| 4500+ Great Links | Summary of Cultural Anthropology by R. Robbins |
| Copyright © 2001,2009 by Zack Smith. All rights reserved. IntroductionThis is my personal summary that I created in 2001 of the textbook Cultural Anthropology by R. Robbins.This book is organized as chapters. Those are subdivided into questions, which the author answers at length. Chapter 1: "Culture and Meaning"Q1: Why do people have different beliefs and behaviors?Short answer: Each group has its own culture, which defines collective beliefs and behaviors. The term culture includes the concepts of economic system, social structure, language, as well as music/art/literature/food/etc. Ethnocentric fallacy: Rejecting other cultures without understanding them. Relativistic fallacy: Saying all cultures are OK if understood, despite moral issues. Film: Anthropology on TrialNew Guinea culture: Swidden agriculture, pig raising, egalitarian, Big Men (wealth through agricultural surplus), simple politics (council).Margaret Mead visited Papua New Guinea and recorded information about the salt water people (of Pere) but not the inlanders (Mbunai). Due to this, her writings, which like all ethnographic writings are considered the public record, contain the biases of the former. Not all that she recorded was considered to be something that the outside worth should see, e.g. births. Canadian John Baker went to another village and recorded the stories and myths of each clan. It took him a year and a half to become accepted by the people. Englishman Andrew Strathern went to the highlands (Mount Hagen) and joined up with the tribe of Ongka. An Ongka became his teacher about the local culture, his professor. Initially the Englishman was thought to be a ghost. Wari Iamu (a new-guinean) came to the USA to study American culture. He went to Oakland, California and spoke with Laura Nader (sister of Ralph) in the film. They agreed that to really know about a culture, you need emic (insider) and etic (outsider) information. Laura Nader said it's not that insiders can't write ethnographies, they just don't. Q2: By what mechanisms do people judge the cultures of others?Short answer: Ethnocentrically, i.e. from the perspective of their own culture.As an outsider, one must try to blend in, lest one be rejected. Too much honesty can undermine you. Q3: Is it possible to understand the perspective of another culture?Short answer: We can try but without being a member, there is a limit to what we can understand. Also, by immersing oneself in another culture one begins to lose one's moorings and exist in limbo between one's native culture and the new one. "Betwixt and between."Example given of witchcraft in Mexico. Q4: How can we understand and describe other cultures?Short answer: By viewing culture as a text (reading the "cultural text") consisting of symbols and meanings.Ask:
Q5: What can learning about other cultures tell us about ourselves?Short answer: If we learn to read our own cultural text, then the answer is, a lot.Examples given include:
Chapter 2: "Meaning of Progress"Q1: Why did cultures change from hunter-gatherer to agricultural?Short answer: Increased population density required that people stop and settle.HG people knew a lot about plants, which they learned through trial and error, theory and testing (one can perhaps even say scientifically). HG owned and carried very little, therefore no Big Men. The former view is that HG activities are difficult, but research has shown they are not. In fact, food gathering requires just an average 2 hours per day of work. Evidence shows HG people knew how to grow crops but didn't focus on it. Gathering was easier. They would gather for a while until their favorite foods were too far away, then they'd move to a new spot. There are two roads to wealth:
Cultural changes proceeded as follows.
