Introducing Cultural Anthropology

Introducing Cultural Anthropology
Essential Readings
Second Edition
Edited by David Julian Hodges
Hunter College
Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher
Michael Simpson, Vice President of Acquisitions
Jamie Giganti, Managing Editor
Jess Busch, Senior Graphic Designer
John Remington, Acquisitions Editor
Brian Fahey, Licensing Associate
Copyright © 2015 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced,
transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written
permission of Cognella, Inc.
First published in the United States of America in 2015 by Cognella, Inc.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Cover image copyright © 2007 by iStockphoto / duncan1890.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-60927-242-5 (pbk) / 978-1-62661-862-6 (br)
Contents
Forewordvii
Acknowledgments xi
Chapter One: The Concept of Culture
1
Introduction3
By David Julian Hodges
Culture: The Classical Definition
5
By Edward Burnett Tylor
Culture: Queer Customs
7
By Clyde Kluckhohn
Magical Practices Among the Nacirema
15
By Horace Miner
100% American
19
By Ralph Linton
Chapter Two: Fieldwork
21
Introduction23
By David Julian Hodges
Franz Boas: A Rebel Anthropologist
By Claudia Roth Pierpont
25
Fieldwork Among the Trobrianders
29
By Bronislaw Malinowski
Lessons from the Field
33
By George Gmelch
Fieldwork on an Urban Street Corner
43
By Elliot Liebow
Chapter Three: Ethnographic Profiles
45
Introduction47
By David Julian Hodges
The Hopi
49
By Peter M. Whiteley
Early Childhood Among the Amish
55
By John Hostetler and Gertrude Enders Huntington
The Inupiac (Eskimo)
61
By Richard Nelson
The Forest People
67
By Colin Turnbull
Chapter Four: Marriage and the Family
75
Introduction77
By David Julian Hodges
Arranging a Marriage in India
79
By Serena Nanda
How Many Fathers Are Best for a Child?
By Meredith F. Small
85
When Brothers Share a Wife
91
By Melvyn C. Goldstein
Chapter Five: Contemporary Perspectives and Issues
97
Introduction99
By David Julian Hodges
Steel Axes for Stone Age Australians
101
By Lauriston Sharp
Death Without Weeping
111
By Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Our Silence About Race: America’s Persistent Divide
By Barack Obama
119
Foreword
A
nthropology is unique among disciplines because it is both a natural science and a social science. On
the one hand, biological/physical anthropologists and archaeologists concern themselves with physical
remnants, including fossils and other relics that provide clues about human and non-human artifacts of present
and bygone eras. These anthropologists analyze artifacts in laboratories. Their scientific endeavors cause the
discipline to be classified as a natural science.
On the other hand, cultural anthropologists and linguistic anthropologists seek to understand how human
beings across the world live together as “social” beings. These anthropologists discovered long ago that human
beings are very much on the move. So, they’ve made no attempt to get them into laboratories or to study them
under “controlled” conditions. The work and methods of cultural anthropologists and linguists are what cause
anthropology to be termed a social science.
For the cultural anthropologist, the whole world is a laboratory, and human beings are studied in their own
habitats by means of fieldwork or participant observation viz., studying every social aspect of human beings—their
language, their families, their food, their art, their religion; in sum, their total way of life.
This textbook is a collection of articles that pertain to the social science realm of anthropology. It seeks to
survey the kind of reading to which a cultural anthropology student of today should be exposed to for a firstrate introduction to the field. Students who are using this anthology are reading select articles, many of which
are the best of the best. The articles go beyond didactic discussion and review of concepts, terms, theories, and
principles—necessary though covering these matters may be—and invite the introductory student to explore how
anthropologists think and conduct their research.
Many anthropologists whose articles are included in this anthology have names that are easily recognized as
masters who helped pioneer the field of cultural anthropology. Every well-prepared student of introductory anthropology, upon completion of the course, should know many if not most of them. Other authors selected for this
anthology are ones whose articles were selected because they are well-written or because they treat timely subject
matter in a student-oriented manner. They too have a special role to play in introducing first-time students of cultural
anthropology to the depth and range of the discipline. Such understanding is essential for the beginning student of
anthropology to grasp a comprehension of the theory and method of cultural anthropology. Where better to acquire
such an understanding than from the pen and perspective of anthropologists who have helped to define the field?
