create an unequal distribution of power in which gender shapes who has access to a group's resources, opportunities, rights, and privileges? What are the gender stereotypes and gender ideologies that support a gendered system of power? 

• Gender Stereotypes - These are widely held and powerful, preconceived notions about the attributes of, differences between, and proper roles for women and men in a culture. Ex) Men may be stereotyped as more aggressive and women may be seen as more nurturing. 

• Stereotypes create influential assumptions about what men and women might expect from one another. 

• Gender Ideology - This is a set of cultural ideas about men’s and women’s essential characters, capabilities, and values that consciously or unconsciously promote and justify gender stratification.

Ethnography: Tombois in West Sumatra (Reader: p. 169-179)

• Fieldwork on gender and sexuality among the Minangkabau people of Indonesia. 

• Gender and sexual identities are fluid not fixed. 

• Individual identities were shaped and reshaped in relationship to and often in resistance to the dominant gender ideologies. Minangkabau are not monolithic 

• Hegemony - The way dominant ideas define what is permissible, even thinkable, and the way new meanings and identities emerge 

• Lesbi(lesbian) or tomboi(tomboy) 

• Tombois challenges a hegemonic system in which the only legitimate grounds for gender identity are biological. 

• They perform their gender identities in ways that defy expectations, placing themselves in conflict with cultural norms, values, and even mental maps of reality held by the Minangkabau people. 

• Tomboi in West Sumatra is different from a butch in the United States

• The term tomboy is used for female acting in the manner of me (gaya laki laki)

• There are different concepts and meanings for words. 

• In opposition to biological determinism, social constructionists argue that gender is not an essence preceding social expressions but an identity that is constructed and fluid.

• Hegemonic or dominant gender ideologies define what is permissible, even thinkable; they serve as the standard against which auctions are measured, producing codes, regulations, and laws that perpetuate a particular ideology. 

• Minangkabau people are one of the many ethnic groups that have been incorporated into the state of Indonesia. 

• Minangkabau people are a diverse group of individuals. 

• They are Muslim and matrilineal, which means that even though they are devout Muslims, inheritance and property pass from mother to daughter, not father to son. 

• Villages have anywhere from 15% to 25% of their residents on temporary out-migration.

• Bancis - effeminate or transcestite homosexual

• Bancis do not carry themselves like men or women

• It’s easier to find Bencong than lesbi 

• The lesbi she met did not present boyish or masculine

• Dayn 

Kinships

Ch. 9: Kinship, Family, and Marriage

• Humans live in groups 

• Kinship is the most effective strategy made to develop stable, reliable, separate, and interconnected groups that last over time and generations, 

• Kinship - is the system of meaning and power created to determine who is related to whom and to define their mutual expectations, rights, and responsibilities.

• Groups are also formed through work, religion, education, and politics

• Kinship provides support and nature 

• Kinships are assumed by Western cultures to have a biological basis and arise around the nuclear family of mother, father, and children. 

• Nuclear family - a group of people who are united by ties of partnership and parenthood and consisting of a pair of adults and their socially recognized children

• Kinship is also created through marriage and remarriage, adoption, and fostering. 

• Gay and lesbian couples and their families are achieving increased acceptance and official recognition. 

• Kinship is the relationship between those closest to us, like our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, cousins, husbands, wives, partners, and children. 

• These relationships are built on shared values, support, emotions, creative energy, hopes, and dreams.

• Kinship helps people look back on the people before them and look forward to new relationships and families. 

Ethnography: When Brothers Share a Wife (Reader: p. 214-220)

• Fraternal polyandry, in which multiple brothers share a single wife, is primarily practiced to keep family land and resources intact. By marrying the same woman, brothers avoid dividing their inheritance, which would occur if each brother married separately and started his own family. This practice helps maintain economic stability and efficiency, particularly in rural and agricultural Tibetan communities where resources are scarce.

• One common assumption is that polyandry is practiced due to a shortage of women. However, Goldstein found that this is not true in Tibetan society, where the gender ratio is balanced. Polyandry is a choice, not a necessity based on the availability of women.

• Another assumption is that polyandry is motivated by sexual promiscuity or that it is an "unnatural" arrangement forced on people. Goldstein's findings show that this assumption is also inaccurate. Instead, Tibetans view polyandry as practical, stable, and beneficial for maintaining family wealth, status, and economic viability.

• Goldstein’s research challenges Western assumptions about marriage being based primarily on romantic love or monogamy. In many Western societies, marriage is viewed as a partnership between two people. Fraternal polyandry, however, is based on economic and social necessity rather than romantic ideals. By exploring the practical benefits of polyandry in Tibetan culture, Goldstein encourages readers to see marriage as adaptable to different social and environmental needs, which can challenge Western perspectives that prioritize individual choice and nuclear family structures.

• A Tibetan anthropologist might observe that in Western societies, the emphasis on individualism often translates to marriage being centered on the nuclear family unit, separate from extended family. This focus on individual success and romantic love can lead to frequent divorce and the splitting of family resources. The Tibetan anthropologist might interpret these practices as economically inefficient compared to polyandry, where joint family efforts are valued. Western practices are also shaped by values such as religious ideals of monogamy, economic independence, and political systems that support individual property ownership.

• As Goldstein notes, fraternal polyandry is becoming less common in Tibetan areas where modernization and new economic opportunities are increasing. With the development of wage-based economies, government jobs, and tourism, younger generations may prefer monogamous or individual marriages because these arrangements align better with new economic systems. Like the Nepalese who adopted love letters in response to changing social norms, Tibetans may also shift away from traditional marriage practices as they adopt new values and lifestyles influenced by globalization and modern economic opportunities.

Notes 

SECTION 2 ANT 10/01

• Subsistence

- The action of maintaining or supporting oneself

- Adaptive strategies for non industrial societies 

• Foraging 

  • Foraging/Hunters and Gatherers

    • Reliance of nature for subsistence 

    • Prior to 12,000 yrs. BP all humans were foragers 

    • Environmentally influenced: desert, rainforests, polar ice areas, ect

    • Substantial Diet - Healthy Physiology (adaptation)

    • Endangered Lifestyle 

• Correlated Variables 

• Foragers - society 

  • Small social groups: Kinships BANDS (microband and macroband)

  • Mobile settlement patterns/nomadic 

  • Sharing of resources

  • Immediate food consumption

  • Egalitarian society ~ mutual consent 

- Food production for strategies for non industrial societies

• Horticulture 

  • Non-intensive, multi-crops 

  • Shifting plant cultivation - fallow land/planted land 

  • Slash and Burn Technique - forest cultivation 

  • Semi-permanent dwellings - Tribe society

  • Simple tools: hoe, digging sticks 

  • Conservation of ecosystem

  • Age and Gender division of labor 

• Agriculture 

  • Intensive and continuous plant cultivation

  • Domesticated animals - irrigation - terracing

  • Permanent settlements

  • Specialized crops - mono-crop

  • Disruption of ecosystem

• Correlated Variables 

  • Horticulturist and agriculturalist - Society 

    • Low-labor and shifting plot (multi-crop), Intensive labor and permanent plot (mono-crop)

    • Social consequences - hierarchy society 

    • Political consequences - tribal leaders and chiefdoms

    • Environmental consequences - Disruption of ecosystems 

• Pastoralism 

  • Domestication animals: cattle, sheep, goat, camels, yak, reindeer

  • Herds used for food: meat, milk, blood

  • Supplemental diet and trade with agriculturalist

  • Nomadism: move with herd

  • Transhumance: part move/part stay  

    • Ex. European Alps

• Correlated Variables

- Horticulturist and agriculturalist - society

• Low-labor and shifting plot(multi-crops) 

• intensive labor and permanent plot (mono crop)

• Social consequences

  • Hierarchy Society

• Political consequences 

  • Tribal leaders and chiefdoms(usually have a much larger village)

• Environmental consequences

  • Agriculturalists s are disruptive of the ecosystem compared to horticulturists

• Economic systems

• Production 

• Distribution 

• Consumption 

- Non-industrial society 

• Mode of production - how labor is organized for the production of food 

  • Labor is considered a social obligation 

  • Kinship and marriage-based 

  • Shared resources 

  • The economy is embedded in society

- Labor in industrial society 

• Capitalist mode of production 

  • Laborer - Money - Owner 

• Laborer is Alienation 

• Laborer as commodity

- Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867 

• Critique of political economy 

• Allocation of Resources

• Non-industrial states: Subsistence fund - replacement fund (equipment)- social fund - ceremonial fund

• Nation-States: Rent fund - Payment to superior

  • Peasants (non-industrial labor) - small scale agriculturalist with rent fund obligations and gov’t obligations

• Market Principle, redistribution and reciprocity

- Market Principle: money, profit, supply and demand - dominant aspect of industrialized society

- Redistribution: Goods move from periphery to center and then redistributed to the periphery. Hierarchy 

• Ex. Cherokee (agriculturalist) of the Tennessee Valley. 

- Reciprocity - Exchange among social equals (close kin, distant kinship, outsider exchange)

- Reciprocity continuum: 

• Generalized  

• Balanced: Equal trade  

• Negative: Vengeance

• Ex. Plains horse stealing and Kuria cattle stealing. Can result in raids.

• Potlatch

- Exchange system based on generosity - prestige 

ANT 10/03

• Subsistence (continued)

- Four modes of human subsistence

• Foraging 

• Horticulture

• Agriculture 

• Pastoralism 

- Consequence of Agricultural Revolution 

• Changes in workload and physical activity 

• Increases in food variety and quantity 

• Increases in population size 

• Easier transmission of infectious diseases 

• Reduction in general health

- Changes with agriculture 

• Diet 

  • Softer foods 

    • Less mechanical strain 

    • Gracile, short skull 

    • Less tooth wear 

• Workload (varies over populations)

  • Lower activity 

  • Less robust bones 

• Adaptability vs adaptation? 

  • Genetic components

- Morphological changes with environment 

• Novel/toxic food 

• Disease 

• Extreme cold 

• High altitudes 

• UV rays 

• Extreme heat 

- Adaptive strategies: Complex Carbohydrates 

• Digesting Carbohydrates 

• Genetics 

  • Amylase gene, AMY1

    • Breaks Down starches into sugars (glucose) 

    • Closely related primates → 1 or no amylase gene 

    • Multiplication in people with high carb diet 

    • Higher amount of amylase in the mouth (and pancreas – AMY2)

      • More effective breakdown of carbs 

• Genomics 

  • Genes associated with metabolizing food: 

    • Differ depending on where people live and what they eat 

    • Agricultural people more specialized, can digest fewer types of food 

- Herding animals 

• Across cultures, different forms of use of animals such as: 

  • Meat 

  • Milk Products

  • Farm animals

  • Other animal products like wool

• Lactase Persistence 

  • In some populations, adults can drink milk 

    • LCT gene (located on chromosome #2) 

    • Lactase persistence 

      • The lactase gene not turned off after wearing 

      • Dominant allele 

      • Persists in homozygous and heterozygous individuals

  • Common in populations with history of dairying 

  • Adaptation to consumption of fresh milk and non-fermented milk products 

- When did lactase persistence evolve? 

