Expressive Culture (Chapter 11)

Expressive Culture(Chapter 11)

The BIG Questions • What is expressive culture? • How is culture expressed through art? • What do play and leisure activities reveal about culture? • How is expressive culture changing in contemporary times?

Expressive Culture • Expressive culture is behavior and beliefs related to art, leisure, and play

Art • What is art? • Art is the application of imagination, skill, and style to matter, movement, and sound that goes beyond purely the practical • A wide variety of substances and activities can be considered art • Beautifully prepared meal, stories, paintings, sculptures, dance, architecture, landscaping, tattooing, etc.

Art • All cultures have art and have a sense of what makes something “art” • Ethno-esthetics – refers to local cultural definitions of what art is • Can get intra-cultural (within culture) variations in opinions of art • e.g. Gender • Men of Shipibo Indians of Peruvian Amazon liking abstract art while women find it ugly • Male shamans take hallucenigenic drugs and may relate more to the abstract, “psychedelic” images than women • Class

Studying Art in Society • Anthropologist who study art are interested in… • The products and characteristics of art in a society • Who makes the art and why • The role of art in society • The wider social meaning of art

Purpose of Making Art • Art can have a variety of purposes depending on the context… • May socialize children into the culture • May legitimize political leaders • May be associated with a group’s identity and sense of pride • May serve as a form social control • May serve as a catalyst for political resistance • May be a form of self-expression • May be a religious means through which individuals connect with the supernatural realm

Purpose of Making Art • May reinforce social relationships / gender relationships • Male strip dancing • May be a form of resistance • Hip-hop, rap music • Graffiti • Protests economic oppression

Focus on the Artist • Add to the understanding of art by studying art from the artists’ perspective • Look at the social status of the artist • May be revered and wealthy or stigmatized and economically marginal • May have gendered divisions among artists • Geisha – female Japanese art form • May have a great deal of specialization and exclusiveness or little specialization and inclusiveness • Foragers – artistic activity is open to all, artistic products shared by all • State-level societies – may need a special kind of training to produce certain types of art, artistic products may only be available to those who can afford them

The Artist Often gender division exists May be revered or stigmatized Native American male carvers were initiated into a secret society In foraging communities, artistic activity is open to all

Performance Arts • Include music, dance, theater, rhetoric (speech-making), and narrative (storytelling) • Ethnomusicology – the cross-cultural study of music • Are men and women equally encouraged to use certain instruments and repertoires? • Is musical training available to all? • Are the performances of men and women public, private, or both? Are women and men allowed to perform together? • Do members of the culture give equal value to the performances of men and women?

Performance Arts • Theater is a type of enactment that seeks to entertain through movement and words • There are often strong connections between myth, religion, ritual, and performance • Performance arts often occur at ritual events – feasts, special ceremonies, funerals, weddings • May serve to both entertain and keep important cultural or religious knowledge alive

Kathakali Theater (S. India) • Blend of mythology, acting, and music • Dramatizes great Hindu epics • Features elaborate hand gestures, make-up, and costume • Audience recognizes characters from their make-up • Similar to European opera • – Zarrilli 1990

A new use for classical dance-drama in India is in neighborhood street theater that includes topics such as wife beating and dowry in the play

Architecture • Highly mobile foragers’ dwellings are the image of the family and not wider society • Only take the family to build • Pastoralists and horticulturalist have designed portable structures like the tepee • Social status may be reflected in where the housing is located (e.g. chief in center) • States show their power through the construction of impressive urban monuments • Shows ability to mobilize enough labor to create them • Architecture may reflect class differences and social rank

Gardens • Gardens for use, especially food production, are differentiated from gardens for decorative purposes • Decorative gardens are a product of state-level societies • Japanese gardens may contain no flowers • Trees, shrubs, stones, water • Traditional Muslim gardens are enclosed by four walls • Traditionally flowers are not a prominent motif in African art, but cut flowers are important economic products in many parts of the world • Contents of a personal garden makes a statement about its owner’s preferences, identity, and status

Taj Mahal in Agra, India

A morning scene in the Netherlands. Dutch people buy on average 12 bouquets of cut flowers a year. But raising cut flowers and transporting them is highly energy intensive.

Play and Leisure • Play and leisure • Have no direct, utilitarian purpose for the participant • Play • Has rules • Contains chance • Often contains tension • Leisure activities • Often lacks rules, chance, and tension

Play, Leisure, and Culture • Anthropologists think about… • why some play/leisure involves teams and others are individual activities • social roles of people involved • “goals” of the game and how they are achieved • how much danger and violence is involved • how activities relate to group identity • how such activities link or separate different groups

Games and Sports • Can be interpreted as reflections of social relationships and cultural ideals • A “cultural microcosm” • American football • Model for corporate culture • Clear hierarchy with leadership vested in one person (the quarterback) • Goal of territorial expansion by taking over areas from the competition • Income distribution • Baseball • U.S. – individualistic plays and strategies • Japan – “team spirit, unity, the ball club always comes first." • wa – discipline and self-sacrifice for the good of the whole

Games and Sports • In many contexts sports are closely tied to religion and spirituality • Asian martial arts • spiritual self control • Hindu male wrestlers in India • Strict routine of discipline – for perfected physical and moral health • Play, pleasure, and pain are often linked • Blood sports – competition that explicitly seeks to bring about a flow of blood or even death • Often with animals – dog fighting, cock fighting

Leisure Travel / Tourism • The tourism industry is one of the world’s largest industries • Ethnic tourism • Cultural tourism • Ecotourism • Often individuals travel from the West to the West or from the West to the Rest • Westerners are doing the consuming • Tourism’s effects on indigenous people can be positive or negative • Positives – jobs, shares of revenues • Negatives – loss of land, environmental degradation

Leisure Travel / Tourism • Often marketed as providing an “authentic” view of “primitive” cultures • Tourists often seek to find the culture the tourist industry defines rather than the real one • Anthropologists are concerned with the impact of tourism on indigenous peoples

Change in Expressive Culture • Globalization brings new materials, new technology, new ideas, and new styles to many parts of the world • Much change is influenced by Western culture through globalization • Attempts by colonialists to eradicate certain indigenous art forms and activities • Introduction of cricket on the Trobriand Islands to substitute for warfare and overt sexuality • Over time Trobriand Islanders melded British aspects of cricket with more traditional Trobriand ways

Change in Expressive Culture • Indigenous people adapting artistic styles to meet tourist demands • May keep indigenous arts alive, whereas indigenous people may be more interested in western arts, music, and sports • Growing worldwide support for the preservation of material cultural heritage • Sites, monuments, buildings, and moveable objects considered of outstanding world value in terms of history, art, and science • Also growing worldwide support for intangible cultural heritage • Living heritage manifested in oral traditions, languages, performing arts, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices about nature and the universe, and craft making • The view among United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is that the preservation of both material and immaterial cultural assets is a human right • People-first cultural heritage preservation is especially important – cultural preservation managed by the community

Change in Expressive Culture • But influence does not only occur in one direction • African musical styles have transformed the U.S. musical scene since the days of slavery • Japan garden styles are popular in the U.S.

Example of Gullah culture as major tourist attraction

The BIG Questions Revisited • How is culture expressed through art? • What do play and leisure activities reveal about culture? • How is expressive culture changing in contemporary times?

Expressive Culture (Chapter 11)