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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lavenda, Robert H.
Core concepts in cultural anthropology I Robert Lavenda, Emily
Schultz. - 4th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-07-353098-7 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-07-353098-0 (alk. paper)
1. Ethnology. 2. Ethnology-Bibliography. I. Schultz, Emily A.
(limily Ann), 1949- 11. Title.
(;N.116.1,39 2010
106-- tk22 200805 1736

'I'll(. 1111rr11r1.
addresses listed in the text were accurate at tllr r i ~ ~ l01i * I ) I I ~ I ~ ~ ( . ; I I ~ I )'I'll(. ofI I
II. ~IIC~IIS~O
.I Wc1) \irt. tlocs not indicate an endorsement by tbr i t i ~ t l l ~01.~ ML.(;I.,IW
~-+ I {ill, ; ~ t ~ (Mc(
l ;r;~w-Hill
tl~,r\I I O I R I I . I ~ : I I I Ithe
~~ accuracy of the informatioil j r t c ~ r t i ~ r ~lllr\r
l \ i t ~ * k , .
 ' Contents e

Preface ix
CHAPTER 1 Anthropology 1
1.1 An Anthropological Perspective 2
1.2 The Subfields of Anthropology 3
1.3 Is Anthropology a Science? Modernism,
Postmodernism, and Beyond 10
1.4 Reflexive Anthropology 1 1
CHAPTER2 Culture 15
2.1 Culture Against Racism: The Early
Twentieth Century 16
2.2 The Evolution of Culture 19
2.3 Culture and Symbolism 21
2.4 Ethnocentrism and Cultural
Relativism 23
2.5 The Boundaries of Culture? 25
2.6 The Concept of Culture in a Global
World: Problems and Practices 27
2.7 Culture: Contemporary Discussion
and Debate 30
2.8 Culture: A Contemporary
Consensus 32
CHAPTER 3 Language 33
3.1 Studying Language: A Historical
Sketch 34
3.2 The Building Bloclzs of Language 37
vi CONTENTS CONTENTS vii

3.3 Languagc ;111cl (:iilture 39 7.7 Social Control and Law 123
3.4 Languagc a n d Society 41 7.8 Nationalism and Hegemony 125
3.5 Discourse 44
3.6 Language (:ontact and Change 47 CHAPTER8 Economic Anthropology 131
8.1 The "Arts of Subsistence" 132
CHAPTER4 Culture and the Individual 51 8.2 Subsistence Strategies 133
4.1 From Individualism to Agency 52 8.3 Explaining the Material Life Processes
4.2 Culture and Personality 54 of Society 13 6
4.3 Enculturation 56 8.4 Modes of Exchange 139
4.4 The Self 59 8.5 Production, Distribution,
4.5 Cognition and Cognitive and Consumption 141
Anthropology 62 8.6 Mode of Production 143
4.6 Cognitive Styles 63 8.7 Peasants 144
4.7 Emotion 64 8.8 Consumption 148
CHAPTER5 + Expressive Culture: Religion, Worldview, CHAPTER9 + Relatedness: Kinship and Descent 153
and Art 67 9.1 Kinship Versus Biology 154
5.1 Religion 68 9.2 Descent 156
5.2 Myth 71 9.3 BilateralDescent 157
5.3 Ritual 72 9.4 Unilineal Descent 159
5.4 Magic and Witchcraft 75 9.5 Kinship Terminologies 163
5.5 Religious Practitioners 80
5.6 Change in Religious Systems 81 CHAPTER
10 + Marriage and Family 167
5.7 Art 83 10.1 What Is Marriage? 1 68
5.8 The Anthropology of Media 86 10.2 Whom to Marry and Where
to Live 169
CHAPTER6 The Dimensions of Social Organization 89 10.3 How Many Spouses? 171
6.1 What Is Social Organization? 90 10.4 Marriage as Alliance 173
6.2 Dimensions of Social Organization 92 10.5Family 175
6.3 Caste and Class 96
6.4 Race 100 11
CHAPTER Globalization and the Culture
6.5 Ethnicity 101 of Capitalism 179
6.6 Gender 103 11.1The Cultural Legacy of Colonialism 180
6.7 Sexuality 106 11.2 Analyzing Sociocultural Change in the
Postcolonial World 183
CHAPTER7 + Political Anthropology 109 11.3 Globalization 189
7.1 Power 110 11.4 The Cultural Effects of Contact 192
7.2 Political Ecology and Political 11.5 Globalization, Citizenship, and Human
Economy 212 Rights 195
7.3 Disputes and Dispute Resolution 114
7.4 Forms of Political Organization 2 16 ( :I I A I ~ ' I ~ I 12
~I< 'I'licory in Cultural Anthropology 201
7.5 Social Stratification 119 11. 1 A1lihr~ol~olot:y
, I & Scir-11c-c. 202
7.0 1:or111b of Political Activity 120 12.2 Niireteenth-t 1etltur.y Apprr,itchcs 2 0 1
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 to covering the discipline is limited. It can also be used
very successfully in conjunction with other readimp, eiher
anthologies or ethnographies, or both. Core Cow&@
in Cultural Anthropology may be assigned at the begin-
ning of the term to go along with introductory lectures
and be referred to as needed. Another approach, popular
with users of earlier editions of Core Concepts in Cultural
Anthropology, is to assign specific chapters to be read along
with particular ethnographies or course topics. To accom-
modate various uses, we have made each chapter as self-
'
' contained as possible. Each chapter has numbered section
If headings to make it easier for students to navigate the text
"
,"' and to give instructors additional flexibility should they wish
to assign segments of chapters in novel ways best suited for
the organization of their courses. We have included cross-
references to related topics in other chapters wherever possi-
ble. If the order of our chapters does not fit your arrangement
of topics in your course, please rearrange the chapters and
sections in any order that works for you. We think our order
makes sense, but instructors should feel free to assign
(or omit) the chapters and sections in whatever way best suits
their approach to teaching anthropology. ' /1 I
Brief and affordable. What you have in y o f k d s is i n
unadorned framework for teaching c d d anthropology. Quite
intentionally, there are no photographs, no lavish graphics, no
elaborate text boxes, no extended ethnographic examples. A
consequence of writing a concise introduction is that many of
the details and nuances of the field are left out. We assume that
instructors will provide favorite ethnographic examples both
in class and in other readings to illustrate the issues they raise
in class. It is our hope that the brevity and affordability of this
text d allow the assignment of additional course readings and
will engender lectures and class discussions that bring back the
nuance and subtlety that are a part of every human endeavor,
including anthropology, teaching, and learning. .,,,
I .
Provides useful study aids. Each chapter opens with a list of key
terms discussed in tlpt chapter. Each chapter ends with a list of
suggwtcd readings, whi&-dong with an extensive endsf-book
bibliography-directs students to more detailed discussions, The
index allows students to quickly find the key terms they ned.
An online Study Guide provides additional learning hdp. 1 1 4
+ Ixlcludes a chapter on theory. Because all anthropologic~,*,,
writing is theoretically situated, we have included a cha*
on theory in cultural anthropology. We think it is important
for students to get a sense of how the texts they are reading
fit into a broader theoretical context of the discipline. We
also think they need some intellectual tools for interpretfng
what they are reading: Ethnographic writing often refers to
alternative theoretical positions, and it is useful for students
to know the issues those positions have raised in the coucse,
of ongoing anthropological discussion and debate. -+.
+ Provides a unique appendix on reading ethnography. This dis-
tinctive guide provides students with a set of tools for effectively ' \ 1
#'
reading ethnographic writing. It looks at how ethnographies are
put together and how they are written; it also offers students
, ;
strategies for getting the most from their reading.
As we put the book together, we had to decide whether some
concepts would be addressed in more than one place in the text.
For the sake of concision, we decided to confine the discussion
of some topics to a single chapter (for example, the discussion
of research methods is found only in Chapter 1).In other cases,
where we concluded that the same concepts needed to be discussed
in more than one chapter, cross-references are provided in the text
(for example, discussions of different kinds of ecological anthro-
pology appear in Chapters 8 and 9).
I I
What's New an the Fourth Edition?
+ Taking account of reviewers' comments, we have s b t -
ened the list of key terms at the beginning of Chapt
("Language"), 4 ("Culture and the Individual"),
7 ("Political Anthropology"), 8 ("Economic Anthropology").
9 ("Relatedness: Kinship and Descent"), and 11
("Globalization and the Culture of Capitalism"). In several
 of these chapters, the discussions of the key terms have been
eliminated; in others, we decided that not every term we men-
tion rates the status of "key term"; such secondaq terms are
italicized in the text. ., *, .
* We have introdhced discussions of collaborative ethnogra-
phy into Chapter 1and "Appendix: Reading Ethnographic
Writing."
+ The discussion of applied anthropology has been expanded to
cover cross-hsciplinary practices.
+ The discussion of race in Chapter 2 has been expanded
and strengthened.
Chapter 3, "Language," has been revised: Some of the more
.,,+tailed discussions of formal linguistics analysis have been
r eliminated, and a new sertinn on language revitalization has
been added.
Chapter 5 is now called "Expressive Culture: Religion,
Worldview, and Art." It includes new material on religious
change, art worlds, art and identity, and media anthropology.
+ In Chapter 6, we have included an expanded discussion of
feminist anthropology, gender studies, and sexualities.
+ Chapter 7, "Politlcal Anthropology," has an enhanced
discussion of cultural ecology and aolitical ecology, a brief
discussion of law and human right d a discussion of the
invenfion of tradition.
+ In Chapter 8, "Economic Ant,u,u,u,y," we hakc ..;earn-
lined the section on Marxist economic theory, revised the
discussion of cultural ecology, and added a discussion of
global assemblages.
+ In Chapter 9, now called "Relatedness: Kinship and '
Descent," we have eliminated the lengthy discussion of
cousin terminology and have extended the discussion of the
relatedness implications of assisted reproduction and organ
t r a n ~ p l a n t a t i o W " ~ ~ ~- ' ~
'I-
1,. . , \
Chapter 11, "Globalization and the Culture of Capitalism,"
now contains a discussion of commodity chains and other
global assemblages.
r Chapter 12, "Theory in Cultural Anthropology," has been
updated to cover some of the theoretical initiatives of the last
decade.
+ In all chapters, the list of suggested readings has been
expanded and updated as needed.
Acknowledgments
:I i
For valuable suggestions on the appendix, we would like to thank Tom ... ' '1 ;,
O'Toole and Katherine Woodhouse Beyer. Our editor at McGraw-Hill, '.I.
Phil Butcher, and the entire production team have been a pleasure to
.$,
work with. We would also l i e to thank the reviewers of the text who .r,
were so generous and careful with their comments: Juliet K. Brophy,
Texas A&M University; James F. Eder, Arizona State University;
Jocelyn Linnekin, University of Connecticut; and Randall McGuire,
Binghamton University.
Finally, we would like to thank Jan Beatty, who suggested a
book like this to us in the first place. This continties to be an inter-
esting and valuable project for us as it pushes us to think about the
different ways in which cultural anthropology might be presented. I;
We hope that you find it to be an effective tool for teaching anthro-
pology to new generations of students.
1'.

I and differences in a& wide a range of human mtieties as possible
A YTHROPOLOGY IS A DISCIPLINE that exists at the borders of
the social sciences, the humanities, and the biologic
ences. The term comes from two Greek words: anthropos, mc
"human beings," and logra, "the study of." The "study of huma
bemgs" would seem to be a rather broad topic for any one fielc
but anthropologists take the name of their discipline seriously, an
anything that has to do with human beings probably is of potential
interest to anthropologists. Indeed, anthropology can be formally
defined as the study of human nature, human society, and the
human past. This means that some anthropologists study human
origifis, others try to understand diverse contemporary ways of life,
and some excavate the past or try to understand why we speak the
ways we do.
Perspective
1.1 An ~nthro~oIogicaI
Given its breadth, what coherence anthropology has as a discipline
comes from its perspective. Anthropology is holistic, comparative,
field based, and evolutionary. For anthropologists, being holistic
means trying to fit together all that is known about human beings.
That is, anthropologists draw on the findings of many different dis-
cipl~nesthat study human beings (human biology, economics, and
religion, for example), as well as data on s~milartopics that they
have collected, and attempt to produce an encompassing picture of
human life. In the same way, when an anthropologist studies a spe-
cific group of people, the goal is to produce a holistic portrait of that
people's way of life by bringing together information about many
different facets of their lives-social, religious, economic, polit~cal,
linguistic, and so forth-in order to provide a nuanced context for
understanding who they are and why they do what they do.
However, to generalize about human nature, human society,
and the human past requires information from as wide a range
of human groups as possible. Anthropologists realized long ago
-Y I ..
that the patterns of life common in their own societies were not
necessarily followed in other societies. And so, anthropology is a
comparative discipline: Anthropologists must consider similarities
before generalizing about what it means to be human.
Because anthropology is interested in human beings in all
places and at all times, anthropologists are curious about how
we got to be what we are today. For this reason, anthropology is
evolutionary. A major branch of anthropology is concerned with
the study of the biological evolution of the human species over
time, including the study of human origins and genetic variety and
inheritance in living human populations. Some anthropologists
have also been interested in cultural evolution, looking for pat-
terns of orderly change over time in soc~allyacquired behavior
that is not carried in the genes. .,ri:. , . , , , , . . '., , ; .
I --
Anthropology in North America histor~callyhas been divided in&
four major subfields: biological anthropology, cultural anthropolo&2
lingustic anthropology, and archaeology.
1 1
,
Biological anthropology is the subfield of anthropologythat look
at human beings as biological organisms. Biological anthropologisi
are interested in many different aspects of human biology, includin
our simlarities to and ddferences from other living organisms. Tho:
who study the closest living relatives of human beings-the nonh~
man primates (chimpanzees and gorillas, for example)-are calle
primatologists. Those who specialize in the study of the fossilize
bones and teeth of our earliest ancestors are called paleoanthropolc
gists. Other biological anthropologists examine the genetic variatio
among and within different human populations or investigate vari;
tion in human skeletal biology (for example, measuring and compa
ing the shapes and sizes of bones or teeth using skeletal remains fro1
different human populations). Newer specialties focus on human
adaptability in different ecological settings, on human growth and
development, and on the connections between a population's evolu-
tionary history and its susceptibility
- to disease. Forensic anthopolo
gists use their knowledge of human
,.- anatomy to aid law-enforcemen
..~
". II
.- I if
 and human rights investigators by assisting in the idenaigrdon of
skeletal material found at crime or accident sites or at dtmlassoei-
ated with possible human rights violations. , , I & . , . .a ,
Overlapping biological anthropology and cultural anthropol-
ogy is the vibrant and relatively new field of medical anthropolog:
Medical anthropologists study the factors that contribute t
human disease or illness as well as the ways in which huma
groups respond to them. Medical anthropological research cove10
a vast range of topics, ranging from alcohol use in various socie-
ties, to the dimensions of the AIDS pandemic cross-culturally, to
social aspects of medical care, to the effects of stress, violence, and
social suffering. p,1,-1-1
, edtural anthropology is rooted in fieldwork, an
Cultdral anthropbl&m @ometimes called soczal anthropology
in Great Britain) is another major subfield of anthropology.
Cultural anthropologists investigate how variation in the beliefs
and behaviors of members of different human groups is shaped
by culture, sets of learned behaviors and ideas that human
beings acquire as members of society. (For a fuller discussion of
the concept of culture, see Chapter 2.) Cultural anthropologists
specialize in specific domains of human cultural activity. Some
study the ways people organize themselves to carry out collective
tasks, whether economic, political, or spiritual. Others focus on
the forms and meanings of expressive behavior in human socie-
ties-langyage, art, music, ritual, religion, and the like. Still others
examine material culture-the things people make and use, such
as clothing, housing, and tools, and the techniques they employ
to get food and produce material goods. They may also study the
ways in which technologies and environments shape each other.
For some time, cultural anthropologists have been interested in
the way nowWestern peoples have responded to the and
economic challenges of European colonialism and the capitalist
industrial technology that came with it. They investigate contem-
porary issues of gender and sexuality, transnational labor migra-
tion, and the post-cold war resurgence of ethnicity and nationalism
around the world. And some cultural anthropologists have begun
50 examine the ways in which forms of science and technology
, $hat originated ln the West-biotechnology, computers, and the
Intwaet, far cxmple-hayt base incorporated into and c o b
to m d i f y the cultural practices of peoples throughout the world,
. In all of these cases, the comparative nature of an&ropolag$
fiequires that whar is taken for granted by members of a speci&
bociety-the anthropologist's own, as much as any other-m
be examined, or "problematized." As a result, there is a dou
movement in anthropology: Anthropologisrs study other ways
'
lifenot only to understand them in their own terms but a l s ~ $ ~ &
. , 8
the anthropologists' own ways of life in perspective. l+fibW& ;Il ,
, ,,
To make their discipline comparative, cultural a n t h r 0 ~ 0 1 6 ~ i k . .
immerse themselves in the lives of other
personal, long-term experience with a specific
heir way of life. Where possible,
year or more with the people whose way of life is of concern ,:,,
' :::;
them. The result is a fine-grained knowledge of the everyday deta@ 71" ,,
cef life. Cultural anthropologists get to know people as individuah:. ,':?! ',
hot as "data sets." They remember the names and faces of peo& 81(:(~
who, over the course of a year or more, have become familiar & . .!7 ,;
I.
I
,' ,
$hem as cornpi& and complicated men, women, and chldren. Th@ AIJ ,,,I, 11 , 8
fiemember the feel of the noonday sun, the sounds of the morni&.. 0, : . ,~
the smells of food cooking, the pace and rhythm of life. In this sen&: 1, I!
.
I"
anthropology traditionally has been an experiential discipline. TI&;, 1 ',
approach does, of course, have drawbacks as well as ad van tag&$:;'^, '' "
J''$,
Anthropologists are not usually able to make macrolevel genera&!; ,,I,
izations about an entire nation or society, and their attention is n%#' !i h .
usually directed toward national or International policy-making or
data collection. They are often, however, well aware of the effecds
'it'
of national or international decisions on the local level. In fact, in
recent years, a number of anthropologists have done illuminating
work about nations, refugees and migrations, and internation-'
and global processes.
Peo~lewho share information about their wav of life with
anthropologists traditionally have been called informants. In recent
years, however, a number of anthropologists have become uncom-
fortable with that term, which to some conjures up images of police
informers and to others seems to reduce fiilly rounded i n c l v i d d tci
 m a&
the thsn'nation they provide. But an$hrpolo@;imhw& b
Wagee on an: e q r @ b &~.&t.q&jm i.w-a] hlpftt
~*~~~ @~'-~9,@5*4%@ $q&*
pq; %&@peo-

much aboutbuman birtoay, particularly prehistory, ,&thelong streti! 1

of time before the development of writina. Archado&rs look fcw

-
ages of the sites they -:digging, archaeolagistsmy ako have tohe
experts in ,ston~tcpl.manufacture,. m e d w g y , .QB ancient .pone@: .:.

' % ; , 7 < ' ' l ' . ~. . L # # I ~ ..
of'ciitmaf inventions over time from one site to another allows
them to hypothesize about the nature and degree of social contact
between different peoples. Some contemporary archaeologists even
dig through layers of garbage deposited by people within the past
two or three decades, often uncovering surprising information about
modern consumption patterns. (Table 1.1 lists the four traditional
subfields of anthropology.)
In recent decades, increasing numbers of anthropologists have
been using the methods and findings from every subfield of anthro-
pology to address problems in the contemporary world, in what
is called applied anthropology. This subfield has grown rapidly
as an area of involvement and employment for anthropologists.
Some applied anthropologists may use a particular group's ideas
about illness and health to introduce new public-health practices
in a way that makes sense to, and will be accepted by, members
of that group. Others may apply knowledge of traditional social
organization to ease the problems of refugees trying to settle in a
new land. Still others may tap their knowledge of traditional and
Western methods of cultivation to helo farmers increase their croo
yields. Taken together, these activities are sometimes called devel-
opment anthropology because their aim is to improve people's
capacities to maintain their health, produce their food, and other-
wise adapt to the challenges of life in the contemporary world.
Applied anthropologists with a background in archaeology may
be involved with contract or salvage archaeology, or they may work
iB ~ulturalresource management to ensure that the human past is
not destroyed by, say, the construction of new buildings, highways,
or dams. Biological anthropologists may become involved in foren-
sic work, such as the determination of social characteristics of crime
or accident victims, or in nutrition. Linguistic anthropologists, in
partnership with local activists and social institutions striving to
protect threatened cultural heritages, have worked to preserve iadig-
enous languages on the verge of extinction. Applied anthropology
has drawn cultural anthopologists into ever wider and more varied
collaborations with scholars from other scholarly disciplines. For
example, cultural anthropologists with interests in the ways that
! / I . ".J >I-?' human cultural practices articulate with the wider envi-
ronment have, over the years, established working relationships
1
with ecologists and economists, historians and political scientists,
geographers and soil scientists, botanists and zoologists. These col-
laborations have produced specialties ranging from cultural ecology r
(see Chapter 8) to political ecology (see Chapter 7) to environmen- ,
tal anthropology, an area of expertise that unites anthropologists ' i'
with others who are concerned about ecology, the environment, and i I
environmentalism (see Chapter 7). ' L ' ,
In recent years, the number of new anthropologists with doctor-
ate degrees who take up jobs in applied settings outside universities
has grown steadily. As a result, increasing numbers of anthropolo-
gists have come to view applied anthropology as a separate field T : ,
of professional specialization-related to the other four fields but I
it;
<
with its own techniques and theoretical questions. More and more !
universities in the United States have begun to develop courses and
programs in applied anthropology. I
Anthropology may have begun in Western Europe and the United
States more t h a ~a century ago, but over the course of its history
. it has become an international discipline. Universities and research
institutions in &any countries around the world have established
anthropology departments, offer courses and degrees, and carry out
research, both theoretical and applied. Anthropologists in different
countries have established national anthropological associations,
and there are also international associations of anthrr&aiglsaloglrt#for
the dissemination of anthropological research.
,. :, ... k.,, . . 7 ; ,:,,
1.3Is ~nthro~oIogg
a scie~ce? t .,
.
. . ,;. . ~: . ,it
)' ji?*
~odernism,postmodernism, and ~ e ~ o d ,, !,,,, .
At the beginning of the twentieth century, most anthropologis;&
viewed their growing discipline as a science. They agreed that the
auth about the world was accessible through the five senses; that
a properly disciplined rational mind could derive universal, objeci
tive truths from material evidence; and that a single scientific method
could be applied to any dunension of reality, from the movement of
the -planets to human sexual behav~or.Such investigation- was sup-
- ways of life they studied. From the perspective of some members of
posed to produce objective knowledge: undistorted, and thus univer-
sally valid, knowledge about the world. Anthropologists felt free to
apply scientific methods in any area of anthropological interest, from
srone tools to religion, confident that the combined results of these
efforts would produce a genuine "Science of Man" (as it was then
called). T h s set of ideas and practices is known as positivism.
Today, many critical observers of the natural and social sciences
connect these ideas to a complex Western cultural ideology called
modernism. Modernism can be (and has been) viewed in terms of
liberation from outdated traditions that prevent people from build-
ing better lives for themselves and their children. Critics have argued,
however, that modern Western science, rather than being a universal
path to objective truth, is itself a culture-bound enterprise connected
to a specific definition of progress. Many members of non-western
societies agree witb these critics that, in their experience, modernist
ideas have been used by powerful Western states to dominate them
and to undermine their traditional beliefs and practices. From their
perspective, Western-style "progress" has meant the loss of political
autonomy, an increase in economic impoverishment and environ-
mental degradation, and destruction of systems of social relations
and values that clash with ~e umodern" way of life.
This criticism of modernism, accompanied by an active qbes-
tioning of all the boundaries and categories that modernists set up as
objectively true, has come to be called postmodernism. Irs plausibil-
ity as an ~ntellectualposition increased after the end of the cold war
in 1989 when many previously unquestioned cultural and political
"truths" about the world seemed to crumble overnight. To be posb
modern is to question the universalizing tendencies of modernis@
including modernist understandings of science. Postmodernists point
out that people occupying powerful social positions often can p a d
'I,,..
off their own cultural or political prejudices as universal wuths whil~!
dismissing or ignoring alternative views held by powerless groups. 9
Anthropologists had long considered themselves to be debunker$,
of distorting Western stereotypes about non-Western peoples. Having
frequently defended the integrity of indigenous societies against the
onslaughts of modernizing missionaries and "development" experts)
they had come to assume that they were on the side of those whosh
those societies, however, as well as from the viewpoint of postmod-
ernists, anthropologists looked just like another group of outside
"experts" making their own universal claims about human cultures,
behaving no differently from chemists making universal, "expert"
about mo]ecule@'f?,n " I f ' ! !vl 'WIl .'J'I7ts 51\.rTl'lh7 D l i l r IUI I1lU
; !I ,,) .l,:i~. I .I *,rrbl.i:: LIA~I* r n,
1 .+ ~eflexive~ n t h r o ~ o l o ~ . .,.
,<,,
i . l ~ ~ ,~ .
d',,c,
,411 I< - n
Postmodern criticism prompted anthropolog~ststo engage in a reap,
praisal of their discipline and, in particular, to re&& what was
involved in fieldwork and the writing of ethnography. While cultural
anthropologists continue to value careful observational methods an
accurate, systematic data gathering, many of them also take ser~ously
certain parts of the postmodern critique. For example, modeling
ethnographers in the field on natural scientists in their laboratories
!
appears problematic once ethnographers grant that the subject matter
of anthropology, unlike that of chemistry, consists of human beings,
members of the same species as the scientists studying them. Rather I
than a relationshp between a curious human being and inert mat?,
ter, anthropological fieldwork always involved a social relationsh
between at least two curious individuals. This meant that the culturah
4
identity and personal characteristics of fieldworkers had to be take
into account when attempting to make sense of their ethnographi
writing. Put another way, fieldwork had to become a reflexi
in which anthropologists carefully scrutinized both their oy
bution to fieldwork interactions and the responses these in
rll
elicited from informants. That is, rather than assuming that they
were, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the people they were
studying, anthropologists began to consider the effect that they had
on the people with whom they were living. They began to recognize
that who they were as individuals and as socially situated actors b d
an egect on their research, Many contemporary cultural anthrop(i10-
gists have accepted the challenges of doing reflexive fieldwork andare
. .
uersuaded that such fieldwork vroduces hetter. more accurate eth-
nography than modernist methods ever did. Reflexive fieldworkers
- about the limitations of their own knowledge
are mu& mptetpxt,licit - sciences such as physics and biology (see Chapter 12). This devel-
and mx& mote generous in the credit they give to their infofmants.
Some, haye d t t n their ethnographies in neve; experimental styjm
that eften read more like novels than scientific texts.
Indeed, many ethnographers today have taken up the chal-
leng,e of doing participant-observationin cultural settings in which
they we insiders. They are conscious of pomntial pitfalls but are
convinced that their profesd~nderaining will help them provide a
unique and valuable perspective. Many have also chosen to engage
in multisited fieldwork in which the goal is to follow people, or
objects, or cultural processes that are not contained by social,
national, ethnic, or religious boundaries (see Chapter 2). Working
in more than one place and with persons or institutions that have
work) have moved beyond the opposition between modernism and
postmodernism. They draw attention to the ways in which mem-
bers of non-Western Gocieties selectively incorporate "modern" or
"scientific" practices originating in the Western world in order to
help them develop their own alternative modernities. At the same
time, a reconsideration of the nature of "science" by anthropolo-
gists and others has shown that the positivist understanding of sci-
ence may in fact offer an incomplete account of scientific successes
and failures, not only in the social sciences but also in physical
opment opens up new and exciting possibilities for alternative,
understandings of science-and of anthropology as a science-
that are yet to be developed.
For Further Reading
BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Park 2006; Relethford 2007
ARCHAEOLOGY
Ashmote and Sharer 2006
APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY

not traditionally been the focus of ethnographic analysis, they are Ervin 2004; Gwynne 2003; Kedia and van Willigen 2006; McDonald
also revealing interconnections and iduences that in the past would 2001; van W~lligen2002
have escaped the fieldworker's attention. These ethnographers see DEVELOPMENT ANTHROPOLOGY
their task as finding- a way to combine the most valuable elements of Gardner and Lewis 1996
the postmadern critique of etbbgraphy with a continuing respect
MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
for empirical evidence. The challenge of such a task is great and per-
-

haps as paradoxical as the notion of participant-observation, but Baer, Singer, and Susser 2003; Kiefer 2007; McElroy and Townsend
2004; Singet and Baer 2007
many ethnographers believe that research undertaken within and
across uncomfortable middle ~ o u n dcan yield important insights H E L D RESEARCH

into human cultural p&es; bights that can be secured in no Agar 1996; Bernard 2005; Bradburd 1998; DeWalt and DeWalt 200%
other way. Such disciplim c o d t m e n t s make anthropological Marcus 1995; Rabinow 1977; Wolcott 2004,2008
research and writing of a g ~ b g vital
, importance to human self- POLITICAL ECOLOGY
understanding. Betglund et al. 2006
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many ethnogra-
phers (as well as many members of the societies in which they
. 3;,~j@$&EY,; , ( I I !
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 ULTURE HAS LONG BEEN the central concept in anthro-
pology. At its most basic, culture is understood to refer to
learned sets of ideas and behaviors that are acquired 'by people

porary anthropologists continue to disagree about bow it should

be defined. Major debates about the culture concept, however,
can be connected to particular intellectual and social struggles in
which anthropologists have been involved historically.