• Europeans 

  • Between ~2,000 and 20,000 years ago 

• East Africans 

  • Between ~3,000 and 7,000 years ago 

• Middle east 

  • ~4,000 years ago

• In certain populations, mutant alleles increased in frequency via natural selection 

  • Possible causes 

    • Provides vitamin D (In northern latitudes) 

    • ‘Superfood’ (it's just good for you) 

    • Uncontaminated fluid (particularly in dry areas) 

    • Following failed crops in mixed economies with processed milk products ( haad to rely on unprocessed milk)

• Anthropology today 

- Scarcity and the betsileo (case study in madagascar) 

• Cultural reactions and beliefs: 

  • The Betsileo people exhibit a profound fear of the mpakafos, whom they believe are cannibals and vampires, leading to a wary reception of outsiders who match the mpakakos; description (fair-skinned and tall). 

• Positive Interaction in Ivato: 

  • In contrast, the community in Ivato was open and welcoming, readily sharing information about local history and relationships, facilitated by trusted local sponsors and a hospitable environment. 

• Economic and social dynamics: 

  • Over time, the introduction of a cash economy and globalization significantly impacted the traditional subsistence lifestyle in Ivato and other regions, shifting from purely rice cultivation to diversified agriculture including commercial crops 

• Cultural shifts due to cash economy:

  •  The necessity for cash led to social and political changes, including increased cattle rustling and destruction of local resources like rice fields in search of valuable minerals.

• Long-term consequences:

  • These economic pressures have strained local resources and fostered a climate where scarcity and competition are prevalent, overshadowing traditional communal values and reciprocities

- Consequence: Scarcity and unsustainable crop production 

• Tavy - Slash and burn agriculture 

  • It could bad for the environment if not treated well

  • In Madagascar, forests were cut down to almost 10% of the island due to unchecked agriculture, 

• Other issues:

  • Overgrazing, unsustainable logging 

• ~90% of natural forests have been lost

• Negative reciprocity: Cattle stealing among the Betsileo

• Mass immigration to cities

  • The government cant handle movement to cities 

  • Rural villages lack electricity and running water

- Plata et al. (2019): Background + objectives 

• Batida - Group hunting 

  • Involvement of dogs 

  • Tiradores - shooters 

  • Pujeros - beaters 

• Main objective: 

  • Provide ethnography on the importance of dogs in Maya Subsistence hunting

- Study Area and Data 

• Los Petenes, Yucatan, Mexico

  • Population 885 (133) 

• INterviews 

  • Audio/video recordings 

• Community workshop 

  • Focus groups 

• 3 sociocultural dimensions of batida: 

  • Dog characterization 

  • Dog-hunter relationship 

  • Interaction: hunter and god during batida

- Main finding

• Batida hunting assisted by at least two dogs  hunting trip 

• Batida dogs benefit depending on their role: 

  • Roles: maestros vs secretarios 

  • Breeds: sabuesos vs malix 

•  Importance goes beyond utilitarian: a sociocultural perspective

• Dogs who participate 

  • Reward 

    • Differences in reward

    • Maestros → same portions as human hunters 

    • Secretarios → scraps and remains 

• Mal Viento, and how to treat it:

  • Clipped the ears and tail to remove ‘bad wind’ 

  • Rubbing herbs and oils on the dogs body 

- Discussion points 

• Similarities between biological and cultural anthropology data collections?

  • Field work 

  • Collaborations with local people 

  • Record keeping 

• Difference between biological and cultural anthropology data collection?

  • Quantitative vs qualitative data 

  • Analytical differences 

  • Solitary vs social work 

• Subfields of anthropology 

• Archeology

• Cultural anthropology 

• Biological anthropology 

  • Primatology

  • Paleoanthropology

  • Bioarchaeology

  • Molecular anthropology

  • Forensic anthropology

  • Human biology

• Linguistic anthropology 

ANT 10/08

• Political Systems 

- The exercise of power and the regulation of social relationships: 

• Decision making, dispute management, conflict resolutions

- Political science: studies nation states with established governments and public policies

• Monarchy, Authoritative Regimes, Military States, Democracy, Social Welfare States, Socialism, Communism

- Anthropology: Includes non-states 

• Four levels: BANDS - TRIBES - CHIEFDOMS - STATES 

• Globalization: all exist within nation-states and are subject to state control

• Bands

- Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers 

- Rely on cultural norms to order society. Lack formal “law” or political enforcement. Egalitarian societies.

- BANDS: Based on kinship groups, subsistence activities are environment dependent and centered on gender roles

- Ex INUIT - ‘Song Battle’ a means to resolve conflicts through society shame (wife stealing, adultery, jealousy)

• Tribes 

- Economies based on horticulture and pastoralism 

- Live in villages and organize into kin groups. No formal government and lack of socio-economic stratification 

- Tribal societies have more effective regulatory mechanism than Bands, but have no reliable means of enforcing political decisions 

- Main regulatory officials: VILLAGE HEAD (smaller tribes) and BIG MAN (larger tribe). “A first among equals”. Can be ascribed (birthright) or achieved (chosen by group) status 

- Society tends to be egalitarian, although some tribes have marked gender stratification. Egalitarianism diminishes as village size increases

• Yanomami - Venezuela and Brazil (rainforest) 

- Horticulturalist who also hunt and gather, Banana and plantain crops 

- Social groups: Families, Village, Descent groups, patrilineal and exogamous 

- VILLAGE HEADMAN: a limited leadership position. His authority lacks the right to issue orders. Influences groups by persuasion, oratory skills, generosity, leading feasts and cooperation of co-villagers. Called upon to mediate conflicts, but is merely an equal among others. Represents villages in dealing with outsiders.

- If villagers are dissatisfied with headman, the members leave and find a new village - Village Fissioning 

• Pantribal sodalities 

- Groups that extend across the whole tribe, spanning several villagers. Such sodalities developed in situations of warfare and competition over hunting areas 

- Great Plains - Warrior societies that united in carrying out horse raids and hunting societies united for communal bison hunt 

- Age and gender related, Plains ex. Young men

- Required leadership position for organization and policing the hunt; imposed penalties to those that broke the rules seizure of  wealth and possibly banned from the communities

ANT 10/10

• Political Systems 2 

• Chiefdoms

- A form of sociopolitical organization between TRIBE and STATE. Social relations are based on kinship, marriage, descent, age, generation, and gender

- Chief: regulates the society (society order) and economy (redistribution centers). Unlike ‘Big Men’ they are exempt from labor.

- Status Systems - Based on gender (men) and seniority of descent (oldest son). Descended from ancestral founders - direct lineage to ‘creators’ Ex. Kwakiutl Chief of Wolf clan is a direct descent of Wolf

- Associated with agriculture, but exceptions exist. Ex, Kwakiutl - Foraging society with a Chiefdom 

• State

- Unlike Chiefdoms, STATES bring non-relatives together and oblige them all to pledge allegiance to a government 

- Autonomous political units with social strata and a formal government 

• Population Control: boundaries, citizenship, census 

• Judiciary: Laws, legal procedures, judges

• Enforcement: military, police - punishment and protection

• Fiscal Support: taxation, Production - Distribution - Consumption. Although there is redistribution, less goes back to society (Bureaucracy)

• The Emergence of Stratification 

- The transition of CHIEFDOM to STATE. Archaic states separated elites from commoners - Stratum endogamy 

- Creation of Social Strata: unrelated groups that differ in access to wealth, prestige and power 

- Max Weber (1922/1968), Sociologist: 

• Wealth - Material assets: income, lang property. Economic Status

• Power - ability to exercise one’s will over another. Political Status 

• Prestige - esteem, approval, respect for exemplary quality. Social Status

- Relationship of power and control: Superordinate - Subordinate

• Social Control 

- Hegemony 

•  Hegemony - subordinates comply with domination by internalizing rulers’ values (natural order). ‘The Right to Rule’. Superordinnates curb resistance and maintain power. 

- Resistance 

• Public Transcript/Hidden Transcript (James Scott, 1990) - Public acquiescence and hidden resistance. 

  • Small acts of noncompliance “nibbling strategies” 

  • Carnaval - Haitian Rara Bands during lent.

- Informal Social Control 

• Shame and Gossip 

  • Igbo Women’s War, Nigeria 1929 (p. 126)

  • Historically in Igbo society women were influential in leadership positions

  • Integration of political system and gender roles

• Ethnographic Readings 

- Classical Anthropologist 

- 1920’s - 1940’s Historical particularism - student of Franz Boas 

- During and Post WWII involved and influential in mainstream U.S. culture - Readers Digest writer. 

- Discusses War - Is it biological or cultural? 

• Which political systems group would most likely not engage in war 

- Margaret Mead, Warfare is Only an Invention — Not a Biological Necessity, 1940. (Reader p.2870 

• Biology (basic aggressive human nature) vs culturally influenced

• An aspect of State Societies - struggle for land and resources 

• Discussion and overview of wars in various societies

- Bobby Benedetto, From Under the Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene, 2014 (Reader p.191) 

• Sexuality, Identity, Ethnicity, GLobalization

• Reflexive anthropology

• Examination of class and sexuality in urban life

• Human Sexuality

- Biologically 

• Sexual physical contact among a male an a female individual to produce offspring

- Cultural

• The complex range of desires, beliefs, and behaviors that are related to erotic physical contact, intimacy and pleasure

• The cultural arena within which people debate about what kinds of physical desires and behaviors are right, appropriate, and “natura”. 

• Biology

- Sex chromosomes 

• A sex chromosome is a type of chromosome involved in sex determination 

- Humans and most other mammals have two sex chromosomes, X and Y, that in combination determine - the sex of an individual

- Females: XX

- Males: XY

• X and Y chromosome variations (DSD)

• These conditions are caused by a problem in the division of the x and y chromosomes during the formation of  a parent's egg or the sperm, which are then involved in conception. The exact cause is unknown, and these conditions are typically not inherited. 

