Agenda Postmodernism Recap The Achievements of Anthropology The Future of Anthropology

1. Agenda Postmodernism Recap The Achievements of Anthropology The Future of Anthropology Aims and Goals Science or Humanistic discipline Concept of Culture Topics Applied anthropology

3. Postmodernity in Anthropology has focused on 1. an examination of the power relations according to which the Other has been constructed 2. examinations of the rhetorical devices and preoccupations of ethnographers themselves

4. Postmodernist Critique • Postmodernists believe that objective neutral knowledge of another culture, or any aspect of the world is impossible • anthropology’s epistemology and scientism is shown to be Western construct • Ethnographies distort reality at best, and have political implications all other voices and interpretations are silenced. • If a text is an author’s representation, and if that author’s work is taken as an authoritative account, then all other voices and interpretations are silenced • Historically, the interpretations voiced have been by white protestant males in Western industrialized nations

5. since ethnography is a form of writing, much of its self-proclaimed objectivity and empirically grounded authority would be better seen as rhetorical effects of the way the ethnographic genre was constructed • If constructed, such texts could be, should be, opened up for inspection, and strategically de-and reconstructed.

6. Critiques of Postmodernism • How does Postmodernism and the deconstructing of texts help us to understand the anthropological endeavor • Taken to its logical extreme postmodernism comes close to turning anthropology into a sub field of literature. • If all writing is nothing more than interpretations of interpretations then ethnography is fiction • And no conclusions can ultimately be reached about anything • anthropology is a representational genre rather than a clearly bounded scientific domain

7. Postmodernist Legacy • There is not any real new change in practice • most central influence is on the nature of ethnography • 1970s ,1980s 1990s anthropologists began to write ethnographies in which their recounting of their own experiences and feelings takes a prominent role. • The recounting of field experiences can become the narrative device by which anthropological experiences can become the narrative device through which anthropological understanding is conveyed Eg Rosaldo • The awareness of rhetorical devices can inform our own writing and help us evaluate the writing of others • anthropologists must now ask how new forms of authority and voices other than their own can be included in the ethnography

8. BREAKDOWN OFNATIONAL SCHOOLS DEVELOPMENT OFSPECIALIZATIONS 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 ECOLOGICAL ANTH. NEO-EVOLUTIONISM CULTURAL MATERIALISM C & P ETHNOSCIENCE-CUM--COGNITIVE INTERPRETIVE Schools and analytical theories in abeyance Main duality: Political Economy vs. Interpretive & Deconstructionistapproaches AMERICAN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY NEO-STRUCTURALISM (LEACH, GLUCKMAN, BARTH, BAILEY, STRATHERN) BRITISH SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY FRENCH ETHNOLOGIE MAUSS — LÉVI-STRAUSS: FRENCH STRUCTURALISM MODERN PERIOD POSTMODERN PERIOD

9. The Achievements of Anthropology • Do we know more about human culture than our great-great grandparents • There is an accumulation of knowledge about individual cultures. Other cultures are much better documented than they were before • anthropology has gained basic insights into human nature • Race does not account for variations in human behaviour

10. The Future of Anthropology • What is the nature and goal of anthropology? • Should anthropological explanation be modeled on scientific theory –building or on humanistic interpretation? • Is the idea of culture useful? • What new topic areas will become of interest?

11. What is, or should be, the goal of anthropology • Is anthropology after insights into humanity? • Should it be primarily applied? • Should it be essentially descriptive of human experience? • What is the point of it all?

12. Should anthropology rely on a scientific mode of explanation – proposing hypotheses, testing them with empirical data, and constructing theory from law like generalizations • or should it be based on humanistic interpretation? • are scientific models inappropriate for understanding the symbolic nature of culture • Do we want to interpret, not explain?

13. What does it mean to be scientific • focus on statistics eg. HRAF • Does it mean “observational science” • Does it mean developing grand theory or universal theory • Anthropology may have been wrong, but is it on the road to truth • Truth is independent of the source • “Mendel was an Augustinian monk, but he got it right about the wrinkled peas; and it would not have mattered if he had been a black handicapped Spanish-speaking lesbian atheist. “ Fox 1996 • Can we really have British, American, feminist science of anthropology

14. if all truths are indeed epistemologically relative and have no universal application, then the proposition that all truths are epistemologically relative is itself relative and has no universal application, and we have no reason to accept it. It is the product of its own context, biases, social conditions,etc. Even with interpretations you still want to be believed. You still implicitly argue that your interpretation is somehow the truth. Otherwise it is simply a story.

