Culture course 1:
What is Anthropology? Guest, K (CH1 p. 8-12)
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. The word
anthropology derives from the Greek words anthropos (“human”) and logos (“thought,” “reason,” or
“study”). The roots of anthropology lie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Europeans’
economic and colonial expansion increased that continent’s contact with people worldwide.
Technological breakthroughs in transportation and communication during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries—shipbuilding, the steam engine, railroads, the telegraph—rapidly transformed
the long-distance movement of people, goods, and information, in terms of both speed and quantity.
As colonization, communication, trade, and travel expanded, groups of merchants, missionaries, and
government officials traveled the world and returned to Europe with reports and artifacts of what
seemed to them to be “exotic” people and practices. More than ever before, Europeans encountered
the incredible diversity of human cultures and appearances. Who are these people? they asked
themselves. Where did they come from? Why do they appear so different from us?
Franz Boas (1858–1942), one of the founders of American anthropology, became deeply involved in
early-twentieth-century debates on immigration, serving for a term on a presidential commission
examining U.S. immigration policies. In an era when many scholars and government officials
considered the different people of Europe to be of distinct biological races, U.S. immigration policies
privileged immigrants from northern and western Europe over those from southern and eastern
Europe. Boas worked to undermine these racialized views of immigrants. He conducted studies that
showed the wide variation of physical forms within groups of the same national origin, as well as the
marked physical changes in the children and grandchildren of immigrants as they adapted to the
environmental conditions in their new country (Baker 2004; Boas 1912).
Audrey Richards (1899–1984), studying the Bemba people in the 1930s in what is now Zambia,
focused on issues of health and nutrition among women and children, bringing concerns for nutrition
to the forefront of anthropology. Her ethnography, Chisungu (1956), featured a rigorous and detailed
study of the coming-of-age rituals of young Bemba women and established new standards for the
conduct of anthropological research. Richards’s research is often credited with opening a pathway
for the study of nutritional issues and women’s and children’s health in anthropology.
Today anthropologists apply their knowledge and research strategies to a wide range of social
issues. For example, they study HIV/AIDS in Africa, immigrant farmworkers in the United States,
ethnic conflict in the Dominican Republic, financial firms on Wall Street, street children in Brazil, and
Muslim judicial courts in Egypt. Anthropologists trace the spread of disease, promote economic
development in underdeveloped countries, conduct market research, and lead diversity-training
programs in schools, corporations, and community organizations. Anthropologists also study our
human origins, excavating and analyzing the bones, artifacts, and DNA of our ancestors from
millions of years ago to gain an understanding of who we are and where we’ve come from.
Anthropology today retains its core commitment to understanding the richness of human diversity.
Specifically, anthropology challenges us to move beyond ethnocentrism—the strong human
tendency to believe that one’s own culture or way of life is normal, natural, and superior to the
beliefs and practices of others. Instead, as we will explore throughout this book, the anthropologist’s
toolkit of research strategies and analytical concepts enables us to appreciate, understand, and
engage the diversity of human cultures in an increasingly global age.
,Anthropology Is Global in Scope. Our work covers the whole world and is not constrained by
geographic boundaries. Anthropology was once noted for the study of faraway, seemingly exotic
villages in developing countries. But from the beginning, anthropologists have been studying not only
in the islands of the South Pacific, in the rural villages of Africa, and among indigenous peoples in
Australia and North America, but also among factory workers in Britain and France, among
immigrants in New York, and in other communities in the industrializing world. Over the last thirty
years, anthropology has turned significant attention to urban communities in industrialized nations.
With the increase of studies in North America and Europe, it is fair to say that anthropologists now
embrace the full scope of humanity—across geography and through time.
Anthropologists Start with People and Their Local Communities. Although the whole world is our
field, anthropologists are committed to understanding the local, everyday lives of the people we
study. Our unique perspective focuses on the details and patterns of human life in the local
community and then examines how particular cultures connect with the rest of humanity.