• Charles Darwin 

- 1859: On the Origin of the Species

• Theory of Human Evolution

• Natural Selection 

• Adaptation and Variation for survival

- 1872: The descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

• Sexual Selection 

• Adaptation and variations for reproduction 

• Sexual Behavior Comparisons 

- Non Human Mammals

• Short-term sexual partners

• Do not raise offspring together for long periods

• Public sex

• Sex for procreation

- Humans

• Long term sexual partners

• Invest in long term high investment offspring and coparent

• Private sex

• Sex for procreation and pleasure 

ANT 10/17

• Sexuality and Evolutionary Biology

- Human sexuality is seen as a product of Darwinian sexual selection. It involves males competing for females and females choosing male partners 

- Human culture is considered as an aspect of ‘sexual selection’ theory: “Society is composed of competing individuals in a quest for gene survival”

- Generally, men’s preference for women: youth, beauty, and body symmetry, -are seen as ‘signifiers’ of fertility

• Male and Female Reproduction Strategies 

• Males

  • They have the ability to reproduce throughout their lifespan 

  • The biological goal is to produce the most offspring to ensure survival 

• Females 

  • Produce limited offspring due to limited reproductive fertility

  • The biological goal is to produce the fittest offspring to ensure the survival of limited high-investment offspring

- Marriage: a cultural expression of “sanctioned” human sexuality

• Human Sexuality and Culture

- Culture shapes what people think is natural, normal, and even possible sexual behavior.

- Human sexual identity can be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual. 

- Human sexual relationships can be monogamous, polygamous, or polyandrous.

- Not all humans use sexual relationships to have offspring.

- Culture guides and limits human sexual desires and practices.

• Sexual Citizenship 

- Hirsch and Kahn, A Landmark Study of Sex, and Assault on Campus. 2020 (p.302-306)

- Prevalence of sexual assault on American college campus 

- Role of culture and power relations that underlie sexual behaviors 

- Knowledge and Education - Sexual Citizenship

• Same-Sex Sexuality and Cross-Cultural Perspective 

- Suriname mati: same-sex female relationships for mutual support, obligation and responsibility 

- Machismo: Lancaster, 1994: same-sex male sexuality study in Nicaragua 

• However- This term stereotypes Latino men. Its origins were created in the U.S. during the Cold War.

- Japan corporate masculinity: building homosocial relationships among business peers. Challenging men’s sexuality and desire in work.

• Heteronormativity and Homosexuality in American Culture

- Heterosexuality is a term that was coined in 1892. Jonathan Katz, 2007 ‘Invention of heterosexuality’

- White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, Chrys Ingraham, 2008

• White Wedding and American consumer culture - inequality and unequal access 

- Gay Weddings

• Sexuality and Power Relations

- Michel Foucault, 1978, on sexuality as “an especially dense transfer point for relations of power” 

• Intersectionality - The ways systems of power affect personal lives 

• Gov’t and Regligion regulate aspects of sexuality. Ex. Marriage, divorce, age of consent, pornography, prostitution, polygyny, Gay and Lesbian rights, transgender rights, etc.

- Textbook examples - p.293-30

ANT 10/22

• What is the difference between sex and gender?

• Gender, Gender Studies, Gender Identity

- Gender is the expectation of behaviors that each culture assigns to people of different sexes

- Binary gender has provided a framework for gender studies - more recent scholarships include nonbinary, gender non-conforming, gender-fluid, genderqueer, and transgender expressions.

- Gender Identity - each person’s experience and understanding of their gender

• Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990

- Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity is a book by the post-structuralist gender theorist and philosopher Judith Butler in which the author argues that gender is performative, meaning that it is maintained, created, or perpetuated by iterative repetitions when speaking and interacting with each other.

• Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, 2024

- How do you define gender today?

• Oh, goodness. I have, I supposed, revised my theory of gender – but that’s not the point of this book. I do make this point in this book. I do make the point that “gender identity” is not all of what we mean by gender: It’s one thing that belongs to a cluster of things. Gender is also a framework – a very important framework – in law, in politics, for things about how inequity gets instituted in the world.

• The cultural construction of gender 

- Humans are born with biological sex chromosomes (XX, XY, or X-Y variations); but we learn gender (enculturation). 

- Culture reinforces ideas of gender: masculinity, and feminity.

• Sholar Interpretations 

- Masculinity 

• Men closer to culture 

  • (Sherry B, Ortner, 1974)

• Are Men Animals 2019,

  • Matthew Gutmann

- Femininity 

• Women closer to nature 

  • (Sherry B. Ortner)

• The Second Sex, 1949, 

  • Simone Debeauvior

• USA: Sports and Gender

  • How is athleticism learned in youth sports?

- What are the ramifications of athletic training in adulthood? 

- Consider family life, work, and societal expectations.

• Labor and gender 

- Division of Labor occurs in most societies

- Employment and gender 

• History of women's work in AMerica is affected by economic need 

• Gender

- Cross cultural genders: Third genders

• Many cultures don’t generalize gender 

• Some cultures believe that those who are non-binary have spiritual powers 

- In western ideology, non-binaries are believed to be part of the LGBTQ community

• They only believe in two genders, and that's the gender given at birth

ANT 10/24

• Cross-Cultural Perspectives and Gender Diversity 

- India - Hindu religion. Hijras (Serena Nanda, 1998). Followers of Mother Goddess, Bahuchara Mata 

- Native Americans - (Berdache) Two-spirits - gender-fluid 

- Idealization - Social Reality

• Mexico: Zapotec Muxe 

- The Muxes, a recognized third gender among the zapotec people in Oaxaca, maintain traditional dress, the Zapotec language, and other cultural traditions that are less prevalent among the broader Zapotec community. 

• Gender and Power

- Real Queer? 2015, David Murray 

• Canadian government asylum claims for SOGIESC (Secual Orientation, Gender Identity and expression, Sex Characteristic)

  • Canadian government is known to take in people that are generally not accepted in other countries

• David Murray examines process for proving refugee status

  • Prove identity 

  • Prove need for asylum 

• International expressions of gender. *cross-cultural perspectives

• Applicants have to prove they are credible to the Canadian government

• Revisiting Male dominance and feminism

- Sherri Ortner (1974), Michelle Rosaldo (1974): male dominance and the division of labor

• 1980’s: stratification and inequality 

- Feminist Anthropology looks at culture from a feminist lens 

• Trobriand islands: Bronislaw Malinowsky (1922) - Annette Weiner (1976)

  • Women of Value, Men of Renown

  • Economic gender participation - Kula Ring/banana leaves and fiber

• Gender Ideology - stratification 

- Male aggressor / female passive 

- Know what stratification means and Strata

• Strata: layers or levels, such as different hierarchy levels

- Martin, 1991: misconception of egg and sperm fertilization process (biology). 

- Human evolution/evolutionary psychology: misconceptions of hunter gatherer gender role contributions

- Gender violence: prevalence of domestic violence and college campus violence, LGBTQ violence, structural/economic violence

• Gender Reality 

- Political activism: CO-Madres El Salvador 1977 - 1992

• Civil war about political activism 

• Gender and Globalization 

- Flexible accumulation: migration women’s wage labor

• Factory work: blue collar/ pink collar

• Carla Freeman's high tech and high heels in the Global Economy, 12000. Barbados

• Impact: better working conditions, increase supervision of male management, low wages, increase social status (fashion) 

• Domestic caregivers

• Pei-chia lans - study of Filipino and Indonesian caregivers in Taiwan. “Global Cinderellas” 

• Impact: freedom from property

  • Exploitation in work environment

- Evelyn Blackwood, Tombois in West Sumatra, 1998

• Kinship

- Families

• Nuclear

  • Direct family 

• Extended

• Family of orientation 

  • Looking at the ego of the child, the family is a family of orientation 

• Family of procreation 

  • Looking at the ego of the father, the family and children are family of procreation

• Kinship

- Consanguineal relatives

• People related by blood

- Affinal relationships 

• Not related by blood

• Connected by marriage

- Square = ego

- Triangle = male

- Circle = female 

- Dot in middle of square or circle means adopted 

- Patrilineal extended family 

• Extended family of father 

- Matrilinear extended family 

• Extended family of mother

- Neolocalities 

• Getting married and moving out

• Having their own house 

- Patrilocality

• If child gets married and lives in husbands house 

- Matrilocality 

• If child gets married and lives in wife's house

• Marriage 

• Descent 

- Descent groups non industrial society central unit of social system 

- Economic 

- Political 

- Religions 

- Lineage 

• Need proof stating who your family tree was

- Clan

• You don’t need proof stating that your family was part of a certain class

- Matrilineal 

• Lineage of mother

- Patrilineal 

• Lineage of father 

- Unilineal

• If lineage is traced by one parent

- Ambilineal 

• If lineage is traced by both parents 

• Nuer of Sudan 

- Classic represntation of descent group 

- 1930’s E.E. evans pritchard

- Patrilineal descent group 

• Passes membership from father to son 

- Pastoral cattle-herding economy. Nuer clans are exogamous

• Descent 

- Permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry 

Matrilineal 

• Lineage of mother

- Patrilineal 

• Lineage of father 

- Unilineal

• If lineage is traced by one parent

- Ambilineal 

• If lineage is traced by both parents 

- Apical Ancestor: Lineage (demonstrated), Clans (stipulated, can be a totem). 

• Ex: Wolf clan

- Descent group organization 

• Horticulturalist

• Agriculturalist

• Pastoralist 

- Postmarital residence rules

• Patrilocality

• Matrilocality 

• Neolocality 

• Marriage 

- Marriage is found in all human societies. It is the civilized and social definition of mating. - Marriage gives social definition to private sexual acts and generates a structure for bringing up children. 

- Human marriage makes sense only if a couple is part of a larger group: it is about the relatives and the in-laws as much as it is about the bride and groom.

• Aspects of Marriage/Affinal Relationships

- Arranged

• Companionate

• Exogamy(open marriage)-endogamy(closed marriage)

• Monogamy(one partner)-polygyny(multiple women)-polyandry(multiple men)

• Divorce

- Same sex marriage

• June 26, 2015 US legalization of same sex marriage 

- Incest taboo (universal): 

• Instinctual aversion, biological rationale, origins of incest taboo is unknown

- cross-cousin marriages

• Acceptable in most societies

- Bridewealth - dowry

• Marriage across cultures (economic-political-religious)

- A group concern

• Assume obligations of in-laws: residence is patrilocal or matrilocal 

• Maintaining alliance between descent groups

- Agreement between descent groups: 

• Dowry(bride-grooms), bridewealth (groom-brides)

- Polygyny

• Played political role in nonindustrial societies

- Polyandry

• Rare

• Cultural adaptation towards male mobility and scarce resource

• Kinship and  the nation state

- Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities (1983), marvels at the ability of nation-states to inspire a common national or ethnic identity among people who have never met, most likely never will meet, and have little in common socially, politically, or economically. 

- Yet many people feel so connected to their country that they are even willing to die for it. IHow does this idea of the “nation” gain such emotional power? 

- Janet Carsten (2004) suggests that nationalism draws heavily on ideas of kinship and family to  create a sense of connection among very different people. 

• US nuclear family - myth and reality 

- Origins of nuclear family 

• Post WW2 due to economic expansion. Limited to White middle class

- Historical norm

• Extended families

- Kinship patterns changing

• Divorce

• Second families

• Adoptions

• New reproductive technologies

• Cohabitation v marriages

• Changing kinship roles in the US

- What does it mean when american women decide to remain child free

- Does autonomy conflict with kinship obligations/expectations? 

