Module 5: Understanding Culture

Module 5:Understanding Culture The Diversity of Human ideas, Values, Beliefs and Behaviour

Announcements Lectures for Weeks 7 and 8 To assist students doing the Australia Asia on Screen essay topic, and those doing the Module 7 tourism topic, I will give a lecture on the feature films in week 7 (Sept 5) and a lecture on tourism in week 8 (Sept 12).

Announcements • Joseph Stiglitz, mentioned in my lecture on the Asian crisis last week is talking on ‘Late Night Live’, Radio National 105.7 FM today at 4.00pm. He is apparently going to talk about the IMF. • My plans for the mid-semester break: I will be in Jakarta for those two weeks, so please see me with essay drafts before the break.

Module 5: Understanding Culture Overview of today’s work First Part of the lecture: • understanding others involves interpretation Second part of the lecture: • understanding others involves a distinctive research methodology

Module 5 Objectives Look at page 5.1 in your Study Book On successful completion of this module you should be able to …. • Define an anthropological concept of culture • List factors that may be included in a study of culture • Recognise that culture is socially constructed

Module 5 Objectives • Describe assumptions and processes of fieldwork as a way of investigating culture • Recognise that the meaning of behaviour is tied to particular “culture worlds” • Use ethnographic examples to illustrate the variability of culture • Describe how we test the validity of interpretations

The Variability of Culture Let’s look at how varied human life is

Why will these Trobriand Island children grow up with their uncle (mother’s brother) as the main person who disciplines them and provides their material needs?

What is the message conveyed by the wearing of the tudung (veil) by modern Malay women?

Why did hundreds of young Australian men in the late 1960s go thousands of miles from their homes to engage in warfare in Vietnam?

Why did the Khmer Rouge assassinate intellectuals and put thousands of people to work digging canals in the 1970s?

Culture Understood as Meaning Making • If we understand culture as a practice of making meaning, it focuses attention on interpretation • Cross-culturally, that means the outsider has to develop an insider understanding

Language and meaning Let’s begin by saying words don’t have meaning they are given meaning Two useful terms: • Signifier – the marks on the page • Signified – the mental concept associated with those marks

Language and Meaning • Key understanding: there is no stable, fixed relationship between the signifier and the signified • One example: • Signifier: C-a-t-t-l-e • Signified: Well, lets see …..

C-a-t-t-l-e over 1000 years …. • 1000-1400 AD – personal property, money, capital, wealth

C-a-t-t-l-e over 1000 years …. • c. 1400 AD-moveable property, wealth

C-a-t-t-l-e over 1000 years …. • After 1500 - beasts, livestock (includes bees and fowls)

C-a-t-t-l-e over 1000 years …. Present - bovines (cows, bulls, calves)

How has the meaning of “Australian” changed? Does “Australian” today mean the same as it did in 1901?

Meaning and Absence Cottage House Hut Home • Mansion Station Villa Homestead

Meaning and Absence • Think about the absence of a gesture, and how that might be upsetting ….

Things as Signifiers • Signifier – rose • Signified – flower • Signified – rose • Signified - ?

Culture/Meaning/Summary • Meaning is a matter of interpretation • Meaning involves asking questions • Meaning involves tracing associations

Meaning cross-culturally • The Ibo “hand” example • The “cassowary/bird” example • The Koya of South India have 7 different words for bamboo, but don’t distinguish dew, fog, mist and snow

Meaning cross-culturally • The Penan have 40 different words for sago palm, but no word for “thank you” • In NE India, the Garo have at least 12 different words for types of ants, but no single word which groups them all together like the English word “ant”

Culture- Summary • Culture may be understood as the complex of events, practices and ideas which give meaning to existence • People are born into their culture/s, like language it exists ready made • But like language, culture can change • Understanding culture is a matter of asking questions, searching for meaning in what people do or don’t do

Second part of the lecture …. • The practicalities of learning about other cultures

Practicalities of learning about other’s culture • We need to interpret, not just observe • Interpretation takes time, and you need to be in the “thick of things” • What research method will work?

Participant observation • The participation observation method puts the researcher in the midst of the people s/he is studying • The researcher’s aim is to build up a “thick or rich description” informed by his or her informants’ behaviour and information shared

Supplementary methods • quantitative • census taking • constructing a sociocultural index • inventories of material goods • standardised tests (eg health, psychological) • compiling genealogies • mapping • vocabularies • archival research

more qualitative • biography • oral history • oral literature • decision-tree table • structured interviews • photographic documentation • Most productive is an on-going program of interviews with selected informants

What objectives have I achieved today? • Can I now define an anthropological concept of culture? • Can I list factors that may be included in a study of culture? • Do I recognise that culture is socially constructed?

What objectives have I achieved today? • Can I describe assumptions and processes of fieldwork as a way of investigating culture? • Do I recognise that the meaning of behaviour is tied to particular “culture worlds”? • Can I use ethnographic examples to illustrate the variability of culture? • Can I describe how we test the validity of interpretations?

Module 5: Understanding Culture