Ch 13 Art, Culture, Play & Heritage – Comprehensive Anthropological Notes

Definitions and Scope of Art

• Anthropological definition: application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and sound beyond the purely practical (Nanda 1994:383).
  • Broad, emic-oriented; includes beautifully presented meals, well-told stories, perfectly formed baskets.
  • Art as a human universal, though forms vary (e.g., Pirahã have verbal but little visual art).
• Questions anthropologists ask:
  • What counts as art cross-culturally?
  • Who makes art, in what social position?
  • How do inequality, microcultural variation, and power shape art?
  • How should cross-cultural art be selected and displayed in museums?

Categories and Subcategories of Art

• Time periods: Paleolithic, Classical, Modern, etc.
• Media-based subcategories:
  • Graphic / Plastic: painting, drawing, sculpture, weaving, basketry, architecture.
  • Decorative: interior design, landscaping, gardens, costume, body adornment (hair, tattoo, body paint).
  • Performance: music, dance, theater.
  • Verbal: poetry, writing, rhetoric, stories, jokes.

Western Distinctions: Fine vs. Folk Art

• Fine Art (Western classical ideal):
  • Produced by formally trained artist.
  • Market-oriented, unique, signed.
  • Non-utilitarian – “art for art’s sake.”
• Folk / Ethnic / Primitive / Craft (non-Western & non-classical):
  • Creator without formal schooling.
  • Not primarily for sale; often anonymous.
  • Primarily utilitarian or ritual/war-related.
• Anthropology challenges the binary as ethnocentric.

Cross-Cultural Esthetics & Ethno-Esthetics

• Esthetics = socially accepted notions of quality (Thompson 1971).
• Ethno-esthetics = culturally specific criteria.
• Yorùbà (Nigeria) wood-carving principles:
  • Midway between abstraction & realism; avoid portraiture.
  • Depict optimal adult physical peak.
  • Clarity of line & form; polished, luminous surface; symmetry.
• Intracultural variation: Shipibo (Peru) men liked abstract computer-generated designs; women disliked them (Roe  men are shamans familiar with hallucinogenic imagery).

Anthropological Methods & Perspectives on Art

• Participant observation (core), plus audio/video, textual analysis.
• Apprenticeship common (e.g., John Chernoff learning African drumming in Ghana).
  • Insight: “The heart sees before the eyes.”
  • Rituals to improve skill (killing chickens; wrist-smart ritual).
• Functionalist legacy: art socializes, builds identity, heals, legitimizes leaders, assists war, acts as social control, can serve resistance.

Focus on the Artist

• Franz Boas: study artists, not just products.
• Ruth Bunzel (Zuni & Laguna pottery):
  • Artists’ design choices reflect both personal agency & tradition.
• Social status variability:
  • Ancient Mexican goldworkers revered; Pacific NW Native carvers initiated & high status; Navajo women weave, men silversmith; Caribbean women carve calabashes.
• Specialization grows with state-level societies & markets; free-ranging foragers have little specialization.

Microcultures, Power, and Art Appropriation

• Art ties to group identity (Berber carpets, Maya huipiles, Inuit stone carvings).
• Powerful groups may appropriate forms of less powerful.
• Case: Maskit souvenir chain (Israel)
  • Founded 1954 to “safeguard ancient crafts.”
  • Shift from Jewish to Arab production; Arab labor rendered invisible; products labeled simply “Israeli.”
• Gender & performance: Male strip shows in Florida marketed as reversal of gender roles but actually reinforce female subordination ("dive-bomb" tipping, manager instructions).
• Resistance art: U.S. hip-hop & rap as protest against oppression, drugs, misogyny.

Performance Arts & Ethnomusicology

• Ethnomusicology = cross-cultural study of music (form, musicians’ status, links to religion/healing, change).
• Temiar (Malaysia) music & gender:
  • Egalitarian society  balanced male spirit-medium singers & female chorus.
• Brazilian música sertaneja:
  • Dupla (paired “brothers”) adapt U.S. country (“Achy Breaky Heart”) to critique capitalism/globalization & uphold kinship.
• Kathakali (South India) ritual dance-drama:
  • Stylized gestures, elaborate makeup (green for heroes, black for vulgar characters) enact Hindu epics (Mahabharata, Ramayana).

Architecture & Decorative Arts

• Housing reflects subsistence & social complexity:
  • Foragers: temporary shelters mirror family-level relations.
  • Amazon horticulturalists: circular semipermanent settlements, drainage, headman shelter.
  • Pastoralists: portable teepee (NA), ger/yurt (Mongolia); encampments in concentric circles by status.
  • State societies: urban grid plans, monumental architecture.
• Japanese interior design change (Rosenberger 1992):
  • Move from tatami/shoji/fusuma to Western LDK concept; carpeting, curtains, DK central kitchen.
  • Mirrors shifts in marriage ideals, consumerism, gender tensions, elder care dilemmas.
• Gardens:
  • Decorative gardens arise in state societies.
  • Islamic garden: walled square, fountains, paradise symbolism (e.g., Taj Mahal).
  • Colonial heterotopic gardens display global specimens (Foucault’s heterotopia concept).
  • Flowers: global commodity; economic/ecological reasons for regional variation (Africa’s limited floriculture historically, now changing).