- What is the role of biological evolution and the continuation of the species? 

- Can a pet replace a child? 

• Fictive Kinship

- Langkawi, Malaysia - cohabitation and co-eating kinship. Janet Carson, 1997

- Southall, England - community ‘cousin’ kinship. Gerd Baumann, 1990’s

- Chicago, Illinois - Black community kinship. Carol Stack, 1974

- Battered Women and Fictive Kin-shared kinship. Dana-Ain Davis

• Globalization and Kinship

- Chosen Families: assimilation with others to form a family

- Assisted reproduction: in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and cloning

- Families of same-sex partners: acceptance and debate 

- Transnational migration - ex. Aging in Ghana. Cati coe, the scattered Family, 2013

• When  brothers share a wife by Mevyn Goldstein 

- Fraternal polyandry

- Story of Dorje, Pema, and Sonam - Tibetan brothers living in Nepal

- Ideal form of marriage 

Section 3           

Art & Anthropology 

Ch.17 Art & Media

• Art: all the ideas, forms, techniques, and strategies that humans employ to express themselves creatively and communicate their creativity and inspiration to others

• Art may include:

  • Music

  • Songs

  • Stories

  • Painting

  • Plays

  • Design

  • Sculpture 

  • Architecture

  • Clothing 

  • Food 

  • Games 

• Art is created and received 

• Art takes its shape not only in creation but in perception as well 

• Art in Western traditions has often been associated with notions of high culture or fine art

• Fine art often includes paintings, sculptures, operas, symphonies, ballets, and plays 

• Popular art is often seen as less refined and sophisticated compared to fine art 

• Art is integral to all human life 

• All creativity carries rich deposits of information about culture as a system of meaning and as a system of power 

• The distinction between fine art and popular art may have more to do with political choices and hierarchies of power than with the intrinsic character of the art itself.

• Anthropologist's unique approach to art includes particular attention to how art is embedded in a community – how art connects to social norms and values and economic and political systems and events. 

  • Who makes art and why?

  • What does it mean to people who create it and to those who perceive it?

• Globalization has had a huge impact on placing art in context

• Art is often a key junction through which local communities engage the global economy 

• Art intersects with key systems of power such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, politics, religion, and economics.

Ethnography: Anthropology and Art (B)

• The development and evolution of the exhibition State of Exception

• Artist and Curator: Amanda Krugliak 

• Photographer and artist: Richard Barnes 

• Anthropologist: Jason de Léon 

• Features items left behind by migrants in the Arizona desert on the U.S.-Mexican border

  • Backpacks 

  • Clothing 

  • Personal items 

• 2 year engagement and conversation 

• Jason De Léon’s Undocumented Migration Project 

• Since 2008, De Léon and his term have been working on the border between Arizona and Mexico collecting and cataloging the debris that is cast off and left behind by migrants as they cross to the United States.

• Originally presented at the University of Michigan Institute for Humanities Gallery and most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, M-O-C-A-D.

• The human experience

• The authors have always thought about this project, conceptually and aesthetically rather than strictly anthropologically.

• The videos, photographs, and objects in the exhibition represent the impressions informed by the perspectives and field work carried out by De Léon and his crew.

• The political implications are important to remember and keep in mind

• They came at this project with a different point of entry with varying experiences and relationships to the material. Thus offering the opportunity to take the exhibition to a unique material, unique, perhaps unexpected, and provocative place.

• State of Exception is the result of an organic and inductive inquiry.

• It continues to evolve and mature with each new installation 

• The exhibition title, State of Exception, is a reference to the political theory of the same name.

  • This theory was first outlined by Carl Schmidtt and later elaborated by Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2005).

• As Jason De Leon describes:

  • "State of exception refers to the process whereby sovereign authorities declare emergencies, often with the stated goal of protecting the state, in order to suspend the legal protections afforded to individuals while, at the same time, unleashing the power of the state upon them. This theory has been a particularly salient concept for those working on the margins of nation states where the tensions of sovereignty and state security are both geographical and visibly acted out on a daily basis as governments seek to keep out “illegal aliens”, (i.e. non-citizens) through a variety of extraordinary measures. We choose to call the exhibit State of Exceptions because we find the vast Sonoran desert and the many social, political, and economic processes related to the migration that occur there to be both exceptional (uncommon, non-ordinary, deviating from the norm) and representative of the ways which sovereign powers can justify treating non-citizens in exceptional ways, (state of exception, catalog)”.

• More philosophically, the authors felt it expressed this place of limbo and perhaps in seeming a contradiction to the exhibition title, a condition of “Statelessness," an exceptional in-between place, neither in Mexico or the United States

• Unresolved and vulnerable as migrants often find themselves.

• extraordinary journey taken by so many the endurance of those under exceptional circumstances, the complexity of the situation 

• The asking for understanding and consideration of human life under exceptional circumstances.

• In 2012, Amanda Krugliak and Richard Barnes joined De Léon in a Arivaca, Arizona 

• Barnes recorded video on location along the border at night, photographing in the field and interviewing students about their experiences.

• De Léon and his students found a woman, Marisol, dead in the desert

• They sat with her for hours until the authorities came and removed the body. 

• The objects curated were now rooted firmly in the present, representing real stories and people, nd this clear distinction of inevitability gave State of Exception an active rather than passive voice 

• Offering the opportunity for awareness as well as an opportunity for response and action.

• The foundation for the installation was based upon a series of ongoing questions.

  • What did the object stored in U-Haul boxes in De Leon's office stand for?

  • Is the backpack from the desert as affecting as an object as a suitcase from the Holocaust?

  • How can human suffering be a point of comparison?

  • Do the discarded backpacks contoured to individual bodies dumped in the desert represent human strife or simply a commodity won my purchase in a sporting goods store?

  • Are the barely there remnants of ID cards, bus tickets, and photographs profound or mundane?

• The work De Léon's Undocumented Migrant Project is charged and thoroughly engaging in its timeliness and relevance to politics and culture.

• For some it is representing the clear path for border activism.

• The author wanted to acknowledge these conflicts in interpretations and build an exhibition that asks more questions than it answers.

• From their presence as a collaborative team, the exhibition of State of Exception attempts to consider the journey of migrants through the desert of Arizona from all sides like a puzzle turning it over and then again. 

• It emphasizes the ambiguity and complexity of a situation

• It is determined as much by geography and race as people smugglers, border patrol and samaritans.

• The Wall of Backpacks became a focal point, representing both the individual as well as the collective experience. Suggesting what it must be like to cross the border illegally, seeking something better than one's respective country can offer. 

• The Backpack serves as figurative representations, gestural references of the body, the weightness,the burden each with its own unique quality. 

• The wall differs from other collective cultural installations in that it is not meant as a memorial to the dead but rather about the living, referencing the visceral tactical sensory experience of carrying everything you own on your back.

•  They are intimate, but at the same time in posing and happening in the room rather than simply being on display. 

• The backpack logos from America and Mexican TV, sports clubs, fashion houses, etc. are literally emblematic of the global economy and the influence of the United States and the endless situation of seemingly unsolvable questions around undocumented migration emphasizing the blurry line between us all.

• In their first presentation of state of exception, in the smaller institute gallery, the backpack installation was immersive, forcing viewers to experience them close up, install on two walls in a quarter configuration.

  • They created an enclosure, a sanctuary-like experience reflecting sensory.

  • This gave the illusion that the backpacks were coming forward spatially rather than contained on a wall.

  • They inhabited the room, their smells, and weather's textures to get up, suggesting human life in the desert.

• Our recent re-installation at M.O.C.A.D.

  • The vastness of the walls of the backpack conceptually was keeping the expanse of the desert and sheer number of crossings.

  • Philosophically, this alluded to freedom and opportunity as well as unpredictability and uncertainty.

  • The openness of the space with high ceilings determined the scale of the wall, the number of backpacks, (600+), displayed, was double that of our original consumption.

• Their curation of the objects left behind by undocumented migrants in the desert represent our attempt to rethink cultural objects and how we collaborate, curate, and organize them.

• Bringing this migration to the border, overall conversation with the refusal to make the objects inanimate.

• In their initial thinking, it was important to them that no one object be elevated, revalued or fetishized more than another. 

• The mundane qualities of the toothbrushes and the border patrol handcuffs tell us as much about an individual story as the baby bottles and rosaries. All our fragments of a story rather than affirmations of one way to tell it or one version or one complete certainty of that version. 

• They placed objects in vitrines to reference more traditional museum displays of other cultural collections.

• They continuously made an effort to curate the objects in different contexts to extend the breadth of the conversation.

• How we think about objects in turn on undocumented migration.

• As an example, a makeshift, quote-unquote, "surrender flag “found in the desert, comprised of a sweatshirt tied to a branch was dramatically lit and choreographed on a wall over the original installation.

  • This evoked the memory of artifacts from history, perhaps even the Civil War, 

• For the M.O.C.A.D. installation, the same object was casually propped against the wall accessible more about the everyday and are familiar with the object which offered a completely different perspective.

•  2 primary video were displayed: 

  • The first is shot at night during a rainstorm with the intended view of the Border Patrol officer through a car windshield. 

  • This is juxtaposed with the perpendicular view from out the side window of the slats of the boarder fence looking into Mexico from the US side.

• The video projections are dominant, theometric, ever-present, 

• In the original installation at the Institute the projections occupied one corner of the gallery playing off the backpacks arranged across the room in a similar corner configuration 

• For the M.O.C.A.D installation, the videos were regulated in their own space, an opposite wall is more contemporary and minimal, where the institution configuration was more personal.

• The recent inclusion of the audio interview and presented significant challenges and we

• are still finding appropriate solutions in the time since the start of our first exhibition

• and the onset of our collaboration.

• De Leon has become more direct.

• The strangest misleading landscape with an abundance of rain in the desert with no water for migrants to drink is ironic and it's a vocation of both the risks taken and the dangers of the deserts crossing.

• The recent inclusion of the audio interview and presented significant challenges and we are still finding appropriate solutions in the time since the start of our first exhibition

• De Léon has become more directly involved with migrants and their families since finding the body of Marisol in the desert.

• De Léon has made contact with her family, learning recently of another cousin, José, now missing.

• We are committing to incorporating audio and objects related with more personal stories.

• as artists, the question remains how to incorporate these narratives in new objectives, thoughtfully still preserving the ambiguous and nuanced character of curation.

  • Well, at the same time leaning towards activism, how can we incorporate individual accounts and still preserve the collective experience?

  • How do we appropriate the interviews without venturing into the territory of reenagment?

• For now, we have chosen to play fragments of the original interviews and Spanish, which can subsequently seem consistent with overall structure and authenticity of the project.

• The exhibition has succeeded in honoring this exceptional migration through the presence of objects, and in doing this the exhibition is now consistently called for voices, the direct account of migrants, a natural progression of presentation.