Sociologists, economists, and political scientists primarily analyze broad trends, official organizations,
and national policies, but anthropologists— particularly cultural anthropologists—adopt
ethnographic fieldwork as their primary research strategy. They live with a community of
people over an extended period to better understand their lives by “walking in their shoes.”
Anthropologists have constantly worked to bring often-ignored voices into the global conversation.
As a result, the field has a history of focusing on the cultures and struggles of non-Western and
nonelite people.
Ethnographic fieldwork: A primary research strategy in cultural anthropology typically involving
living and interacting with a community of people over an extended period to better understand
their lives.
Anthropologists Study People and the Structures of Power. Human communities are full of people,
the institutions they have created for managing life in organized groups, and the systems of meaning
they have built to make sense of it all. Anthropology maintains a commitment to studying both the
people and the larger structures of power around them. These include families, governments,
economic systems, educational institutions, militaries, the media, and religions, as well as ideas of
race, ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality. To comprehensively examine people’s lives,
anthropologists consider the structures that empower and constrain those people, both locally and
globally. At the same time, anthropologists seek to understand the “agency” of local people— in
other words, the central role of individuals and groups in determining their own lives, even in the
face of overwhelming structures of power.
Anthropologists Believe That All Humans Are Connected. Anthropologists believe that all humans
share connections that are biological, cultural, economic, and ecological. Despite fanciful stories
about the “discovery” of isolated, seemingly lost tribes of “stone age” people, anthropologists
suggest that there are no truly isolated people in the world today and that there rarely, if ever,
were any in the past. Clearly, some groups of people are less integrated than others into the global
system under construction today. But none are completely isolated. Human history is the story of
movement and interaction, not of isolation and disconnection. Although some anthropology
textbooks show “tribal”-looking people in brightly colored, seemingly exotic clothing holding cell
phones, which suggests the recent and rapid integration of isolated people into a high-tech, global
world, anthropological research indicates that this imagined isolation never really existed. Yes,
today’s period of rapid globalization is intensifying the interactions among people and the flow of
goods, technology, money, and ideas within and across national boundaries, but interaction and
connection are not new phenomena. They have been central to human history. Our increasing
,connection today reminds us that our actions have consequences for the whole world, not just for
our own lives and those of our families and friends.
One of the unique characteristics of anthropology in the United States is that it has developed four
“lenses” for examining humanity. Constituting the four field approach, these interrelated fields are
physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and cultural anthropology. In Europe,
the four fields are quite separate, but the history of anthropology in the United States has fostered a
holistic approach for examining the complexity of human origins and human culture, past and
present. Holism refers to anthropology’s commitment to look at the whole picture of human life—
culture, biology, history, and language—across space and time. The field’s cross-cultural and
comparative approach considers the life experiences of people in every part of the world, comparing
and contrasting cultural beliefs and practices to understand human similarities and differences on a
global scale. Anthropologists conduct research on the contemporary world and also look deep into
human history.
What is Culture? Guest, K (CH2 p. 33-40)
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. Culture is our manual for
understanding and interacting with the people and the world around us. It includes shared norms,
values, symbols, mental maps of reality, and material objects as well as structures of power—
including the media, education, religion, and politics—in which our understanding of the world is
shaped, reinforced, and negotiated. A cultural group may be large or small, and it may have within it
significant diversity of region, religion, race, gender, sexuality, class, generation, and ethnic identity.
It may not be accepted by everyone, even those living in a particular place or time. But ultimately,
the culture that we learn has the potential to shape our ideas of what is normal and natural, what we
can say and do, and even what we can think.
Culture is learned and thaught. Humans do not genetically inherit culture. We learn culture
throughout our lives from the people and cultural institutions that surround us. Anthropologists call
the process of learning culture: enculturation. Some aspects of culture we learn through formal
instruction: English classes in school, religious instruction, visits to the doctor, history lessons, dance
classes. Other processes of enculturation are informal and even unconscious as we absorb culture
from family, friends, and the media. All humans are equally capable of learning culture and of
learning any culture they are exposed to. The process of social learning, passing cultural information
within populations and across generations, is not unique to humans. Many animals learn social
behavior from their immediate group. But the human capacity to learn culture is unparalleled.