2.1 ~ u ~ t u tAgainst
-e Racism:
he rarIy ~wentiethCentury
Culture gained power as an anthropological concept in the early
decades of the discipline, around the turn of the twentieth century,
in a social and scholarly context in which the distinctiveness of dif-
ferent social groups of people was widely attributed to race. Races
were thoughc to be distinct biological subpopulations, or even
subspecies, of humanity. Scholars and physicians usually assigned
people to various racial categories on the basis of skin color, hair
texture, or other visible physical traits. But these physical traits were
thought to be inseparable from a number of other, often less visible
traits that were also thought to distinguish one race from another-
traits ranging from langi~ageand dress and musical ability to moral-
ity and intelligence. Many early physical anthropologistshoped that
if they could succeed in accurately identifying the "races of Man,"
they would be able to specify which languages and customs origi-
nated with, belonged to, or were otherwise appropriate for which
races. Unfortunately, &s search for a scientific definition of race
took place in a historical context in which ruling groups in the soci-
eties from which the anthropologists came were already convinced
of the reality of race and so used race-based distinctions to justify
their own domination of darker-skinned peoples around the globe.
16
hrk t e w e , nose ghapc, stature, or the l i k e 4 1 a? compelled on the human species as a whole, explaining variation both among
&a p e m a to speak or behave in .my pa tide^? WV.&I.&& ehe and within populations of our species as the outcome of adaptations
rBIPidiq~& && pP1ejofi =add . k .& ~ b & ~ ~ i c g $ S
,
to particular natuial environments that were shaped by natural selac-
am@h, ;*aa
*: @n$$ &a*,&':'!sf &@ . tion on genes. But it was not until the late 196@, in the text of c o l ~
the,dture concept in.exptaiming vasiation.across ahaman 4-l lapsing colonial empires and the civil rights movement in the U&ed
States, that this orientation became standad in anthropology.
-
Becatisexhe capacirieS to creawand,kmc$ture.belung*, .thaM1e
All ithis work aimed to demolish the concept of biological race
Humam@es,.nothing~ prevents my .subgrohp from IearbgdiW?
guages. or,beliefs.,drpractices origins& qdevdoped by~soni6bnber for $ood, and yet at the beginniag of the twenty-first centmy, the
concept of "race" has not diwappeared. The concept oh culture
explains why t l s is so: People can invent cultural categorie~based
on superficial physical features of human beings, caU these catego-
ries "races," and then use these categories as bdding blocks fm
their social institutians, evm rf d categories correspond to no
- ,
~ c ~ [ w ~ l . , ~ ~ w i n g , ~ ~and s '!racial7
s.~i bound-
~~~gd~~i~, biologxal realizy. Thus, when a particular social order depehds an
a*F<The cdtwe c o n c q t . p r & i ~ t j a explawtionfoc wby differ- racial categorizations of the population in order to function in a
e 3 briai groups often livid 1%~ that were quite distinct fcom particular way, racial categories can persist no matter how pow-
erfully scientisB demonstrate that they hare rio ,basis in materid
reality (see Chaptef 6). Ironically, racial categories that are con-
demned for stigmatizing different segments of the human popula-
tion may be reinforced when, for example, a gwerment asks its
citizens to identlfy themselves by "race" in ordex re measure the
extent to which compensatory government programs have or have
not assisted the members of different "racial" groups to overcome
past oppression. An ongoing challenge within anthropology haa
been how to deny the reality of race as a biological concept with-
out ignoring the continuing vigor of race as a cultural constructior
in societies like that of the Unitad)States.
, 4

Rejecting racial thinking led the Boasians to stress the plas&itp

of human biology under different environmental circumstmces::4f
human beings could learn any language or culture to which. ekq
were exposed, this must mean that they required cultwe i;n cab
to survive and thrive. Along with many founders of the $md&
synthesis in evollrtionary biology, such as Theodosius Dqb~h&p&
and Ernst May5 anthropologists came to argue thatin&bm Lq& 8
of human evolution, natural selection on genes produced species
(our own and those of our ancestors) whose members adapt and
survive as biological organisms by learning the cultural practices
of those among whom they live.
Compared even to our nearest primaterelatives, we human being*
seem to be born remarkably free i d specific "survival instincts,"' or
biologkl programming that would secure food, shelter, and mates
for us antematically. Instead, as Malinowski suggested, every human
group apparently can invent (and m o e ) its own particular setsfif
learned cultural traditions in order to solve those problems. Thw,
human beings must learii everything necessary to survive and thrive
from older, experiencedmefnbersof their group.
Put another way, the may that a humm group adapts to the envi-
ronmental challenges of a pxticular habitat does not depend only
on human physiology (or the gcnes involved in the development of
hanphys~ologicalresponses). For exampk, human beings attempt-
ipg t o survive in cold climates are not obliged to wait u n d natural
selection provides them with thick fur. Instead, they can rely on their
cultural capacity to learn to control h e , make warm dothing from
skins, invent ways of using cold-adaptedplants and animals for food,
and so forth. Natural selection on g a e s dplays a role, but selectiatl
would favor those whose gene& endowment allowed them to learn
especially easily from those around them and who were curious and
creative in devising cultural so1upi~nsfor new adaptive challenges.
Some anthcopdogists, known as nlla~ralilzheritance theorists, have
used mathematical models borrowed from population biology to
demonstrate how the capacity fm fcZtman culture could have arisefi
as a result of natural selection on d t u r a l variation. Their work grew
out of work by cuhwal ecol'igis~like Julian Steward, active in the
mid-twentieth century. S t e w d ccmscted changes in culture over
time in particular sooietiesitv&anatlu!e of the societies' adaptations
to their material enviromefib adaptations in which their culture and
technology played central tdcs:,(seeChapter 8).
If people's d m d a&&4ti~ reshape the environments in which
the.p live (and to whi& tihe$ must adapt), then people also alter the
selection pressmes .&at 'they face. This process, called niche con-
stmc8ion, remo&l:lsl& environment to which any population mu@
&st &r memberg of their groapa acquiae t h s h h&ouch
, grouped together as instances of the "same" thing in another. This
slippage between symbols and what they stand for makes possible
complex human cultural systems, and it enables their remodeling
or dismantling under novel conditions. Such slippage also means,
however, that effoxt is constantly required to keep ~ m b o l i csystems
systemic-that is, ordegly and coherent. Furthermore, nothing guar-
antees that existing cultural systems will w t change over time, due
either to internally generated d e v e l o ~ e n t sOF to exposure to new
phenomena introduced from outside.

2.4 ~ t h n o c e n t r i s ma n d ~ u E t u r a ~elativism
l
Still, despite these factors, ethnographers were impressed early on
by the high degree of cultural coherence and -predictabilitv that thev
regularly encountered while doing field research in non-western ,
societies. This was impatant because it undermined the racist ste-
reotypes about tribal or non-western peoples widespread in the
early decades of the discipline. In particular, sucb~eophs were reg-
ularly portrayed as irrational "savages" w "barbmiane" leading
lives that were, in the words of se~enteenthrcenwryphilosopher
Thomas Hobbes, "nasty, brutish, and short.'' Such ~ o ~ t r a y aof ls
tribal peoples by Western observers were based on the wiversal
human tendency to view one's own way af life as natural and as
naturally better than other, different ways of life. Anthropologists
call this attitude ethnocentrism-that is, using the pxactices of your
own "people" as a yardstick to measure how well the customs of
other, different peoples measure up. Inevitably, the ways in which
"they" differ f r m "us" (no matter who "they" and "us" happen to
be) are tmderstood, ethnocentrically, in rerms of what they lack.
,,-'
Ethnocentric Europeans and North Americans believed that to
be "civilized" and "cultured" meant to follow an orderly way (rf , , ' F
life graced by refinement and harmony. But ealy anthropologistp 1 4 :i~
'
found that they could use 'the cdture concept to counter these e&-
nocentric beliefs. They cauld show that all peaples were eqttdl~
"cultured" because every group's social practices were tharao-

tenzed by order, harmony, and refinement. The partiodar &at@$

customs one followed depended on the group one was born, &bob
fmm whose members one leatned thosecustam',h d t a ? group%
c~xoms & j&m ,maq$omsjbm-@@&':@w
mimight: aq~ally
 Some anthropologists had always raised questions about just
how sharply bounded, just how internally integrated, any particu-
lar culture might be. Boas and his students, as noted previously,
had documented much borrowing of cultural objects and practices
by one supposedly distinct society from another, suggesting that
boundaries between cultural traditions might be rather porous.
But if society A borrowed a custom from society B, could rhat
custom ever be made into an "authentic" part of the culme of
society A? And if it could be integrated, did that mean that the
culture of society A was no longer "authentic"? And who would
decide? Purthermore, even if a provisional correspondence could
be established between a particular society and a particular set of
cultural beliefs and practices, was it plausible to claim that every
member of that society shared every aspect of its culture-the
same beliefs, the same values, the same practices, the same points
of view? What if members of the society in question disagreed,
say, about how to petform a ritual? Could only one of the partles
be correct, and must the others necessarily be wrong? And, again,
who would decide?
Ethnographers often sought research settings that seemed
to approximate the ideal of cultural uniformity-for example,
remote villages or culturally distinct urban neighborhoods. Often
they had to acknowledge rhat this setting was only one part of a
larger sociocultural system, even if that larger system was not the
focus of their research. This was particularly visible and problem-
atic in the case of ethnographic work carried out during the colo-
nial period: The wider imperial setting would be acknowledged
briefly, but little or no reference to that setting would be made in
the rest of the ethnography.
In recent years, many ant~ropologistshave begun to question
the validity of speaking as if a large and complex society could
possess a single, uniform "cuiture." It has also become obvious
that even within relatively small homogeneous societies, mem-
bers may disagree with one another about what "their culture"
actually is. Anfhropologists have become increasingly sensitive
to the political issues involved in drawing boundaries around a
society or a culture or in taking the views of one subgroup of a
larger society as representative of "the culture" as a whole. This
or else risk persecution. Such practices are p e r k 8 obvious in
those societies that wece once colonies but have simx beceme inde-
pendent states. A common :expercience in :a&mw :q&~ was the
disco%* that vefy little,zpirpc r~rnftim.&;~.mlo&+
trig ppo&ef, flai$$dtbg b e ~ 1 ~ w
b sh per@
~ of &+&kwsoa$esx-
The d i g &@J@:&&Qha,d i&eriqed.~ & &&I$ , g~T&-q&&&i+
l a u i n g h e a e p ~ 6O$: &Q&z~L. ill f d vr:ws&ddiy
~
to of n,atio~d&Q bdS& g&&ddyfir&&f
&lmj,a?' ~elem@@.;@f &&:a:.fiij&&l ~&l~~,.l&&-

!r@mqL%s %h& @
&Jd,i,m hdBndii$ew., .
:@,&&&&
I ... s ~ a hpr&OkR
, #
.
'
wDnBd
@&,'t@ & $ h&'Tip*
~ ~ .t$ &&&t&&@i&Jq-whws: @! @jV&
&j wjbd ,M,w.~ &z*
fiz~c x ~ p l & & & wac&es
'&&wak
;&&&a PP<&ah~d
&.c ~ i * b,y&.
pcrl&;

Having expelled one colonial they would see no advantage

in being recolonized by onc of heir wichbors.

members never see ohe @&ex face-to-face but who nonetheless

experience a sensc of feeIjag for onc another. In Anderson's

snd pra~tieek.. ,;,'!!

8 '
. ~
 I J
Discussion and ~ e b a t e
What has been the outcome of all this discussion and debate about
the cultwe concept? Some anChropologists assert that the concept
of culture has been forever tainted by the older usage that assigned
every society its own unique, iqternally harmonious set of behefs
and practices. Because this use of the concept reflects an outmoded
understanding of how soaeties and cultures relate to one another,
they argue, and has permitted culture to be falsely understood as
a prison house of custom from which people could never escape,
the term should be d~scardedentirely. They believe that it beats
too many traces of the colonial circ~mstancesunder which it was
developed and to which it proved so useful an intellectual tool in
dividing and dominating colonized peoples.
But abandoning the one-society-one-culture model does not
mean that the concept of culture needs to be discarded. Many of
the anthropologists who reject that model prefer to think of culture
as the stun total of all the customs and practices that humans have
ever produced. They point out that, with the increasing speed and
density of communication and travel, nobody anywhere on the face
of the ear6h is isolated from the major flows of information and
activity present in our contemporary world. Fast food, rock music,
and computers h'ave a worldwide appeal. Because we are a species
that needs to learn how to survive and are wilhng to learn new
things from others, people everywhere now seem to be involved in
stitching together their own patchwork of beliefs and practices from
both local traditions and the wide range of global culture locally
available. Iri situations like this, many contemporary anthropolo-
gists argue that what counts as anyone's culture is "up for gabs."
And yet those psocesses that turn culture into something individ-
uals put together on their own are frequently countered by another
process in wbch groups defend a uniform and closed view of their
own cdture in the face of potential inundation by global culture.
Thus, much like some early anthropologists, contemporary activists
in movements of ethnic solidarity defend a monolithic, internally
harmonious view of their own culture against "outside" forces
claiming to know what is best for them. Such a defense, however, is
not without its own paradoxes. For example, to present the image
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. . , ,

UMAN BEINGS, ALONE MONG all..h'ing species9r d y 0 h SpO

ken language to.communicatewith.meanether,'This far6.ih.s ,
puzzled and intrimed people in all societ?es,has Rlayed ,a &@.or-
tant role in religious and philosophic.aI feflections on the h&ar
condition, and 'has been a central focus of attention in.antbrop~l
ogy from the very beginrring, Trying to define language in a rlea
and una&6ipoui way? however, has proved surpriskgly d&icdt.
Today,,most,antkopologists would probably agree, minimally, that
languagk is a system of &biti.ary vwal symbols that human beings
use.to.enc&te their exbrie~ceefthe world andto communicate with
digci~&i &at pursDes. a scientific study
olie , a ~ o t h e~he'scholarl~
~.
'of language is called linguistics. The terms anthrbpolqgical ling&-
tics and linguistic &thro~ploWhave be,a used by anthropologi~tsto
refer tothe~snidy~of language in inuItp@lcontext.
;h4,;p,,";i7! . .
. ,
I ,
~5toncas tetch
..
3.1~ t u d ~hnguage:
i n ~ 4.
The study of lggua6e was wma1 to eatly anthropology because '
it was a dnnension of kulture that was easy to observe and study in
detail. For =ample, languages (like the cultures in which they are
embedded) show'tremendoui vgiattop, both over time and acfoss
space. The Eurqpean study ofsg~ematit linguistic change over time
is usu~llysaid'to hirve begun &.&**he work of the British scholar
Slr Wiharn Jones i;1746-~4:), who studied Sanskrit in India. He
pointed out in 1'786 that San6krib; classical Greek, Latin, and more
recent European l a n g u a g ~ s s h ~numerous
~rl similarities, suggest. ,

k g that they may have: &iv&rgedfrom a common ancestral lani

s a g e , or protoIaagi*ge,, that came to be called Indo-Europw.
All languages believed to, b e descended from a common ancestral
language are said to belotlg to the same language family. By 1.8214,
the German schohr Jakob Grirnm (of fairy tale fame; 1785-1863r
was able to show h t cegular changes in speech sounds could be
! :00s;:.-, , ,
34
according to specific rules. The elements of language and rules for ooatiaues this hwstiga- Iniodey. Second, it drew amerjaioa W;iobia
combining words are generally referred to as grammar. But much
besides grammar is associated with spoken language, such as the
various qualities with which we utter our wosds (vokqe, pitch,
emphasis, speed, and so forth), which linguists call pwalahguage.
Moreovet, grammar and paralanguage do not conkin all the
meankg we convey when we speak; meaning is also carried by =oh
things as out postures, our facial expressions, and out akcompany-
ing gesestures, These phenomena, which are sometimes called body
latzgwge, haae been studied by anthropologists using a special sys-
n kmsias. In addition, we often choose our
tem af n o t q ~ ~called
words carefully, depending on the persDn whom we are; address-
ing ;ar the setting in whf& we are speaking, which highlights the
impmant role that context playis in shaping the meaning of our
utterances. Finally, as the philologists showed, the language our
grandparents (or more distant ancestors) used often differs park-
edly fram the lanppge that we use today. So how muah of all this
should we take into consideration when we study language?
To answer this question, Saussuremade<animportant distinction
betwee0 what came out of peopl~'sm~uths when they spoke (which
he called parole) and the underlykiip,rules that generated that speech
(whichhe called langue). 10 his dew, parole varied from speaker to
speaker, reflecting each indiuidql's idioqyncratic interests and sty-
listis preferences, whereas lmme refeired to the stable, universal
rules that all speakers-dbserved. Sausme wanted to define language
in a way that would permit him to study it s6entifically. Therefore,
he recommended paring atztdcm only to the most systematic and
unvarying elements of l a ~ ~ a a g d iis,l tto langue, which corre-
sponds to what other lingui@$c d the limguistic code or grammar.
Saussute argued that langmi(&e code or grammar shared by all
speakers) was a self-ataided system and that the signrficance of
any element in the system is&as sounds or words) depended on its
relationship with other slemants iia the system rather than on some
feature of the outside w d d
language had at least two major conse-
Saussure's a p ~ r o a c h m
quences. Fitst, it g+vt hguists a clear-cut object of study, whose
intricate details thqcouldptobe without distractian; theendresult
was the birth of the independent discipline of linguistics, which
according to specific rules. The elements of language and rules for
combining words are generally referred to as grammar. But much
besides grammar is associated with spoken language, such as the
various qualities with which we utter our words (volume, pitch,
emphmis, speed, and so forth), which linguists call paralahguaga.
Moreover, gxammar and paralanguage do not contain d ld h
meaahg we convey when we speak; meaning is also carried by such
things as our postures?om facial expressions, and our accompany-
ing gestures. These phenomena, which are sometimes d e d body
lavz&ccage,have been studied by anthsopologists using a special sys-
tem .of notati;on cdled kkesics. In addition, we often chbose ow
w ~ @ meWs3
s dependiqg on the person whom we are address-
ing or the set!hg h which we are speaking2which highlights the
hpwtan.t role that context plays in shaping the meaning of our
utter-. Finally, as the philologists showed, the language our
gmdparents (or more distant ancestofi) used often differs mark-
edly from the language that we use today. So how much of all this
should we take into consideration when we study,language!
To answer this question, Saussnre mapie animportant distinction
between vhat came out of people's mouths when they spoke (which
he called parole) and the undmlging rdes that generated that speech
(which he called l a n e e ) .In his vicw, parole varied from speaker to
speaker, refleeting each individws idiosyncratic interests and s@-
listic preferences, whereas l a m e referted to the stable, universal
rules that all speakers*obsenndSaussure wanted to define language
in a way that would permit himto smdy it iientifically. Therefote,
he recommended paying atteation ~ d toy the most systematic and
unvarying elements of lmguage-that is, to langue, which corre-
sponds to. what other lingw,is~~~dJ the linguistic code or grammar.
Saussure argued that langqe 4&e code or grammar shared by all
speakers) was a self-con&edd system and that the significance of
any element in the systemCmch as sounds or words) depended on its
relationship with other b t s ih the system rather than on some
feature of the outside world+
Saussure's appxoach tvbrguage had at least two major conse-
quences. Fitst, it g a ~ lhgidsts
b a clear-cut object of stndy, whose
intricatedetailsthepmdpxobe without distracti6ni the end result
was the birth of the independent discipline of linguistics, which
sounds that human beings are theoretically capable of producing
and hearing, the scientific study of which is called phonetics.
Many early linguists analyzed thk sets of phonemes characteristic
of particular languages, They were also interested in m w a l units
of-meaningin languages. Although in languages like English such
units often correspond to wo~dk,comparative work in very &rept
languages, such as those of indigenous Americans, demnstraed
that not all languages are put together the way English is. And so
linguists adopted a new term, morphemej to refer to the minimal
unit of meadng in a language and studied the rules for combining
fiorphem%"%n a branch of linguistics h o w n as morpIrology.
B'ut pho~sologicaland m~rpblogtcalrules alone EOUMnot
accomt for the features of all grammatical sentences, a point
foncefnllp made in 1957 by N$&m Ghomskp. Chomsky argued
persuasi~elythat senrences were themselves units of grammatical
structure, and he proposed that liflguists begin to study syntax,
the structure of sentences. Chomwky Vater argued rhar any gram-
mar ought to be a theory 06 a hag&*, and because all languages
were used to convey meanings%mry grammar ought to contain
a component concerned wit6 bow-that language dealt with mean-
ing. This jhstified attention to serinantics, or the study of meaning,
a dimension of language that tradi~iwnallyhad been viewed as too
vague and variable to serve as "a@dbj'ect of linguistic investigation.
The fields of formal syntax ~ @ m d a n t i c s have developed in dif-
ferent directions since the Y9&0k1bit all those developments have
roots in rhe initial orienvatiomsiprovided by Chomsky.
Chomsky also observed %h3tyeople's actual utterances often
were full of errors, hesit&ions, and false starts that might be
the result of physical faetars &ch as sleepiness and thus did nor
truly represent their under'lyitg grammatical knowledge. And so
Chomsky further distinwidk8Cbetween linguistic competence (the
ufiderlying knowledge OF ~zammaticalrules encoded in the brains
of all fluent speaker$ bf 'a Banguage) and linguistic pe$formance
(the actual things peo~lr&id, which for the reasons mentioned,
might not reflect &4@ ;22tual linguistic competence). Much like
Saussure, ~ h o m s &g Q U ~ ~linguists
T should ignore linguistic per-
formance and rt te develop theories of linguistic competence.
5q& J1*nm1)3h1<
languages like Hopi attracted attention (and eventual notoriety)
both within and outside anthro~olom. -. In several controversial
articles, he seemed tr, be claiming that every language had a unique,
self-contained grammar that strongly . influenced the thought - -pat-
terns and cultural practices of its speakers.
Aftg World War 11, when both Sapir and Whorf were dead,
o t h q anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists tried to devise
experimentsthatwould test the influence oflanguage oncultureand
thought, These researchers advanced what they called the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis: h e claim that the culture and theught patterns
of people wete s ~ w g l yd u e n c e d by the language they spoke.
Immediately, however, the researchers f a , d a familiar problem:
How do y w define "laughage" and "culture" and "thought" with
sufficient rigor so that it becomes possible to measure the degree
to which ,one does or does not influence the other(s)?In practice,
"language" was equated with "gr-ammatical code," and tests were
devised to measure whether speabrs whose grammars possessed
(or lacked) certain grammatical structures were correspondingly
forced to perceive (or prevented horn perceiving) those structwes
when they looked at the w ~ r l dsound them. For example, does
an absence of grammatical m a r b g verbs for past, present, and
future tense mean that speakers Of that language cannot perceive
the passage of time? Or, if a language has only three terms for
basic calo~s(for example, hjack, mhite, and red), does this mean
that speakers of that langua%eearnot tell the difference between
the colors an English speakef identifies as green and blue?
Actual research showed Qqt questions posed in this fashlon
were far too simplistic, bps& ahoqt grammars apd about human
perception. Any languag,e ia always a part of some culturethat
is, it is learned, not jnnggh,mdit is intimately interrelated with
all culrural practices in wkc4 its speakers engageand t u g
cannot easily be di~tin~uilhedfrom the linguistic and cultural acriv-
ity in which it is realat-1~ involved. Thus, it is virtually impossible
to tease langdage, witme, asd thought apart, let alone to figure
out the direction of the causal arrows that supposedly link them
to one another. By t& eaiy 1960s, most linguistic anthropologists
had concluded that &ere was no solid evidence that grammatical
features of particular languages determined thought patterns or cul-
tural practices. The fact that many people throughout the world
were bi- or multilingual, successfully communicating with speak-
ers of languages with sometimes very different graminatical codes
(for example, Hopi and English), called into question the supposi-
I
don that people typkally were manolingual-that is, they khew or
&pokefluently only one language from birth to death,
In the 1950s and 1 9 6 0 ~a ~numb~rof anthropologists devel-
aped a research program known as ethnosemantics or etlinosci-
enae that aimed for greater accuracy and sophistication. As the
labels suggest, their goal was to discover the systems of linguistic
meaning and classification developed by people in their own lan-
guages and used in their own cultules. Borrowing the linguistic
, contrast between phonetic and phonemic studies af the saunds