• A video projected on the floor from above became the third primary element for the overall installation of state of exception.

• The immerse pathway offered viewers the experience of walking across the debris field left by migrants on the US side of the border as they changed their clothes to try to blend in.

• Hoping to avoid attracting by border control, the field of cultural artifacts they cast off in the desert consists of aforementioned backpacks, water bottles, deodorant, and toothpaste tube shoes, etc.

• Experiencing some video sets viewers off balance, disarming them.

• Its initial disorientation, thrust viewers into a new space and a new way of seeing.

• Finally a video grid composed of a John Cage experimental score. Takes six interviews done on site with Dr. Leonsfield School participants and collapses and layers them over one another.

• The documentary style video portrays each individual becoming swatches of data in themselves.

  • The voices overlap sometimes and are chaotic yet at other moments.

  • They offer up important factor impressions.

  • At times, everyone speaks simultaneously

  • than maybe one or two.

  • And there is a clarity rising out of this babel of expression.

  • It might be a student discussing what is like to come upon a body decomposing the desert sun or another participant whose own parents are illegals in the country of his birth 

  • The combination of elements evokes the difficulty and conflicting views around the immigration.

• Specific to the M.O.C.A.D installation were photographers and that Barnes created specific to the M-O-C-A-D insulation were photographs that barns created on the on location during a time in Arivaca, Arizona.

• The photography as a medium also felt contemporary and relevant to the young urban Detroit community.

• The photographs of commemorative tattoos marking desert coordinates on the bodies of field students spoke to a young generation influenced by pop culture with some freedom from associations of World War II and the Holocaust.

• It is their hope that the state of exception will continue to travel and be reinstalled at additional venues, recognizing that each community in place should graphically redefine the exhibition and change it.

• The exhibition is also changing, incorporating the migrant stories in their own voice.

• Photographs taken by migrants with pocket cameras during the crossings will also be represented.

• As of 2020, State of Exception is no longer touring, the show did travel after

• M.O.C.A.D. and during the time in which this article was written with three more iterations in the United States, as well as two features in the New York Times, and finally resulting images from the show running in small town newspapers across the globe.

Medical anthropology 

Ch. 16: Health, Illness, and the Body

• Conventional wisdom attributes health and longevity to a combination of genes and good behavioral choices: eating right, not smoking, drinking in moderation, avoiding illegal drugs, exercising, and even flossing.

• This criteria meshes with certain core American cultural values of individualism, personal responsibility, and benefits of hard work and clean living

• Health: a person's mental or physical condition.

• Illness: a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind.

• Since the 1980s anthropology’s key research ideas have proven profoundly effective in solving pressing public health problems

• Key research Ideas:

  • Intensive fieldwork

  • Extensive participant observation in local communities

  • Immersion in the daily lives of people and their problems and experiences

• Disease: a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that has a known cause and a distinctive group of symptoms, signs, or anatomical changes.

• Pathogens: a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism that can cause disease.

• Anthropologists study the spread of disease and pathogens through the human population by examining medical ecology

• Epidemiology: the branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health.

• Medical Ecology: the interaction of diseases with the natural environment and human culture.

• Anthropologists use an interpretivist approach to study health systems as systems of meaning: How do humans across cultures make sense of illness, pain, suffering, birth, and mortality? 

• Critical medical anthropology: understanding the origins of dominant cultural constructions in health, including which social class, gender, or ethnic group's interests particular health concepts express and under what set of historic conditions they arise.

• First, critical medical anthropology considers how economic and political systems, race, class, gender, and sexuality create and perpetuate unequal access to healthcare. 

• Second, it examines how health systems themselves are systems of power that promote disparities in health by defining who is sick, who gets treated, and how the treatment is provided

• Health and illnesses are more than a result of bacteria, viruses, individual behavior, and genes. Health is also a product of our environment. Our access to adequate nutrition, housing, education, and health care, and freedom from property, violence, and warfare

• Ethnomedicine: the traditional medical practices concerned with the cultural interpretation of health, diseases, and illness that addresses the healthcare process and healing practices. Like herbs, teas, massage, religious rituals, and locally trained healers.

• Biomedicine: medicine based on the application of the principles of the natural sciences, especially biology and biochemistry

• Culture has shaped the evolution of the human body and shapes individual bodies today.

Ethnography: Structural Violence as Social Practice (B)

• The author began volunteering and researching in Haitian communities in the Dominican Republic nearly 20 years ago.

• Initially unaware of the scholarly attention these marginalized communities would attract.

• Began this work during a National Science Foundation Postdoc at Harvard Medical School, focusing on infectious disease and social change.

• Inspired by Maurice LeMoine’s Bitter Sugar: Slaves Today in the Caribbean (1985), a harrowing account of Haitian agricultural workers on Dominican sugar plantations.

• Noted the lack of attention to the health impacts of human rights abuses.

• Aimed to document the health profile of Haitian workers and analyze how historical forces like anti-Haitianism affect health outcomes.

• Origins and effects of anti-Haitianism.

• Spaces where human rights abuses occur and their impact on health.

• How anti-Haitianism becomes normalized and invisible, making it harder to counteract.

• Introduced the concept of “Batey studies” to address issues in Haitian agricultural communities:

  • Human rights abuses.

  • Immigration and statelessness.

  • Health disparities and cultural syncretism.

  • Anti-Haitianism, policing, and spatial segregation.

• Bateyes are symbolic and central to understanding Dominican-Haitian relations and agricultural labor.

• Inspired others to study health and social issues in bateyes:

  • Youth-targeted HIV prevention using soccer as an educational tool.

  • Neglected tropical diseases like lymphatic filariasis, malaria, and cholera.

  • Chronic conditions (e.g., hypertension), health needs assessments, and food insecurity.

  • Community development politics and poverty alleviation.

• Research should:

  • Continue documenting health disparities and social determinants of health.

  • Highlight local resilience rather than portraying Haitians as passive victims.

  • Adopt interdisciplinary and holistic approaches.

• Challenges include:

  • Outsiders’ ethnocentric views and paternalistic approaches.

  • The risks of “rights”-based rhetoric in dangerous contexts.

• Researchers must critically reflect to avoid the “industrial savior complex.”

• Doña Maria’s Story:

  • Doña Maria, a poor Haitian woman born in the Dominican Republic, was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer.

  • Obstacles to Healthcare:

    • She lacked a birth certificate, meaning she couldn’t claim Dominican citizenship or access essential services.

    • Stateless and undocumented, she feared deportation and could not risk passing police checkpoints to access healthcare.

  • Her story reflects systemic issues faced by many Haitians in the Dominican Republic.

• Haitians in the Dominican Republic:

  • Population and Employment:

    • Approximately 800,000 Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, historically migrating to work in sugar cane fields.

    • Many now work in other sectors like coffee, rice, tobacco, construction, and tourism.

  • Exploitation:

    • Haitians often face labor and legal conditions that exacerbate economic, social, and health vulnerabilities.

• Structural Violence and Health Disparities:

  • Structural Violence Defined:

    • Coined by Johan Galtung, it refers to social structures that limit individuals' potential and impair fundamental needs.

    • Structural violence is normalized by social institutions and often invisible.

  • Connection to Health:

    • Discrimination and anti-Haitianism manifest as structural violence, affecting access to healthcare, legal standing, and education.

• Anti-Haitianism (Antihaitianismo):

  • Definition: A cultural disdain for Haitians, rooted in racial prejudice and nationalist ideology.

  • Operationalized through legal, political, economic, and social practices that marginalize Haitians.

  • Examples:

    • Denial of Dominican citizenship to Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic.

    • Spatial segregation and policing of Haitian movement.

    • Exploitation through lack of proper immigration documentation and work contracts.

• Bateyes: Spaces of Marginalization

  • Shantytown communities around sugar plantations with some of the worst living and working conditions.

  • Conditions:

    • No potable water, electricity, or waste disposal.

    • Endemic diseases such as dengue, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

    • Surveillance and policing by Dominican authorities.

  • Etymology:

    • Originates from the Taino term for "ball court"; now refers to communities associated with agricultural labor.

• Haitian Migration and the Bateyes

  • Migration Patterns:

    • Haitians historically migrated for contractual agricultural work or through undocumented means.

    • Seasonal shifts occur during the sugar harvest (zafra) and downtime (tiempo muerto).

  • Population:

    • Includes Haitians, Haitian-descended Dominicans, mixed-heritage individuals, and some ethnic Dominicans.

• Key Themes

  • Discrimination:

    • Anti-Haitianism is deeply embedded in Dominican society, exacerbating the marginalization of Haitians.

  • Health Impacts:

    • Structural violence translates into poor health outcomes, restricted access to care, and vulnerability to exploitation.

  • Normalization:

    • Systemic injustices are institutionalized and difficult to challenge.

• Types and Characteristics of Bateyes

  • Ownership:

    • Privately Owned: Operated by private entities.

    • State-Owned: Managed by the State Sugar Council (CEA), which oversees 10 sugar complexes (ingenios) and 240 bateyes.

• Population:

  • In 1991, approximately 125,000 people lived in rural CEA bateyes, and 200,000 in semi-urban CEA bateyes.

  • There are about 400 bateyes in the Dominican Republic, with populations ranging from 50 to 5,000 people.

• Living Conditions:

  • General poverty and deprivation, though some bateyes have limited infrastructure (electricity, semi-potable water, healthcare access).

  • Institutional support from government and NGOs is minimal.

  • Limited livelihood opportunities and access to markets.

• Structural Violence in Bateyes

  • The poor infrastructure and lack of services reflect structural violence.

  • These conditions disproportionately affect poor Haitians living in the Dominican Republic, undermining their health and well-being.

• Research Methodology

  • Study Design:

    • Conducted between 2002 and 2005.

    • Used a cross-sectional survey with descriptive and analytical elements.

  • Data collection methods:

    • Ethnography (8 years of participant observation).

    • Semi-structured interviews with key informants.

    • A questionnaire with 162 variables.

    • Focused on structural impediments to health and well-being.

  • Key Questionnaire Themes:

    • Mental health, work-related stress, and injury.

    • General health status and medical access.

    • Illness and disease symptoms.

    • Maternal and child health.

    • Water security.

    • Personal security.

• Participants and Setting

  • Communities:

    • Six bateyes were studied, ranging in size from 500 to 2,000 people.

    • Five were associated with sugar cane, and one with rice cultivation.

  • Demographics:

    • 370 individuals interviewed.

    • 48% female, 52% male.

      • Residency duration:

        • 31% lived there for 15+ years.

        • 25% lived there 5–10 years.

        • 19% lived there 10–15 years.

        • 14% lived there for 1–5 years.

        • 7% lived there for less than a year.

      • National/Racial Identification:

        • 72% born in Haiti, 26% in the Dominican Republic.

        • 69% identified as Haitian, 23% as Haitian-Dominican, 5% as Dominican.