When non-human energy is taken into consideration, growing one potato in America today costs more in energy than an HG person taking one out of the ground. Q2: Why do some societies have industrial superiority?Short answer: The pursuit of wealth and domination has lead to disparities.Example given of textiles as a global commodity, leading the British to destroy Calcutta's industry and causing America to reemphasize the use of slaves. Q3: What keeps poor countries poor?Short answer: Poor countries have assumed that "economic development" was good for them, when in fact it has mainly put them in debt and destroyed their environment and industries, and made their poor populations poorer.Example of Brazil given. Q4: Is modern health care better than those of less "advanced" socities?Short answer: As societies become more complex, there is more disease because people are
Numbers given for Ju/Wasi appear to show that they are roughly as healthy as modern Americans. Tangent: Chewa of Malawi (Africa) believe illness is caused by witchcraft. They and others believe in an "interpersonal theory of disease" which is directly tied to social interactions. Q5: Why are non-industrial societies becoming extinct?Short answer: Modern people want their land, either for direct use or for indirect (parks).Examples of the Ona in S. America and the Ju/Wasi. Example (not from the course): The slow genocide in central India against primitive peoples, in which the Indian government labels any non-acceptance of mining companies' theft of land as "terrorism". Chapter 3: "Social and Cultural Construction of Reality"How do people come to believe? Example of totemism given. (Emile Durkheim was the source that Freud mentioned in Totem and Taboo.)Q1: How does language affect thought and experience?Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
MetaphorsMetaphors are used to describe things in one domain using concepts from another. Each culture has its own ways of using metaphors. For example, English speaks of time as a commodity. Sometimes metaphors are appropriate, but other times they are restrictive ."Key metaphors" are metaphors particular to a culture which are consistently used. Examples given include
Use of key metaphors causes people to try to control one domain of experience by controlling the metaphor's domain of experience. So, control life by controlling eating. Example is provided of metaphors used in English witchcraft to describe personalities. Q2: How does symbolic action (ritual) support a given worldview?Short answer:
Examples given include:
Q3: How do people adopt and maintain a worldview in the face of contradictory evidence and ambiguity?Interpretive DriftThe more time that a person spends in another culture, the more they come to see through its perspective, and less through their own.There are several mechanisms by which this happens.
Contradictions and AmbiguityThese are typically explained away or ignored.
Q4: What is the role of humor in dealing with contradictions in language and metaphor?Short answer: Humor makes use of contradictions in language and metaphor and puts people at ease about these things.Problem: It lets them off the hook as well, permitting them to be non-critical when being critical especially about key metaphors (e.g. war) may be appropriate, beneficial, or transformative. Q5: How do people adapt to a worldview that is no longer appropriate?Short answer: "revitalization movements" help people abandon worldviews that are no longer useful or appropriate; usually a prophet leads the change-over.Examples given of Wovoka leading the Sioux with the Ghost Dance; Mother Ann Lee leading the Shakers to America. Chapter 4Q1: What is the typical family like?There is no universal, typical family across all cultures. Each culture has its own version.Three examples are given:
Key relationships:
Ju/wasi: Husband-wife
Q2: How is the typical family formed and maintained?Almost all societies recognize some form of marriage, but what marriage consists of varies. Children are induced to want to marry by parents who provide names and games: boyfriend/girlfriend, playing house.Which people can become spouses differs between cultures and families but usually prohibits close relatives, which would be incestuous. Factors to consider:
0. USA
1. Ju/wasi: Girls marry as young as possible, to maximize the gain from their husband's bride-service. Ju-wasi boys must wait until they can hunt, but not too long since parents don't want somebody who is much older than their daughter. Ju-wasi are prohibited by the incest taboo, but also by their naming system, which says that anyone who has the same first name as you is essentially a brothers/sisters, and their relations are your relations too.
2. Trobriand boys and girls have sex before marriage. After the first year of marriage their sexuality becomes private and it is shameful to refer to it. Girls scratch/injure boyfriends to indicate copulation has occured.
3. Traditional Chinese. The major theme is that marriage happens primarily to produce male heirs. After marriage a new wife is very subservient until she produces a male, at which point she gets respect.