of language, ethnoscientists explicitly cantca~~ed @ticcategories
devised by outside researchens and emk c a t e g p l i ~devised $
native speaker-informants. Thsir gad was ao d m i b e as:fiairhh&y
as possible the emic a t e p r i e s nsed by insormw~s$I $eir own
language, and s a t h q ewouraged a rigamus set of resear~hprac-
tices involving substitution frames in ,order to protect th& data
from etic contamination.
For all their achievements, however, etbnoscientists continued
to work with a theoretical model of language and culture in which
researchers and informants were understood to belong to mutually
exclusive monolingual and monocultural worlds. It was pot thst
anthropologists failed to recognize the inaccuracy of the model.
Fieldwork and study had made many of them bi- or multilingual
and bi- or multicultural, and ahistory of oolanial conquest followed
by linguistic and cultural imperialism had often made many of their
informants bi- or multicultural and bi- or m u l t i l i i a l as well.
3.4 Language and society
The necessity of taking this bi- and multi.liingualism/cul~~~, .&$.$ ~ ~
theoretical account,prampted:Hymes to urge his colleagues 1 o ~ e 9
beyond the study 06 indiaidud i?nguages to the stu'dyi.&&*..
communities. A speech c o d u p i t y is. any c o n ~ c a ~
~.
. .
 individuals who regularly interact verbally with one another. It might
be a village or a neighborhood qr a city.,today it might include "vir-
tual communities" created by Internet chat room or e-mail. Hymes
pointed out that if you delimt a speech community and then do an
inventory of all the different kinds of language used by members of
that commdty, you will quiddy discover not merely one version of
one language in use, but rather a variety of forms of one language
(and sometimes moce than one language) in use Some aariedes will
be regional dialects: versions of a particular language associated with
particular geographical seMgs such as the AppalilchianvemwTexan
versus New England di&lmtsof Noah American Enghsh. Somedbe
social tE$l~@s: ve~sionsof a particular language associated with par-
ticular social groups such as the "Cockney" working-class dialect of
London as contrasted with the "BBC English" ofthe educated British
qpper middle class. StiU others will be social re&isws: versions of a
I
p a d d a r 1angu;zgeassociated with particular so~ialsettings such as
I a;court oilaw OK an elementary s & l p l a ~ r o u n dor a house of reli-
gious worship. Every member of the speech community may not be
able to converse fluently in ail the varieties represented in the commu-
nity, but all members will ordinarilyhave control of several varieties,
each of whlch will be called for in a different set of circumstances.
This approach developed h linguistic anthropology by Hymes
was supported by similar a p p r o a c h developed in sociolinguistics
by sociologists such as John Gumperz, Sociolinguistics is usually
defined as the study of themhtienship between language and soci-
ety. Traditionally, it has h g n interested in correlations between
social variatiw (for exampk daS6 or ethnic stratification) and
linguistic variation (for exsmple, in the form of regional or social
dialects), as well as couelatbms between particular social settings
and linguistic registers. Tegehm, Gumperz and Hymes developed
analytic concepts that meshed in interesting ways. For example, if
every speech community is characterized by a number of different
language varieties, then every member of that speech c o m m h t y
can be described in terns of her or his verbal repertoire: the s u m
total of verhal varietiFp aawticular individual has mastered.
Gupperz and, others were able to show that the number and
nature of the varie1:ies"witbinan individual's verbal repertoire not
9

i
 linguistic communication, in real life, when people struggle to
defend their interests using whatever tools are a~ipil'able,rules of
g r a k s r and rules bf use can be bent lor brokeg so achieve other
c~ninun?cative.effeas. And if rules can be b~f~kkn,:~e-rIia$,s they
aie as much a pirodwct of 0 t h sorialdad cEllt~rai,comu$cati&
as they areshape&bfthat conhumcation. .'
Th&$o,cuson multiple linguistic varieties pesent in dl slj&Sh
e d ~ & t . i e s a k don &les;far ortheir appropriate use inev<ta,bly;d~~
&tt@&fion to ;theefact that -not all varieties were aebrded c?tthLrS1
resp& (ah&&at&t lingui&-who ~k : a h a t 'we" grathmat
I j l &im,EfiPhad
~ ~ in~&d ~oily ,&e ~ hi&-pIesti&e:varieq
~ :dl
ldgUggaFX, &hey *wwe;.like ChomsS.,, educated lingnists study-
i t && . . native.l&gu&ge,tke grammar in question was likely
M k& rhar lanpage"s liierary standard, such as Standand Emgbsh.
'1 , &d because native-speak& I@guists were told to anst their Qwn
in@idOfis'in deriding whether certain usages were "g&a~i~al,'2
it became increasing[yilear &at.in practice "in,guEstic cotnpectin~e'~
!I meant comperence in the standard variety. Deqite 111Fguists' asser-
t i o n ~that their work was descriptive, not prescripri~eitionstandard
varieties inevitably appeared ,ungra@matica1 with r e s k #to'the
sta~dard,making thoie varieties (and, byemension, their spedkeis)
look defective.
L
Ifi (I , . ' ,I t , . - 1. - ! . : , , . , ' .
, I . !)

j:+'. D- , .
,
, .
: , : : . , . . .&,. .-;-!,: . . .-.:,,.
, ! ;,,. ,,
Iscourse
S u c h judgments looked suspiaously like the old-fashioned opinions
of prescriptive grammarians. From the point of view of linguistic
@*ropologists, they reflecied sociocultural evaluations of speak~is
associated with those linguistic varieties, evaluatiofs that inevitably
reflected the unequal power relations between evaluators atld those
being evaluated. Linguistk anthropologists began to focus explic-
itly on the way linguistic usage and evaluations of linguistic usage
wewe shaped by power struggles between various subgoups within
a society. They emphasized that rules of "grammatic* or ''rul-
Nral acceptability" often are based on lin@tic forms preferred
by powerful groups in society. AS a xesult, disadvantaged groups
maiy choose to q:ess resistance against a given power structure by
contexts. Uakhtin demonstrated how s p e a k e r r $ . W maneuver
around verbal censorship by the ironic use of l a m e - w h e n
speakers and (some)listeners understand that words- in a par-
ticular setting mean the opposite of what they ord~narilysignify.
Bakhtin also drew attention to the parodzc use of langua-when
officially acceptable language is exaggerated or mimicked with the
intention of poking fun. Double-voiced discoqrse highlights the
agency of speakers who manage to keep their actual words within
acceptable grammatical and cultural boundaries while the coqtext
in which their words are spoken imparts to them meanings qhite
different from thew formal denotations. Officially, order is upheld,
but unofficially, it IS held up to ridcule or critique. ;lit. ., . 1 . I .,I h , r . . ,, i.:~?,!61.19 .
, ;

To focus on subversive iorms of talk like double-voiced dis-

. .
, .'
.,: . .+, .i1
:.?. . 8 !
.
ahd jpdii~~gny'&flecte;i rules of use that s l a p
course is to emphasize the way in which language in cultural con- articular acts of speech commugication among particular speag
texts of use twists and manipulates the supposedly unvarying and d audiences, in the specific cultural settings in which thq
stable elements of formal grammar. The demonstration was so tF+ly occur. Put another way, the "universal" rules of form?"
powerful that even formal linguists begah to include a pragmatics &&aatics turn out to be so idealized a ~ l dcultme bound that the
component in their formal grammars, which purported to catalog die
,.. "&$little
. help when we try to understand what is going on i
universal rules of use obeyed by all speakers of all languages who m6stverbal interactions in most cultural settings in most societiel
wanted to communicate s~ccessfullywith others. (Table 3.1 lists -1 ,'T$> ...! , < i l

the components of formal linguistic analysis.) . ., ',. . ,+?

Linguistic anthropologists quickly pointed out that the kinds of
rules proposed by formal pragmatics, however, were based on h e
linguists' incorrect assumption that the primary purpose of linguistic
communication is to convey faithfully from speaker to hearer fac-
tual information about the world. This communication, moreover,
is assumed to take place in a conversational setting between disinter-
ested parties of equal social status.
Communication sometimes does involve the transmission of
information between equals. Gnguist~canthropdlogists were able
to show, however, that such communication is ohly a small and
highly idealized part 06 what normally goes on when real people
with differential linguistic and cultnral knowledge, living in real
societies characterized by social inequal~ty,try to communicate
with one another. As a result, l~nguisticanthropologists argue that
every analysis of language use in cultural context must Include
information from ethnopragmatics, Ethnopragmatics is the study
3.6 Language Contact and change
Considering linguistic interaction within a context of struggle
among speakers with. unequal access to valued resources in a soci-
ety has also refreshed our understanding of languages called pid-
gins and creoles. A pidgi'n language traditionally has been defined
as a redwed language with a simplified grammar and vocabular
that develops when speakers of mutually unintelligible languagea
come into regular contact and so are forced to communicate with
one another. Those who speak pidgins are native speakers of
other, fully developed languages and use pidgins only in restricted
settings wi'th those who do not speak their native language; for
this reason, pidgins are said to have 00 native speakers. However,
when pidgins persist ovet two or more generations, they often
begin to change. Specifically, their grammar sometimes becomes
more complex, their vocabularies increase, they ate used in a
wider variety of social settings, and children learn them as first
+ . . . -

languages. When this happens, according to the v~dlrionalview, that are regularly revealed inwhat people say and how they say it. The
the pidgin has developed inso a ereole and functiws just like any 8tududp of lmgp~geidemlow ,bxh u i s t i c anthrop~lopistsis centmi in
other .natural human lang,uag~. r e t h g s with.e.b;istory.6fooJao&atim. Yer e m w h e n w . e t . d a s
$@f 4 ~b~ $,GM &t. &,R m
: j
- &apu- of e: s d e t y we &em. a in'& officd'fis@ag6, ,%,&F
gjq g&e ma^ $ . ~ ~ . , . a&g @
p&
$&,~ , &a& j ~ bee@ms'&~w-.
$ ~
, .~,
ingly
, cfm
.- &at
., . ~ , p@g&s :a& c ~ t i o bm, : pier&t,&&&;&h &Q@
?.

~a D&ex ,1an~ag.e.m&r;i--sj &~ 3$pmbqq-89 &I*

the,i&e.found, That is, speakers tzf~@id+s a l ~ ~ J i ~ e h ::s-- ~&k
M & ~ w&e dig&=& +kge ~ & ~ t i ehxm
s s p m i a ..~:.l . :?I&~
.,
, s~

Mag@%, q& g-~ia a;re jha 3qqp$$

pawwG & w+&&>!gmemi that. differ& rr.a&eties+4&: :& 4

.a tgq&& wes,@g+:ai ;&dse Mth a,oge presiigims *.i:is&s

,pPta~
h.&e@i;q&al;Teje,
.,35:
,,y,z..r,m,,.G

t
-,.,. ~ . * ~ .
?:~[~~-,...
g&rqy~i9g& d s&&,~s?s
&.qjded p&tiCal.awd s o d 4 ahBR-
,.. ,.
, ;R most r e e d w+we:d p ; ~ ~ ~ p b ~ ~ ~&copean
~ ,
h+v@pdi~cd
~w

f d
r .. .

o w i d
,.<
.&&&ah &-aP&~~t & rn~&.+ . . %pg =are M e r thxt ,
&d, c ~ e g l ade7"@i&4 . d .q :c&q#,,, $Adpostc~bni+l]pdiBk.1
wwnasiq , t d

$%hes,' &
,'>..
2 , ~ $
.I @&% &n$ua$-ofi&e c~l&r u
,if . . : >,
or exampbe.
: . &g&h, #fe&h. a w
l'-.gJ.:: ': ....
k p has ,been a prereq&s&e ] milktam, effortsra powtibe the we sf
,Em' e c ? & ~ ca.& ] s ~ c i%a&~$& < groups in the & i e ~,&at the creation of ~ a k m t i v min the &al hs&iage.
ha= &en deprived of the;: : , : a m @t.o become literate *he cok Lifigwistic ~t.ion&rn is hardly limired t@h m e r coja~es.of

.aisr) deprived @faams,,mm#d:he

3
o~&er's:[or nattanSsrare1<$&;:&&J e":.siq@$ard" '- laaguage variev
wealth, power, and prestige
European powm. Citiim of Europzan mm&a Iike & m e ha*

in .mei6%yp. , .? .. .
$d.a situ.&:w hel~+$*& &e,::eo~fetlmes pident strqgjm
thdg aecfir i$Q Q ~ C V &m+&w,, , ~ especiallk-In those &at French heopk fear ihat tjkinflm of.dmerican Engbsh s y d o h e ~ z
we& mpg EvropeaQ c@&&&l&~& @h&chlengwa br languages
oling and. ~f gpu-ent,
beus speak 8 ,nmF,etof&f-
and if aaess 00 tke m ~ t
&pen& on 8h+y crr litefiq the state hw thr&t&nedth&s e v d af their m . d
it is easy to. sae thar spa& AS it h a p p ~ $natl@&l,
, mgi
d ezwh S~gu,age
. . g @ # @&r~t
; t their o m language to be $he of business qnd politics have b
o&&~l ~ + ~ , ~ a g e i 2 1 ,'.IJ,;J,: years, often +T the expense o
e .-m F J@&uages illustrilre tke ~ ~ e r a of
nebatas owgr . .f.~
~angurl$e.idqIugp:, b@& azd praaices a h $ t h g m e tkt,ate
~- , few n&e speakers. The gravrth of ,schoo

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inch* the capacity for symbolic laaguage and culture. Those
artiibutei we share with some other hunan beings are cultural sim-
ilarities. The great insight of social scieaces like anthropology has
been that individuals do not reinvent far themselves from scratch
totally new cdtural practices based onpersonal preference alone.
Rather, we all begin by acquiring the shtred ways of speaking, act-
ing, and interpreting experience in use m o n g the articular group
of people among whom we grow up. At be same time, even human
beings who have lived their entire lives immersed in the cultural
practices of the same society aie never sinply cookie-cutter replicas
of o a t another. Individual members of Be same family or kinship
group or ethnic group are vety differenifram one another, based
on not only such factors as gender and ase differences but also per- 1
sonal talents and inclination. Each of ushas. not only a unique set
of genes (identical twins excepted!) butalso a unique biogtaphy,
making each of us, in some ways, like naother person on earth.

4.1 From individualism t o Agency

The Western capitalist societies that ~ r o d u c e dthe first anthropol-
ogists were immersed in a culture that plrced unusual emphasis on
individuals. Unlike most other cultures f1om other places or times,
capitalist culme exalts individuals and enourages (or forces) them
to reject ties to other people, such as relaives, who they have not
freely chosen. This position, called individdism, is based on a view

(7
 the twentieth century, anthropologists had mostly rejected the h consistency of behavior over time and across a variety of social set-
old-fashioned, extreme contrasts between "individual free will" t i n p Anthropologists who offered hypotheses about the factors
and social, cultural, or historical "determinism." Although they rc~ponsiblefor the development, structure, and fun&on of indi-
remain critical of defenses of individualism that ignore culture and C vidual personalities shared a number of concerns with psycholop
. .. . ..
history, they nevertheless now widely agree .that individuals are
mt robots programmed by their cultuses to chink and behave*omly
in prescribed ways. Contemporary anthropoiogists use the term
agency to refer to individuals' abilities to reflect systematically on 3 which distinct personality eonnguranans were remarly assocl-
taken-for-gr~ntedcultural practices, to imagine a l ~ r n a t ; ~and ~, tad with particular cultures. In rhe middle decades of the twentieh
to take itdependent action to pursue goals of their own thoos- ce~llry,this became known as culture-and-personality ~eseareh.
ing. Unlike d e t e r u s t i c accounts, this vfew recognizes degrees d Anthropologists of the cultme-and-personality school invesri-
indisidud freedom: but unlike discussions of "free will," ic accepts nted a range of issues concerning the relationship between individ-
that p e ~ ~ pidea6
l ~ ' %re
~ always embedded in the cultural practices ds and culture. For example, if aculttlre could be understood as an
of'dx4r own time and place, which restricts in some ways both the rdividual personality writ large, did this mean that everyone who
dimnatives they are able to imagine and their abilities ta act freely rew up influenced by the same culture would have identical per-
inpursuit of those alternatives.
: ,# . 1\24 . , ...
. .,,,,, i . ' I . ,
! <' '
.'
1 r
" .
I I
>nalities?One psychological anthropologist, Abraham Kardiner,
noposed thar all members of a society did come to acquire what he
called a basic personality struckre in the couse oEindividua1 devel-
4.2 c u l t u r e and ~ e r s a n a l iN,.t ~ ,,, ,i, he called the primary institutions
How did anthropological ideas about the relationship bemeen . .
culture and the individual demlap? In North America, the earli-
est efforrs arose as Boasian anthropologist^ sought a persuasive
way to characterize differences between cultures. A key move
was made by Ruth Benedipt (15874948)who, i~her 1934 book all members had to adapt to the same primary institutions. Kardinet
Patzewu of Culture, urged b r maders to think of the integrated also spoke, however, of secondary ins?itations:established religious
patterns of a particula~cultme, or d t u r a l configurations, as if or ritual practices that help inctviduals cope with the challemges
they were the integrated pattetnsof an individual p~smality.This
metaphor-that ct~ltufesweze essentially individual personalities
"writ large1'-was perhap an inevitable development in a soci-
ety that exalred individu&mi Indeed, Boas and hi students were
persuaded that psychd~y-the study of individual minds-held
important clues for the understanding of culture.
As a resulr, cultural anthopologists began to look at individual socletles w~tha more complex exmion ox laDOr w o w generam q.
personality for e v i d m e t h t would reveal the unique configurations wider range of personality types than would smaller societies wihh
04 the culture to which an individual belonged. In general, person- more homogeneous
. institutions. A d

aiiy refers to ways of &&king, feeling, and acting that are unique Many critics of culture-and-personality researoh &*
to a speclfic indivib! and that might explain that individual's these specifications 60.~evague arrd difficult t o 3 d e m & ~ e ~ + w
studies attempted to gather a much richer body of data on per-
sonality traits from a wide range of sources and to use statistical
analysls to interpret the results. Such studies preferred to speak
not of basic personality but of modal personality, a ''typi~al"per-
sonality fm mmathrs of a particular sociery, which was revealed
as the cenmal tendency of a frequency distribution.
Debates about basie versus modal personalities highlight one
of the pensistent challenges of cultwe-and-personality research:
how to gather palid information about personality characteristics.
One way that anthropologists tried t o meet this challenge invoi'ee3
supplementing the mual range of anthropological fieldwork tech-'
niquesAwkht&&g methods borrowed from psychology.
Onz: tkchntque wide$ used in culture-and-personality research
i$ the projective test*For example, the anthropologist mey present
i d o r m r s with a series of ambiguous images or sketchy drawings
and ask them to describe what they think the images or drawhgs
repeesent. Because the images and drawing6 are deliberately vague
and open to a wide variety of pomible interpretations, anthropolo-
gists assume that subjects willproject their ownpersonalities into the
images; that is, they will interpret the images in a way that reveals
their own personality traits and psychological preoccupations. If
culture truly is a prime shaper of individual personality, then sub-
jects with the same cultural baekgraund should produce very simi-
lar results on the same projedve test. Unfortunately, experience has
shown that responses to prrgiective tests, like the images used in the
tests, ace not always easy to intecpret, Making sense of them requires
considerable additionalinfofm~ffonabout the culture of the subjects
and about the subjects themselves, including their understanding of
the purpose of the test-takhg situation.
I!-

Some anthropologists doifii culture-and-personality research have

asked questions about how individual personalities develop as
children mature into adults. Unlike most conventional psycholo-
gists, however, antht~~ologists do not automatically assume that
personality development is identical in all human societies. For
or another. Anthropologists wanted to determine how much of
Freudian psychology w&sculture bound and how muoh might be
unixensally ,valid.in all human societies.
Because Freud suessed the importance of yowg rchldren's
exp~iencesin their families, psy&ologicaI anthropoLogi6ta 'began
to pay attentionto .child-rearingprafitices:r h e ~ a x in s xhi~hadid!$
(espe&dly
. .. in a pat.ticular c d t ~ t tried e to shaP~?~ch.d&etr:~s
behavior .to b e g it in h e with culmeespecific ideals .of appipi.-
atenees. T h e y w o d lor ,emple,fthe way in which infmts
wezeh,afi&& %-by ablomd to.mave.theirmms and~legs;fredy~
or were&ejit+&tlY ,swaddled for severalmo.&s? ,Cawld,swhzreat-
@en% be~sdn.@p&s~@, h ~ ~ n s f i a f l ' e n cfor
e s the child's,later :petsbnd-
A

i@ ;&a&tpm@ah> Like:Freud, these psychological anthropatopi~ts

f~&f;edm~ke~~ev;an.ts:such &.the weaaing of nursing babjes from
he~berstOP the teaching of bowel and bladder control (that is, mi-
l@ttcairhg):Freud considered emotionally fraught poxer struggles
inthese areas m be inevitahleand frequently traumatic for children.
Thus, anthropologistswere inter&ed in what the personality conse-
quences for chlldren might be in cultur+ethat, for example, allowed
children to nurse until 3 or 4 yeas ~f age ot in which indoor toilers
and Western sanitation prx~tice%wereabsent.
Cross-cultural child-tearing stdies produced a wealth of d o r -
mation about the different m a p that chile%-& were enculturated to
beeome successfd adults in &@eraitcultures. This information con-
vinced many anthropolo@ that Freud's ideas were indeed heav-
ily influenced by the middle-dms, patriarchal, Viennese culture in
which they had been f o m d . Mmy anthropologiste concluded that
the repressive vdues and ~rh-&ee~ of that culture (paaicularly its
restrictions on females) &d qore to explain the neuroses and psy-
choses that Freud identified .than did his supposedly universal series
of developmental stages.,@at d y were such maladjustments absent
in cultures with differeat ?dues and practices, but sometimes the
"maladjusted" behvibr ww~iewedpositively. For example, indi-
viduals who would b , labeled ~ s ~ c h o tby i ca Freudian because they
claimed to hear thevoks, oiinvisible beings or to converse with the
dead have been &mn high status in many societies as sbamtaws, a
particular k h d offd@&us practitioner and curer (see Chapter 5 for
details on shamans). In addition, ethnographers have encountered
 their goals do or do not mesh with those of other people and
institutions. They are able and willing to. pursue personal goals
b a t cwe.spo,adto their ,wBqm deats a d opportudies, even
iltl tbe facg of $pal!~ppbsitidn.3o the; e:~p9~i@&on
,, gr~pnlar-
,iaed.hytlahaljarn,&g&ex$ ;a.kc$.&g~~~e,.i~~c~t~e-:~d-~e@~~a&it~
k.ese'a~ka&w&
~~.<~+.. the 7)reafs of @an12 W~a:d,,s@h@&*&@d$@&

of fa& ~ekih*M%w.~$
in hed ~ O ~ . . .~~ ~~ , ~& .
~~
world. This change in orientation first became well known in the
work of anthropologists in the 1950s and 1960s who came to
be known as ethnosciatists (see Chapter 3 ) . Ethnascience as a
school of thought was interested in the ways that people in dif-
ferent cultures categorized their experiences and classified objects
and events in the wider world. Working in the natbe language of
their informants, they made great efforts to expunge the influence
of their own Western scientific (or etic) aategories andlto faithfully
elicit their informants' indigenaus tor emic) systems of classifica-
tion (see Chapter 3 for further details). Cognitive anthropol~gists
who studied non-Westarn classification systems discovered that,
althaugh there was considerable overlap between, for example,
i n h e n o m dassifications of pIants and animaIs and biological
classifications offered by Western scientists, usually there were
also significant differences. Often, these differences had to do with
the funaional or symbolic sigaificace of certain plants or animals
ar other objecw Lound in everyday life. Objects 0 s events might be
- hecause they were all associ-
classified as "the same," for exarnpke,
ated with the same daily activity or jointly figured in a key ~jtual.
These segments of culturally significant
. activity were under-
stood as key cognitive units, or schemas, whose overall config-
uration overshadowed the parts .tsf which they were composed.
This meant that objects or events to& their central meanings
from the role they played in sehmas of high cultural salience,
not because they all possessed the .same set of abstract attributes.
Put a n a h way* people claesiiy objects in terms of prototypes:
typical instances of objects ~t events they are familiar with and
know most about. English apeakets living in the temperate United
Srata, for example, are &ely to think of robins as prototypical
f high ievel of experiential and cultural sig-
turds b ~ a u s e ~ otheir
nificance; that is, we associate robins with the return of spring and
renewed naturalgrowth. Other living things will then be classified
as "birds" based on the degree to which they resemble robks; for
example, smaW, songbirds like cardinals will be much closer to the
bird prototype tbaia will large flightless birds like ostriches.
Prototypes and schemas clearly are related to each other.
Together, they pmvide groups of people with distinctive, shared
cognitive tads that they can use to make sense not only of the
subjects who had never been to a Western-type school typically
used what was called a global style; that is, they first focused their
attention on the situation as a whole before paying ~ttentionto the
detailed elements that made it up. Global style was said to be field
depertdmt; that is, subjects requited knowledge of fihe broader con-
text in which the elements were embedded in order to &sense of
the elements themselves. This contrasted with the articulated style
regularly used by educated Western subjects. h this style, they &st
vaid attention to the detailed elementsthat make uo A
the ssitatim and
only later Imked~6wthe relationships these elements might have with
one mother. Articulaned style was said to lae field d e p e n d ~ t zthat
~
is, mbjre&s could consider individual elements in themselves without
paying @tt%tit%~ to the context in which they were embedded.
The &Id-independent, articulated style that requited peopke to
ign'ofe context looked as though it might be the outcome of in&
pendmce training in which self-actualizing individuals are taught to
ignose @ontextualrelationships thatmight restrict them. Similarly, the
field-dependentglobal styke looked as though it might be the result df
dependence training in which individuals are nfged to embedsor sub-
merge their persotla1 identitp &to the wider contextual identity of the
group. In fact, as cognitive anthropologists did more detailed work in
both Westefn and non-Westan culturks, they showed that aM people
in all cultures can make u s e d global and articulated styles; the main
differences have to do with which cogriitive styles are considered
appropriate for which tasks. Because both rules of appropriateness
and kinds of tasks vary considably from culture to culture, there
is a high likelihood that peq1e fiom different cultures will interpret