  • Employment:

    • Agricultural work (31%), merchants (15%), domestic work (11%), motor-taxi drivers (6%), construction (5%).

    • Employment patterns: 48% year-round, 46% seasonal.

• Data Collection

  • Recruitment:

    • Local leaders were briefed about the research and granted permission.

    • Trained interviewers fluent in Spanish and Haitian Kreyol conducted interviews.

    • Snowball sampling was used to recruit participants.

  • Interviews:

    • Focused on health, mental health, stress, maternal and child health, and security issues.

    • Ethnographic fieldnotes and observations were recorded and elaborated upon within 24 hours.

  • Participant Observation:

  • Conducted in two batey communities to understand social norms and cultural contexts.

• Data Analysis

  • Process:

    • Audio recordings and fieldnotes were transcribed and analyzed.

    • Data were coded and organized into themes for comparison and analysis.

    • Analytical methods were based on standard qualitative research techniques.

• Results Overview

  • Geographic Segregation and Access to Transportation

    • Urban vs. Rural Access: Health care facilities are primarily in urban areas, leaving rural bateyes with little access. For the bateyes surveyed in the Cibao region:

      • Closest clinic: 7 km away.

    • Residents rely on costly transportation like public cars, motorcycles, or buses, making healthcare unaffordable for those earning $3–5/day.

  • Barriers Beyond Cost:

    • Many Haitians face discrimination in transportation, often being ignored by public vehicles.

    • Police and military checkpoints near clinics disproportionately target Haitians, requiring documentation (passport/visa) or bribes. Noncompliance risks deportation, detention, or fines.

    • Physical and linguistic markers (skin tone, facial features, accent, and dress) further impede mobility for Haitians.

  • Health Care Awareness:

    • Despite obstacles, 96% of participants knew their nearest clinic, and 76% had visited one. Common reasons: fever, respiratory issues, vaccinations, stomachaches, and hypertension.

  • Illustrative Case Studies:

    • Andre:

      • Chronic illness led him to walk 7 km to access medication for TB (despite inconclusive tests).

      • He relied on community aid for survival, as he was unable to work.

    • Celise:

      • Fear of deportation due to expired visa prevented her from seeking daily treatment, so Andre retrieved her medication.

• Occupational and Environmental Health Challenges

  • Work-Related Strain:

    • 40% reported high tension from work, while 45% worried about personal and family health.

    • Sugar and rice agricultural labor is common:

      • Sugarcane work: High injury rates (machete cuts, amputations), no protective gear, and temporary disabilities.

      • Rice field labor: Prolonged stooping and exposure to contaminated water led to chronic pain and potential infections.

  • Dangerous Conditions:

    • 15% of respondents reported work-related injuries, with 25% caused by machetes.

    • Pesticides, parasites, and standing water in rice fields worsened conditions.

• Environmental Health Challenges

  • Sanitation Issues:

    • Garbage disposal is unaffordable, leading to waste accumulation in public spaces and rivers, attracting disease-carrying vermin.

    • Most bateyes lack latrines, forcing open defecation, often near living quarters.

    • Rivers, also used for bathing and drinking, are polluted with human and agricultural waste.

  • Water Insecurity:

    • Sources: community wells (36%), rivers (13%), trucked-in water (13%), or purchased bottled/bagged water.

    • Waterborne diseases (e.g., diarrhea) disproportionately affect children, causing high infant mortality rates.

    • Limited knowledge and practices around purifying water:

      • 51% knew how, but 72% did not purify drinking water for children.

  • Housing:

    • Homes are constructed from low-quality materials like scrap wood, plastic, and recycled coffee cans, contributing to health vulnerabilities.

• Key Takeaways

  • Structural Barriers: Geographic isolation, transportation costs, and systemic discrimination limit access to health care for batey residents, particularly Haitian nationals.

  • Workplace Hazards: Agricultural laborers endure hazardous conditions with inadequate protective measures.

  • Environmental Neglect: Poor sanitation, water contamination, and substandard housing exacerbate health issues.

  • Health Outcomes: Preventable diseases and injuries remain prevalent, worsened by a lack of sustained medical interventions or environmental improvements.

• Housing Challenges

  • Material Instability: Homes made from low-quality materials, such as tin (hoja de lata), often disintegrate in tropical downpours.

    • Heat Retention: Tin homes become unbearably hot during the day.

    • Poor Protection: These homes offer minimal shelter from weather.

  • Overcrowding: Dwellings are often small and crowded, sometimes housing up to 15 people in one room.

    • Health Risks: Overcrowding and poor ventilation contribute to infectious diseases like tuberculosis.

  • Combined Effects: Poor housing, parasites, pollution, and poverty together worsen the residents' health.

• Healthcare Access and Treatment

  • Perception of Medical Care: Patient experiences vary:

    • 24% rated care as poor.

    • 31% rated it as fair.

    • 23% rated it as good.

  • Language Barriers: Proficiency in Spanish is a key factor in receiving better treatment:

    • Haitians with limited Spanish may be ignored or treated rudely.

    • Stereotypes about Haitians exacerbate these issues, as seen in dismissive behavior by clinic staff.

  • Coping Strategies:

    • Patients often bring bilingual family members to translate.

    • Relationships with Dominicans of higher status may aid access to care.

  • Gendered Language Dynamics:

    • Men gain Spanish proficiency earlier through school and external work.

    • Women, often confined to the batey (village), lack opportunities to learn Spanish, affecting their healthcare access.

• Health System Challenges

  • Government Health Programs:

    • Public healthcare services (SESPAS, IDSS) are insufficient:

      • Only 35% of Dominicans are covered by subsidies.

      • IDSS covers just 6% of the population.

    • Most poor patients, including Haitians, cannot afford care.

  • Treatment Inequality: Poor Dominicans also face challenges but Haitians experience additional barriers due to prejudice (antihaitianismo).

• Barriers Beyond Healthcare

  • Geographic Isolation:

    • Bateyes are rural, limiting access to clinics and affordable transportation.

    • Police checkpoints restrict movement for Haitian-looking individuals.

  • Work and Living Conditions:

    • Labor is physically demanding with long hours and inadequate safety measures.

    • Overcrowded housing and lack of clean water worsen health risks.

• Implications and Future Research

  • Challenges to Research:

    • Haitian laborers are highly mobile, making longitudinal studies and interventions difficult.

    • Transient populations in bateyes complicate stable community assessments.

  • Structural Violence:

    • Antihaitianismo creates environments detrimental to health and limits healthcare access.

    • Gender disparities and social practices reinforce these challenges.

  • Potential Interventions:

    • Research should target structural obstacles like geographic isolation, social exclusion, and language barriers.

    • Findings can guide NGOs and other organizations to better support marginalized groups in similar contexts.

Race, Racism, Ethnicity 

Ch. 5: Race and Racism

•  Racism: Individual’s thoughts and actions as well as institutional patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources, and opportunities based on imagined differences among groups.

• Race: The idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups based on inherited physical and behavioral differences.

• Anthropologists claim that there is no scientific basis for classifications of race, why? Because genetically there is only one race, the human race. We separate ourselves using superficial physical characteristics to divide the human population into a few biological groups and attribute to them unique combinations of physical ability, mental capacity, personality traits, cultural patterns, and capacity for civilization.

• Race has become culturally real 

• Race is a framework through which people see human diversity

• Race has been deeply ingrained in human society and is very difficult to remove this framework from the mind 

• Race has served to create and justify patterns of power and inequality within cultures worldwide, and many people have learned to see those patterns as normal and reasonable. 

• Race is the most significant means used to mark differences in U.S. culture

• Race is a framework that shapes the allocation of power privilege, rewards, and status

• Race infuses all of our political, economic, religious, recreational, educational, and cultural institutions.

Ch. 6 Ethnicity and Nationalism

• Ethnicity: A sense of connection to a group of people who we believe share a common history, culture, and (sometimes) ancestry, and who we believe are distinct from others outside the group.

• Ethnicity can be seen as a more expansive version of kinship –the culturally specific creation of relatives– only including a much larger group and extending further into space and time.

• Anthropologists see ethnicity as a cultural construction 

• Origin myths and stories–like the American Thanksgiving story–are told and retold to emphasize a shared destiny and shared values

• Ethnic Boundary Markers: Any of the signs by which ethnic boundaries are defined or maintained, including language, religious and cultural symbols, or territory.

• Boundary markers are created to signify who is in the group and who is not: a shared name; shared cultural practices such as food, clothing, and architecture; a belief in a common history or ancestors; association with a particular territory; shared language or religion.

• No group is completely homogeneous.

• Boundaries are usually not clearly fixed or defined

• Imagined Community: Since we will probably never meet everyone in our group, ethnic identity is imagined community, primarily perceived, felt, and imagined rather than clearly documentable.

•  Ethnicity can be mobilized to rally support in times of conflict and mobilized to create opportunities, including economic opportunities

• Identity Entrepreneurs: The set of values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that enable a person to be in an entrepreneurial role.

• States: regional structures of political, economic, and military rule

• Nation-State: assumes a distinct political entity whose population shares a sense of culture, ancestry, and destiny as a people

• Nation-states are much less stable and self-contained   

Ethnography: Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving (Reader: p.49-57)

• Why do so many in the Wes tthink Muslim women need saving?

• Personal Reflection on Invitations and Discomfort

  • Initial Experience: The author received numerous invitations to speak on women and gender issues in the Middle East, especially after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, on platforms ranging from news programs to university departments.

  • Discomfort: Despite being a devoted scholar in this field, the author felt uneasy about the surge in attention.

  • Reflection: This discomfort prompted a deeper consideration of how feminist and Western perspectives on the "plight of Muslim women" might perpetuate problematic narratives.

• Critical Lens on U.S. Public Response to September 11

  • Skepticism: The author urges caution about the obsession with Muslim women’s issues in the wake of the attacks, using the metaphor of “minefields” to signify the dangers of oversimplified or biased views.

  • Anthropology’s Role: The discipline of anthropology is suggested as a means to navigate these complex cultural dynamics thoughtfully.

• Analysis of Media and Political Narratives

  • PBS NewsHour Engagement:

    • The author was asked to provide background for segments on “Women and Islam.” She challenged the oversimplified and generalizing nature of the proposed questions, such as:

      • “Do Muslim women believe ‘x’?”

      • “Are Muslim women ‘y’?”

      • “Does Islam allow ‘z’ for women?”

    • She provocatively asked whether similar questions about Christian or Jewish women would be considered sensible, exposing the biases in the framing.

  • Response to Follow-Ups:

    • The NewsHour contacted her again with ideas for segments on Ramadan and Muslim women in politics, connecting these topics to the ongoing conflict and political speeches by figures like Laura Bush and Cherie Blair.

• Highlighting the Misplaced Focus on Culture

  • Cultural Framing:

    • The media consistently relied on cultural explanations (e.g., women and Islam, religious rituals) to interpret complex geopolitical events, such as:

      • The attacks on the U.S.