Q3: How do sex / love / wealth play a part?0. Americans use sexuality to get partners and spouses. Once married they manage wealth to attempt to produce a rise in status. They express love to children in the form of guidance on how to be happy and successful. Parents' sacrifices for children is a bargaining tool used in parenting.1. Ju/wasi: There is no wealth issue, but sex is a tool for women and many lovers are taken to determine the nature of her social relationships. Sex has an equalizing effect and Ju/wasi women believe that women rescue men by giving them sex. Men however know that women can be a source of conflict between men and are cautious. Parenting is done by the group, so there are no "parents' sacrifices for children" for use as a bargaining tool used in parenting. 2. Trobriand: Sex of young women is used before marriage as a negotiating tool, but once married she has wealth via yams etc. and stresses fertility instead. Men must be sexually attractive in order to get wives and wealth. Yam transfers are of vital importance: A man pays them for marriage, gets some back from brothers in law during marriage, and receives them back when offspring are married. 3. Chinese: Sexuality plays almost no part. It's all about a wife being a child-producing machine, in particular a boy-producing machine. Sex and love play no part. A man who can afford concubines takes them. One could say the family is simply a factory, and the manager (husband) must be stern with employees (wife) who start out being low-status (new-hire). A female only gets respect as a productive worker (child-producer). An exception is the prostitute, which is a woman who could not get a husband or lost one. Prostitutes are not thought of as lowly because becoming one is a common predicament (in the village described in the text) and doing that helps support the family. Q4: What can disrupt a family?0. USA: Major threats to stability of the family fall into three categories, and are sex, love, and money. Infidelity, reduced sexual activity/attraction, lack of love, and strains due to lack of money all can cause divorce.1. Ju/wasi: Main threats are infidelity or efforts to get an additional wife. Polygamy is allowed, usually polygyny but rarely polyandry. Example given of 5% and 2% respectively. Infidelity in one example was ~30%. A woman who takes lovers can get more sexual variety but also gifts of food, money, beads. Ju/wasi men are expected to fight for their women, even if their women don't want them. 2. Trobriand: Threats are directed toward the stability of the matrilineage, especially as it is maintained by the giving, getting, and growing of yams. Sorcery, mainly used by chiefs, is always a serious matter since it can be used to kill a person, and that is considered an attack on that person's matrilineage. But all deaths are thought to be the result of sorcery, so all deaths indicate an attack of one matrilineage on another. 3. Chinese: Threats are directed toward the stability of the patrilineage. If a son breaks away from his father (rare), that is a "violent act". A man with no sons also has big problems. Example given of man who broke away, then returned and married adopted sister. If a father died, sons usually squabble over remaining wealth, which leads to a division yet multiple families will still share a house usually. Chapter 5 - Culture and IdentityQ1: How does the notion of a person vary between cultures?There are two extremes: Egocentric and sociocentric selves.The former is a person who thinks they are entirely self-sufficient and deservant of praise and money because they are self-made, they have succeeded through their own efforts. They may have a tendency to praise themselves too much and offer no credit to people and institutions who have helped them. The latter is someone who thinks of themselves as a part of a larger whole and gives credit to others and to society and its institutions for helping them succeed. This carries over to one's concept of identity, which is tied to that person's place in society. Americans are the obvious example of egocentric people. The Japanese are an example of sociocentric behavior. They practice keigo (polite speech) to identify their own level, and enryo (restraint) to avoid being pushy. They stress interdependence over independence. Japanese believe in self-development. Autonomy is a trait that is employed when one is away from society, whereas for Americans it is practiced within it. Q2: How are peoples identities differentiated?There are many obvious traits that are identified to differentiate people: Skin color, wealth, language, accent, dialect, ethnicity, religion, etc.In each group there may be a notion of a positive identity (model person), versus a negative one (a competing group's model person, or just a negative stereotype). Sexual types can be derived from different aspects: Preference, biology, occupation etc. The example is given of how some Native Americans define a third type called berdache or nadle which is not abnormal but different. Q3: How do personal identities change?Answer: Constantly through life.Arnold van Gennep defined the term rite of passage to identify a three-phase change in a person's identity consisting of separation, transition, and incorporation. American corporations use the rites of passage concept to condition people to be more loyal. A major transition of interest to us is the transition to adulthood. Boys tend to make the transition as a group, girls one by one or in small groups. Example given of the Masai ritual, which begins with circumcision without anesthetic, then military service for 7 years, then the insulting ceremony with the mother and the large group ritual at which point the young men become junior elders. Example given of college fraternities in the US. Initiation is a rite of passage and it is typically physically and emotionally abusive. In depth analysis is given of Sanday's analysis of fraternities that practice gang rape i.e. pulling train. Three reasons for this phenomenon are