15. Humanistic Anthropology • addresses the question: what it is to be human • recognizes that we live in a world of symbols with their contexts and interpretations, • Humanistic anthropology is moving away from anthropology as a naturalistic science which understands cultures and societies through causation, structure, and function • It contests that anthropological research is physical, empirical and modeled on a positivistic version of science • focus on the self and away from collective symbols. Accordingly, there is a push towards writing ethnographies of the self,

16. Applied Anthropology One of the distinctive methodological processes characterizing anthropology historically is participation/observation and seeing things from "the people's point of view.“ What value does this have in contemporary world (eg. Iraq) is this essentially translation application ?

17. Does the Concept of Culture still hold value? Old View • bounded, small scale entity • defined characteristics (checklist) • unchanging, in balanced equilibrium or self-reproducing • underlying system of shared meanings: 'authentic culture' • identical, homogeneous individuals.

18. New ideas about Culture • 'cultures' are not, nor ever were, naturally bounded entities Cultures' are dynamic, fluid and constructed situationally, in particular places and times • culture is a contested process of meaning-making • Eg. Merry 18th and 19th century Hawaii • Contests took place between people in asymmetrical relations of power • Symbols and ideas never acquired a closed or entirely coherent set of meanings: they were polyvalent, fluid and hybridized. Key terms shifted in meaning at different historical times.

19. How are these concepts used and contested by differently positioned actors who draw on local, national and global links in unequal relations of power? • How is the contest framed by implicit practices and rules - or do actors challenge, stretch or reinterpret them as part of the contest too? • In a flow of events, who has the power to define? • How do they prevent other ways of thinking about these concepts from being heard? • How do they manage to make their meanings stick, and use institutions to make their meanings authoritative? • With what material outcomes? • Eg. Homosexuality in Canada, the anti-and pro American rallies

20. 'corporate culture' • the early 1980s, 'culture' became a buzz word in management studies • corporate culture, often equated with a mission statement, had become the sine qua non of any serious organization • literature attributed the culture concept to anthropology: Geertz, Turner, Douglas • This interchange between academics and practitioners has increased in the 1990s as managers have called on researchers and consultants to provide 'training' to change organizations.

21. Culture and development • 'culture' is entering a new domain, overseas development, with the help of anthropologists • Wagner (1975) argued that in the very act of fieldwork anthropologists 'invent' a 'culture' (in the old sense) for a people. • Anthropologists plunge into situations which are beyond their interpersonal and practical competence. • To cope with this, they encourage themselves by thinking that they are dealing with a 'thing' and they can learn how it 'works'. • Some people in the host society gain insight into the anthropologist's perspective - - and for the first time perceive their daily life as a thing that works in patterned ways. • The anthropologist proceeds as if what is being studied is 'a culture'. In the process, what people had hitherto experienced as an embedded way of life becomes objectified and verbalized invented - as 'culture'.

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23. The politicization of 'culture In all three fields, (politics, business, development) politicians, business people and academic advisers are using 'culture' as a political tool. anthropology is implicated in the politicization of 'culture'.

24. Wagner (1975) argued that in the very act of fieldwork anthropologists 'invent' a 'culture' (in the old sense) for a people. • Anthropologists plunge into situations which are beyond their interpersonal and practical competence. • To cope with this, they encourage themselves by thinking that they are dealing with a 'thing' and they can learn how it 'works'. • Some people in the host society gain insight into the anthropologist's perspective - often whilst trying to control and domesticate her or him - and for the first time perceive their daily life as a thing that works in patterned ways. • The anthropologist proceeds as if what is being studied is 'a culture'. In the process, what people had hitherto experienced as an embedded way of life becomes objectified and verbalized - in Wagner's terms, invented - as 'culture'.