Fundamental to the study of cultural anthropology is the concept of culture. The culture concept is, appropriately, the essence of the field. To fully understand cultural anthropology, one must first grasp its essence. Thus,
the first chapter of this collection devotes itself to this all-important concept. The articles in the first chapter are
written by masters in the field of cultural anthropology whose writings changed the way people thought about
the world and its people. Down through the decades, the culture concept has been useful in helping us to better
understand those who were different. No matter where any of us may have been born, or in what society any of us
may have acquired our way of life, there are other societies that provide a contrast; other societies that are different
from our own.
viii | Introducing Cultural Anthropology: Essential Readings
Cultural anthropology, through the culture concept, prompts us to better understand those who are different,
those who may live in distant lands, those who may eat foods with which we are not familiar, listen to music we
consider strange, speak languages we cannot understand, and engage in customs or practices we consider odd or
bizarre. The culture concept helps us understand the essence or the core of those differences.
Concurrently, the same concept that enables us to see and understand difference also prompts us to see and
understand commonality; how much we share with those whose way of life differs from our own. Anthropologist
Johnnetta Cole appropriately subtitled one of her books, “Lines That Divide, Ties That Bind.”1 This phrase effectively spells out the mission of cultural anthropology: viz., to provide a means of seeing and understanding both
the lines that divide us from others, and the ties that bind us to them.
A major emphasis of cultural anthropology, then, is placed on cultural relativism, the notion that an anthropologist must seek to view another culture by reference to the values and perspectives of that culture, insofar as the
anthropologist can ascertain them. How then does an anthropologist go about determining those perspectives?
Fieldwork is the anthropologist’s reply, and the book’s second and third chapters consider both the theory of
anthropological field work—i.e., what issues anthropologists have found challenging as they have endeavored to
immerse themselves in the ways of life of others, and a wide array of fieldwork examples drawn from sites as wideranging as an urban street corner to folk cultures representing the far corners of the globe. As noted above, the
whole world is a laboratory for the cultural anthropologist. These articles provide a beginning student of cultural
anthropology with a glimpse of what the fieldwork or participant observation of anthropologists has produced.
Chapter 4 singles out one of the many cultural institutions that could have been selected to illustrate how
widely human societies may vary. In this case, the institution selected is the family. The focus is on variations
in marriage and family forms and practices. Alternately, we might have chosen cross-cultural variations, in art,
religion, gender roles, or any number of other societal forms, patterns or institutions found across the world. Again,
this illustrates the difference/commonality dichotomy, key to the mission of cultural anthropology (viz., seeking to
understand those things that make us different as well as those things we have in common with others.)
Poet Susan Polis Schutz, extends this principle to an applied purpose:
We all hear the same sounds. We look up and see the same sky. We cry the same tears. Our feelings and
emotions are the same. All mothers are sisters. All fathers are brothers. All children are one.
Yet there is hate. There is violence. There is intolerance. There is confusion among people. We don’t try
hard enough to understand each other. We don’t seem to realize that we all have the same basic needs,
no matter who we are or what part of the world we come from.
We must understand the differences among us and celebrate the sameness. We must make the world a
place where love and friendship dominate our hearts. Equality, respect, compassion, and kindness must
guide our actions. Only then will we all be able to peacefully and lovingly live the life we each choose.
—Susan Polis Schutz2
1 Johnnetta B. Cole, All American Women: Lines That Divide, Ties That Bind, The Free Press, 1986.
2 Stephen Schutz and Susan Polis Schutz, One World, One Heart, Blue Mountain Arts Publication, 2001.
Foreword | ix
The anthology’s final chapter explores a potpourri of contemporary issues and perspectives that may be used
selectively to complement course discussions and basic textbook readings for the introductory student of cultural
anthropology.