the "same" task in different mays and will choose different cognitive
str2tegies to cope wih it. Hitimver, one big difference does seem to
hold dversally: Those indi-~dtlals: regardless of cultural background,
who have experienced Western-style schooling consistently perform
like educated people from Western cultures on cognitive tests.
*I*'
5 111 .-
4.7 Emotion
In recent years, some cognitive anthropologists have returned to
a study of emotion, but their emphasis is quite different from that
of the culture-and-personality theorists. Rather than emphasizing
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 H UWAN BEINGS IN ALL cultures try to make sense of their
experience in ways thaslink them rneeningfglly.tothe %id+
world: Anthropologists use the term worldview to refet tti the
result of such intwpretiveefforts: an encompassing picture of real-
ity based on a set 6 f shred assumptions about how the world
works. P i n t j ~ ~ g o b g i.have
s t ~ long been ihtexcsted in how wo~ld-,I
view&ace conwucted and how people use them t~ make sense of
rheir experiences. Worldviews establish symbolic frameworks that
I highhght certain significant domains of social experience while
h
downplaying others. Multiple worldviews my coexist in a single
e~c&&* ~q 3 single worldview may dominate.

As they began to compare cultures, anthropologists repeatedly

encountered worldviews that reminded them of the religions they
knew from Euro-American societies. Over the years, they have
tried with mixed success to craft definitions of religion that took
these diverse beliefs and practices into account. Most definitions
that are currently in usedo seem to agree that a religion is a world-
view in which people per40nify caamic forces and devise ways to
deal with them that resemble the ways they deal with powerful
human beings in their satiety. In practice, this means that people
with religious worldviews conceive of the universe as populated by
powerful forces that may un&rstand human language and take an
active interest in human + W s . Although their presence ordinarily
may not be detectable by &; human senses, they are never very far
away. They may monitor human behavior and send punishments
to those who violate m x a l 'rdles, but if human beings approaoh
them in the proper fnamer, they may use their power to confer
benefits. Such pergd&ed beings have been variously called gods,
goddesses, spirits, aneestoxs, ghosts, or souls.
,,;<~do~f.-
-
I
68
 In societies where the connections of relatcdncaa do not end
with physical death, religion may take the form of what is called
an ancestor cult (for more about relatedness see Chapter 9 ) , In
these systems, the ancestors are believed to maintain a strong
interest in the lives of their descendents and are believed to act
to maintain social order by sending sickness or other misfortune
when the rules by which people are supposed to live are violated.
In these wcieties, it is often the most senior people who gain @eat
power f r a n the ancestor cult because they are closest to becwing
ancestors,
Othet w~ietietirmognize-the existence of sentient and pereoai-
fied fmcw.that are~lesslocal and more powerful. The entities may
be calledgods, and traditions in which there are many such beings
are sosnetiTnes called polytheistic ~eligions.The gods in polytheis,
die religions may have many of the personal attributes of hum-
I
beings, including gender, and they may produce children with one
another or with human beings as the gods did in the religion of
ancient Greece. Rut in some societies, the cosmic force or forces
recognized are barely personalized at all. This is true in the case
of mana, a Melanesian germ introduced inro anthropology in the
nineteenth centup to designate a cosmic force whose only human-
like attribute is the ability to respond to human beings who use the
correct symbolic formulas when they want to harness or channel
this force for their own putpq~es.h o t h e r minimally personified
cosmic force is an oracle, an b~teibleforce capable of understand-
ing questions addressed to it in human language and willing to
respond truthfully using s-y.mbolicmeans that human beings with
the proper cultural knowle:&p can interpret.
The beliefs that poplehaxe regarding the nature of the world
and the beings that Inhabi~k - h r m one part of a religious world-
view. But societies differ & haw systematically they have orga-
nized this knowledge and h how much leeway they allow their
members to offer alternaive interpretations. In some societies,
religious knowledge of-this kind is highly detailed, carefully orga-
nized, and formally passed on from generation to geheration.
When the truths it is believed to contain may not be questioned,
such knowledge is scrmtirnes called dogma or orthodoxy (correct
" I
to defend their claims to land in the territories that their ances- E r ~ mdm so&l routittwb,qecpahylife, recognimble by man-
tors visited and to negate claims to the same land made by other
members of the society. In short, to understand why myths have
the content they do and how that content changes wec time, one
must understand the social beliefs and practices of the people who
tell them.,
Thesecond approach to myth comes from the French &*opol-
ogist Claude Gvi-Strausa (1408- ). Whilenot denyingMaIi,nowski%
observations ahbut h e practical uses to which myths cmld be pat,
L&vi-Srraussshowed that the very structures af mythc narratives
are meaningful and m s t h studying in their own right. In this
sense, m ~ t biyte cogaitive tools for resolving logical contradi;
t i a s in human social experiehce that cannot otherwise be ove.
come in the marid that humw beings know. In particular, myths
ane attempts no deal wit& oppositions of continuing concern to
members o+ a particular socieq, such as the opposition between
men and women, nature and culture, or life and death, or opposing
styles of postmarital residence (postmarital residence is discusse"
in Chapter lo). Although these oppositions may be irresolvable i
everyday life, myths offer aa imagbative realm in which alrern:
tive possibilities and thcf (frcqaerltly undesirable) consequenct
can be explored. ,~ritutb~.n%&d
&@&
Many scholars, includrng Maltnowski and Lkvi-Strauss, have
assumed that the people whabalievein myrhs typically are unaware
how their myths are strucitwed m how they use myths to defend
their interests. Recent an~oprr~ogical work, however, acknowl-
- that ordinary i n e m k s & a society often ~e aware of how
edges
their myths stmctwe mearthg. And it is precisely this awareness
rhat permits them to mafit~%itste the way. myths
. are told or inter-
p e t i d in order to g a i ~
s@@&?t for. the version o t intetp$e~ation
that furthem their .god&, -. ,
', 'Y,&;~!TI),'.

-.
Anthropologists use &e tttin ritual to identify certain repetitive
social practices, many d which have nothing to do with religion.
A ritual is composed d a sequence of symbolic activities, set off
 nrr RILIQION,
WORLDVI~W, AND ART 75

gain the sympathy of a particular personified coemic being. One aocial world. The second, transitional stage of the ritual \*.aspar-
k i d of religious ritual involves addressing these pwsonifked forces titularly significant for anthropologist Victvr 'Turner :(1920-83,);
in human speech, often out loud, while holdig5thebody in a con. who reterred to it as thelimindpeciad(&m the Latin was&,l@>&,
ventional posture ol respect; .rhis & c d e d paaver. h a t h e r kind . Tw& noted that when people,are on the
of neligi,ous ritual ~involtres:offaing s@mething of ~dae.(goodsi, '(betw& a d be:mee~'"&&ex ia nor ,out*In
. ~ v i c , amonep,
, dC an appropriiltel'y,slau&rered. an,im.al)to: t&e of .passage, the symboiism ,associated mi& che trahsitional
inV@& & a s or their agenai this is c&d &pi&e:, PBQ~~.& exptmes ihat ainbiguityi It is described as being in
sac$&e. frequedy ,are performed when members: of a xeli&a@ isible, being in the witdernese, o r as death.
tta~thn:.om~8agetherip pro~essions,.meabrtgs>,wr~~&vedrt&y,rn& in the liminal stage tend M develop an intensp
this is callkci congegation. ade~hipwith one moth&=;sa&al &s.tjnctiom that oep&ated
sMemhers:., &s;o&e
. ,':' selmigious
traditions insist t h a t c z r ; m ~ ~ r i a ~ a ~ ritual w d will separa%c8 t h ,again aftemmd
b@ha~iss 4s ceesm@d.at times &-prayer or sauifice and &@ ,$q e irrelevant. Turner called &is liminal sdcial relationsh?~
.&~&a* &a nfl@&e. riku$il,,~hdeed,some religious t&t&& munitas, which is best underst~tid.as!anunstiumred or mini-
a i ~ ~~tw&~~b'(rjrtua;#l~e.Pev
d wakng a t t k t adherents,perfar* '. y structured community of .~qual.individuals,in rites of pas-
. .q$e re1igfo;us prze&e .&tIed o&opray .(<orre&pra&&bi th initiatian, f e y asample, the l~hfjqzlperiod is a
N t a11 rdiigiow tradiriom that,value rimal ,are orthopra~,,how& whkh those being ,E&.ted aze.mfa&,h b n , o ~ k e d @ e - ~ d
Ever; many enterItaina a 0k~@5ion.~@&d$lg c&rect pradi_q, that their elders begevie i e & q must maszek &they a w aq b~
and individual peapie! sr -inwe~46mtr.&gious practitioners "ant. age:.of life thep;ireabo~tto efitecL
free t o devekop the* m.~ittiais:.'gcR ~ i a n tof s -morebroadly wt:f~cs>itwwr)I :nlsmii:aret+
o ~ k e riwalsS,
d . ,. . tU.;~&~,,,~,$~,p:~+~v.
.,.,:i,...
One. pa.cular kin,&:& r $ ~ & !&s , d r a m consideraMe $atten- 7.4~ q g j and
c W&TCT& ,.., 1j+1,:, ,?ILO
&an from anthropol6gt$tS;:the riteefpas@age,which occurs when Anthropologists have also paid much attentihn to abo~herform
one or more membezs a&s ~ ~ ~arei ritllalJy e p transformed horn of ritual called magic The persisxente of definitions of magic that
one kind .of social pepsoil &pmsfio,&er. Rites of passage often a k include the term stlpernamrr@iisanocher iditation ~Fthedifficulty
initiations into dulthoad .w&n gbls are made women or bays of using one culmre's definLtions io describe practices in other c a -
made men, but they may;&s:@m~:kmarriages (when shgke.pe NreS, ~ e n e t - a l lmagic
~ ; refem $9 ritual practice's that do not,have
become a married ~oq@E@)~, &e : k t hqf children fwhena new technically or scientifiaakty kpparent efieck brg are believed by the
edters the herld), or $&&k @hen k i n g relatives becegeanas- actors to have %ninflience on the outcome a4 psacticil matters.
tors). T h e and other- g&%ded life-cycle transitions frequently People ttmy believetbat the corred iperformence of'suchritgals can
gre marked by rituak&%&dOanectparticipants EO q ~ e s t o r ior result in healing, the growth.of plants, the rewpery of lost o r s$o-
gods or other cosaie,&ms. &&opologists pobt out'zhat rites len objects, getting a hit in baseball, or safely sailing an ouuigger
of passage regularly fdg*.a&ee-part sequence. First, the ritual canoe in the Pacific Otean. 'The classic anthropologcal expla~a-
passengers ithat is,,theq~~$@fle who are changing their social posi- tion of magic comes from theresearchof Bronislaw Malinowski in
tion) are separated,f~~mi&eL:previous, everyday existence. Neext, the Trobriand Islands early in the twentieth c e n t q . ~ E i n ~ ~ s S c i
they pass thropgh s ,~&~&%anal state, in wbicbr they are neither suggested &at all living .societ~esb a ~ develaped.
e effective i a o ~ l ~
in the old positim ~@k.;pr&in. the new one. Fin& with th& new edge and practical techniques for,dealing with the. id. &$,the
status, they are rasmg@t@d,or brought back, into the everyday same time, however, hey. also re& ihar thsir p r a q b l t@.~m@$:
 over the world hm limits9Where.:&& c e u M m & d r b W l a d p
'&c&&&&$wk

r,
effects of belief in the efficacy of magic spells. E. E.Emna-Pritchard
(1902-73), in his classic monograph Witchcraft, Oracles, and
Magic Among the Azanda (first pnablishzd in 1937), demonstrated
that the beliefs and practices associated with all thee phenomena
were \perfectly Ldgical if ,one accepted certain basic assumpbions
aboutthe world.
Among the Azande, witohcraft involves the p e r f m a n c e
l human beings believed to possess an innate, n o d u - I
i
I
of e ~ i by
man "wir&waft substance" that can be activated wicheut the
ind'iidualas awareness. (Dither anthropologifssss,udng batkde, '
, operate, even in the so-called scientific West. After all, the "xi-
witchcraft as their pnotrstype, have applied the term to similar
I bdfeh and practises found in other so~ieties.') Fur the Azande~
ulrit~hixaf~ctads to explain misfortune when other possibilities
I ham been dis~orinted~ For example, if a good potter carefuI2-p-
p~ekmmhis pots and fises them as he always does but they
' Beliefs and practices bearing aresemblancetohandewitchcraft
' are found in many societies, in Africa and elsewhere. Comparative
still break, he will attribute his misfortune to witchcraft, and
I his neighbors will probably believe him. But if a carelea6 pot-
ter is sloppy when firing his pots and they bteak, he may claim
that witchcraft was the came, but no one who knows him will :
believe it.
Evans-Psitchard & Q W ~that t'he hentire system of Azande -
beliefs and practices comerning w i t c h c d , oracles, and magic
was rationaf if we assumed that unseen forces exist in .
the world and that nothing happens to people by accident. For
example, when someoae fallls v e q ill or dies, the Azande assume
that the person has been b t c h e d . But the Azande are not help-
less because they know they consult oracles who will help
them pilipaint the w&& rwponsible. Once the oracle has identi-
fied the witch, they can send a ritual message to the accused witch,
who can offer a ritual oepIy-thattwill stop the witchcraft if indeed
he (it is usually a man] has been the cause of it. If the bewitched
person dies, however, the next step is to obraim vengeance magic, .
which can be used so seek out the witch responsible and kill him.
'Th~stechleal use oftbr~ru~ahould not be confused with everyday uses of the
U
wbrd in contempo~aryWeetern soaeues, stdl less with the practices of follow-
em of mowments like %?am, which are very dlffereut.
r m w ~ ~ ~ f i u C f l i o i ~ w AoN D~ A~R T~ 79
~ v ~ ~ w ,
-.-
The Azande do not collapse in fear in the presence of wicch-
craft because they know how to deal with it. Moreover, they
make an accusation of witchcraft only after cross-checking the
oracle's pronouncements carefully. Because all the steps in the
process are carried out in great secrecy, who has accused whom
and who has killed whom with vengeance magic is not open to
public scrutiny, so contradictions in the system are rarely exposed.
This, Evans-Pritchardsuggested, is how all complex belief systems
mtific method" at its most stringent is hardly followed regulady
by ordinary citizens or even scientists once they are outside the
laboratory. Evans-Pritcharss work has inspired many subsequent
studies that debunk ethnocentric Western notions about the sup-
posed irrationality of magic and religion.
*
studies of these phenomena revealed interesting variation in the
patterns of witchcraft accusations in a given society. Patterns of
accusation fall into two basic types: Wirches are wil outsiders,
or witches are internal enemies, either members of a rival faction
or dangerous deviants.
These different patterns of accusation have different effects on
the structure of the society in which they are made. If the witch is an
evil outsider, witchcraft accusations can strengthen in-group ties as
the group unites in opposition to the witch. If the witch is an internal
enemy, however, accusations of witchcraft can weaken in-group ties,
perhaps to the point at which one or more factions in a c o m m u ~ y
might leave and build a new village; then the entire social structure
may have to be rebuilt. This, anthropologists argued, was not really
a bad thing because what had prompted the accusations of witch-
craft in the first place was a communiq that had grown too large f.os
the prevailing political organization to maintain order. The kt&-
craft accusations provided a relatively nondestructive way to restore
the community to the proper size for a kinship-based sys-
tem. If, on the other hand, the witch is a dangerous internal devian
to accuse that person of witchcraft might be an attempt to c
the deviant in defense of the wide&valuesof the community8
. . -
1 'I;;*
.1
 5.5 ~eligiousPractitioners 1 d.

Anthropologists also have devoted attention to the organization of

religion as a social and cultural institution. V i a l l y without excep-
tion, anthropologists have stressed that complex skts of religious
beliefs and practices are not merely the by-products of idjrosynaatkc
individual invention. Rather,they are the products of coflective c d -
tural construction, performing social and cultural tasks that inyo1
far mose than tending to the spiritual needs of supporters.
The mtrask between different kinds of religious inr;Xitutio
in different socikties can be illustrated with reference to the &-
tence and role ~f specfabd rzligious practitioners. In many s m d -
scaie, saCiedes, apetiallzed ritual knowledg~or practice may simply
belmg to dld~rswho perform r e q ~ z e drituals for their kin. Other
1 societies, however, do accord a special status to religious special-
ists, and anthropologists have classified them in two broad catego-
ries: shamans and priests. Shamans are part-time religious specialists
I
commonly found in small-scale egahtarian societies. The term shah
man itself comes from Siberia, and Siberian shamans constitute the
prototype that anthropologists have used to classrfy similar relt-
gious specialists in many other societies. They are believed to have
the power to contact powerful cosmic beings directly on behalf of
others, somerimes by tramling te the costnic realm to communi-
cate with them. They &en ykead with those beings to help their
peopleby curing them, .for. example--and they may also bring
hack messages for them. In &a cases, the shaman enters an altered
stateof consciousnessto seek andremove the cause of an iItness that
is afflicting a persdn who has Gome for healing. In many societies,
the training that a shamanife*ves is long and demandmg and may
involve the use of powedd pphotropic substances. The position
of shaman may be danger&& The effects of entering altered states
of consciousness can be leng lasting. The power to contact cosmic
beings or to heal is itself pmeived as ambiguous in many societies:
The person who can inemme for good can also intervene for ill,
and shamans are somet&es"feated as well as admired.
Priests, by contrastj care skilled in the practice of religious ritu-
als, which are carried out f m the benefit of the group or individuals
within the group. Priasta frequently are full-time, formally trained
take a syncretistic form, but syncretism also may be rejected in
favor of nativism, a return to the old ways. Some nativistic move-
ments anticipate a messiah or prophet who will bring back a lost
golden age of peace, prosperity, and harmorly, a process o h
called revivalism, millenarianism, or rnessi.mim.
One of the most important aspects of religious changes in
recent years has been the spread of religious movements into areas
of the world that already have establishd rebgious system3 of their
own, This is notably the cqse in Latin America where Pmtestant
denominations and sects, have expanded dramatically in recent
decqdes at the eqqnse of the Roman Catholic Church. These
denominqtion~ft~quentlyoffer a more emotional, dramatic the-
olom a%w& p~ altered states of consciousness known as ecstatic
we@@&+ m$stiences. These include trance, speaking in tonguesL
ezy+rns, and possession. In other cases, they offer a more in&-
midualistic theology.
In the United States, anthropologists have studied so-called
New Age movemerits: post-1966s foqms of spirituality that exploxe
divinity within the individual. New Age movements have amacted
people who seek to beak free of &e ddogmas and restriaions of
organized Westerxi reli6ious institutions. Followers of such move-
ments believe that adopting alternative, especially non-Western,
religious practices will p&t +,em to develop an individual spiri-
tuality free of such restrictions, b o q g the berter known prac-
tices are chandeling, Hqrp*, Canvergence, and Neo-paganism,
sometimes known as vice*.
In recent years, anthrp~&&rs have examined not only the
power zelations involved @ p n c r t l s m and revitalization but also
the way that different w ~ ~ l ( 1 ~ iare
i y srelated to the creation and
maintenance of poweE adattom, within societies. For exarnlje,
power differences mag +, swstained by differential knowledge
as when some groups Qd,pwple within a society ham access to
iqportant knowledge, d9b& not available to everyone or when a
limited number of indi.v.ii4tualsexercise control over key symbols
and ritual practices*kj-y cases, those with power in the soci-
ety seem to have sutc~s:&llymade use of the self-evident truths
embodied in their w ~ l d x i e wto continue to control others.
m. - -
IF
 case that the aesthetic response is a universal feature in all cultures
and, as with play, may be part of the human candition. This does
not mean that everyone in dl places and at .&times responds in
the same, way to. a given wock of @--quite the .contrary,, there is
aqple : e ~ i d e m that awthetic response varies kom p h e to p h c ,
Nevertheless,
,,.~. as p a t of one of anthropolagy's prc~j~cts over Gh$i
:y~ar~~,~nrhrop.aLogists
~ have. been eager to undermine &heoomPI&
cent.Western assumption 'of cultural and social mperf.@itya2 @d
emphasizing the presence oi "art" in n o n - W e s t e r n . s : o ~ i e ~ . & ~ . ~
when, people in .a.par~cular,swiety do not recoglrize. a ?id,@
,term, has. ~ o : n @ i ~ t.o ~ ~,,this
, &Brrqiecr. , .

I In r$k~fi~t..p%s,
,. it h4s bbabme increasingly ththecase&at>a
~ . x q
.*j&xa~gg,@t.~,cq&q*eqf
, ~,~.
. &wanactivity ace.mnsider.e&toibe,+ , .
1:, ,
bFp.eo:,$~k~$e~t~n.sacieties,
.-

,. ,_
,.*
& ~ e ~ o d u c twere
ljrr:i
s n~t,~rmIuced;to
4:
acad it.is equally dear thatmany
be "art." Western art.mv6p
, . ,, ' ,
ta m s pment furniture, religious or dev,otional objects, j.ewk&$
,.-,; '( ,desig&d f a personal adordmwt, te&noloog, arms and'arttia-.:
and much mate from Western history a s qrt, and they d , the
j ~ s aI ~ ~
f i r sbjects .fsom ~gfi:Vestem sociaiqs as !4; Anthropolo&$ti'
Shelly ,Erxington (I$ q&p&?$ $) between art 4~
.&@.qguishes
im.t&on and air by ?DFqpda%o~. Art intention
objects that were made to:,ba,mt, such ,as.Impressionist paintine;,,,
Art by appropriation, h&e&, consists of all the othkr obje&
that "became art" b,e,e~u&et a Fitah moment certain peopdci
(they colild he local .art$5t~.~ @ tuqgeum'c&ators, art dealers, ayt
colle.ctor.s, interior dcj~ignag)de:cided that they belonged to th&
categoty 9f arti Becafipe $Q&$@Q@@~ q t dealers, and art collectq~s
are fpmd everywhere in &. 'vozld today, so too it is now the
ca6e that p~tentiallyafi? m;2ttmiialabject crafted by human bands,
ean be appropriated by ,ybw-einstitutions as "art." The set of
people and institutians!c~nceinedwith defining and maintaining
art in one form or ,a~o+~e:make up an art world. This includes
artists, art hist~rianq,~. &tics, curators,, gallery owners, a n
witas*, designers, ark> . . ~Qilgctors,art patrons, museums, ,galler-
ies, art ychools, ags ~:!@$nes, art fairs, paint companies,, stone
,quarries, ,and so £ g -&, . ~ M these people and institutions make it
possible for the art;&q,r! carry out his or her but also help
 A number of anthropologi,sts have considered how iden-
tity becomes connected with art (and vice wrsa); for example,
how indigenous people in Southeast.Alaska use commercial and
"towist" a r ~ ~ h l a n k e tpict;uris,
s, ~e$&p'-t& ;iAni+ex membership
+thin a auIew$l group (Buten; 2a0.6). In &&kt casesj ap~&r@.
pologrsts have craced the .M@ences&SPcl;e.s:'s;ternatt~mafkesa n dhe
pfodm'&p o$ f i s f h e s rn. w w n g@o&or h e eitadhed ~ O J ~ P
the Aboriginal acrylic paimings have. become :si@ifi;me,mz&
&s. bf the Ausaafian stase. A$ .tha ,sams .time, an .Awtdian &.
WOi-kdh * ~emaged
, wkt.h ~ ~ f m e c t i ~inn&tlie.
s : remote area6 @ f t ~ & :
bsl ,,themajtj~reitiea if Anaalia, and such att ~e,atefg,
a s : E e W v ~ &eiw.
k &,i$&mi ,k
.1 . , i ~ h i i t ~ ~;;+#
m?;

h rehent years, anthropologists have begun to direct their gaze

at the ways that the media-television, radio, photography, f i k 9
1)
, and soap operas-are received, understood, created, and used tbp
people around the world. The media have extraordinary power
and exceptional reach, and an&ropolagists have realized that the,
effect the media have oh people's lives can be very great. Some of
this work connects to processes of globalization (see Chapter l f ),
including the ways that television programming diminishes, iE not
erases, the boundaries of t h e and space (somewherein the world,
Gilligan's Island is heing broadcast). But at the same time, some
of the international cable teevision companies (Sky, for example]
have begun regional services ehat "reterritorialize" the medium by
providing programming thq is culturally and linguistically appro-
priate for the different parts of India or China. Some of the most
interesting work deals wi& devision and the cultural politics of
nation-states-for exam&J&,India. Purnima hfankekar (1999)
connects television, wpfla&ooh, and the nation-state In examin-
ing how the televisioq @rials (soap operas or mphical or histori-
cal serials) on the n%tippaltelevision service were created and how
they were received by vimers. Mankekar suggests that television
broadcasting in India 60& underlies and undermines the creation
of a nationalist conmiousness on the part of viewers. * , ."I. 7 4 ' "
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0 NE OF THE BASIC CLAIMS of anthropology is that human
beings are a social species; that is, we have evolved to live
with and depend on others of our own species. Biological anthro-
pologists have demonstrated, for example, that human infants are
positions. Each such social position is called a status, and all indi-
viduals come to occupy a range of different statuses in the c0eours.e
of their lives astheytake part in a .caariet)raf s ~ i a l . i m e m c t b n ~ ~ I
People h o w what to do in such iiteractionektcause e a i ~ s t a ;
tus is asgociated with a co~respondingrde:a b-ndke of rights and
I
dbligatims apprLopriatefos occupants bf' rhe scams in ques,@;
~ h u s ,Eor ex&plej the kinship status, 96 parant- mighr inrclude;
awing 0 t h $kings, t h e . ~ % htot discipli-ne ,en& e&i$L&en. and r.he
wbkigation to feed &em a d send them to 6haol'. Violation cd the
a .

born earlier in the gestational process than are infants of apes and role reguirementa associateddh a particular :social sca;tus genbr-
monkeys and that our young are dependent on other members of ally bringe abrm$.d&app>ovalf-iom o~herfn6mbes-of sakiew.
the group for far longer (15 to 20 years and more) before they S(yC$a1 sJso AS&@ish basid h d g ;of m:a a1 sta-
'-

are capable of establishing themsdves as mature adults. Human tus@ fbwd in. ail $&+&es:. !asc*&,~d :dd achieved. d;n a s d e d
interdependence means that we cannot survive as lone individu- staws;3~:s . ~ h t &m.hawe ]i&e,.con@ok$yo,^ ate b r n
s t a m @v@%,
als but need to live with others; that is, we must live in society. into ~ C Q :.@~w;fam
I ,&&jjop@&$@ :@ft*n ewamphex from ,
When anthropologists speak of hbman society, at minimum they hmafl ;1&Bfii.pqm6, Fg~&ga~Li'6t&eei&c&i&e~ $$amsi.=ban tm
mean a group of human beings living together whose interactions born, yeh are.a ~ ~ ~ ~ a y & y q1 @ $;m!a