Museums & Representation

• Museum = institution that collects, preserves, interprets, displays objects regularly (Kahn 1995).
• Diffuses globally via colonialism; many developing-nation museums retain colonial imprint.
• Museum anthropology debates:
  • Need for context for all objects (not just non-Western).
  • Repatriation: NAGPRA (1990) mandates U.S. institutions inventory Native American remains & objects.
  • Post-Soviet claims: Ukraine seeks ≈ 2{\,}000{\,}000 art objects from Russian museums.

Play & Leisure

• Play characteristics (Huizinga/Hutter):
  • Non-utilitarian; time-bounded; rule-governed; may involve chance/tension.
• Leisure lacks rules/chance (e.g., reading, sunbathing) but overlaps.
• Anthropologists study team vs. individual play, identity links, violence, political/economic contexts (e.g., 2010 World Cup, corporate sponsors).

Games & Sports as Cultural Microcosm

• Clifford Geertz: sports are models of & for culture.
• U.S. football = corporate hierarchy & territorial expansion.
• Baseball U.S. vs. Japan (Whiting 1979):
  • U.S. individualism vs. Japanese wa (group harmony, self-sacrifice).
• Indian male wrestling (Alter 1992):
  • Akhara training, guru supervision, intense calisthenics (≈2000 push-ups/day).
  • Mainly vegetarian, avoid alcohol/tobacco; consume bhang, milk, ghee, almonds to build semen (source of strength in traditional dietetics).
  • Parallels Hindu sannyasi asceticism; wrestlers respected for physical & spiritual discipline.
• Blood sports: cockfights, bullfights; convey sadism, male validation, culture-over-nature symbolism.
• Turkish & Ukrainian baths: blend pleasure & pain via harsh scrubbing, extreme temperatures, social interaction.

Tourism & Leisure Travel

• Tourism = major global economic force; often Global North tourists to Global South.
• Types: ethnic, cultural, eco-tourism marketed as “authentic.”
• Tourist literature emphasizes primitive imagery yet promises comfort; tensions between accuracy & expectation (Appalachian “hillbilly” stereotypes – LaLone 2003).
• Impacts: Amboseli NP (Kenya) excluded Maasai; Guanacaste NP (Costa Rica) included locals in planning.
• Locals exercise agency (e.g., Gullah of South Carolina).

Change in Expressive Culture

• Globalization  two-way flows (African music shapes U.S.; Japanese gardens influence U.S.).
• New materials, technologies, ideas accompany colonialism, tourism, political change.

Colonialism & Syncretism: Trobriand Cricket

• British missionaries introduced cricket (1903) to pacify warfare.
• Islanders localized:
  • Big-men competition, redistributive feasts.
  • War magic repurposed (spells, decorated bats, weather spells).
  • Uniforms replaced by body paint, feathers, shells; songs/dances with Western elements (P-K gum, airplane sounds).
  • Home team must win, but not by too much; feast is main goal.

Tourism’s Complex Effects on Art

• Dangers: mass production, abbreviated performances, loss of quality/authenticity.
• Positive cases:
  • Vietnamese water puppetry expanded nationwide & year-round, boosted by tourism.
  • Istanbul belly dancing gentrified; symbolizes cosmopolitanism vs. modesty tensions.
• UNESCO Material Cultural Heritage (1972) & Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003):
  • List & fund preservation of sites, rituals, crafts; anthropologists warn against static “trait lists.”

Cultural Heritage as Contested Resource

• Key issues:
  • Who defines authenticity?
  • Insider vs. outsider interests in preservation.
  • Power imbalances threaten local benefit.
• Hawaiian Hula renaissance (1970s–): reclaim language & dance; competitions provoke concerns:
  • Non-Hawaiian participation degrades quality.
  • Time limits violate traditional format.
  • Secular staging offends religious essence.
• People-first heritage projects:
  • Waanyi Women’s History (Australia): community control, unpublished data, women employed as cultural rangers  income, entitlement security.
  • Hampi (India) bazaar eviction (2011): top-down preservation displaced residents, erasing living heritage.

Art for Social Change

• Anthropologists engage in applied, activist art:
  • Emily Joy Rothchild’s Hamburg hip-hop academy; student album “Let Me Speak” opposing ISIS & Islamophobia.
  • Rwanda post-conflict art therapy fosters remembrance & reconciliation.

Key Takeaways & Connections

• Art, play, architecture, and heritage are deeply embedded in power, identity, economy, and social change.
• Anthropology supplies holistic, contextualized understandings, challenges ethnocentric binaries, and champions ethical, people-first preservation of expressive culture.