Culture is taught as well as learned. Humans establish cultural institutions as mechanisms for
enculturating their members. Schools, medical and legal systems, media, and religious institutions
promote the ideas and concepts that are considered central to the culture. Rules, regulations, laws,
teachers, doctors, religious leaders, police officers, and sometimes militaries promote and enforce
what is considered appropriate behavior and thinking.
Culture is shared yet contested. No individual has his or her own culture. Culture is a shared
experience developed as a result of living as a member of a group. Through enculturation, humans
learn how to communicate and establish patterns of behavior that allow life in community, often in
close proximity and sometimes with limited resources. Cultures may be shared by groups, large and
small. There may be smaller cultures within larger cultures. For instance, your college classroom has
a culture, one that you must learn in order to succeed academically. A classroom culture includes
, shared understandings of what to wear, how to sit, when to arrive or leave, how to communicate
with classmates and the instructor, and how to challenge authority, as well as formal and informal
processes of enculturation. Although culture is shared by members of groups, it is also constantly
contested, negotiated, and changing. Culture is never static. Just as cultural institutions serve as
structures for promoting enculturation, they also serve as arenas for challenging, debating, and
changing core cultural beliefs and behaviors. Intense debates erupt over school curriculums, medical
practices, media content, religious practices, and government policies as members of a culture
engage in sometimes dramatic confrontations about their collective purpose and direction.
Culture is symbolic and material. Through enculturation, over time the members of a culture develop
a shared body of cultural knowledge and patterns of behavior. Though anthropologists no longer
think of culture as a completely separate, unique possession of a specific group of people, most
argue that a common cultural core exists, at least among the dominant segments of the culture.
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. These are not universal;
they vary from culture to culture. Even within a culture not everyone shares equally in that cultural
knowledge, nor does everyone agree completely on it. But the elements of a culture powerfully
frame what its participants can say, what they can do, and even what they think is possible and
impossible, real or unreal.
Norms are ideas or rules about how people should behave in particular situations or toward
certain other people—what is considered “normal” and appropriate behavior. Norms may include
what to wear on certain occasions, what you can say in polite company, how younger people should
treat older people and who you can date. Many norms are assumed, not written down. We learn
them over time—consciously and unconsciously— and incorporate them into our patterns of daily
living. Other norms are formalized in writing and made publicly available, such as a country’s laws,
a system of medical or business ethics, or the code of academic integrity in your college or university.
Norms may vary for segments of the population, imposing different expectations on men and
women, for instance, or children and adults. Cultural norms may be widely accepted, but they may
also be debated, challenged, and changed, particularly when norms enforced by a dominant group
disadvantage or oppress a minority within the population. Consider the question of whom you can
marry. You may consider the decision to be a matter of personal choice, but in many cultures the
decision is not left to the whims of young people. The results are too important. Cultures have clear
norms, based on ideas of age, kinship, sexuality, race, religion, class, and legal status, that specify
what is normal and what is not. Cultural norms may discourage exogamy (marriage outside one’s
“group”) and encourage endogamy (marriage within one’s “group”). Although U.S. culture has very
few formal rules about whom one can marry—with some exclusions around age, sexuality, and
certain kinship relations—cultural norms still powerfully inform and enforce our behavior. Most
people, though not all, accept and follow a culture’s norms. If they choose to challenge the norms,
other members of the culture have means for enforcing its standards, whether through shunning,
institutionalized punishment such as fines or imprisonment, or, in more extreme cases, violence and
threats of violence.
Cultures promote and cultivate a core set of values—fundamental beliefs about what is important,
what makes a good life, and what is true, right, and beautiful. Values reflect shared ultimate
standards that should guide people’s behavior, as well as goals that people feel are important for
themselves, their families, and their community. As with all elements of culture, cultural values are
not fixed. They can be debated and contested. And they may have varying degrees of influence. In
the United States, while the value of privacy is held dear, so is the value of security. The proper