a ,~&p w @ f pMd, &ju&ery
with one another are patterned in regular ways. Such organized when ;you have pij:!&*;@@&mhly
groups might also be identified by the particular geographical ter- a puenr, mother or.faher. a$~f?b;e&
sta,txzsesS~ f & ~ & ~ ~ ~ & @ ~
ritory they inhabit, by the particular language they speak, or by the notbe discarded, and any pe~sonwhoq$plifis will be eqecced to
particular customs they follow-any or all of these features might fdlfill the role obl.igations that go with. the 's6atusaVety ;&fe*&nt,
distinguish them from other, neighboring societies. Such distinctive however, is ari achieved status, one-&at y.o+may rrot assume weil
features are in turn mostly cultural, which is why anthropologists or unless:you meet geftainoriteria through your own (or others'.)
developed the habit of s p e a h g as if each identifiable society came efforts. For instanoe, being a college graduate is a n achieved ,sta~-
equipped with its own culture, and vice versa. Still, anthropologists tus, and achieving that status ofdinarily te&ire~both hard work
recognize that no culture is monolithic, that cultural patterns may .and financial resources. &ch member of a society occupies a mix
be borxowed or shared by people in different societies, and that crf ascr<besland achieved statuses.
a single society may contain within it representatives of different S~aius* and thtk.aecompanyi"g roles, m e not isolated but
cultural traditions. . are often l'jnked ZQ one mother in eomp1eanenrary pairs or sets.
Foi; e~eample,tkstatuses of parents' and children (or mother and
7.14 i
.,, , , I
daughter, fa&ef +adson, mo&mand son,or father anddaughter)
6.1 what is social Organization? , $ .
arerecip~ocalrelationships. Thus, the right of paren.ts to discipliire
Anthropologists, together with other social scientists, have devel- &&&&en matche>&e oblQ9.*on of to obey their par-
oped a set of analytic concepts that help describe and explain the @$% .(intheory., at least). To deqcribe such a clu~tef~of statuses wi&
orderly interdependence of human hfe in society. In particular,
they have noted that people who interact in society do so not as
cu@pk-entary roles is no be& to identify key-endurhg~s~cials&.,. . .... ..,. .
ti,a&iip.~&at provide a fomr$,a*ion for regularized, p$tferned sogd
8 8 .
&que individuals but as incumbents of publicly recognized soc~al int&$c&,ti;,@rsocial s m c w e . &,soci8l ,. .
metur&?fs not $i@p@~
matter of interlinked and complementarystatuses and roles attached One widely influential model was proposed by Emile Durkheim
to individuals. Most societies regularly associate particular sets of (1858-1917), a French sociologist considered a founder of bath
statuses with particula~s a i a l groups defined'in such terms as gen- modern sociology and modern anth-ttopolem: Durl&eim ww
der, family, lineage, da-ni.occupationjand politid o r religious affil- interested in what held a socigy together,, .eowas&g s&idete~
iazion.; The rel&tio&hip.s.that ljnk members ,d these various gc.hl heldtosther by mechanicalsolidarity W& thqgekekd:t&&b~4~
gtoqpps may :+Is0,b:e highly structured, often at;&unda common ;!ask organic solidarity, Meoh.hanical@dmiq chara.a.erked:smaU.~ed.e~,
or c- +ocus. The clusters of. social statuses and gro.ups that
&.are.suchammrnon focus usually a w ~ n e ios,~tutions.
d Thue,.we
speak& edutia,ri.oiralinstitutions that uriite individu~lsand gmups
whose sc?ci.d s&ttq$es,f~.rus " ~!educa&nd
n issub. a r 6f p,litical
in&tituti~ns ,$ha%brixis :tagelk& indiGdudsSq d igraups. whose &a-
ruse6 fwus ,oa h:&s&n of pornen in the soupy, S a m e h e s
$;acid.~&%@&@fez$@ ~ to, h< e arrangemen of status, positions
and $iloqp@Wirb.r@s@~ct. tD. each whm. By contrast, social.organiza-
&g fidkrs:to-rhe interlocking: - role xelationsbi~sthat are, advzfed
L

a r h a damsw have, incrnbents and groups- h a ~ er n a b e ~ s *all. of

w h m are gehg abbut.the daily busime@sof %xirzg,
AII this terminology &;associatedwith the schod &,sogial sri-
entific &~.ughtcalled functionalism (for mcm &wut functional-
ism, see Chaptee '2)- Fmctimahm,was s~:$fis!m;ea'c influential in
rhe..m&r.tw*&& cntuty.and has sinae.,bnamawhcri&cbed, bnt
many anthropologists and socic&g~~,>w&m to find. its termi-
nology useful far descrilzimg-.ba&#@~d ~.bbadans,,even when they
do net swept some of i@s~~@e:&&fi&f@@~&~p tlons.
'
8 i
Mi# w
' m J!: 1" :
. . :,,',,
, A d A. .:* , cwebdl..health and :strengthofthe whole. Thus, organic,mlida~'*k
6.2 Dimensions of Socia Organization
. I ,
. ,
b , ,,
One issve of great merest in the early years of anthropology and
sociology was the contrast between large and powerful European
nation-states, w~thindustrial technology and a complex division of
labor, and small-scale societies, with little or no social stratification,
whose members used simple tools to make a living and who were
socially organized almost entirely on the basis of kinship. The con-
trast was sometimes phrased as an opposition between so-cqlled civ-
ilized and so-called primitive societies. Sociologists were supposed
to explain how "civilized" societies worked, and anthropologists
were supposed to explain how "prhtlve" societies worked.
! ..
mak%nglormetalworking m i g h t o t have had the time o r resources
to produce their o m food o r ~ l o t h i theyn ~ became dependent on
other specialists-food.pr~ducers urr tailordfor these goods and
servites. Such interdependgate aeant't& kny stgle occupatiisl
grouping could n6t easily break away frsm the larger social whole
becauss It was not self-sufficient. Like the organ systems of a livin~
body, spec?alized ~s.u.bgroupsof complex societies clung t o g e h e ~
,.
and depended on one anodmr to survive, thereby preserving
..
could hald ,much la~gei-societies together f a more, secmely -d
could mechanical solidarity.
Anthrspologjsts incorporated concepts l i e these. &YO! '&:&&
ewn analpic t~oJkiras they ammpced to make t&, &e:~*&
ety of forms that different human mieries ass:m& ig &@gipj
!
times and places. They also,introduced new concgpxs*:q1
".? ,
bm
further ~&s&cti~nareveaIed by .e.hographic~reseaveh ;@;m>t$$h
msst basic is ,the fou~foldclassification of so
sf their foi-m of politl~al'
o ~ a n i ~ t i o 1band,
1:
state (discwsedat.greater length in Chapter Tkk;~.
similar fowfold classification of soc&&qa!~
 -
of economic organization: .
- . herders, extensive aasicultur-
foragers,
alists, and intensive agricultucalists (discussed at greater length in
Chapter 8). The correlations between these diffezent eiassifications
highlight the connections between the mays that people make a
living a d the ways that they organize themselwes politically.
The,~orreiationis not perfect, however, and this is highlighted
bv ta%e.thapair of concepts that cro$.scutsthe earlier dassifk-
t i o h %'hatis, anthropolo@stsdi&nguish,betwem egaliratjw s.o,ii-
eties, in whidh dl members (or c.omponent groups) ,enj,oy~OQ&JX
the #%wedegr6&of wed.th, porn=, and prestige, and m d e d
so~i@ies,, @ @M.,$o@er&cmb@rb(ar 'c.owpcment groqps,) have
@e%w!(a~ds&@p@&anep$) :ac~s&$, to Borne or 41 of these h r e e
%dud~,@@w$e>~ .Bat & :&&.m,y of 'the transition f r ~ i negsllitar-
,
-, iam ~s.p&etbs(#,b;?&s md i&ys,: la: the current classifictgion) EO
mati$&d;ss&e.&s i(&&awa~d .gates) is not fully understo.od.
.%M a&~pa1.gists. pap pla"#h$Iar a y e ~ t i o nt o societies. k n q q
throygh gthr&graph%ar-k o q w m c h a e o l o ~in which egalitar-
ian relbtions ~haxe.&em to m.de b ~ ia $ .whioh p.wmanent, inher-
ited.pagems ,of g*i:%k sqa&e6&aahaqe.net yet been established,
Such societies, like.those of, th.e :&digenpus peoples of the north-
west coa*loi Worth &+& ac &e Tq&riand Islanders of Papua
New Guinea,. .&epended+gt$:f@#@&@,, @rextbnsive agriculture for
subsistence, just as m q + ~ , ~ q g j dsocieties
~ ~ ~ hdo. But they also
have social structures t h . t i : b t e i ceatain individuals and their
families above everyone, d&?,;admvin~them privileged access to a
limited number of h$&-$cm~. gasitions. Anthropologist Morton
Fried c d e d these r&,g~&&&~, &$me of whose members r a k e d
above others in stxiailkm@ghwt did not have disprop~rtionate
access to wealth or ,%hi+consensus is that fully stratified
societies. probably ~~P$Q@$$$taukt of rank societies, but the ezact
m~shanismsfox the C W ~ & & O I h~ a w been much debated and may
yell hape been seme&4e.,d'@e~ent' in each case,
Ethnographic:~e$tbk.o~~g.parted Durkheim's observation that
small-s@le s,ociet~~~$@&,,@ i;ie organized primarily on the basis of
b - h i p . As we &&av~l'@j@apter9, kinship ;systemsmust be fairly
elaborate to aarg gj*.:.&i~ task, and anthrop.~logy,traditionally
has solzghtto undb@diand compare the many &fexent kinsltip
knowledge revealed only to initiates, which they are not allowed o m lowest are $he a u ~ ~ ~
or ua n,t o, u c h a b ~wbs.at.&t a,& ,

to share with outsiders. Initiates may also progress to higher posi-

tions within the society to which they belong, but they must pay
fees and receive special instruction to do so. In addition to these
hiternal activities, secret societies also carry out speci$ic tasks a h

public. Social relations between men and women tend to be highly

e g a l i ~ i a nin cultures with secfet societies; for example. the male
roro society and female Pande society of a village might jointly be
responsible for supervisingpublic behavior and sanctioning - those
who.violate.expe&etd ru1,es 03 co~&ot.
F o m s of s o ~ i o
d w f a a t i o n , such as: kinship and sodalities,
c& ~hll. be fowd ih:s&&es :.hat &re.socfallystratified, but thejr
g~irpg. &p'm.ance $re mo&fied by new featares of social
, , . , . . , , a #ustsin the inequalities on whidh social stratification
Sti"nmPrh'.
, ,

?s b-a~d.Thaf i%> swaiified sbE?eties are internally divided iuto a

am:ber of groups;that .mearranged in hierachy. The most
importantbsuch ' b r c h i c a l smctufes studied by ,ir:n&tpplogists
have been a t e and class> I,'J- 1 : ' ,,+ , ,.P.,mw:n.~. . '..:'I
b ' . ~

~,;;,!,; :...>. .
.I.. &yj*"r(-. ':l.z.'.:
%.. I & ? : ,CA4~&.#. " '.) ,
&-3.casteand class ,+;LM2:-b.,i , .!.,:,

Antlhropolagists traditiouaUy desc2fb met@societies as stratified

..
individuals out of die s&p;3;u'p: Srr. which they were born, is cot
&&.. ~ltho~&:t.he;~ri~r&a1.pr~ory.~e for caste societies comes
from Indga, 'an&ropoIogislts haw wed the term to describe similar
scacai & ~ & @ e ~ e &@:&' j ? ,e~
$'societies.
~ t**a&&~
,b@&-~ ;a,& &e&&f&n $guth Asia, each caste traditionally is
ddf"f& nw,6# gs &&:endogamousgroup within which members
m w chose mates $see Chapter 10 for a deiiilition of endogdmy)
hat &terms. of 'a tradiEional occupation wfth which the caste
is. identitie4 :(s$lt makes, farmer, warrior, or priest, for eicample).
Each o~apatfon,and the caste associated wi@hit, i~ ranked on a
scale of ~ , ~ I.akd
r y .pollution, with higher-ra&ed,cas$es subject to
vaifbus$ie~ar.y&ridother taboos required.to mainraincastepurity.

:
.
Highest ti &ep&tyscake are the Brahmim, the vqetaiian priestly
<!'
8
.:
mobility from one class into another is not for,hidden. An cmpl~asis married couple (@he
on class rnohilitytends ta hlghhghttxcejptid, mccessful individu-
dq he i+aiseW$k,d fw lakert.o&&t;r:ol~~6a vh,&wer1ookbg
. h e md* !ctgi*,f dggs b a d a ~ e i sf a f e mmy
w p ~ iti
:saeiiitidk
, .. fGtea*Bi!t+ih,
. , example);si.w@.+
for +SB$ d ! ; + ~ ~
das3 an&il.ig., An die ,samne,time, em4 pkasi&g:*'im8:w~&,.&L
$fi.a &ste &item @,~mav+ $3~4 a O1~I'~&&&~q'~.& . .&
r&tcj cmee lmetjo,&s$be kysi cWUFC~ ~ p e r m a n 6 ~mnl.&tps
~
difik&~,&$t&~ s ~ e t ~ & , . s i j h ~ ~ ~ e ~ p ,&;eF&at&g
s @ c s e ~.&&
d, &&
. .
Ntivep&k$tim.qf;&$r '&ste:Mt&@ & ~qeqs&ca.steisY.~W~.:.
' B e w&as i&@&ed S & @ q i ~ in~trat&e(Z&tiikt&$ & qt$t~
+
&,$ i++&p&Ede,.. &i+j$m
-*, i&'t:~: a p swppd$ed t0 9mbp+ $&;a :$I&
,&as@him.+z, mni :-&a ibweefl ,,suchgroups do :muf;~
M&,,,
. ,. w&$ki
. ,, ,, , ,,. ae
idass .entagonim berWr;db+
,

f@?&dJ p@j&Dkdj, .&&& $e predkted uhimate:lgTwe&

@&jdwk Gi@$s;,mf@e ,
& qhick &@ :~*&ers wo& &enhaw ;&&
,&&&sz &; md 8

&ZbpomjQ~&s w&&g

mess ~f those at h a ~ & ~ ~ ~ & ; e ~ s tm P as w

t e pmsuch
~ a posi'tjo~
se& $&t; i ~ t & q @ @
. , ,
$
,
, : &$dndiii&&
~ ~ @ ~ frm &ffe?;&
1:avpj@ 4EX hiefaq&,&&kB$femi is, not regularly . c h a r a ~ t e f d , ~
by iyu@hqicjke@e&,&& af@!b&$. ., .,.< .,.,
\
;$f ili#ereet r&d @amps fJ&d
q~nyioIg$ wigs $ a + ~ ..@ ~ ~ l ~ with ~ i one s ' & &E&k
o ~.&t&ret.., p
f a m @am are ag&ww&;d'fBaent o @ ~ ~ ~ mei@7
a , a & ~ ~ ~ ~ & ~ ~
b&s, m;ry h ? ediJr ~ $$$@&$@
,. qpnhact w i h m e ..qo*er +e;n
t h q ~ u e dane: ama+eds!&m-for example,,ia the wodcp1am~
i~,s$itutionalized od&sTh3e+w&y
:wmeefiions&&t~ $1 hkoneinE ,to %&d

-
beGamge h e y ,dotmBrlj?i&~ve a member of a h i g h h c a ~ , g @ ~ $ & i
(&@ &&-) & a. . ,~... ~ , rqf a low-rmcnking gr@p ,(.& cfiebtj. A
e nthe
w i ~ ~ & c m e n 8 e d ~ . e x ~ e ~ 6 t f d f iis t aLath
g G Aaaeriean: insti-
t a b i ~ ~ ~ co@asenshoad. ~ # , S, i ~a reIq'tiOns&jp
~ ~ ~t t x q~
n,: ' "

societies, but they are rarely sufficient to characterize all the sig-
nificant dimensions of social organization found in such societie
Anthropologists recognize the importance of additional ~ a t e g o r i ~ ,
used by members of these societies that may be embedded withip
or may crosscut caste or class strucmres. With this in mind, th@
also have long paid attention to the category of race and ha&
grown increas~nglyinterested in distinctions framed in terms $dA
ethnic identity, gender, and sexuality. , , . ,., uL , . ,o r ,
i .
8 ,& ,Q,,, 3 >/: , ,.I > , ' ,<$ v d l r . , 2 ,?
6.4 Race 1 . " I , . 4 ! ~ , , Y , , . * : I , \ : ,*f3 !7K,,,..
The concept of race was intertwined with the very origin e&
anthropology as a discipl discussion in Chapter 2).Althou&
some late-nineteenth-century physical anthropologists hoped @
demonstrate a causal connection between the physical attributes $
a group and their language and customs, early-twentieth-cenv
anthropologists worked hard to expose the flaws in such attempt&
The modern concept of culture was developed to explain how in&
viduals could learn any language or culture, regardless of their bi&
logical origins, and to argue against schemes that tried to classik
1 1 ~ aces and to rank them
the world's people> i n t . 0 ~ ~ eq&ayg
hierarchically. J #&v I I
At the same nine, t%5% ce or &hyunderlyingbiological basis
for racial categories has never prevented people in some societies
from Inventing cultural categories based on a group's supposed
origins or physical appearance and then using such categories as
building blocks for their social institutions. Precisely because racial
categories are culturally constructed on the basis of superficial
appearances, however, different societies may draw the boundaries
around racially defined social groups in different ways. 216, rrttr:r,!.
For example, as the twenty-first century dawns, peep%
in the United States tend to classify people into several differes
racial categories, but the great divide remains between two majm
racial categories, black and white. The enslavement of Africans bpi
Europeans in the United States and the continued oppression cf$
their descendants even after emancipation in the nineteenth ceq-
tury have created a social reality for residents of the United Stat@
qy'
8
,lir
x
I
in which the divide b e w i black and white appears so obvious
I
as to be beyond questiox, To be sure, continued world domina-
tion by societies whose r&rg groups trace their origins to Europe
has sustained a global hierarchy in which light skin is valued over
dark skin. And yet, outside the United States, in the Caribbean
or in Brazil where Africans also suffered under European slavery,
race is understood in different ways. Rather than an unchanging
identity that people carry around with them everywhere they go,
I l i I, the racial identity one claims, or is accorded by others, may vary
,, , from situation to situation, depending on who else is present. That
j is, in any particular social setting, those with the lightest skin may
claim and be accorded the identity of "white," but when they
move into a d~fferentsetting and interact with others whose skin is
lighter than theirs, they may have to accept being assigned to one
of a variety of lower-status, nonwhite categories. Some anth
pologists use the term colorism to describe this pattern of rac.. .
classification in contrast to the once-and-for-all pattern of racial
classification' found in the United States.
Moreover, social mobility and the cultural changes that accom-
pany it-learning the dominant language, getting an education,
finding gainful employment, adopting new customs in diet and
dress-may be interpreted as movement from one racial group into
another. Thus, in some parts of Latin America, indigenous people
who cut their hair, speak Spanish, wear European clothing, get an
education, and find Western-style occupations may be classified by
other members of their society as "white" or "mixed" rather than
"indigenous," even though their outward biological features have
not altered. Anthropologists sometimes use the term social race to
describe these cases in which so-called racial labels are used to refer
to cultural rather than physical differences between groups.
8 .
6.5 ~ t h n i c i t ~
The distinction between
ture is thus not
emphasize or
 identity to others. This ambiguity appears when we conaidcr another
important social categosy.investigated by a t h r ~ ~ ~ o l o g i sthat
t s , of
the @~hniegroup..Ethnic gronps usually are dietinguishedfrom other
h d s i OX social groups based on attributes defining g~bup.member-
ship that are cuI.mal in natwer shared language, shared r&&e,n,
shared c~ptornsyshared hi.stoi;y. However; beeause all &is sulpupil
shatihgicodd qeverhave o a r e d if goup members did .not r q u -
1arJ.yintera;ceand even intermarry,, ethnic identity i s often .tho&,
by both grouyp'members "and ou&i&ts, ta be ro,oted in .some cemL
m m bhl~gicalorigin. indeed, wme anthr.opolo&ststhi& of @Gal
identity as bein&nadi&esent.hmerhnic identity, w e p t thatratid
idebti~&gp&edl%iis biohigiea1 .h ripin in whereas ethnic identitp
h?$ tii@&&$ @~~~~.~.hdjinp~a~fi~~~~~he~~concepts~of both race a ~ d
@&ptg?mq~ &i~~@y&$@~&th &* macept f na.e,n(disoU~ed &
>I
,~8it&,f&1:i~ &&@m
.F:)..
& l ~such @ h di&ea;b&C~esw&$&&r
. u ~ m s ~ o Oino terms
d mi
&&p:or WE @r!:e!&&$id~~d:~jp In o @ p ~ & e , @ ~
similar ided6ies i.n a ceompleg s.@$fl,g~&g.. T ~ U the ~ , boundat-
ies t h eventue&.me
~ tra be: rmwgp&.ed* 8bew.m races or ethnic
gro;us are a pcordu@:o$ h ~ k ~ i n i e ~sel$&fi&tion
nd: and exter~al
~.
d e h i t i by
~ ~othrs, :Of,coq@~, ~ ; ~ m ~ 1 e : d ~belonging,
. ~ g ~ o uand
~ th.0
ability to distihguish oil& a&. @,upP -from neighboring groups
stretch far b a ~ kinto &e.krn& m a t makes the study of
racial on eth,nic er n a ~ o d i ~hportant ~ p ~ today,~ however,
is.thanew ole such g.cp~$ elgs .withip the boundaccies od con-
te-mporary nation-states.
As djgussed in Ch~pt:erT$?m~ion%tares
, , are relativelyn .forms ~
of poliuml .~rga&a~o+~~~h&dav~I~~in~ in late-eighteenth-ceatury
and nidetemth-ce@tm~&&e@ad~the Americas and later spsead-
ing thro:ugho&t the.g & g . & ~ & ~ gthe dissolution of Weste~n
colonial empices, Eef@e~~&@. Preach Revolution, European ..states
were ruled by kings aq&;bmperors whose access to the throne was
officially believed ,tahmiiibeen ordained by God. After the French
Ilevolution, whbktb&&1y. discredited the divine ri& of kings
&d gr0claLne.d. th~,:?&&@ of Man," a new basis for Legitimate
~~ta;te
authori* had:$&& lound. Over the course of the nineteenth
cenngy, the g a & a ; d $ ~ d a p d that rulers were :legitimate. ot~lyif
''i&*,
.,,I' -
,(
<,
:h' '!
 -

-
manv long-held assum~tionsabout the contributions of women to in$ividu& in Western sooieties-and within
culture. Feminist anthropologists noted that most ethnographies,
including those written by womeq were based primardy on the views
of male informants, even concerning matters pertaining to women.
Thus, most discussions of "the culture" of a group in fact portrayed
culture from the viewpoint of men (often high-status men). When
w o r n were disaesed at all, it was usually in the context of m-
riage and the family, and the assumption seemed to be that womn's
cultural roles as wives and mothers followed "naturally" from the
biological facts of pregnancy and lactation. Margaret Mead's dem-
onstration in the 1930s af the lack of correlation between biologeal
sex and culturally ,expected behaviors of males and females in soci-
e t y m a well-how wception to this pattern.
Bp the eady 197Qs, gemhist anthropologists were forcing a
s ~ i o u reexanination
s of traditional assumptions about the roles
of women and men in human society. Picking up where Mead left
o&, they presented oveiwhelming ethnographic evidence showing
that the cultural roles mf women and mcn ih any society codd
not be predicted f r m or reduced to their bbkgical anatomy. It
became commonplace in cultural anrhropd~gytouse the term sex
to refer to the physical characteristics thae distinguish males from
females (for example, body shape, digidbutian of body hair, repro-
ductive organs, sex chromasomes~.& contrast, gender referred
to the culturally construaed rm1~1assigned to males or females,
which varied considerably' &RTII.I, sodefy to society. At the same
time, early feminist ani~hopologistswere concerned that, despite
this lack of c ~ r r e l s h , * ~ ddomination
tl of females appeared to
be u ~ & ~ s amstwid
l. md ethnographic evidence, however, both
sugg~sred&at m a ' s .subordination to men was not inevitable.
Pol example, &farxist-&minist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock
(1922-87) argued that male dominance was connected to the rise
of private property and the state, and she showed how some gen-
der-egalitarian indigenous societies had become male dominated
as a eonsequence of Western capitalist colonization.
Bythe 198Bs, many anthropologistshad concluded that women's
gender roles could not be studied apart £corn thegeder roles of men.
Jh adchiti6q3bhe growing visibility of lesbian, gay, and transgender
6.7 sexuality
In recent years, one of the most important attempts to pick apart
the supposed essence of a cultural category has been made by
ahthcopologists and other social scientists exptbring the highly
controversial topk of sexuality. Minimally, sexuality refers to the
ways in Whith people enperience and value physical desire and
pleasure. in the context of sexual intercourse. But contemporary
anthropologists are more likely to refer to sexualities, in the plbral,
to acknowledge Me many ways in which sexual desires and plea-
sures hav'e always been shaped historically by cultural, social, and
political structures dfche larger societies in which people live. a s
approach 'to tcrmatity, based on work by the French philosopher
and hib.torian Michel Foticault (1926-84), became influential in
mthtopo1og-r in the late twentieth century.
Same-sex sexual practices have become an accepted topic for
research in anthropology. One result has been that the tradition-
ally unquestioned *normalityn of heterosexual sexual practices
has been called into question, and the culmrally variable links
between biological anatomy, gender identity, and sexuality have
been ,explored in a variety of ethnographic contexts. i n a manner
parallel to the development of feminist' anthropology, legitima-
tion of "homosexuality9'as a practice and'as a topic of study was
followed by critiques highlighting the Weestern male bias tacitly
attached to the term. As a resuit, the vaieries of L'homosexual"
experience in Western societies haw been scrutinized, allowing
the recowition of impoctant differences in the experieaces of gay,
lesbian, bisexual, an@traran~~gendered indiviauals. These studies
have bees supplew5:8 not only by ethnographic research on
sexuAitieh hi orbet ~d&esbut also by a reexadnation of older
ethnographfc writhga' about societies in which nonheterosexual
practices have been in&tutionalized. In this regard, anthropolo-
gists have given particular attention to research and writing on the
cultural and sexual practices of the so-called betdache.
The term berdache traditionally has been used in anthropology
to refer to hdigenous (especially Native American) sdcial roles in
which men (and sometimes women) were allowed to take on the
activities and ~MnBtimesthe dress of members of the opposite sex.
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W HEN NINETEENTH-CENTURY ethnologists from Europe and
North America began to compare societies across space and
over time, they noticed not only that members of different socie-
ties made a living in ddferent ways but also that daily life in all
these varied societies seemed to unfold in an orderly and predict-
able manner. The presence of apparent social otder in societies of
different sizes, organized according to a variety of diverse social
principles, puzzled some observers because of their own assump-
tions about what made social order possible. These ethnologists
lived in societies whose leaders assumed that individual human
beings were naturally selfish and competitive and thus could live
peaceably together only if they were compelled to do so by threat
of phys~calforce. That is, they believed that social order was not
natural but could result only from the external imposition of
power. ,,},I.,,,, p*d?!~ (

7.1 Power WWI~

Power often has been understood first and foremost in terms of
coercion, especially by European philosophers and social
scientists, who traditionally define power in terms of one individu-
al's ability to compel others to do what he or she wants them to do.
This view of power seemed natural in societies like those of Europe
and America that were organized into states. Anthropologists agree
that states were not invented in Europe but first appeared several
thousand years ago in half a dozen different regions of the world.
Anthropologists group these states together, ancient and modern,
because they appear to share certain prototypical features, That
is, for anthropologists, a state is an ~ndependentpolitical entity
that coarrols a geographical territory with clear boundaries and
that defends itself from external threats with an army and from
internal disorder with police. States have specialized institutions
1 , ) , ,
110
 point of view, coercion is only one kind of power, a d attention TI& e.ppt.oach was ~bakedby other scholars ~ h called
a trhmoeh~
must be p,aid to all.hose other k m s of ~bfluen~e mhat eansform
people's practical achvikss tor theirri&as sbmt.&e w ~ t l dwithout

. .the
. ,
relyhg & phy4icd fasce. Forms of pexsuasive paw%range. from
&@fiesdna of a aeligam psoph&, ,the f b c d i y prmcpi.&d ' '
bqt qB&&~m?b&tp- ~ ~ ~ s a & a : m e r n h ~ s . d ~~,mm&&&
me&@
d . . , r &. m w prome.@&& !i&?n,w"&-&j!vg, totbe.013:t~&,~&fw&
af 1:&pilanm
,, . shi~viab,g6aetoq wo&er~ 40; gp. mmika. <. .

: p a k d tmp.qg,
,bqt. WE i@%kaftil% nziad ta a.&er

@ ~ p b @ s eqpgci.@u~r.
3 pesple. m&e, a liA&&, ha6
~&,&.&&som a n t h r ~ ~ d q @a@&&n~m a' &c r,w&skips
,L&&mni p-w s.wi& and S$&Z q ~ v m h y~bj.ch
:
l&ey livs, h& t .q be &fined b m d g rn &p.qg&
,m srf &t,1;&-
t i m ~ ~ a h&g s r iwganisrns.md,
~~~ their efiv-qqq5 ew~bgjef
. ~ p ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ n.d,ex;~f,&e&q$mi
~ ~ w ~ & ~ ~appsoaches R . ~ ~ ~ , a
to, &e s ~ d y&f
;b n .t- wider aolO$al
camme to tvhieh &&y m u s t j a d ~ m
a&$&sm.Chq.ter 8 for &-