Sanday gives us the term phallocentrism to describe using the penis as a tool of domination. Q4: How do people express their identities to one another?People use physical objects (possessions for instance) to convey things about themselves.Gifts are one major example because they are obligatory (although they appear the opposite) and they express something about wealth and dependence. This is the principle of reciprocity (Marcel Mauss). Example given is the Kula Ring of the Trobriand Islanders. Two kinds of items circulate: Red shell necklaces or white shell armbands which move clockwise and counter-clockwise around the ring, respectively. Kula items convey status and are only traded among established trading partners. Example given of northwest coastal Native Americans who have "potlatch" ceremonies wherein they bid on names of people. They must give money for these. At the ceremony guests are seated according to rank and they can complain and get money if they think they have been seated wrongly. Example given of Hawaiians, who must always appear generous and gregarious. So "aloha" means "love". Material historiesKula and potlatch items have histories, but since industrialism began, according to James Carrier, Western society has been flooded with impersonal manufactured objects. Before industrialism, a buyer knew the maker and seller, but this has not been the case since industrialism began.Carrier differentiates between possessions and commodities. For Americans, everything is a commodity that seemingly makes gifts meaningless. Americans must convert commodities into possessions through a process of appropriation i.e. ascribing of emotional meaning to a product. There are several kinds of appropriation:
Christmas in America is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1770s they celebrated St Nick (Dutch saint) on the Dec 6th. By the 1880s Xmas was already commercialized. Christmas is a family celebration, contrasting family warmth versus the cold work-world and physical cold outdoors e.g. ice, wind, snow. Gifts from non-family are not as legitimate. For Christmas, a gift must be biographical about the giver and tell something of the relationship with the recipient. Manufactured items do not serve these functions. There are several solutions for this problem:
Q5: How do people defend their identities?People can disagree about who they are, leading to identity struggles.Example given of the Beaver Indians of BC, Canada. If a person is especially lucky or gifted and then their luck changes, they blame this on the supernatural powers of someone else. This is the "medicine fight" - an argument about use of these powers which may lead to violence. Most people use material goods to assert identity, and in Papua New Guinea, Andrew Strathern reports that the Melpa "make moka" to struggle for "big man" status. Moka is a ceremonial gift exchange. Many big men get together and have a large exchange -- usually big men from many groups at once. Winners give speeches and dance around. Moka does not involve ever-increasing gifts, but simply alternating indebtedness. Moka is often made to forge unions, and a given person may have many people who owe him and can pay him back to support important gifts. Moka ceremonies put the honor of givers and takers on the line. Chapter 6 -- Why is there inequality in modern society?Q1: What kinds of social rankings are there?In America, people are categorized by class, race, gender, education, age. These can affect prospects for work, wealth, and various privileges.Example given of the caste system in India, where occupation can be determined by which caste you belong to, and lower castes are less clean. Discrimination based on caste is illegal in India, but it goes on anyway. The author discusses the plight of women and children, but fails to provide statistics for men and adults to compare to. Ruth Sidel wrote a book called Women and Children Last on this subject. Main point from that: Americans tend to blame the poor for their own poverty, or, if the poor person is a child, they blame the parent. Q2: Why are social hierarchies formed?In some non-stratified societies, people put forth an effort either to:
Some societies show no inclination to rank people at all. The general rule is that as societies become complex, stratification occurs. There are many theories as to why, but here we talk about two:
The integrative approach indicates that for efficiency's sake, people specialize in certain kinds of jobs. This division of labor leads to a specialized management group or military group which abuses its position to hoard money, jobs, resources. Herbert Spencer said that with more complexity, more supervision is required i.e. government, management, military. He was a social Darwinist. [Note the irony, if Americans are so individualistic, why the focus on corporations intruding into all aspects of life?] The argument for rewarding leaders more is that they ensure the survival of the whole. Small bands of hunter-gatherers are said to be too small to need hierarchy. Karl Marx says that social class is a result of capitalism, in particular a result of the rulers, landlords et cetera owning the means of production, which allows them to seize the surplus value of labor, which is the cost of a person making an item, excluding the cost of materials. The surplus value of labor is simply the market price minus materials. People accept the fact that they don't own the means of production because of political or social repression. Namely the ruling class which owns the means of production also puts politicians into office who write laws in favor of the ruling class, such as those which outlaw labor unions. The only way around this is violent revolution . The ideology of class convinces people that the order of things is natural and right. This is possible when the ruling class controls the mechanisms through which people's worldview is formed. These mechanisms include churches, newspapers, schools et cetera. Several examples are given of how this is done:
