Making sense of anthropology 1

Making sense of anthropology


Eriksen starts his text with a quote from T. Ingold “Anthropology is philosophy with people in.” This later proves to be an invaluable starting point in his discussion about what it is that Anthropologists really do. Anthropology looks at all the complexities within human culture and social interaction and from this vast selection of knowledge seeks to define just what it is that makes us all human at the end of the day. This complex study is unique in all the humanities studies, and no wonder, with so many things that underlie even the most common terms, like culture. It‘s clear to see why only the very foolish or very brave would even attempt it.

Discussion

To better understand what Anthropology is, let’s first look at the name itself. Made up of two words “Anthropos” and “Logos” that were taken from the original Greek, we see that they mean “humanity” and “reasoning” respectively. Thus in its simplest form anthropology can be defined as the “reasoning about humanity”. Second let’s look at the basic term culture. Taken from the Latin “Colos” witch literally means to cultivate we can now say that Cultural Anthropology is the reasoning about cultivated humanity. There are of course many other factors that underlie this study and as we focus upon this study of “cultural humanity” they will become more evident.

Spradley starts his report by criticizing what he calls naïve realism, which is the practice of assuming that all cultures regard reality in much the same way, as well as thinking that everyone ascribes the same meaning to everyday objects. This is clearly false, as van be seen even when two people who presumably share the same ‘culture’ are asked to describe a concept. Eriksen doesn’t directly mention this, but I think it is important to be aware of this type of reasoning, even if only to successfully avoid it. Not everyone sees the world in the same way, and heated debates, even within the confines of the same ‘culture’ illustrates this clearly. Culture is always contested as can be seen in Wright, and these contestations are major catalysts in cultural transformation. There are however certain similarities that can be found when viewing individuals from the sae group. Let us thus define culture as the learned social practices concerning everything from language to the general code of conduct advocated by that society.

It is in fact these rules that concern anthropologists (Spradley). Anthropologist use participant observation as a main method of study (Eriksen) and this has proved to be in invaluable tool in understanding how different cultures operate. It is important to remember that culture is not an “innate” reality of man, we are not born a certain way, and we learn to think by the way society teaches us to think (Eriksen & Overring). There does seem to be a sort of golden thread linking humanity though and it is worth noting that in our constant search for what unites us, we’re still not allowed to simply paper over the differences in society and try to bash everyone around us to fit into our own mould of reality (Eriksen).

This brings us to Ethnocentrism which literally means, judging someone else from our own “ethnos” or cultural perception. If we do it in this way the rest of humanity van only ever be seen as inferior copies of ourselves (Eriksen). Clearly from this standing point we place the rest of humanity at the bottom of the pyramid, with us the “wise west” looking down. This harks back to the 19th Century view of “cultured” European society at the top that had to go out and cultivate the savages (Overring & Rapport). Kipling even went as far as describing colonisation as our duty, to civilise the savages calling it “the white man’s burden”. We have mostly moved on a great deal from this way of thinking and modern anthropologists realize that to effectively understand a society, we must look from the inside. From their point of view, instead of just substituting our own (Eriksen & Spradley).

One of the firs people who cottoned on to this fact was Boas, who saw all people as equally cultural. This small step went a long way in forming our current understanding of culture. It is worth noting however that this was not he same as Orwell’s “Animal Farm” where the rules were changed to “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Boas in reality did seem to come from a noble place in the belief that we should endeavour to see the world from that particular culture’s perspective instead of just overlaying our own. There were of course those that exploited an “innocent” concept, but this was not Boas’ intention. This is incidentally also the starting point for cultural relativism, which states that behaviour within a culture should be judged by that culture’s own standards and beliefs (Eriksen). This can lead some people to believe that, that means we end up with no other option but to approve of every foreign policy (Hatch). Which in turn causes a moral dilemma since you cannot sanely approve of everything that happens in the world regardless of consequence (Eriksen & Hatch). The principle of cultural relativism does not in itself carry any moral principle, but rather asks of us to give everyone a fair chance to be who they are and think the way they do, without judging them unfairly. It may indeed be a flawed ideology as Hatch suggests, but it certainly has merit as a starting point.

Although Eriksen doesn’t embark on a sort of anti-relativist crusade, it is worth noting that he mentions that quite a few anthropologists, who practice relativism in their work, do have very certain ideas about right and wrong in their personal lives. Relativism then is not just abandoning all reason and granting a blanket approval of everything that comes your way, but simply suspending your judgement for long enough in order to be fair.

Conclusion
Cultural anthropology is not a popularity contest with anthropologists at the top giving out marks to decide who’s got the best culture. Eriksen very aptly puts it when he states that “anthropology doesn’t answer the question of who has the best culture – simply because it doesn’t ask it.” Rather it is a question of looking at all the vast complexities in human society and culture and finding between all this diversity the part of being human that ultimately unites us. There may not be a “global” culture that that the media is currently preaching, but we van all do well to step off our pedestal for long enough to see that, just because someone doesn’t think the way we do, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.