,,,J&dim Steward and his

kcuses on the way spe-

to fashion adaptsiim

p~pdationscan call upon d!@- b@ $i&iyat

wqiee h ~ ~ , wdal @ h o r g ~ a t i that
n m e w e ;&& adapts-
E@@S '$@.@@JL m q ~ a m e a t scuItwd
, e g o l a~~ p ~ a + h c hamaan
d
pwpul$%m $,,&ey faced the s e m ~ kiiz?d~sf dkip&~ec h a l ~ e n ~ s
as p~pd-&&er .- ~peciesli~in~,rin~&e:~~~~&bb~fica.i m m
. :+&aiooleis always.. , h p w t when cons$qi@g, h d t d y m
ms. Cadsid~k& ,&@$
h.iWempIq*8,
 Peoples who engage in feuding are quite aware that this form of
retaliation can escalate into a bloodbath. Therefore, some arouos - -
have invented cultural institutions that feuding groups can call upon
to achieve settlement, such as a mediator: a Eormall~recognized, -
neutxal third party to whom the disputing p d e s can appeal ro
settle their differences. Mediators have m coercive power of theit
own-but instead rely on the persuasive power of negotiation-that
is, of verbal argument and compromis+to induce the hostile pm~-
ties to come b a mutually a e p t a b l e resolution of their +te.
Mediators play an exceedingly imporrant role when the parties
attributes such as subsistence stranegies.and:~p.csof kintibiip ,or&
see Chanter 8:.gor
nizarion (far discusd& of subsis'tenw'stra~eFlieB I
to a feud xte closq neighbors-. who must somehow find a way. to.
c~sxist, desp1%,,&6$ i@hal,gkiqances. Often mediams appea1.t~
mii@nd ggg@&@ - ;to mijhfy :&e 'apgriewcd party, .such
&& b~ &e :pgfy,8f .a given ,amount of material
wml& ;i+waqlaI8n hes~odk:or a t h a valuabl~s)~, a payment
freqdemly rkferred to! asbloodw~dth..Some~anthropoLogists view
$he invention of ?bloodwreai&t a :+~,.edtural ac&evement that
for inimille&&:has to ls&&t&ra& gauds and restrain th-eir
d e s w c d ~ ckpaciy.
e
Warfare, by. cofitbast, iht~~rI@m vk(r1ent d i e t a n a significantly
larger scale, Entire .so&t&m mibf&e bg@.t each other, trying to
kill as mz.ny members d the i&ep<saciety8aspossible until one side
.surrenders t o the other. W d m e occws when persuasive means,of
dispute resolution, sach,as .d;p'kornaq, ,either do not exist or have
failed.or are ignored, aqdlpdlpi&h.,oombatbecomes the only avenue
ocen to settle .diffeden.ms. &iqf'se, none of these classificatory
labels is airtight5 a l i a f 6 t m kute designed to highlight what appear
to be salient similarioik% d&erences from a -poliirical point of -

view. Red-fife casesr&&~@&potboxe complex and ambigu~usthan

the^ labels themselvw i$&&'t. sqggest. For example, feuding garried
out on a grand-end.d.&+.~~aie:bepins to look a lot like warfare,
, , , :> 1,; , .~r!ii,,,,';
j :< !,:~,:',!,
7.4Farms &P&<tical
. Organization
, J i (1 ',. ,.%

~ h - and warfart! draws ow attention

The contrast 1 b g ~ kuding
back to an iswe&* has preoccupied so many pofitieal anthropl-
ogists: SocietZes %that
engage in warfare typically have some form
may create social links that crosscut kinship groupa. Kin groups may
compete with one another for resources, but they are not ranked
hierarchically; indeed, within each kin group, the access of adults to
communal resources remains broadly; equal.
The first evidence of the erosion of egalitarian political forms is
found in those societies organized as chiefdoms. Chiefdoms make
use &the same forms of subsistence and kinship as tribes, but new
sucial arrangements show the emergence of distinctions among lin-
eages in terms mf status or ranhng, In paitndar, one lineage is
elevated above the, rest, and its leader (the chief) becomes a key
political figure whose higher status often derives from his role in
redistaibu'tiae ecanomic exchanges (defined in Chapter 81, The
chid's higher rank ( m d bhat of the lineage to which he belongs)
gives hfm an haeased opportudity to favor his kin and h s sup-
porters with material or social benefits, but he has very limited
coercimpower. Significant power remains in the hands of lineages,
who cwtinue to contxol their own communal malth in land or
herds.
The social diffexentiation, ranlwng, and centrahization that are
incipient in chiefdoms are fully realized with the appearance of
states. The state organization described previously (with its ter-
tiroq, army, police, tax collectats, and do forth) did not appear
nnxil well after the invention df intensive agriculture approxi-
mately 10,000 years ago, w W generated surpluses that could
be used to support full-time oceqpational specialists such as pot-
ters, weav-ers-Smetalwo&ers, priests, and kings. (Table 7.1 lists the
basic forms of politid bsganization.)
contemporary prehistorians seems to be that no single factor can sates have heads (chiefs oc !&I# or presidents), wherem rnrneendb
explain all cases in whifih inequality and centralination emerged
kom egalitarian political mangements. For example, archaeolo-
gists have uncovered the remains of many early societies organized
as chkefdoms that never developed into states. It seems clear that
although certain underlying factors must have been present, con-
tihgej?t historical factors also played an itnportant rok.
Some anthropologists are further concerned that preoccupa-
tion with explaining the "ripe of the state" smuggles back into
the analysis assumptions of unilineal evolutionism that had sup-
posedly beea expunged long ago. Such a preoceupatian can make
a drive toward social complexity from band, to tribe, to chief-
dom, to state Seem inevitable and ir~esistible,even if the paths to
aomple-xlty are varied and have not always been taken and even
though human history is limeted with the fall of states and the dis-
integration of empires. To the extent that states and empires and
other encomp8ssiing forms of social complexity are seen as power-
ful generators sf inequality and oppression, moreoxer, the rise of
state control will not necessarily be viewed as pmgressive, and the
disintegration of an empire may be viewed as liberating. Overall,
the open-ended unpredictability of f u m e socio~oliticalchanges
can then be openly acknowledge6 and more attention can be paid
to the ways in which societies 01ganiged with different degrees of

The classification of paliticd systems as bands, tribes, chiefdoms, all ndvlv~&ecsrof the wib&accep mlga Urn &ispr&ss,w . #
and states can be useful even if one is not interested in their possi- r e s u l o h ~ ~ ~ a ~ ~ %does'
n ~ e a smwt mean
~ rhat wns6&hs is.-
ble evmldtionary relationships. Many political anthropologists have
used these categories as ptotovpes for distinct forms of political life
and have been more interested in exploring how these fotms actu-
ally work. Such anrhropoIogists have been intrigaed by the striking
contrast between egalitarianism and inequality, between diffuseness
of power i~ egaktarian societies and centralized monopoly of power
in strati&d societies. As Meyer Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard
put it mofe than SU years ago, centralized societieslike chiefdoms or
,..-no,.-'
ers, and their achievements do not go unrecognized. Indeed, their
achievements lead other members of their society ro accord them
Feat prestige. Individuals in bands or tribes who enjoy such prestige
may be asked for advice or deferred to when detisions must be made
because their past achievements-as hunters or ritual specialists, or
fighters car diploma@-give their opinions greater weight than those
of o ~ k a r yfolk. Anthropologists have used the term headman to
identlfy such indjviduals who may be the ones chosen by their gel-
l o w tb deal d t h outsiders in ambiguous or threatening situations.
In fact, outsiders (such as representatives of a colonial pawer) often
have assumed that members of indigenous groups who mediated
between their owngroup3and the colonial adminimation were lead-
ers with raerrive power, As we have sewn, however, this assump-
tion mas ineorxea when appked ro headmen in bands wr tribes, who
haw no sapacity tca Eorce others to do their will. When colonial offi-
cials tried to incorpot;ate "headmen" into their chain of command,
expecting them to enforce conlpliance on the local level, they regu-
larly discovered that, despite their pxestige, headmen had no power
to issue orders or force people to obey them. the passage af
time, under continued ~oloi~lalnile, headmen often faund themselves
caught in an untenable position: expected by members of their own
tribe to defend tribal interests against the colonial administrationand
expected by the colonial administration to -act compliance with
cololljal ediccs from f e h kibesmen,
Another well-known anthrapolngical emmple illustrating the
exercise of persuasive power h egalitarian societies is that of the
big man.Big men are "bigv because of their ability to use their per-
sonal persuasivq skill8 to arf:~wmmplex regional public events that
in~olvekin and neighbms. In New Guinea, for example, big men
gainpersanal predge: by organizing elaborate exchanges of valuables
between their ovn and n d b o r i n g tribes. Such exchanges often
begin as a kind of bloodwealth exchange: An end to hostilities is
nt*tiated when the aggressors promise to present the aggrieved tribe
with a quafltity of wealth in the form of pigs, shells, monefi and other
vahables Big men compete with one another to organize the cdlec-
tion-and presentation of rh&e goods, which is a major achievement
given tha* they have no coerciv~means to colmpel other inembers of
these definitiomalwrith its monopoly rn roeraive pmu, anthropolo-
gists generally agree that it is appropriate to speak of law. In panbe-
ular, they have been interested in comparing the ways in which la.m
has developed or is administered in non-capitalist state sodeties, ,>
The appearance of formal law in a state does not mean I$@
in£ormd means of social control &sappear. Rather, formal la*
ordinarily used to sanction only the most serious crlmes such
theft, murder, or treason. Formal laws usually aim to be unive
m scope, applying to all members of a society who possess certain
3 case before them; that is, based Q
attributes, and they usually focus on compliance (or lack thereof)
with specific obligat~ons(rights and duties) that all such individuals
are expected to honor. Such a system of law is known as substantive
law, and it is often the most interesting ethnographically because
it encodes notions of right conduct that show much cross-cultural
variation, Substantive law contrasts with procedural law, which
describes how those accused of breaking the law are to be treated.
Anthropologists who compare legal systems cross-culturally also
often distinguish between civil law, the brealung of which affects
only one or a few individuals, and criminal law, which regulates
attacks against society or the state. Modern industrial states have
developed complex law codes in which explicit rules covering many
areas of social, economic, and political life are articulated, together
with the penalties incurred for breaking them.
Of course, members of any society when accused of brealung the
law (informal or formal) often deny that they have done so. As we
saw, egalitarian
- societies h a ~ edevelo~edtheir own informal wavs
A
of resolving such disputes, including mediation, feuding, and wealth
exchange. In state societies, bp coptrast, formal laws and penalties
are accompanied by formal legal institutions, such as courts, for
resolving disputes. Informal dispute resolution remains in the hands
of the affected parties: Recall that feudmg kin groups, together with
a mediator, must work out a resolution of their differences that satis-
fies the groups. D#erent disputants, however, might ,work out their
differences in endrely different ways. It is this lack of uniformity in
dispute resdkution tbat a state tries to overcome in two ways. First,
lution of the dispute from the hands of the par-
it into the hands of a formal institution, the
cciu&~mcond, it evaluates the disputants' claims against the univer-
sal rights and responsibilities encoded in laws with uniform penalties.
Because the court is supposed to be an impartial forum, care must be
taken to ensure rhat the truth is told. Thus, all c o w systems deelop ,I
rituals designed to achieve that end, such as $e administratbn of '
oath$ or ordeals to those who give evidence. In the end, the formal
officers who preside in a court of law (that is, judges) adjudicate the
dispute will be settled. L-i 5 1, ,d
A :A! '
Clearly, this entire appalat
societies producing sufficient su
ized formal court system with its law co
punishments. In other words, a formal system of laws requires a , E
formal system of punishments, or penal code, without which a full- ,I
fledged court system cannot functim. In
for the society in which it is found, what formally counts as crime
and what does not. New laws can be promulgated that turn for- I
merly tolerated behavior (for example, public begging) into a crime
or that decriminalize formerly illegal behavior (for example, when ,'
taxes are abolished, not paying one's taxes is no longer illegal). ;,
Documenting changes ia a legaI system can offer important 8;
insights Ento the changing values and practices of the society ro
which the legal system belongs. One of the most powerful recent?
changes anthropologists have encount
involves attempts by citizens to petition their national govern-
ments or international institutions for legal rulings that will protat
their humae rights or their cultu~alrights. Often the petitiwne~e
are members of so-called traditional, or indigenous, groups w h
have learned how to operate successfully in regional, national,
international courts of law (see Chapter 11for a fuller discus&m
of anthropological studles of human rights and culqraI
7.8 ~ationalisrnand Hegetnorig -,h,2
Much of the ethnographic data on i
were gathered in societies that once enjoyed
but at some time in the last 500 gears c m e
 political control of Western colonial powers. To be sure, capitalist s claim a cwmw "
~ time, m y p ~ u pthat
& t h same
colonialism did not affect all areas of the world at the same time or w i 08 the
~ &.;dm.e .OX history w l & ~ b d -
to the same degree, and maoy p~ecolonialpolitical institutions and
practices
. survived, albeit under changed - ciirumstances, well h t o
the twentieth centmy. Butthe last two decades of the twentieth mn-
tury exhibited
. ~~. an jntensified push of capitahst practices into th.pqe.
a.reaa;yf the gl:oObethat p~evioustyhad been buffered from some:of
their most disruptiveeeffects, And many p~liticalanthropologiswin
recent years; k a ~ ebecome less intere.ssted in local political particu-
larities md more.interested ingl,&,alfovces that increasjnglgly shape
the oppormi,tiesfw la&; p,oliti&ale~pfesston.
Such smfb~gologigtg pay ~&Q.QI~~RG to politid pro.cesses ,that
b e g p w&fithe spr,e& Q~Burmg~n wI.&d empires, Political con-
*
q.weska@$k a a $ ~ ~ r s t i o%n$t&q <@Be. wether European empir,e
desmapad many hdieemys p&tibd insGtutimn6.. Howeyer, cola.
nial political pxaci~i6e.sitin&&,~d~nized :peoples to rethink and
. rework & & t d e g s @ a n & o thew we=-and+hgwthov.&ould.
~f ~ d m .. . .
h f & x i a u s , ~ e r e n c ~~~ da w
, ~~~ o b r b a v m .edainde,
( s r hilo$
people beIieve that~thekilt isa b r .uf.~ancjeiladresscthat g w b a e k on

European colonies~
Ths issues w e cempJ~g. a& ~rwied,but many anthropolo-
gists ' h v e been inktested .kthe phenomenon of nation&sm.
Traditionally, anthr~gxdlq&fsused the 8erm nation as a synonym
for ethnic group or tribe-hat iexto identify a social group whose
membe~s;sa~themselves;~sa.~~~~e people because of shared ances-
try, :culture, lqgnag%,,@$h~qry.. S'QC~.nations/tribes/ethnicgroups
did not fieces&ly b+gefg@y c m c t i o n to political srste&s. that
w e e d swtes ,&@.be eighteenth century, and esp,eci-+lly~e
nineteen_thcentury,j g@i~g@:,Bpthe end of the nineteenth century,
many Europeans be$?ffiv;edt{ ;&.a* the political boundaries. of .states
should~correspondwi&,sdwai and linguistic.boundaries-th,at is,
that states and natiom cihadd coincide and become nation-states.
In the latter half of thet-wrentieth century, newly independent po,st-
colbnial states tried tozfieglh the nation-state 'Ideal by attempting
rq build a &wed. ~ge:.o$.national identity amobg their citizens,
most of whom MLggged to groups that shared few i x no political
or cultural ties &~:pg@c91qnialtimes.
 neighbors, Gramsci emphasized a contrast bowman h sole of
authoritarian domination (or coercive power) and hegeamy (or
persuasive power) that many contemporary social s c i e n h have
found useful. Domination can put a regime in power, but domina-
therefore, this is probably because they have accurately concluded
that rebellion would not succeed under current conditions. %h$
concepts of hegemony and hidden transcripts help anthropobgii~,:
demonhtrate that political concepts such as "freedom," "justice,*
'It1
r

;'II .
tion alone will not keep it in power. For one thing, it is expensive and "democracy" do not have fixed meanings hut may be the foe* j 8

to keep soldiers and police on constant alert against resistance; for of cultural and political struggle between powerful and powerlese;. .;..1I
another, the people come to resent continued militar .veillance, groups in a society. .
,, .
which turns them against the regime. This is why long-term sta- .. .
-8
i I/
bility requires rulers to use persuasive weans to win the support
of their subjects, thereby making a constant public show of force For Further Reading
unnecessary. Gramsci used the term hegemony to describe cntltrol
POWER
. achieved by such persuasive means.
A variety of tactics can be used to build hegemony, mclud- Arens and Karp 1989; Wolf 1999
ing neutralizing opposition from powerful groups by granting POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
them special privileges and articulating an explicit ideology that Fried 1967; Lewellen 2003; Service 1962,1975; Sharma and Gupta
explains the rulers' tight to ryle and justifies inequality. If the ide- 2006; Vincent 2002 ,. ~. . . ,,,
. . , .'! ,
ology is widely promulgated throughout the society (for example, LAW 8 -
, ,

8 "

in schools, through media) and if rulers make occasional public Harris 1997; Nader 1997; Pospisil 1971
gestures that benefit large sections of the population, they may 8
-
,,,,E;,:*
3
NATIONALISM i t
forestall rebellion and even win the loyalty of those whom they , 8 .

dominate. Because hegemony depends on persuasive power, Anderson 1983; Hughey 1998; Tambiah 1997 . 8 : ~ t , '
however, it is vulnerable to the critical attention of the power- HEGEMONY A N D HIDDEN TRANSCRIPTS
less, whose reflections on their own experiences may lead them to Hobsbawm and Ranger 1992; Scott 1987,1992
question the ruling ideology. They may even develop interpreta-
POLITICAL ECOLOGY
tions of their political situation that challenge the official ideology.
Sometimes the term hidaen tratlsctipts is used to describe these Hodgson 2004
alternative (or counterhegemo~ic)understandings because they
are frequently too dangerous to be openly proclaimed. Because
hidden transcripts offe~an dlternative, however, they offer open-
ings to more sustained critiques of the status quo that eventually
could lead to open rebellion.
Many anthropologists find the concept of hegemony to be use-
ful because it offers a way of showing that oppressed groups that
do not rise up in open revolt against their oppressors have not nec-
essarily been brainwashed by the hegemonic ideology. Rather, such
groups possess sufficient agency to create counterhegemonic inter-
pretations of their own oppression. If they do not take up arms,
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 living off nature's bounty; "upper savages;" for .=ample, not on$
controlled fire andfished buthadmastered..the lamw .wda~row..The

INCE ITS FORMATIVE YEARS as a dissipline, anthropology has

b ~ e ninterested in the many and varied ways in which human
beings in different societies make a living. In the late nineteenth
century, anthropologists devoted mudh attention to the tools and
techniques developed by various peoples to secure their material
survival and well-being i n a range of climates and habita~s.Indeed,
the ebjecta people niade for these purposes-spears, snares, fish-
nets, bows, arrows, hoes, plows, baskets, and the like-formed the
collections of early ethnoJogical museums in Europe and North
America, Early anthropological theorists paid particular attention
to the activities in which these objects figured, called the "arts of
subsistence" by Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-81).

Jb
8.1 he "Arts of ~ubsisknce"
Morgan focused on large-scale variatioh ia patterns of the arts of sub-
sistence in different human societies when he construqed his grand
unilineal scheme of cultural wolurien (a discussion of this approach
is found in Chapter 12).His key criterion for ranking subsistencepat-
terns was technological comprlexiy: 'the simpler the tookit, the more
"primitive" the society's atts of aubsis.tence. Morgan's final scheme
encompassed three great "eWdperiodsw-Savagery, Barbariem,
and Civilization-through which, he claimed, every human society
either had passed or would pass as it evolved.
Morgan assumed thar the society in which he lived had evolved
further and faster than others on the globe and thar, consequently,
the arts of subsistence characteristic of those other societies could
accurately be described in terms of not only what they possessed
but also what they lacked. Thus, "savages" were all those peoples
who had never domesticated plants or animals for their subsistence.
Morgan subdivided them into lower, middle, a ~ upper d categories
based on the complexity of the tools and skills they had devised for
 subsistence strategies identified-hunting and gathering (foraging),
pastoralism, horticulture, and agriculture-reiterated the distinc-
tions that Morgan had recognized.
The key feature distinguishing these strategies is domesricatiop:
regular human interference with the reproduction of other species
ways that makes them beneficial to ourselves. Hunter-gatherers-
now usually called foragers or food collectors-are those who do not
rely on domesticated plants or animals but instead subsist on a vari-
ety of wild foodstuffs.Their knowledge of their habitats is encyclope-
dic, and they manage to live quite well by roaming over large tracts
of land in search of particular seasonal plant foods, water sources, or
game. By coutrast, practitioners of the other three subsistence strate-
gies depend on domesticated species and so are sometimes referred
to as food producers rather than food collectors. Pastoralists rely on
herds of domesticated animals, such as cattle, camels, sheep, or goats,
and regularly move these herds, sometimes over great distances, as
water and forage in one area are used up. In many parts of the world,
these movements are patterned in yearly cycles of transhumance as
herders move from dry-season pastures to wet-season pastures and
back again.
Horticulturalists cultivate domesticated plants by using human
labor and simple tools and techniques to modify local vegeta-
tion or soil texture before planting their crops. In slash-and-burn
or swidden cultivation, for example, hand tools are used to cut
down all vegetation except large trees from an area to be planted.
The vegetation is then burned, and the ash serves to fertilize the
crops. But swidden farmers can use a particular field for only a
few growing seasons before the soil is exhausted and must be left
fallow for several years to regenerate. As a result, swidden farmets
must move on to clear new fields every few years, which is why
their practices are sometimes also referred to as s h i i u g cultiva-
tion. Shifting cultivation is highly productive and energy efficient,
but it functions well only when farmers have access to enough
land to live on while old fields lie fallow long enough (often from
7-10 years or more) to regenerate. Shifting cultivation is thds
sometimes also called extensive agriculture because so much land
is required ~o support so few people.
i,'h),
. ,';It
Only with intensive &culture do we find soci* gemw
ing the strength of domestic animals by harnessing them to more
complex tools like plows and growing and harvesting crops with
the help of irrigation and fertilizers. Intensive agriculturalists first
appeared some 10,000 years ago in Southwest Asia. Their farming
practices are intensive because the techniques they emppby allow
them to produce more than shifti~gcultivators could produce on
the same amount of land while keeping their fields in continu-
ous use. Contemporary intensive farming practices, often called
mechanized industrial agriculture, rely on industrial technology
for machmery, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. This form of
agriculture uses vastly more energy than does shifting cultivation,
but it enables a few farmers to produce enormous amounts of food
on vast expanses of land, their "factories in the field." (Table 8.1
I_
lists the major subsistence strategies.) ,,
Intensive agriculture marked an important break from fc
0.f extensive agriculture because it allowed farmers to produce sur-
pluses beyond what they required t o survive from harvest to harvest
and still save enough seed for the next year's crop. Agricultural sur-
pluses supported the first ancient civilizations by mahng possible
new and complex forms of social organizatioe, involving a special-
ized division of labor that promoted technical developments in all
areas of material life. Writing and its analogues (such as the quipu
in Andean civilizations) did not drive these changes, but they were
extremely useful for various kinds of political, economic, and social
record-keeoine. ,. ,
8.3 rxplainingthe ater rial ~iFe dhoue money to make sense of, say, the wy.geiopLe ia sl&q
Processes 06 Society X w~d sklls. f~maibi* a m I ~ z e : w 9 1 W ~~&& l'b d .