25. horticulturalists living in the rain forests of Eastern Brazil. • Mid 1970s 700 of the 800 died of disease. • Missionaries provided medicine in exchange for the Kayapo's adopting western clothes, building their village along a street, and suppressing their ceremonials • A state organization controlled their trade and communication with the outside, and embezzled their cash from the nut crop The Kayapo • The Kayapo felt dependent and in a situation over which they had no control

26. Turner saw his role as an anthropologist as 'uncovering the authentic social and cultural system beneath the corrosive underlay' • He found his authentic culture in the surviving social and ceremonial rituals which, to him, reproduced Kayapo as social persons in a moral universe • The Kayapo did not see it like that: it was just the way they did things • They did not have a concept through which to objectify and label their everyday life as a 'culture'. This Kayapo chief wears a feather headdress which establishes his rank.. He is smoking natural tobacco in his traditional pipe made out of ironwood.

27. He argued that they needed such a concept to deal with their situation: to give them an identity and distinguish themselves as a 'culture' on a par with other indigenous people and vis-à-vis the dominant national society in an inter-ethnic state system. A Kayapo chieftain wears the traditional botoque through his lower lip. The plate is made out of balsa wood, and is a sign of courage meant to frighten the enemy.

28. However, the Kayapo realized that what missionaries and state administrators used as justification for subordination and exploitation, another set of Westerners valued highly. • 'Culture', which had seemed an impediment, now appeared as a resource to negotiate their co-existence with the dominant society

29. After a Disappearing World documentary was made, the Kayapo sought further documentaries so as to reach the sympathetic elements in the west. • In 1989 the Kayapó protested a government proposal to build hydroelectric dams along the Xingu River. Their appeal aroused worldwide support and the project was shelved. If it had been implemented, the damming would have flooded much of their territory • When they arranged to meet the Brazilian government to oppose the Altamira dam, they choreographed themselves for the western media in order to gain support of the western audience and add pressure on the government.

30. Gone were the shorts, T-shirts and haircuts that had appeased the missionaries; with men's bare chests, body ornament and long ritual dances, the Kayapo performed their 'culture' as a strategy in their increasingly confident opposition to the state. • by the 1990s the Kayapo had obtained videos, radios, pharmacies, vehicles, drivers and mechanics, an aeroplane to patrol their land, and even their own missionaries. Young Kayapo girls painted with Jemipapo, a black paint which is made from Jemipapo fruit crushed and mixed with fish oil.

31. Kayapo had learnt to objectify their everyday life as 'culture' (in the old sense) and use it as a resource in negotiations with government and international agencies. • Kayapo politicians seem to have been fully aware of the constructedness of 'culture' • They presented themselves as a homogeneous and bounded group • They defined 'culture' for themselves and used it to set the terms of their relations with the 'outside world'

32. In a history spanning forty years, missionaries, government officials, the Kayapo, anthropologists, international agencies and non government agencies had all competed for the power to define a key concept, 'culture'. • Missionaries and government agencies initially had used the concept to define an entity that could be acted upon, producing disempowerment and dependency among the Kayapo. • The Kayapo strategy to wrest control of this concept from missionaries and government officials and turn it against them was part of a struggle not just for identity but for physical, economic and political survival. Kayapo girls dancing during the Jemipapo ceremony. Note the girl at the lower center with the traditional Kayapo haircut.

33. Kayapo leaders have used ethnographic film to assert their own definition of their 'culture' and used the strategies others have used against them to challenge the processes that have marginalized them

34. Topical trends • If the cultural world is shrinking is anthropology losing its subject matter • Exotic cultures untouched are non existent • Soon cultures of the world are homogenized into a single culture

35. 1. Cultural Survival of Indigenous Peoples • N Americans are concerned with preserving their cultures • Concern is not so much a matter of anthropological research as it is for basic human rights issues.

37. 2. The study of complex societies • A growing interest in applied anthropology after the affluent decade of the 1950s and 1960s witnessed the rediscovery of ethnicity and poverty, birth of which were defined as urban problems. • Therefore policy makers have been more inclined to use the findings of anthropologists to help some of these social problems at home. • Research opportunities in other cultures have diminished – newly independent countries reluctant to let western anthropologists in • Funding problems • study small ethnic communities, socialized occupation groups, or other sub cultural groups which operate in within the complex societies.

38. 3. The Greater Use of Anthropological Knowledge • So that anthropological insights will have an impact on policy makers. • Development agencies • Companies • Governments