      • The rise of the Taliban.

      • U.S. interventions in Afghanistan over the years.

  • Ignored Contexts:

    • Broader historical and political factors, like:

      • U.S. funding of conservative groups during the Cold War to counter the Soviets.

      • The role of the CIA in building infrastructure later used by the Taliban.

• Key Themes

  • Critique of Western Feminism: Western feminist perspectives on Muslim women can sometimes reinforce stereotypes or oversimplify their struggles.

  • Cultural Reductionism: Using cultural explanations to analyze geopolitical issues can obscure deeper political, historical, and economic dynamics.

  • Media Responsibility: The media's portrayal of Muslim women post-9/11 often reflects biased and limited viewpoints.

• Critique of Cultural Framing

  • Selective Focus on Culture:

    • The author questions why cultural factors like religious beliefs and the treatment of women were prioritized over political and historical explanations for the region’s instability.

    • This approach avoided addressing systemic issues such as the development of repressive regimes, global power dynamics, and the history of international interventions.

  • Artificial Divisions:

    • Cultural framing divided the world into simplistic binaries: West vs. East, us vs. Muslims, and civilized vs. barbaric.

    • These narratives oversimplified complex global relationships and contributed to the perception of Muslim women as passive victims.

• The Role of Women in the "War on Terror"

  • Symbolic Mobilization:

    • Muslim women, especially Afghan women, were prominently featured as symbols in the rhetoric of the "War on Terror."

    • Their plight was used to evoke empathy and justify military actions in Afghanistan.

  • Laura Bush’s Speech:

    • In her radio address, the First Lady:

      • Equated the Taliban with terrorists, creating a "hyphenated monster identity."

    • Collapsed distinctions between the Taliban’s specific policies (e.g., banning nail polish) and systemic issues like poverty and malnutrition, framing them all as part of the same oppression.

    • Depicted Afghan women as symbols of suffering that could be liberated through U.S. intervention, portraying America as the savior.

  • Her speech claimed that military gains freed women to enjoy rights like listening to music and teaching daughters, linking the fight against terrorism with a fight for women’s dignity.

• Historical Parallels with Colonialism

  • Colonial Justifications:

    • The rhetoric used to justify U.S. actions echoed colonial narratives, where the oppression of women was cited as a reason for intervention:

      • In British colonial South Asia, reforms like banning sati (widow burning) were framed as "white men saving brown women from brown men."

      • In colonial Egypt, British officials criticized the veil as a symbol of oppression while opposing women’s suffrage in England, demonstrating selective concern about women’s rights.

  • This phenomenon, termed "colonial feminism," selectively highlighted women’s issues to serve imperialist agendas rather than genuinely addressing gender inequality.

• Key Themes

  • The Misuse of Cultural Narratives:

    • Framing the conflict as cultural rather than political avoids accountability for global power structures and entanglements.

  • The Weaponization of Women's Rights:

    • Women’s suffering was instrumentalized to justify war, reinforcing binaries of Western "civilization" against Eastern "barbarism."

  • Historical Continuities:

    • The U.S. rhetoric mirrored colonial strategies, showing how women’s liberation has historically been co-opted to rationalize domination and military intervention.

• The Veil as a Symbol in Western Discourse

  • Western Perceptions of the Burqa:

    • The burqa is often framed as the ultimate symbol of the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban.

    • After the Taliban’s fall, there was a Western expectation that Afghan women would "liberate" themselves by abandoning the burqa, revealing a narrow and culturally specific notion of freedom.

  • Western Assumptions:

    • Liberation was imagined in terms of Western fashion or lifestyles (e.g., "belly shirts and blue jeans" or "Chanel suits"), ignoring the cultural and personal reasons for women’s choices to veil.

• The Cultural and Historical Context of the Burqa

  • The Burqa Pre-Dates the Taliban:

    • The burqa was not invented by the Taliban but is a traditional garment specific to Pashtun women in certain regions of Afghanistan.

    • It represents one of many veiling practices in the broader subcontinent and Southwest Asia.

  • Veiling as a Social Practice:

    • Veiling conventions, including the burqa, symbolize modesty, respectability, and the separation of men's and women's spheres.

    • These practices are deeply tied to cultural norms that associate women with family and home life rather than public spaces.

• Anthropological Perspectives on Veiling

  • "Portable Seclusion":

    • Anthropologist Hanna Papanek described the burqa as "portable seclusion," a practice that allowed women to navigate public spaces while maintaining modesty and adhering to moral codes.

    • This perspective reframes the burqa not as solely oppressive but as a tool of agency, enabling mobility within cultural constraints.

  • Veiling as Community and Identity:

    • Veiling signifies belonging to a specific community and adherence to a moral way of life where family and home are central.

    • It reflects values about privacy, respectability, and the sanctity of women rather than simply oppression.

• Key Themes

  • Challenging Stereotypes:

    • Western narratives about the veil often fail to consider its cultural, historical, and personal significance, reducing it to a symbol of oppression.

  • Cultural Relativism:

    • Anthropologists, especially feminist anthropologists, highlight the importance of understanding veiling within its cultural and social contexts rather than imposing external judgments.

  • Empowerment Through Tradition:

    • Practices like veiling, when examined within their cultural framework, can represent a form of agency and participation in a moral community, challenging simplistic notions of liberation.

• The Role of Modesty and Respectability

  • Symbolic Protection:

    • Veiling, including the burqa, serves as a marker of modesty and respectability. It symbolizes that women remain within the "inviolable space" of their homes, even while navigating public spaces.

    • These cultural conventions help protect women from public harassment and signal their belonging to a respectable social class or family.

  • Unconscious Adherence:

    • Veiling practices are deeply ingrained in societal norms, so many women continue them without consciously reflecting on their significance.

• Analogies to Western Dress Codes

  • Cultural Norms Shape Dress:

    • Like Afghan women adhering to veiling norms, people in other societies follow unspoken dress codes. Examples include:

      • Avoiding shorts at the opera.

      • Refraining from wearing pants to a WASP wedding.

      • Orthodox Jewish women covering their hair with wigs and altering clothing to meet religious standards.

    • These norms reflect shared social, religious, and moral ideals, and deviations are often intentional acts of defiance or arise from financial constraints.

  • "Tyranny of Fashion":

    • Even in the U.S., where women are perceived to have clothing choices, societal and fashion norms impose constraints, demonstrating that clothing decisions are rarely entirely free.

• The Taliban’s Impact on Veiling Practices

  • Imposition of a Regional Style:

    • The Taliban enforced a single style of veiling (the burqa) as "religiously appropriate," erasing the variety of veiling practices previously shaped by regional, ethnic, and class differences.

    • Historically, veiling in Afghanistan varied significantly, with different groups and classes having distinct styles.

  • Class and Education Factors:

    • By the time the Taliban rose to power, most women remaining in Afghanistan were rural, less educated, and nonelite—those unable to emigrate during times of hardship and violence.

    • These women, even if freed from the burqa mandate, would likely continue wearing other modest coverings, consistent with cultural norms in nearby regions (e.g., rural Hindu women in India or Muslim women in Pakistan).

• Local Variations in Veiling

  • Diverse Styles of Covering:

    • The New York Times article highlights the variety of veiling practices among Afghan women:

      • The burqa, with its iconic embroidered eyeholes, is associated with Pashtun communities and signals respectability for women who stay inside the home.

      • Chadors (large scarves) and the newer hijab (Islamic modest dress) are worn by women pursuing education and professional careers, similar to their counterparts in other Muslim-majority countries.

  • Social Status and the Burqa:

    • The burqa is tied to status and class. For example:

      • A street vendor explained that wearing a burqa might provoke teasing because it is associated with "good women" who remain at home, not those forced to work in public spaces.

      • This underscores the burqa’s role as a marker of social and familial respectability.

• Key Themes

  • Western Misconceptions:

    • Westerners misunderstand veiling as a uniform symbol of oppression, failing to appreciate its varied meanings and cultural significance.

  • Cultural Relativism:

    • Veiling reflects local values of modesty, community, and respectability, and decisions around veiling are shaped by deeply embedded social norms.

  • Impact of Class and Status:

    • The type of veiling often signifies class, education, and societal roles, challenging oversimplified narratives about women’s oppression.

• Dr. Suheila Siddiqi as a Case Study

  • Resistance and Agency:

    • Dr. Suheila Siddiqi, an elite Afghan surgeon, resisted the Taliban by refusing to wear the burqa, showing personal agency and standing up to oppression.

    • Despite rejecting the burqa, she wore a gauzy veil (chador), demonstrating her acceptance of certain cultural norms about modesty and respectability.

  • Complex Meanings of Veiling:

    • Siddiqi's case highlights that rejecting the burqa doesn't equate to rejecting all forms of veiling. Different coverings carry distinct meanings depending on the social and cultural context.

• Veiling as a Multifaceted Practice

  • Voluntary Acts and Agency:

    • Veiling can be a voluntary, meaningful practice rather than an imposed one. For example:

      • Among Bedouin women in Egypt (as studied by the author), covering their faces before respected men is a way to express morality, honor, and family standing.

      • Women decide when and for whom to veil, demonstrating their active participation in social norms.

  • Historical and Cultural Diversity:

    • There are many forms of veiling, each reflecting different meanings within various communities.

    • Veiling practices have changed over time and been influenced by modernizing states. For instance:

      • Turkey and Iran banned veiling in the early 20th century as part of their modernization efforts.

      • The Taliban imposed the burqa as a state-mandated form of modesty, erasing local variations.

• Challenging Simplistic Views

  • Rejecting Reductionism:

    • Veiling should not be reduced to a symbol of women's lack of freedom. Such interpretations ignore the agency and cultural significance behind the practice.

    • Denouncing the burqa as merely "medieval" disregards the social and historical contexts that shape women's choices and identities.

  • Freedom as Contextual:

    • Human beings are social creatures shaped by their communities and histories. Freedom must be understood within these contexts, not through ethnocentric ideals.

    • For many women, veiling is not about oppression but about aligning with cultural values and maintaining social respect.

• Ethical and Political Considerations

  • Western Obsession with the Veil:

    • The author criticizes the disproportionate Western focus on the veil as a marker of oppression, arguing that it overshadows more pressing issues affecting Muslim women, such as education, health, and economic opportunity.

    • Instead of fixating on clothing, feminists and others should address systemic challenges and inequalities.

  • Cultural Relativism vs. Engagement:

    • Limitations of Cultural Relativism:

      • Cultural relativism, which advocates for understanding rather than judging other cultures, is an improvement over ethnocentrism and imperialism.

      • However, it can lead to passivity, especially in a world where cultural interactions and histories of interference have already occurred.

  • Navigating Difference:

  • The challenge is to engage with cultural differences ethically and respectfully while addressing injustices without imposing one’s own values or replicating colonial attitudes.