The ideology of class tells the poor to not bother trying to change things because it's not right to try and there's nothing that needs changing and there's no way to change it anyhow. The author claims that class structures are resistent to change. The author believes that people think class structures are natural. Q3: Why do people accept hierarchies?Franz Boas worked to discredit racist, sexist theories and ideologies.In America, hierarchy is or was based on the idea that some people are more "fit" to succeed and to be leaders. [This is Social Darwinism.] It is common that stratified societies use certain arguments to support stratification:
On IntelligenceSamuel George Morton tried to prove that some people are smarter by measure cranial capacity, but he made many mistakes and appears to have fudged things to get the result he wanted. His aim was to prove what he assumed was right, i.e. that white men were superior.Morton was trying to prove that people deserve their ranking in society. Americans believe that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Therefore, outcomes are fair. To prevent people from saying that outcomes are unfair, Americans implicitly recognize that it is important to assert that everyone has succeeded as much they are capable of. If it were proven that they have not, and that talent was being wasted, a reordering of society might be called for and that could harm the ruling class. The idea that intelligence is inherited helps the ruling class maintain a grip on power because they can assert that they are smart, therefore their children are smart, therefore their class can remain in power. But this logic is flimsy:
Furthermore intelligence is socially defined and there are problems with the traditional notion, which is defined as follows:
Example given of Japanese, who think of intelligence as we think of health -- we all have it unless there's a problem. Francis Galton was the nephew of Darwin and founder of eugenics, which attempts to identify and encourage "desirable" traits. He worked to show that "genius" is hereditary. He focused exclusively on wealthy British males. Karl Pearson tried to prove that mental characteristics are inherited. He compared boys who were brothers and relied on subjective judgements of them from teachers and classmates. Charles Spearman tried to identify a "general intelligence" metric called g based on correlation of test results. He too relied on subjective judgements. In all three of these men's works, there was a cultural bias toward wealthy professional people. Inequality via GenderIn the early 1900s, the Supreme Court ruled that women's physical structure limited their range of work and that in the public interest they should produce children.Emily Martin said that, at that time, women were seen as baby factories. She said the language of our culture tends to describe women's reproductive processes in negative terms, so for instance, menstruation is a failure of a new egg to be fertilized. She also claims that the language as used referred to sperm production in the opposite way i.e. as a successful process. Q4: How do people adapt to poverty?Oscar Lewis invented the term " culture of poverty " to describe the lifeways of people in city and rural slums.(See also my essay on poverty culture.) Some people dislike that term because they feel that it implies that without poverty, these people would have no culture. (No music? No cuisine? It's a poor argument since obviously that's not implied.) Other anthropologists simply say that life in ghettos is an adaptation to a particular economic system. Carol Stack worked in the mid-West and showed that kinship (not necessarily biological) is key to surviving in ghettos. People rely on one another for food, housing, childcare and refer to this as "swapping". In Stack's work, she found that giving childcare was a privilege. Married couples were excluded from the kinship system and married women were no longer able to receive state welfare. There are three kinds of reciprocity:
Jagna Sharff worked in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1970s. She found that everyone, even those who seemed idle, was working to generate money legally or illegally. Public assistance provided some money, but not enough to live on. Public assistance prevented a person from having a bank account. Many young men died because of involvement in the drug trade. Theft was common to get clothing, as was mugging and other crimes. Sharff identified four kinds of children being raised:
The scholar advocate was a passive male or aggressive female. Q5: Can egalitarianism work within hierarchical society?Charles Erasmus studied intentional societies.Example given of the Hutterites -- similar to Mennonites and Amish but they use modern equipment. They are mostly egalitarian but groups of them compete with one another. They split ("branching") every 15 years to reduce internal pressures and help group cohesion. Who goes into each new group is decided randomly. Hutterites have not specialized into specific industries but they are very successful agriculturally. Downsides include bible-based organization and sexist ideas. It's not clear that these societies can be successful models for the urban poor. Links
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