In general, fieldworlung cultural anthropologists have left investiga-

tion of the origin
. of subsistence strategies
- and the rise of ancient clvl-
lizations to archaeologists and prehistorians. Given the pernicious
use to which extreme and exaggerated unilineal evolutionary claims
had been put in the nineteenth century, early-twentieth-century eth-
nographers preferred to document the enormous amount of diversity
still to be found in the mater~allife of living societ~es.But this pur-
suit of cultural documentation, apparently for its own sake, struck
later generations of anthropologists as unwarranted and pernicious
in its own way. They sepsed, there were patterns to be detected and
explained, and this required a professional willingness to develop
theories that could generalize across particular cases.
One attempt to reintroduce theory into the anthropological
study of material life was made by Melv~lleHerskovits (1895-1963)
arowd the time of World War 11. Herskovits urged anthropologists
to borrow concepts and theories from neoclassical economics, the
scholarly discipliee rooted in Adam Smith's efforts in the eighteenth
centllry to make sense of the new Western economic system later
known as capitalism. Herskovits was persuaded that the concepts
and theories of neoclassical economies had been refined to such a
degree of scientific objectivity and formal precision that they could
be applied to economies very different from the one they originally
were invented to explain. Those anthropologists who decided to fol-
low Herskov~ts'ssuggestion came to be known as formal economic
anthropologists, or formalists.
Formalists took concepts like supply, demand, price, and
money, which had successfully been used to analyze economic
activity in capicalist market economies, and searched for their
analogues in noncapitalist societies. They realized, of course,
that many such societies had no system of coinage performing
all the functions Western money performed. But they noted that
objects like iron bars or lengths of cloth or shells often seemed to
be used much the way people in capitalist societies used money,
as a medibm of exchange or measure of value. And so formal-
ists tried to use the ideas neoclassical economists had developed
individual's pursuit of his or her own self-interest. That i ~ in
, a Em provisioning their m&bers came to be aalled s&@d&%,,
world of isolated individuals competing for access to scarce goods, %hcmti~istsa i - g d &at descr
looking out for Number Oak turns out to be agood thing-indeed,
the rational thing t o do-because putting others' needs fkst might
interfere with maximizing on& own happiness.
Still, Adam Smith and others believed that when competitidn
was cwi-ied out among individuals of more-or-less equ-al weal&
and power, prfvate vice could lead to public virtw. For instance,
if you tried to &heatyour customers, word would get around, and
they would "Dy from othfii producers, cansing you to lose money,
Thus, you end up happier if you make yo^ customers happy as
wefib, Indeed, the price cm which the two of you decide ideally talisw;~lany-peopleas,yned*thatthe,orily path t a a f f l u e y
wgbt to pnovide the best possible value either party might hope producing mwh; but:~ahbins.a.rgoe$ that a second,,"Zen road*.$o
to obtain.
Only if such a view of human nature is accepted dues neoclas-
sical economic theory make sense. But anthropologicalcritics were
convinced that such a view of universal "human nature" could
tzot make sense df the etonomic pfactices ethnographers had dis-
covered in the pavtiarEltra noncapidst societie* whee they had
done fieldwork. They poinred out that many e t ~ n d systemsc
were built on the assumption that human behgs were, first and
foremost, social creatures with legithat6 obligations to other
members of the societies in w h i ~ hthdF bed. Indeed, economic
arrangements in such societies wBe shaped to the contours of
other religious or H&ip institutions in the society.
That is, ecofiotaic activ- Fete embedded in the noneconomic
institutions that made &cfety as a whole function properly.
Rather than a me@- o'f hew individuals universally allocated
scarce resmcces among alternative (presumably un'lversal) ends,
the& antbropoio$lsts preferred to think of an economy as the con-
creYe (and particular) way in which material goods and services
weTe made available to members of a given sea*. Capitalism
might allow individuals the freedom to pursue their own seE-
interest apart from the interests of bthers, but such an economic
sysrem was a recent and unusual addition t o the kthnogiaphic and
historical record. Those anthropologists who defined economic
systems in terms of their substantive institutional arrangements
i ,.rnUIWljl l 1 i , i i ( , , l I IL1JJTJ<,l, L +:.,,>.
would belance out in inthe long run. Bahcaced rScip~~o&y required hvalves redistribution; but most goods and services ace p s o b e d
both ,thm z ,gilt be rep* &&. a stic t&e limit a d that goods and e ~ c h a n ~ tbv
e d moans of caritalist m h t d a e ,
B X e h ~ w dbe, .@f g o w p && s@& *lu@. @&procity
hwlqed@&$S. 6 0 kepmedy ~&dt.m.g& fi@&&i
fmteae ;anQbr ,in,,a.
@-K thgib ~ & e&i&e m T 6jif@&
e&*p t o &,he,bett:ter af.the&w, . ,

socieries organized along capitalist Im the United ~mtes,for

example, exchange relatiom between.parents and children ordinar-
ily arc governed by gener&~ed.~rkip'roeity,and the collection of
income taxes and the disperpikd gonerwent subsidies to citizens
 of them, regardless of perspective, largely agree that economic life
can be divided into t h e e phases: production, distribution, and
consumption. Neoclassical economic theorists, dazzled by the
power of modern capitalist markets, saw distribution to be key:
After all, priw3 are set in the market when suppliers of goods and
buyers of goods reach agreement about how much to offer for
whaL Historically, capitalist markets developed under circum-
~tancerin latmmdiwal European cities in which certain kinds of
people-merchmts, artisans--engaged in economic ttansaaions
free af the feudal obligations that controlled exchange between
lords and -peasants in rural areas. This freedom from oblieations "
to others-the freedom to take one's chances buying and selling in
the rnarket4eeinIxl to Vdkdate a view of human nature that even-
cudly justifiied neoclassical e c w m i c theory in a society in which
q i t a l i s m had triumphed. And it was a theory written primarily
horn the point of v i w of those d o had engaged in free-market
tkanmctians. and prospered.
Marx and his followers, however, paid ateention to those
whose participation in free capitalist marketa kept them mired in
poverty. These were the -proletariat, the w o r k - $ who toiled for
-
wages in facrories owned by the bourgeoisie, capitalists who sold
for pofit the commodities the workers -praduced. The very differ-
ent positions o6capitalisrs and wwkens weEe due to the fact that
capitalists owned or conttdlled';&v ~ ~ I s wproduction, @ $ whaeas
the w0rket.s owned nothmg bak~b%riomri labor power, which, in
order to survive, 6hsy w e ~ e ~ f m s sell ~ d t. c~~the
~ : capitaIist at,what-
ever prica hewti6 %ilfi~dgtt@j&&$i~he,unequal relation~~ip'between
wopkers. md .-Beg w@e.@g@$i$ahsmmeant that, when both met
h & e ma&et'wg W'XQ~ q&ll'jsame of them (the capitalist , o m -
.as)&@ic&nsfdm~&tv geac~r economic power thaa ,others,(the
ww&er&);.,~ !o~igius e &&at inequality required ,that atteflti-oh be
paidto the pfloductf~nphase of economic life.
L a h s i s a .mntrd concept for a M a d a n analysis,of economic
prdq&10n, @ipecdlysocial labor inwhidh p e q h mark together to
t ~ s f. o r mthe marefid world into form thev:can .WSBC In nonce&
,~
<
talist ecqp~w~s$stems, people o d h r i l $ work with others to pro-
d~ gee& $or && own use, usi'ng to& an&:in*riaIs that betQng
to them. Under industrial capitalism, all this changes. For example,
workers might produce shoes in a factory, but shoes, along with the
tools, technology, and materials used to make them-what Marx
called the means of production-belong to the fa~toryewer, not
to the workers. Instead, workers receive maney wages in exchmge
for their labor. With these wages, they are supposed to purchase in
the market food, clothing, and other goods to meet their subsistence
needs; that is, they become consumers. Because workers compete
with one another for &arce wage work, they must put their individ-
ual self-interest first if they are to surviv~thus, they come to view
their fellows as rivals rarher &an comrades.
In all these ways, Marx asgued, life under capitalism separates
workers from the means of pmduction, from the g o d s they pro-
duce, and from~ther human beings, a situation he called denation.
For Marxistsa .ther'ehq the isolated iadkvidual who is the hero of
the capitalid ~ e r s i mof "hurp'ttn natnm" is actually an alienated
social b&ng forced imo dstencb d e t ' ~I.S fismzicatly recent eco-
nmmic conditions of Western eapitalim. WXand mast ~fhis fol-
lowers were interested in underatanding haw t h a e soaioec~nomic
conditions had developed in Western Emopem swdsties. Like
Marx, many also found the situation intolerable and believed that
the point was not to understand society but to change it.
Among those Marxian concepts that have been the most important
in economic anthropology, we will emphasize here only one: the
mode of productian. A mode of production refers generally ro the
way the production of material goods in a society is carried out.
Not only does it involve the tools, knowledge, and skills needed
for production (the means of production), but it also depends on
a -particular division of social labor in terms of which different
groups, or d a ~ s e sof people Are responsible for various produe-
tive activities, or the relations of productian. Marx characteximd
Emopean capitalism xs a made of produaionj,and h e , ~ o & + a & ~ . i $
wfth&e feudal mode )ofproduction &at preceded i t In the h d d
and,',apitalistmodes of production, . .
the central &vi,siaia ,@8&%,&
.-
 was between rulers and ruled: lords and peasants in feudalism and haw wondered how much auwnomy peasam might ham in pm-
owners and workers in capitalism. tiuullw societiwmdu&w %hat ~ ~ m c @ ! & ~ t !a&&$
A key element in the Marxian analysis of modes of produc-
tion concerns the nature of the relationship linking classes to one
another in a particular society. Marx's point %as that, although
botk classes had to work together for production to succeed, their
ewnomic interests were nevertheless contradictory because of
incieasfng ,penetrd&n of capitalit market relatiose.? sIna)a !,ru
.,M$&o$.the.wo~ld'saeasan~;were first~imaddcedto .ci13@ '1
their different relations to the means of production. Eventually,
Marx predictkd, these class contradictions would undermine the
mode of production, leading to a revolution that would bring
forth a new and imuroved mode of production.
~nhe~d~@ist;s~11%11~~i:.cb~&c corrditionsin &fetent soci-
eties d%.ilot:@g@@~$~<~@$pt - Marx'ci -,mo&edes
. abatit revolution.
Bg%&g$! b%v;~ ~@d<fd.,&:&a aoncapitalist economic,pat-
,,, ternssewedd b~.fiel,dw& ~ h t ~ u s e f d bey understood as differ-
r 1 ent,modes c~f ~prduction.Some mt+o.epolagists working,in Afrira,
for e~ampl%~&wgjat chatthe e , ~ ~ n & ~ * m r n p m e nthey
t s ebsemed
among .people whe @&ad &a, :s.&eties (and their economic
activi&s) o n b e b a s i s . o $ k i n -s b
a
as a lineaxe
- mode
ofproduction. That is, the opgosed "olasses" wereelder and younger
groups within particulm'heages &at owned important economic
resources like a~ricultwral?and&dim,,emenrs (chemeans or forces
of praduction). Like awners and workers under capitahsm, the eco-
nomic interests of elders and juniors were opposed and might lead
to conflict Elders wanted to maintain their control over the forces

m.;
of production, and jwime w a e d to take it away.

gpg
.s 11.8 ..
8.7Peasants 'L'
I .

Other anthropolog aw talked about a peasant mode of pro-

dwctian obsemabke r a q contemporary Latin American societ-
ie~.These societies am swn to be divided into classes, with peasants
dominated by a &g &5s of landowners and merchants. Anthro-
woloRists
. - -
use thew&&peasmt to refer to small-scalefarmrs in state
societies who o ~ & e i c a w nmeans of production (simpletools, seed,
and so forth) an&&@ produce enough to feed themselves and to pay
rent to their l@&ds and taxes to the government. ~ n t h r o ~ o l o ~ s t s
 have
increasing reliaslce on wage WQ& £QJ smival ma;n&a,t
b ~ ~ n . "b ~@ ~ ~d~ ?~ ~ ; ~ ~ g . ~ q i ~dpmductioml
s~li!.%mode
H q V @ : W j b g ~ : ~ d ~ : ; : ~ ~ . ~ @ . i & tp;~oletal;-
~u.&..&~&

but would simply take longer than they originally predicted. Jome
anthropologists of a hrla~danbent, howevex, argued that the situa-
tion was more canplezc. Rather than precapitalist instirutims being
replaced by capitalist i n ~ t h t i o n sthey
~ said, what had emerged1 in
these settings was a new kind of social formation composed of two
or more articwlating mods ofpodaction That is, in settings such as
former European colonies in Africa, prwpitalist modes of praduc-
tion and the capitalist maele of p ~ o d u c h neach
, ~rganizedaccord.
ing to dihferent relations cif production, appeared to bere adapted
to each othe1's presenae. Wndw such cir~stamces,indl+duale and
goups could turn to precolonial i-el~ionsal:produot-iotl when pap
ticipation in capitalist relations of produdon was too codlp or did
not suit them for other reasons. (Table 8.3 lists some basic mudes of
production.)
The argument that two or more modes of prodmtion rmght
articulate with each other, however, seemed to imply that individual
modes of production were not bouded, self-contained sets of eco-
nomic arrangements, As a result, the concept of mode of production
met a fate s M a r to concepts of society or culture that at one time
had also been conceived as bounded and self-contained. Aker 1989,
the end of the cold war ushered in worldwide changes in e~onomi@~-
political, social, and cuitnral relations. The boundaxies separating
societies, nation-states, and cultural traditions fiom one anocher
turned out to be far more porous than many anthropologis~had
assumed, and capitalism seemed to engulf the entire world. But w,
p d e , wealth, ideas, ideologies, and material goods b ~ g aw ~ ~ t ~
across these boundaries in unprecedented ways, new pws3b$i~&~f@
new ways of life-and new varieties of c a p i t d i m - w t e d&q
, . I , '
1 ''I.

., J' .,
., ,,,.
shape. One consequence may be that, as a result of such chnnges,
there will be no room in the post-cold war world for those people
formerly knewn as peasants.
Perhaps the most striking development in recent @arw has been
the way different h d s of people have come together in new ways
and have begun connecthg a variety of heterogeneous cultural a ~ d
ma~eriqlelements to one another, often in places far from &tk
points of origin, t o make possible brand-new kinds of economic,
political, socia, and cultural institutions. Some anthropologists
use the term global assemblages to identify such newly articulated
institutional ariangefnents,
- distinctive both for their unprece-
denred ge&grq&~dt " & ~ h . ~ d + @ ~ ~ t b ~wtureJof
~ d i v e r * the people,
&j;em,,~ d ' : m m ~ g a , , &rhe,y
& t Jink tagerhet '(see Chapter 11 and

The final phase of economic adivity is consltmption, when the

goods or services produced in a society are distributed to those
who use them up, or consume hem. Most econorniiq whether of
neoclassical or Marxiam persuasion, traditionally have had little to
say about why it is that these goods and these services (as opposed
to other goods and services) get produced and distributed. Either
consumption references are reduced to the idiosyncratic, unpre-
dictable, and inexplltable choice$ ofifi&v1dt1als (as in neoclassical
economics) or they are redp~ed!t~basic biological needs (as when
Marx skated that h m a a b$ings need first to eat and drink befbre
they can make histo~y).S a t anthropologists have made similar
argumenzsL-&.smii1w Mallnowski, for example, wanted ta show
that "p&tni@ive'' peaptmwere in fact no less human than their "civ-
ilh.edn c~unterparts.He argued that, although all viable societies
must satisb their members' universal basic human needs for food.
shelter, companionship, and so forth, each society has invented its
own cultural way 6f meeting those needs. Malinowskib approach,
howwer, failed.to addres; the question of why, for ample,
Trobrianti Istanders satisfied their need for food with yams and
pork x a t k than with, say, sorghum and beef.
 &wenthough ohr con@a.ed exbtcnce requires.a bm;d

has played a key mediating i d e in human evolution and that it

continues t o exat p o ~ & dinflpmces on CoptemQorary - h w q
ecol~gicaladaprations. (Table 8.4 lists some basic approaches t~
consumption.j
~Gultureappears to play an important role in conscrmption pat-
terns for at l a s t two reasons. First, consumption preferences often
are more closely llnked to membership in particular social groups
than to the ecological setting in which one lives. Second, the con-
sump ti on preference^ people share often involve goads and services
that are not easily explained with referehce to basic human ibio-
logical needs. A good illustration is the patrern found in capitalist
sooieties that soc~ologlstand economist Thosstein Weblen (1857-
1929) labeled conspicuous consumptian. Conspicuous cousump-
tian involves the p c h a s e and publi~&splay ~f goods known to
be costly and unnecessary for basic rmvival. For example, many
people d o live in the suburbandQited States find it necessary to
own an automobile for trmswo~&~on.
+ - from home to work
Getting
t~ the supermarket ta I&. @&@ping mall in no way requires the
extta soeedabd @ower*o$;a@ottscar, but many suburban residents
neveaheless spsid tens of kousands of dollars for spots cars.
Ve~kdensugges'ted, and cultural anthropologists agree, that people
who drive these e m do so more for symbolic than for practical
reasons. That is, they want to show other people (especialy those
whom they want to impress) that they are so pcosperons that they **of adm*:iad ma-I
we not limited to purchasing gaods for ppurely practical reasom;
rathkr, thsy can "waste" cash on non-necessities, on 1-ious,
ostehtatiom extras.
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technologies-technologically mediated reproductive practices
such as in vitro fertilization, smrogate parenthood, and sperm
banks. For example, new types of kin ties are being created in
the United States through the process of 'organ transplantation
from brain-dead individuals t o people. who need organs t o s n r
Gve. To t& surprise of spme of tbe professionals who Aan&e
organ ttmsplantation, the recipients and families of the &tors
not only ww to meet one another but also have devtioped kir*
relationships (Sharp -2006).A man in his mid-69$ ,who.teceived
the heart .of a reenagm now calls the danot's ,sister ''Sis,'' and
she oalls,him ''Bfia.:'' Zhle .donor?s.m~ther*inher dd-5Bs a d the
recipj,ni g & . ~ ~ a e ~ . '!aMo&
~er & j ?.'&-.' ,Sharp found that foj
h, w~$leh~ofvedthamampka0,ted.argati was believed to carry
g~&:es&&ce d rh6:,&0r&& wi& it,end &is powefif& connkctgf
the t,&cipie; 80 the Un of &@nor.This. was pai?icularly tfue ijn

.; -.!. !:.,rntrclW~dfr*)l.= I ) ! h l t ~ l , , t ~ ,, 11hft6ll,i

~.
. . 7

Discussions in anthrap~Iogy&d b@~.s.pe~ialize in different aspects

~f kinehip,Cu&twal?Fd&~e:d westi ions b,ased on mating are
ueuallp 'called mawh;.&d QEC &.en referred to as affnal.rela-
tionships (the term baedis afittity, which means "personal
a~raction").These relafihs&ps, which link a person to the kin
of his or her spouse, will be &&ussed in the next chapter. In this
chapter, we consider e d d y defined relationships based on birth
and nmtumnce, ~ & c h ~ ~ & ~ a ~ m l otraditionally
gists call descent.
Peop1e:relkted to !-: &p descent are what English speak-
r *$" ' ? i ~ ~ . &
ers often r e f ~ to "
elations and .are socially relewant
connqcti:o~sbased ~m&&vp,went-child relationships of si61ing
relationships. hthr:@@&giimuse the term comanguineal kin to
referto all those P~q$g.8i!hoare linked to w e another izy birth as
blood x,elations~~tb.m~,~
. . comes~ from the Latin sangwineus,mean-
ing "dMoo.d''),.,ki &dai.don, however, a consrlnguineal kinship
gcaup anay inuladw idividuals whose membership in the group
was establishdl adt by birth but by means of cultwrally specific
rimale of inccq&wtion that resemble what Euro.Americans call
 unambiguous: An individual belongs to only one lineage. This is h.dbringuishing heages and clans is that lineage d e a e can
in contrast to a bilateral kindred in which an individual belongs to q&fy the .pne&se-&&
,a
d us
Mz>m:&c& aWiI%Xi,
ov&lapping groups.
Talk of patrheal or matrilineal descent focuses attengoo on the
kind of social grbup created by this pattern of descent: the lineage. A
lineage is composed of all those~peoplewho believe they can specify
the parent-child links that connect them to m e another thraugh a
common anmtor, Typically, lineages vary in size from 20 or 30
members to several hundred or more.
Many anthropologistshave argued that the most important fea-
ture of lineages $that they are corporate in organization. That is,
a lineage hm a single legal idefitity such t h a to outsiders, a l l mem-
bers oF&e line'age are equal in law to all others. In the case of a
b h t l feud, frs~example, the death of any opposing lineage member
avmges the dea& of the lineage member who began the feud; the
death of the a m a l murderer fs' not required (feudhg is defined in
Chapter 7). Lineages are also corporate in ithat :&.qrontrd prop-
erty, such as lakd ot herds, as a unit.
Finally, lineages l'e the main politi~al,WS@Q~&WS in the soci-
eties that,havethem. Individuals h,av=e h~p&&d of legal status in
such sucieties except thfough linea@a&xb;~s'~hip. They have rela-
tives who are outside the lineage, b a t , t h ~ i f , op.oolitical
~n and legal
status derives from the lineagete whfah rkey belong.
Because membership in a ike@ge~;l& .&ermined though a &ect
line from father or rnoth~rw hnezges can endure over time
and in a sense hawe,,= 'hde+widmit existence. As long as people tan
remember heir mi~.&@&~r,, h e group of peopke. descended
frdn&Maammi- ?can
.'. . en.
dLire. Most lineage-based societies
ha~.ea -, :$kpt&;&df about five generadoas: grandparents,
psm;tsj J&i, &n:, &&,gmdchil&en.
Whennmmbers062 descent group believe that they arein some
way :connected but cannot specify the precise genealogical links,
t h &&ompose
~ what anthropologists call a clan. ,&ually, a clan fs
made ,%p@t'.lineages that the larger so.ciety's members believe to
be r61gted to ,one another through links &at go back to mythical
times. Smethxzps-thecommon ancestoris said to:he-an animal that
livsd .arthe ik@*g of t h e . The importQntpoint to remember
 By contrast, in a matrilineal society, descent is traced through Jed.&nuss being passed. matrilineally, then, ~ ~ e a n b % h d
Wl h-
women ratha than through men. Supe~ficiall~, a mawifincage is a dren of Jewish women who have conceivt& #lp@&b L@&@-D
mirror imaged a patrilineage, but certa.k features make k distinct. fertilization are auto
Firstj the protatypical kernel of a mstrilineage is the vistet-brother gr&&d'bf th6,sijerrn donor is
p&ka mawsineageinay be,&o~&t a @@upof b$oththae a@, .,
lar coid&&tihn
)). .,,,: , *..
jn
sisters ,cmnected through liriks made by-w o r n . Brothers: mwtp
ouc &&en live-with ,thefamikes of their wises, but -they
certa~pinstZne$s
.,, . if
tain an.active.. h x e s t inthe affaim &,their ,own lineage. gecqnd,
he most ,kpoTtant man in a boy's.lifeis sot his father (who isnot
3n his lineage) but& m6kher's brother from whomhe will receive
his; lineage inhedtance, Thi,rd,,the amotlnt oEpower women exer-
&e itl.rn;a&hmm . .. iqg.@fbejnE h & z:&bated in &&opol.ogy.
A,jjmqa;@w
,~
,&&
$$,fl@t .k;
~.~ ,&&g as. .a ma$r&Cky (a w e t g
,'rSw. - 4 *,-:4~,d,e)i,&,b#
t &en zetain what appear* to be
a tce&b~o&pgb f f m t ; h&;e fffk&;@.. Same an&~ogolog&$s,
&at %hem.& membars ;&.a maef&wge me suppSeddto rm the
lineage, tipen thaqgh there i s , < m ~ t ~ : a a t e nfor
~ mwe;men
y in matri-
lineal. societie. in pa@W&&e$j they suggest the day
"-day exercise o&ptwtip re.&wf&d out by hebrothers
o t soinethps the hu$.bahd$.~. A.6@tq~bnjp Bf swdes, however, have
questioned the va1Eidity Q@ these . ~ e ~ ~ ~ a a l i m t i,Tryhg
o n s . to say
something abaut milla:ike&so<i&w &:general is difficult bemuse
they vary a great deal, T k w t e k e ~ a p h i cevidence suggesrs that extending it to include fictive kin (also,discussed iq Cha~ter64
%Y::l, 'c. ,)' I<'>
matrilineaggs-mustbe;~examah&djon a czswby-case basis. 3csiite tki' &r:etyof ki'%Gilj. s ~ d e m sm &e kbitd, &thro-
f l I ,: <!:.all:
For Jews, ~ewiih&swembersh~ip in the Jewish people- . ,: identified iix'niajor patterns gf kkinstfi termmology
pd~o$i:sts'have
. I : ,
.,I~, S t
..I"
has &storicaUy btien w,&& ;batpilineally. A man or a woman based on iiaw ~khpk'catPg~r)ze
,.,,.,,.,:.. "" .
t,v, , )l: .r consins.
.,...,, The $i* *itterns
" . (.':L.
whose Father was Jed& ~ W ' ~ w b mother se was not would reflect common sdlut~onsto <%K&ural pro%lemi faced by soueties
have to' got thmowgR' a ritual bha~would incorporate them into orgq$.& & ~ ~ s ! ~ ~ ~ ~ , ~ ~ e clucs p r o ~ hew
. p ;concenning i d e
tbe Jewish 6?ople *ile such was not the case for geople w h s e tjue.vati&&4@miatdwpA.of potential kin m a y b~,orga-
mother atas ~ e & i s(in . ~ tikip Ndted States, the R e f a h novement n ~ e d ; : ~ ~ ~ ~ ~b ~Lt the b o external
p i baundaries
~ ~ s t
ofi Judaism has r&t+am&d to accept any p e r m who has at and the ,idter@d ,d&&g.of .the kinshjq groups,.and,they p ~ l i n e
least one pageat. dq.&:~@wish as Jewish). This has led to inter-
esthg c o n s , e q u e ~ ~ & i las h dassisted reproduetion has: become
mere commgn. i&-la,d&.a pronatalist state, nieaning 'that having
children is en'qmqtggdj:end the national kea1.h: spgem in Israel
supports ~ a ~ ~ ~ @ ~ ~ & g k & technokogies
d u c t i v e to' all. women, mar-
ried or notz q$&.q& to have childreh. Eoll,~#&gthe logic of
 cousin conventionaKv refers to someme of the 18&e genera- Pardel cousins, for example, are Ego's father's brother's chil-
tion 4s E ~ Q : . , dren or Ego's mother" sister's children. Ctoss relatives are
linked tho& a brother-sister pair. Cro$s coushs q e Ego'e
Gem&$. q+&of
, ... &e, ~&fid&r
,~ ... .~. &&&j
'I" -
rh &&;ptiaie
,
' '' mother's brather's cMdren or father's sister" children. The 5ex
kn., rti $$$nish4 Qrima
. refers to a mak gowin and pxipg, m,
a fdb&':&u.s&i.
.;: , . I
~

.,.. & ;. ;&-C.~:i,,~: 4-1

.t,!T
InJ3nglwhz;f?yspa F e not, l m ~ g ~ ~ q , ~ $ . ~ a g .
\, ad &her Ega ox the cousins does mof matter; dze imgoBmt #a&
! ! > ..;.,:
';a
tor is the sex of the h e g d8tivt.s.
, d;,;:a,%safger~der, .b& &G& an$ mat are &stinpisheddm
ih'e;b.i&vof bdth genetation and g.~ ,d e r ,
, .
c ~ f i & . . & : & ~ ~ & ~ t pi :S~ ,~~ &@&e &* ba&,,of For Further Reading
KINSHIP

Carsten 2000,2003,2007; Collier and Yanigasako 1987; Parkin 1997;

Parkin and Stone 2004; Peletz 1995; Schneder 1968,1984; Stone
om ea& @thwon.the.
2001,2005
ADOPTION
Weismantel 1998
., . .

*i ~~&$~rd2*,
ig,,&&ach ~ *b0 ,ae
lj.~.m*&& NEW REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Kahn 2000; Strathern 1992
REPRODUCTION AND POWER
Ginsburg and Rapp 1995
GENDER
Brettell and Sargent 2008; Lancaster and DiLeonardo 1997;
Lewitl2006

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.d

NTHROPOLOGICAL DISCUSSIONS of marriage and the #a&

ily complement discussions of descent and round oat our
study of relatedness. As we saw in Chapter 9 , the complexities and
ambiguities of descent are many. The study of marriage and the
family offers just as many complications, the first of which is how
to defipe these terms.