• Key Takeaways

  • Veiling is Contextual:

    • It reflects cultural norms, personal agency, and historical influences. It cannot be universally interpreted as a symbol of oppression or freedom.

  • Focus Beyond the Veil:

    • Feminists and activists should prioritize addressing structural inequalities over symbolic issues like clothing.

  • Ethical Engagement with Cultural "Others":

    • While understanding cultural practices is essential, we must also address historical entanglements and global inequalities without perpetuating imperialist attitudes.

• The Issue of Difference and Freedom

  • Acceptance of Cultural Difference:

    • The author questions whether Afghan women, after being "liberated" from the Taliban, might want different things from what Western societies envision as freedom or justice for women.

    • Respecting Difference:

      • It's important to recognize that women from different cultures may have different desires, values, and ideas about justice. These may not always align with Western ideals such as individual freedom, equality, or rights.

    • Alternative Desires:

      • Some women might prioritize family, religion, peace, or community over emancipation, equality, or rights. For example, rural Egyptian women have expressed no envy for U.S. women, perceiving them as lacking community and moral values.

• The Problem of "Saving" Women

  • Rhetoric of Saving:

    • The author critiques the narrative of saving Afghan women from the Taliban, particularly the rhetoric used by figures like Laura Bush, which constructs Afghan women as needing rescue by Western powers.

  • Imposing Superiority:

    • When we talk about "saving" someone, it implies that the culture or situation they are in is inherently inferior and that the saving process will bring them to a superior way of life (often Western norms). This mindset reflects a form of cultural arrogance.

    • The author draws a parallel to how it would sound if the same rhetoric were used in the U.S. about disadvantaged groups like African American women or working-class women, where their struggles are viewed as caused by structural violence rather than cultural deficiencies.

  • Challenges of the "Saving" Framework:

  • The rhetoric of saving relies on a sense of superiority and overlooks the complexities of local cultures and histories. The language of "saving" is patronizing, and the transformation it entails can often be violent or imposing.

  • Rather than "saving" others, the focus should shift to creating conditions that allow people to make their own choices and improve their lives in ways that are meaningful to them.

• Moving Beyond Cultural Relativism

  • Respect for Difference, Not Cultural Relativism:

    • The author distinguishes between respecting cultural differences and subscribing to cultural relativism, which can excuse harmful practices because they are part of a particular culture.

  • Engaging with Global Injustices:

    • While respecting differences, we should also be mindful of global injustices, especially those caused by the privileged positions of Western powers. The world is interconnected, and historical and ongoing global dynamics, including military and economic interventions, shape the lives of people in the Middle East and other regions.

    • Instead of focusing on "saving" people, we should work toward a world where global injustices are addressed, and communities can engage in discussions and transformations without the imposition of foreign power.

• Towards a More Just and Ethical Approach

  • Creating a Just World:

    • The author calls for creating conditions that promote justice, peace, and equality, not through military and economic dominance but through support, solidarity, and alliances with local communities.

  • Solidarity vs. Salvation:

    • Rather than imposing Western ideals, we should approach global issues with a mindset of solidarity, aiming to help communities achieve their own goals, rather than dictating what those goals should be.

  • Example of RAWA:

    • The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), despite their advocacy for Afghan women, has opposed U.S. bombing campaigns. They view the military intervention as harmful and increasing hardship for Afghan women, not as a form of "salvation."

• Key Takeaways

  • Respect for Cultural Difference:

    • Freedom, justice, and equality are not universally defined and should not be imposed from outside. Women in different cultures may have different visions for their lives.

  • Rethink the "Saving" Narrative:

    • The Western approach to "saving" women from oppression often reflects a superiority complex and ignores the local context, history, and desires of the people involved.

  • Global Solidarity:

    • Instead of focusing on "saving" others, we should focus on building solidarities, supporting local communities, and addressing global injustices that limit people's choices and opportunities.

  • Building a Just World:

    • We should work toward a world where communities can transform their own societies without external imposition, while also challenging global inequalities that shape local conditions.

• Criticism of Western Focus on the Veil

  • Focus on Larger Issues:

    • The passage points out that radical feminists working for a secular, democratic Afghanistan are not fixated on the issue of the veil. Instead, they advocate for disarmament and the presence of peacekeeping forces to create a safer environment for Afghan people.

  • Critique of the Taliban vs. Afghan People:

    • Advocates warn against conflating the actions of the Taliban with the Afghan people, as ordinary Afghans (especially women) are often the ones who suffer the most under these regimes. This highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of local dynamics.

• The Role of Global Interests

  • Oil, Arms, and Drugs:

    • The passage emphasizes the importance of considering global power structures in understanding Afghanistan's situation. Policies around the country are often shaped by oil interests, the arms industry, and the international drug trade. These external factors often play a bigger role in shaping Afghanistan’s struggles than cultural issues like veiling.

• Moving Beyond Simplistic Cultural Language

  • Breaking with Alien Culture Narratives:

    • A significant point in this passage is the call to stop using the language of "alien cultures" when discussing Afghanistan or other non-Western societies. The author argues that we should move beyond viewing these cultures as "other" or inherently problematic, whether the goal is understanding or eliminating them. Instead, we should approach these societies with more empathy and recognition of their complexities.

• Helping Afghan Women Beyond the Veil

  • Broader Goals for Afghan Women:

    • The ultimate goal is to create a world where Afghan women can live in safety and dignity, not just through superficial interventions like removing the veil. This involves addressing the global power structures that impact Afghanistan and considering how to create an environment in which Afghan women can thrive.

• Key Takeaways

  • Wider Feminist Goals: Feminist movements like RAWA are more concerned with peace, disarmament, and the protection of Afghan citizens than with symbolic issues like the veil.

  • Global Interventions and Interests: Foreign policies and global industries (like oil, arms, and drugs) shape the lives of Afghan people far more than cultural practices do. It's important to address these root causes.

  • Empathy Over Alienation: We need to move beyond seeing Afghan culture as something foreign or needing "fixing" and instead focus on understanding the deeper, structural issues that affect people's lives.

  • Improving Lives, Not Just Symbols: True progress involves ensuring the safety, dignity, and agency of Afghan women, not just focusing on symbolic acts like the removal of the veil.

• What did you learn about the clothing of "women of cover," the history of the burqa and other forms of covering, and the moral communities from which they arise?

  • Historical and Cultural Context of the Burqa and Other Coverings:

    • The burqa is not a uniform garment imposed solely by the Taliban but a local form of covering worn by Pashtun women in Afghanistan, and part of a broader tradition in the Southwest Asia and subcontinent. Various forms of covering have been used to symbolize modesty, respectability, and the moral boundaries between public and private life.

    • The practice of covering serves to separate men and women in public spaces, reinforcing the association of women with the private sphere (home and family), where their honor and modesty are protected from the gaze of unrelated men.

    • These forms of covering are deeply connected to moral communities—groups that uphold specific values around modesty, piety, and family. Wearing these garments is often a symbol of belonging to a community with shared moral and religious ideals.

• What does Abu-Lughod mean when she calls the burqa a liberating invention? Why does she compare them to mobile homes?

  • Liberating Invention:

    • Abu-Lughod uses the term "liberating invention" to describe the burqa because, for many women, it allows them to move out of segregated spaces while still adhering to moral codes that protect them from the public gaze and keep them within the "safety" of their community’s values. It grants mobility without compromising their sense of respectability.

  • Mobile Homes Comparison:

    • By comparing the burqa to "mobile homes," Abu-Lughod emphasizes that these garments provide a protective, enclosed space for women, much like a home that they can carry with them in public. This metaphor highlights the mobility and autonomy that the burqa can afford women within the constraints of their cultural norms.

• Why does Abu-Lughod reject the use of the word "saving"?

  • Rejection of "Saving":

    • Abu-Lughod rejects the term "saving" because it implies that women in non-Western cultures, such as Afghan women, are in need of rescue from their own culture. The rhetoric of "saving" assumes that the Western way of life is inherently superior and that other cultures are inferior or backwards. It is an arrogant and patronizing view that overlooks the complexity of women’s lives in these societies and their agency in choosing their paths within their cultural contexts.

    • She challenges this view by arguing that Western interventions often impose a one-size-fits-all model of liberation, disregarding the values and desires of the women they aim to help.

• Why does Abu-Lughod suggest that cultural relativism is not adequate in approaching cultural diversity? What alternative approaches does she suggest?

  • Cultural Relativism Critique:

    • Cultural relativism often advocates for not judging other cultures and accepting their practices as they are. Abu-Lughod argues that this does not go far enough in addressing injustice or oppressive practices. While it helps avoid ethnocentrism (judging other cultures by one's own standards), it can lead to inaction and a lack of engagement with necessary social change.

  • Alternative Approaches:

    • Instead of cultural relativism, Abu-Lughod advocates for an approach that respects differences but also recognizes that cultures are shaped by historical contexts and global interactions. She urges people to be aware of their privileges and to engage in ways that support justice without imposing Western values. This includes solidarity and alliances with communities, rather than assuming a stance of "saving" others.

• Turning the situation around, do you think American women have free choice over what they wear in every situation? What are the norms that apply? How are these norms set through participation in a moral community? How do you think American women's clothing might be perceived by people from other cultures?

  • American Women's Clothing Choices:

    • While American women have more freedom than women in many other societies, they do not have absolute free choice in what they wear in every situation. Social norms—such as professional dress codes, cultural expectations, and fashion trends—play a significant role in shaping their clothing choices.

    • For example, wearing casual clothes to a formal event might be seen as disrespectful, just as wearing clothing that is too revealing could be criticized in more conservative settings.

  • Norms and Moral Communities:

    • These norms are shaped by cultural values, class distinctions, and expectations within specific communities, from professional settings to religious groups. Women's clothing is often a reflection of the values and standards of the communities they are part of.

  • How American Clothing is Perceived by Others:

  • From the perspective of people in more conservative or traditional cultures, American women's clothing might be seen as immodest, individualistic, or disrespectful, especially if it is revealing or seen as a symbol of a lack of community ties and moral grounding.

• Abu-Lughod urges her readers to become involved in "making the world a more just place." Drawing upon the challenges Abu-Lughod offers in this article, what would this "just" world look like?

  • A Just World According to Abu-Lughod:

    • A "just" world would be one in which people, particularly women, are free to make their own choices in the context of their cultural and historical circumstances. It would not be based on imposing one culture's definition of justice or liberation, but on supporting local efforts for peace, safety, and dignity within communities.

    • This world would also acknowledge the interconnectedness of global issues—such as economic inequality, military interventions, and cultural imperialism—and work toward creating conditions where people's desires and aspirations can be met without being overpowered by external forces or structural violence.

    • Abu-Lughod envisions a world where we can work together in solidarity with others, not as saviors, but as partners in addressing shared challenges and creating conditions for true justice, equality, and freedom.