Transcript Chapter 3 Anthropology and Intercultural Relations

Chapter 3
Anthropology and Intercultural
Relations
Introduction
• Culture
– Human capacity to differentiate
– Categorize the world of experience
– Assign meanings to the categories
• Common sense
– Unstated assumptions shared amongst communities
• Cultural Misunderstandings
– Different common senses amongst different groups
• Intercultural Relations
– Flows of symbols across the global landscape
Cultural Misunderstandings in an
International Milieu
• Complexities of many beliefs or common
senses
– Misunderstandings occur
– Both sides are correct, just different points of view
• Misunderstandings on a larger scale
– Not always at the interpersonal level
– Happens often in politics
What is Culture?
• Humans generate meanings or models to
understand the world around them
• Culture is a learned system of meanings
through which people orient themselves
• Culture is…
– Symbolic
– Shared
– Learned
– Adaptive
Culture is Symbolic
• Humans understand and manipulate the
world using symbols
– Words, gestures, clothes…all symbols
– Symbol: something that stands for something else
to someone in some respect
• Symbols are arbitrary
– We know the meaning only if we were taught it
Culture is Shared
• Ideology
– Mobilization of cultural symbols to
• Create inequities
• Sustain inequities
• Resist inequities
• Generation of similarity
– Establish common beliefs in a community
• Organization of difference
– Effort to regulate behavior according to ideology
[Figure 3.1 - Ideology involves the mobilization of cultural symbols toward political ends. Photo by
Mark Allen Peterson.]
Culture Is Learned
• Enculturation: Passing on culture to new
generations
– Formal learning (institution)
– Informal learning (watching, listening,
participating)
• Embodiment
– How we speak, eat, move, etc.
– Unconscious behaviors learned through doing.
[Figure 3.2 - Most enculturation involves informal learning—the learning we engage
in simply by participating in everyday activities. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]
Culture is Adaptive
• Cultural learning is a lifelong process
– Adapt to internal and external pressures
– Diffusion of ideas through direct and indirect
contact
• Culture does not cease to be culture because
it adapts
– Globalization does not change cultures, it is an
integration of cultures
Levels of Culture
• Culture is deeper than what is seen
– But what is seen does play into culture
• Culture exists on three different levels
– Everyday practices
– Reasons and logical explanations for those
practices
– Assumptions about how the world works
Cultural Practices
• Everyday actions through which people in a
particular community get through their day
– The things we say
– The tools we use
– The things we buy
– The ways we behave around other people
• This level of culture is sometimes called
artifact
Cultural Logics
• Underlying mechanisms behind human action
in a certain community
• Nature acts as a constraint to human action
• There is always an explanation for the failure
of cultural logics
Worldview
• Refers to the assumptions people have about
the structure of the universe
– Fundamental principles and values that organize
and generate cultural logics
• Expressive culture
– How we show ourselves to ourselves
– Art, poems, stories, rituals
• Sometimes described as an encompassing
picture of reality
[Figure 3.3 - As cultures increasingly come into contact with each other through economic
globalization, there is little evidence that a shared world view is coming into existence.
Rather, we find an increasing organization of diversity. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]
Intercultural Relations
• Cross-cultural encounters have powerful
transformative effects on social systems and
individuals
– Cultural diffusion through trade, books, etc.
• Intercultural relations are about societies and people
– Refugees, migrants, tourists, soldiers account are a few of
the many people that influence other cultures
• Culture shock
– Unpleasant, sometimes traumatic feeling that comes with
cultural misunderstandings
– People deal with culture shock in different ways
[Figure 3.4 - Rituals, play, art, sports, theater, novels and movies are all part of
expressive culture, in which world views are articulated and elaborated in symbolic
forms. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]
Studying Culture:
The Anthropological Perspective
• Anthropology is the empirical study of what it
means to be human
– Not defined by its subject matter
– May cover other fields of study
• Defined by perspectives
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Comparative
Holistic
Empirical
Evolutionary
Relativistic
Comparative Perspective
• People tend to define what they are
accustomed to as normal
– Might seem normal to one group but not to
another
• Comparison allows for the questioning of
normalcy
– Anthropology studies the differences
Holistic Perspective
• Anthropologists assume that all aspects of life
are intertwined
– Breaking down or simplifying human tendencies
does not make sense
• Example: Stephen Lansing’s study of Balinese
agriculture revolution
Empirical Perspective
• Anthropology is a science in which data is
collected through observation or interaction
– “Fieldwork”
• Participant observation refers to long-term
engagements with a host community
– Anthropologist enters into everyday life with the
community
– Learns through interaction
Evolutionary Perspective
• All communities are in continual processes of
historical change
– Adapt to population pressures, environmental
changes, wars, technological advancements, etc.
• The evolutionary assumption reminds us that
traditions had histories
Relativistic Perpective
• Assumption: all human societies offer data of the same
type
– Controversial and misunderstood
• One system is not better than another
– Reverts to ideas on common senses
• Methodological relativism
– Data as institutions that serve particular social functions in a
specific time and place, embedded in complex webs of
meanings
• Theoretical relativism
– An assumption that all human actions make rational sense
when understood in their own contexts
• Philosophical relativism
– Whatever people do is right for them
Anthropology and International Studies
• Anthropological perspective’s five key
dimensions to international studies:
1. Importance of culture in explaining human actions
2. Urges a more sophisticated approach to cultural
boundaries
3. Reminds us there are usually more than two points of
view
4. Encourages us to think on a smaller scale
5. Emphasizes the importance of people in international
studies