While cultural anthropology enables us to see and understand others, it also seeks to help us better understand
ourselves. In so doing, we see that we may have similarities and commonalities with other cultures that we may not
have seen or understood before. This self-reflection is considered an important trait of a cultural anthropologist. It
requires that the anthropologist suspend judgments and assumptions about others in order to view them from the
perspective of their own values, customs, and world view.
Anthropologist Ethel J. Alpenfels sees this perspective as not just an essential characteristic of a competent
cultural anthropologist, but as a virtue that must be shared by all human beings, if we are to find ways to live
together harmoniously and democratically in an increasingly global existence:
This is the sin of you, and me, and all of us
To have more power than we have love,
More knowledge, than we have understanding,
More information about this earth, than we have
about the people who live on it,
More ability to fly off to faraway places,
Than to stop for a moment, and to look within
the secret spots of our own hearts
For freedom can become a dreadful word,
Unless it goes hand-in-hand with responsibility,
And democracy could disappear from the face of the earth,
Unless the hearts and the minds, and the souls
of men and women grow mature.
Acknowledgments
D
r. Ethel J. Alpenfels was my doctoral mentor at New York University. So it is appropriate here to express
my great esteem for her and my profound indebtedness to her for her incomparable teaching, guidance,
and inspiration. I have never known a teacher quite like Ethel Alpenfels. Few students who have taken any of
my anthropology courses have left the course unaware of my keen admiration of my teacher, or unaware of the
profound influence Dr. Alpenfels continues to have on my life and on my career as an anthropologist.
Among the many others to whom I must also express my appreciation is my colleague and fellow anthropologist, Dr. Joan Burroughs, who also received her doctorate from NYU. Her doctorate is in the anthropology of
dance. She has been a constant source of inspiration and support in several projects I have undertaken as professor
of anthropology at Hunter College.
I also thank Hunter College and the City University of New York for granting me the sabbatical time I’ve
needed to complete this book and to complete other such projects that will enhance my work as a professor of
anthropology. Hunter’s president, provost, and my dean in the School of Arts and Sciences have all been strong
in their support of my work. This kind of discerning support is what makes it possible for scholars and teachers to
do well what we love to do.
My gratitude extends as well to my cherished colleagues in the department of anthropology, who were unanimous
in their quest to recruit me into the department after I completed an administrative stint as dean of the School of
Education a few years ago. Their welcome has been as constant as it has been warm and generous.
To the incomparable students of anthropology I’ve had the privilege of teaching, and from whom I have learned
much more than I have taught, I am also deeply indebted. They have made me a better scholar and teacher than I could
possibly have been without them. Some of them over the years—even when not formally in my classes—contributed
implicitly to this project. I must mention specifically, Dayana Blandon, Vicky Chang, Imran Chowdhury, Kilrak Chung,
Michael Kim, Elisabeth Manwiller, Mai Matsumura, Don Elio Robertson, Wadiyyah Salaam, and Allyshia West.
It is appropriate here to acknowledge once again, as I have in previous works published by them, the awesome
expertise of University Readers in many areas, but especially their expertise in acquiring the copyright permissions
that are so crucial to an anthology of this type. Each reading in this collection is a crucial component of the
book’s theme and foundation. What confidence it has been to know that I could rely upon University Readers to
attend—diligently and successfully—to the all-important acquisition of permissions as the last “leg of the race”
to get this book published, leaving me to be concerned solely with the tasks of editorship and writing. They are
indeed, “copyright champions.” I am especially grateful to Mieka Hemesath, Jessica Knott and their entire publishing team. The book’s cover is the result of the skill and graphic arts expertise of Monica Hui who graciously
and patiently allowed me to participate in her design.
Last but by no means least, I express my deepest appreciation to Terry Wykowski and Neil Douglas of the
Oxford Consulting Group without whose unstinting support, encouragement, and caring this book might never
have been started or completed.
—David Julian Hodges
chapter one
The Concept of Culture
Readings in This Section
Introduction�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3
Culture: The Classical Definition���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������5
By Edward Burnett Tylor
Culture: Queer Customs����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������7
By Clyde Kluckhohn
Magical Practices Among the Nacirema��������������������������������������������������������������������������15
By Horace Miner
100% American����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������19
By Ralph Linton