10.1 what is Marriage?-

If we take what Euro-Americans call marriage as a prototype of a
particular kind of social relationship, we discovet. in all societies
institutions that resemble what people in the United States would
call marriage. At the same time, the range of beliefs and practices
associated with these institutions is broad, and the degree of overlap
is not great. Nevertheless, we tend to classlfy all these institutions as
marriage because of the key elements they ddo have in common. On
these grounds, a prototypical marriage involues a man and a woman,
transforms the status of the r t ~ and
n the woman, and stipulates the
degree of sexual access the mafried partners may have to each other,
ranging from exclusive to preferential. Marriage also establishes
the legitimacy of children bmh to the wife and creates relationships
between the kin of the wife and the kin of the husband.
We stress the pfotdtypjcd nature of our definition because,
although same sacikrits are quite strict about allowing females
to marry only malks, and vice versa, other societies are not. The
ethnographic literature cohtains many examples of marriage or
marriagelike relationships that resemble the prototype in every
respect except thar the partners may be two men or two women
(as defined according to biological sex criteria) or a living woman
and the ghost of a deceased male. Sometimes these marriages
involve a sexual relationship between the partners; sometimes
they do nat. Apparently, the institution we are calling marriage
. ,
 person is to marry outside a defined social group-extended family, h,@Jrd& dct
anthropological ~ i d h g the
, term m d o ~ al d gpmthwea
lineage, clan, class, ethnic group, or religious sea, for example- Ifa&:tg ~ e f e r ~ 8 & . ~ . & & &&jLfe'eh w.,
anthropologists say rhat &e society in question practices exogamy vA& t h e wife's mother.) MacjlocBI .~sidence is, f&&e&i~swi
(or wt-marriage). The opposite situation-in which a persan is in mafrilmeal societirs (sotne:.matsiliaea&sc&xk aee.gab&&
expected to marry withthin a defined social wup-is called endag-
amy.These patterns may be obhgatory (i.e., strictly enforced) ETE
merely preferred.
Once mar~ied,thk spouses must live so~ewhme.Anthropolo-
gists have ideatihied six patterns of postmarital residence, Meolcfcal
residence, in which thenew partners set up an independent home-
hoid at a place of theit own thoosing, should be familiar to peo-
ple w h ham gs:own up in h e United S ~ t e sCanada, , and most of
Emope, H&hc;ul residence tends to be found in societies that are
ntr)%eWfieSs iadividual%ticin their social organization, especially
tho~eiu which bbateralkin&eds also ane found. N e o l ~ c dresidence
exists thro+u,t the world bzrt is most common in nation-states
and in saGeties. b~td&ngh e h / l e d i t a m m &a, .&,me ,so;ci&es
with bilateralk i n & & h a v e b i l & d r e i e e n s in whichmar-
ried partners live,wirhfor near),eithe~pb:%&~s or thehusbandL
parents. Despite ,this flexibilip '$a iuilniphg married partners to
wake&ecisionsregardiorg where &.hey Wght,li*e, very few societies
with bikocal residence hme been $@&bed in the anthropoLogical
literature. . .
The most cbmmon r&sideii~agmwm~ in &e world, in tenns of the
number of societies in whi~liai~.k,~t;~cticed, is patrilocal residence i?l
which the p m e z s in .a m@$&ge: ~ ~ fiw with (or near) the.hisband's
father. ,[Inolder an&op&@&g&' w~iting,the term ,virilocd is some-
time$ usedto distinguiglx44&&g~ch the husband'sJIcin: b m
iRg:~pecifi~allTwithth&e:.h~~~#s~Stitther, for which tlietempqtdocal,
reserved.)~ a @ i l o . ~ disnstrongly ~ e associated with p a t r k -
eal d e ~ c e a t . s ~ s t e m ~ ~ ~ kpercent
~ & @of ~ socieries in which postmari-
tal residence is patt&g$l~@e also patrilineal. I f c W e n s e b o r n into
a patrilineage an@?&~&.&om the father or other patrilineage mem-
bers, then there p%dP.vntagesto rearing theq amonp'the members
of thelineage: .'
When t h e p. ~ m w ~
in a marriage live with ( ~ r ~ n e ather ) wifeas
mother, an&~@bJo,gi~ts use the term mdtrilod rexi&=. (A++,
c:llsic ' ,
brother in yet another kinsh~pgroup. In many societies in eastern , intenbed, likwohc sororate, to maintain the &WB
b d l c r m ' ) is
and southern Africa, a woman gains power and influence over her -t - b',.xl:8~m
Lamween d e s o ~ mu;~51. ~oci&&s.~,& a h *um&ia$:,a.
brother because the ca'ttle that her marriage brings allow him to kind of social sscuriry system for widows, &? mi&.&w&ie b
marry and continue their lineage. destitund.after the death of their husbands.. ,.1 . ~ ~ . y k ! , i m ~ & J ! ~
Dowry, by contrast, is typically a transfer of family wealth,
usually from parents to their daughter, at the time of her mar-
riage. It is found primarily in the agricultural societies of Europe
and Asia, but it has been brought to some parts of Africa with the
arrival of religions like Islam that support the practice. In societies
~nwhlch both men and women are seen as heirs to family wealth,
dowry is sometimes regarded as the way women receive their
inheritance. Dowries often are considered the wife's contribution
to the esrablishment of a new household to which the husband
may bring other forms of wealth or prestige. In stratified societ-
ies, the size of a woman's dowry frequently ensures that when she
marries, she will continue to enjoy her accustomed style of life.
In some stratified societies, an individual of lower status some-
times marries an individual of higher status, a situation in which
the children will take on the higher status. This practice is called
hypergamy, and it is usually one in which the lower-status per-
son is the wife and the dowry is seen (sometimes explicitly) as an
exchange for the higher social position that the husband confers.
The ties that link kinship groups through marriage are some-
times so strong that they endure beyond the death of one of the
partners. In some matrilineal and some patrilineal societies, if a.
wife dies young, the husband's line will ask the deceased wife's line
for a substitute, often her sister. This practice, called the sororate
(from the Latin soror, "sister"), is connected with both alliance
strength and bridewealth. That is, both lines-that of the wid-
ower and that of the deceased wif-wish to maintain the alli-
ance formed (and frequently contmued) by the marriage. At the
same time, if a man marries the sister of his deceased wife, the
bridewealth that his line gave to the line of the first wife will not
have to be returned, so the disruption caused by the wife's death
will be lessened. In many societies, if the husband dies, the wife
may (and in rare cases be obl~gatedto) marry one of his brothers.
T h ~ practice,
s called the levirate (from the Latin leuir, "husband's
II!R
 elations st ups am~.%the c ~ w i wand the therel&~Mp of the g r o t ~ ~
of ~ . w ,G& g ~ OhPi ,sin&% h*@& .&d&&@l! pmp1exi~
- arises
in the younger generanon as children haye wnne~$opto half-
slbbnps (the same father but a different mother) and-MI siblngs
-,
of &~(Itsin their lives-their>otber's cowives.Xhese Merepa
..-.. ititernal dpamics of polygynous families qf&re& frb
m&e,thz 4

children who may be adopted-forms a family. GLBT activists have

used this model as a resource in their struggle to obtain for long-
standing families of choice some of the same legal rights enjoyed by
traditional heterosexual families, such as hospital visiting privileges,
partner insurance coverage, joint adoption, and property rights.
Marriages do not always last forever, and almost all societ-
ies make it possible for married couples to divorce-that is, to
dissolve the marriage in a socially recognized way, regulating the
status of those who were involved with the marriage and any off-
spring of the marriage. In some societies, it is not merely the peo-
ple who were married who are involved in the divorce; it may also
include other family or lineage members of the divorcing parties
whose relationships are also changed by the divorce. In societies in
which bridewealth is part of the marriage ceremony, for example,
divorce may cause difficulties if the bridewealth must be returned.
In such societies, a man who divorces a wife or whose wife leaves
him expects her family to return to him some of the bridewealth
he offered in exchange for her. But the wife's family may well have
exchanged the bridewealth they received when she married to
obtain wives for her brothers. As a result, her brothers' marriages
may have to be broken up in order to recoup enough bridewealth
from their in-laws to repay their sister's ex-husband or his line.
Sometimes a new husband will repay the bridewealth to the for-
mer husband's line, thus letting the bride's relatives off the hook.
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 p d o d of greatest expandon, which suetched roughly f~omrhb
d
l the ,nineteen& until s h o d r @P. .%$'add w@p
D[

. .. A" >I,& .*N

A NTHROPDLCIGISTS HAVE SPECIALIZED i n t a h g seriously the

ways of life of people in "remote" p m of the wo~ld- rewok,
that is, from the activitiee and concerns of most people in the vestern
capitalist nations from which the anthropologists traditionally came.
Untilvery recently, limitations rooted in the te&nologies of transpor-
tation aad communication meant that, even when political or eco-
nomic ties linked mrritories at some distance from one another, the
movment ~f peeple or goods or ideas from one place to another was
slow and cumbersome. By $,000 years ago, the growth of states and
their expansion into empkes drew peoples in several regions of the
world into intensified contact vith one another. At the beginning of
the twenty-first century, however, economic or pditical events whose
consequences used to be felt only within restricted geographical
regions regularly affected people living in regions of the world that
used to be considered distant born ome ananother. It was only a little
over five centuries ago that Emopean explorers began to make con-
tact and then to conquer indigenous g~owpson all continents, eventu-
ally establishing far-flungcdanid einpires that lasted until the middle
of the twentieth century. The teIatitmships established by European
colonial domination created the condirions for the emergence, by the
end of the twentieth integrated global economy.
,.
1
11.1 he
Europeans did not invent colonialism, which can be defined as
political conquest of m e society by another, followed by social
domination and forced culmral change. Since the rise of the first
states in antiquity, rsgions of varying sues have been brought
together in differewpnrts of the worldag a result of imperial expan-
sion, and what is today Western Europe was marginal to most of
them. None of those earlier empires, however, ever attained the
scope of the European colonial empires, especially during their
' 1.
180
-'-
-

peoples for the purpose of resource extraction (mining, for cxam-

ple) or far growing cash crops valued in Europe (see Chapter
8.for further discussion oi cash crops), displacing indigenous
farmers and herders from their lands and turning them into wagt
wurkers forced to seek employment on, plantations,. in mitres;ol
in the growing cities. Economic efficiency further requ+r& @ht
h~iIdihg:~f infrastructure (mads, ports,, and sr, cm)by whichcad
crops or minerals could be transported out-.of colonies and .back
to Europe. Culinists regularly relied gn, the labor of coIoriize~
peoples to build such infrastru'c,~ure,sometimes resorting to thc
use of comet, or fo*d labor, ih which laborers were kequired t c
wwk a gk~eaatnb.&.o$ .daysa n a given project .or rfsk fines or
$ ~ P ~ i & ~ ~ ~ ~
As cakB&l . e r c@afr:01, ~ qnrxeased,
~ ~ ~colonized
~ peoples
beeam familiar-withEuropeae .eeonotnic practices such as tht
use of money
goods for emh
to meet subsistent
ple were deprivedof the land. dh which&e.y:~~'im,efly had growr
subsistence crops or as th.t.ir-~*dit&d glj&@nal produttion of
pots or cloth or f a ~ mimplements sag ~@&lantedby rnanufac-
tured items produced in and imppmgd &om Europe. Over time,
indigenous peoples ,hadto eomtwtwt m s i t h these cultural prac-
tices, and the way they did sar h'wv&ied from time to time and
place to. place. They werei&,@&g ' .. kith what many scholars have

called cultural imperialism, a sifitation in which the ideas and

practices of one CUIQ@@ &$,&wp@eSed upon other cultures, which
may be modified or "e:I;~&~@tids: a result. Western colonialism
appear,& to produ~e:g &&narive kind of cultural imperialism,
frequentlycalled w e w a . t S a n , in which the i,deas and practices
of Western Europtia+$kw North American) culture eventually
displaced ma,nE"w$'?&4dtias .and practices of the in:digenous cul-
tures of the r ~ k b s $ e ~ .places where European settler colonies.
eventually broke &$faEurope, as in North, Central, and South
America, antl@@gGb,&stsoften speak of iureinal adlonialisin
imposed on i~&@wo,uspeoples within the hiders. of indepen-
dent states.; . '
...
ought to assist the "young" nations to attain maturity. However,
economists fcom Western industrial nations insisted that the leaders
of new nations carefully follow their recipe for development. Like
parents dealing with sometimes unruly adolescent children, they Oha: these. ttansformcd relatioris ef pprodiuaion ares.j,&~sn-
worried that young nations eager to modernize might resist disci- uenche4 pditidll independence done will iiot mike dwnein.'~
plined evolution through the stages of economic growth and look
for a shortcut to economic prosperity.
During the cold war years when modernization theory devel-
oped, the tempting shortcut was seen as socialist revolution. The
twentieth century has been marked by a series of revolbtions all over
the globe, the best known being those in Mexico, Russia, China,
Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In 1969 anthropologist
Eric Wolf characterized all but the Nicaraguan revolution (which
would take place 10 years later)as wars waged by peasants to defend
themselves from the disruptions caused in their societies by capitalist
market penetration. Followingthe Russian Revolution, opponents of
the capitalist system elsewhere in the world also formed revolution- trying ~ a . ~ d ' ~ ~ ~ ~
ary movements whose explicit aim was to h o w capitalists out of natioh fm over a . ~ 3 w u ~
. I
the country by force. Although many rank-and-file members of the d m states ofiAfrjca; A!reie~a&g--
il
~ * i b
revolutionary movements had modest dreams of return to a more tohe called dependency t h ~ . s h q ~ h t ' p t d m $ a a i & ~ & -
prosperous status quo ante, their leaders often hoped to replace cap- development" were a w ) z s e q r c e m e ~ o f . . c ~ ~ s t ' & O ~ ~ ~ ~ n
italism with some locally appropriate form of socialist society. After
the successful Cuban Revolution in 1959 when Fidel Castro and
his supporters openly committed themselves to socialism and allied
with the Soviet Union, modernization theory became the foreign- state of derdevelopment in whch their economies came to depend
policy option of choice in the United States, a potentially powerful on decisions made antbide thelr,bordersby edonial~nrlerswho were
approach to economic development that might woo potential revo-
lutionaries elsewhere away from the Marxist threat (see Chapter 8).
The Marxist threat was real because Marxists argued that the
factor responsible fot the impoverished economies of postcolo-
nial states was precisely what the modernization theorists were
offering as a cure, namely, capitalism (see Chapter 8 for a detailed
discussion). A key feature of capitalism is the way it creates sepa-
ration, or alienation, of workers from the tools, raw materials,
and technical knowledge required to produce goods, When, for
example, peasants are pushed off the land and forced to work for
wages in mines or on commercial farms, they are caught up in a
 nation-states as primordial socioculturalunits, each of which is indi- system, which was, in his opinion, the only sooi;rl systtmthat vame
vidually responsible for its own successful modernization. In recent tb being s e l f . c ~ ~ & & ~ ~ &sel$+wla&g?.&: L&@ mwl+
years, the individualism at the center of modernization theory has -+. %&pst&im:&w?s&: itha*.n~a.w&k'm&
/ , ~, ,
reappeared in the guise of neoliberalism in which internationalinsti- , g s ~ : z ; ~ a ~ ~ b m u m ~ & : ~ ~d ~w&+~m. &
Mby , &, .G: ,w $ 1
tutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund $,*,w:ibB6@&d.gmie*&&w;d &&@&
_ I&$&& gts&;&&&w@w,,
k&q&7;&,

urge individual nation-states to pursue their own economic self- o;r&$ I . @

. $ '&&~~lmpj&k~$ @&&&:&
i
;
intexest in competition with one another. Neoliberdism replaces , ., ,. @f~ t i e ~ ; ! f l i r ~ k ~ f l ~ f ~ ~ & . @ . ~ & ~ ~ s & @ e , @ @ & ~ ~ ~ & @ &
s&f.k~
the goal of achieving prosperous national self-sufficiency with the .tw(j&s
.. a,;-:&m,q@rM:@mm IW&, .~.
" ..PI. . < ~~ * ~ .,.
&q$~;~

goal of find& a niche in the global capitalist market. State bureau- ~ ~ & : ~ p m , ~ & @ w p t @@e:+mpw
@& &&&faif2 ! i :. , , . : i; ,:,..;,
crats have had to divert funds away from state institutions that ~ ~ d & ~.a ~ $ m , : ~ w i s t s 5 5 a ; ~ aEm;tiiqaw~@
wns~~a'~~~i~
subsidized poor citizens in order to invest in economic enterprises as mmn6&&:$&6ipa&&:h.mb~~ p~st:ks;@l~g&;~m~-.
that "wouldearn income inthe market. um > 5 @ * & * & ~ ~ i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ p 2 ~ & y e b v ~ ? ? :
..~... : ~.~
. .
sD, @a hp,=(d , @ & .+
,
Dkpendemq t h e o ~ ,by contrast, rejects the individualistic , I8 &@Orn~d@<+$p @-&.ti.@$t>4&%'1p
~% ~

analysi-s along w1rh its cancl~sions.Naioh-states are rcot primor- $,g~&&b&.@&&

.., . ~

dial enrities but are historical creations; and some nations of the
wodd were able to become pcrwerful and rioh only because they
forced other societies into weakness and poveq. The fates of a
rich country and its poor colonies (or neocolonies) are thus inti-
mately interrelated, Social-scientific perspectives that rake this
observation as their starting point us~altyare said to pay attention
to an international political econbmy i(see Chapter 7). In recent
years, many anthropologists inmtested i m the international politi-
cal economy have become shanp eritks "of neoliberalism.
An ongoing struggle hetween anthropologists favorable to
modernization thwry and those mitical ot it was a feature of the
cold war years of the i195Qsand 1960s. By the 1970s, critics of
modernization theory were act$ve in anthropology, many of them
iduenced by dependenq i!lgory. By the 1980s, however, many
anthropologists agreted &IT dependency theory was too simplistic
to account for the cohpfwities of the postcolonial world. Many
anthropologists&as"adbpredthe broader perspective of world sys-
tem theory, an anakMa4 framework first suggested in the 1970s
by sociologist Imm%nhelWallerstein.
World system theory expanded upon and strengthened the
Mmxist critique cd capitalist colonialism inherent in dependency
theory. Wallairstehqbmost original idea was to apply a function-
alist analytic flamework ((see Chapter 12) to the capitalist world
 social scientists approach world history outside Europe prior to In thc past, such mwements of peoples encomexed many
the rise of capitalism. Geographer Janet Abu-Lughod, for example, barriers, but today dawndlh r cervain m
q;8d -8 @ 4gg.e
has made a persuasive case for the existence of a thirteenth-century
world system centered in India that organized trade by land and ;"@y&: &,&$ 'iSBf%m
- '~'

sea from Southeast Asia to Western Europe and from China to East
Africa. Some anthropologists have been inspired by Abu-Lughod's core have $beenrelocated in peupherd mtiolas to take adva&@'
work because it not only provides a fuller historical context for of low wage'rates. Wage wonk in maaufacmias farm~lrenabkd$
understanding the development of ciultures they study in the lands
that formerly belonged to this world system but also shows that
the capitalist world system is not the only world system ever to
exist and that Western cultural hegemony is not inevitable.
Following the end of the cold war in 1989, cultural anthro-
pologists were among the social scientists who observed a series
of far-reaching apd intensifying global changes. From one point of
view, it looked as though the fall of socialism in the former Soviet
Union and the adoption of capitalist economic practices in China
was making it possible for the capitalist world system to swal-
low up the entire world. From another point of view, however,
the farces that were responsible for these new interconnections
appeared to be so powerful that they were undermining key fea-
tures of the world system.
For example, world system theory rests on the assumption
of an international division of labor in which people in differ-
ent geographical regions specialize in different economic tasks,
This makes it both possible and meaningful to distinguish core
from semiperipheral from peripheral nations. However, the vast
improvements in transportation and communication technologies
in recent decades has permitted a breakdown in the link between
economic role and territory. Anthropologists have described a
massive deterritotialization of both peoples and activities from
their former exclusive locations in one or another region of the
world system, together with complex processes of reterrirorializa-
tion of those migrants and those activities elsewhere in the world.
Anthropologists often face the challenge of carrying out fieldwork
among people whose ancestors may have been rooted in a sin-
gle territory but who themselves may be living in a diaspora of
migrant populations located in many different places.
 growth of computer-mediated communication. The cultural possi- exclusionary political alliances defined more narrowly than and
bilities tb%t.&&@,be~pro+jn+ed by unb~i&d. hyherdanges on a
globalilevel~pemainilimite~,hv~ev~x,,:h~~use .ai.aess:.tfi.~o~putarz,
, -
mediatqd.:~.mmus&atienis ~.still largd~t.h% prgsswr of.,miM@. =-
dissusers: ~8th =master$.of compqE,er.,$@bqq113@and, lite?:ac$& thpn ps overriding standards beneath. which all other c a q p 9 1
E~&sh;,Zn,a&%mn;
.. variou8 mti~aal g ~ ~ @ r m e EW&Y@~&,$@
nt6 pities aid idevtities shodd be subor,dinated or eliin+ted. . P.~ s
to.~~!~i&their citizenslraaws;tv ~ . a y b e x c : o m t t l ~ ~ + ~ ~ ; ~ ~ i & ~ ~ - . another way, the hegernqny of ;he narion-stare and.eitizensfi
ing $&&ee ~f LSWC~SS..:.: 3 , . . . , ., :
, . .;,: . , I. :.;.,):! .\,
! . Th.ei;fwGe& gbb.alkati~n,, base,liftle~res~ert&rrth8-~kinds. ;@f
~ s ~ i a l ~ tsligiogsi ~ ~ . ~ ~@Iieical~
l ~ ~ ~,md: l ,.geogrdpkcaI
~ h~y~~axi- . . .
~&at~."ua.us~&:@rfli~~ip@e-:,.;m.i! ,~q&qi.zt.aon~cfs beheen vastly mc.mbeys or by orltsi~.ers,,as,h.pmoge?eoq2 apd harq44nious arc
. d i f f ~ c ; e j l ~ i ( ~ a r ; e , ~ ~ ~ & : ~ e : ~ ~ . ~ ~snd!pgoples.
q & ~ i 1 ; ~ ~Zhw, tic~$, more often c , h a r a ~ ~ ~.; ,.) ~. ~ d.. pl~ralism.~ a .i is,. they
b.. ~ . ~ ~ l rThat . are
&ej~%#~$51&$B~~B@ePPg$+q&~1~:&&
. . way it. agpears
>., + ... .
, .
~&&,&~q~$~~~&&&:~@i;d6;.:$&ejjand ;8$acGa*;B
:ejq&enii . : & L ~ Q G Q ~ :w&&,~mai~ -.aq&opJ~&~ 4 nth@
&~oLars & g ~ ~ b ~ ~ $ ~ , , t h + ~ p , a & ~ ~ ~ ~ m n d & 8 i ~ . i ~ h i w ~ m : r e f ~ ~ ~ ~
thetsi.tuati~@h?~&b,
~ ~ Iju&@.&@gslfig~&qp&&es:at , ., & dywfi
,,of,tfie;~.eaw~st~,e,wtqrF:~~e&$.&~@~w&~&&enCes,aLe~~
hilate&,,,&&a these . ~ ~ i ~ ~ ~ ~ ; & ~ ~ @ @ ~ @ of &''fiati.Onal
~ ; ~ ~ f i t s ,
"Ii(
sden&a mbde~nityP+pms~e_a&n:~&$&;~ &Wee-appead mave
4qsi~~ t@day+ than;eves, and h&&@&&&gly been eafled.hto
que~tioaj(see;'.GhapterI ) , . :; & n o a r > . : ..
M e r 198?,,for exampl@,,: W r t a i n ~ e of s the cold war years 8

, iitizens of the United.Stat*:.

bur Menas? .Indeed,,who.are
~ . ., tics that have experienced %cent i-gration, pru&cing a situ;
Sime-a terroris& World Twde Cente~in arion &at, is oftm caU,ed,m u l + u l p r ~ s m ,Tke,$,@ipn-states,uf
0 1 , @ a y &rie&ms have
stepped into &e Sioot-&as
sts." But this hq.har:cjly..ledto
ing how "ten;otjkcsb' /we to
ughtc Eome &cmxist groups ,
itedaStakw+md&~mpe have
orist groups~&at~er..?r~wagr~~n.. .,
@;age situationsj ,@f ~ungert!&awand inse-
, given rise, to a,. phenp@~611 ;sometime$
11.4 he ~ u I t u r a~I f f e c t sof contact by contact with the U.S.military during Wwld War N. Tip
~ekrs,in general, to1thc&,qudantmanufacWd.M$'bg@b$&
Anthropologists probably have always been aware that the non-
Western societies in which they were doing fieldwork had been
heavily affected by imperialist forces of one kind or another. This
awareness was surely responsible at least in part for the relativistic
defense of bounded, internally harmonious "cultures" so important
in the early twentieth century. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead
(1901-1978) and Bronislaw Malinowski (18841942),for example,
regularly drew attention to what they saw as the misguided and per-
nicious effects of colonizers and missionaries on indigenous cultures.
Shortly before his death, Malinowsh wrote about the enormous
changes taking place in indigenous cultures as a result of colonialism,
and American anthropologists like Melville Herskovits (1895-1963)
were drawing attention to the processes of cultural change that colo-
nial encounters (external and internal) had set in motion. It was only
after World War II, however, and especially after the achievement of
political independence by former European colonies that the colo-
nial situation itself became an explicit focus of ethnographic study.
When anthropologists began to address the consequences of
cultural contact, they invented a new vocabulary to try to describe
the processes that seemed to be at work. In the United States,
Herskovits and his colleagues spoke of acculturation: a process idy +&~g&a4& &@&.aF~.. . - e b & +ke B@ew&&,~,&
~

by which cultures in contact borrow ideas and practices from one ~~!~pj&&e&ih*d$q&:&$@f@
$$ &s:i$f,*ie&,,$&@J*#b
.
7 '. ,l

another, thereby moddying or replacing traditional ideas and ptac-

,&jkb.wflr& &u?S-&@&em $ : & 9 w a w mm@&$m -~

tices. The study of cultural borrowing had always been important

in North American anthropology, and anthropologists pointed
out that the process often involved reshaping the borrowed item
to make it fit into preexisting cultural arrangements. When viewed
by an outside observer, the result often was described as syncre-
tism:a mixing of elements from two or more traditions. For exam-
ple, a syncretistic religion emerges when missionary Christianity
and a traditional indigenous religious system both contribute to
new shared spiritual practices that are neither wholly "Christian"
nor wholly "traditional" (see Chapter 5).
Frequently cited examples of religious syncretism are the so-
called cargo d s that developed in Melanesia and New Guinea

*' r
in the decades after colonial conquest, many of them stimulated
cultural exchange were much more complex than the struggles of
identity politics or the worries about cultural imperialism would
lead one to imagine. Their efforts were complemented by the actions
of individual members of different subaltern groups who refused to
assimilate to a hegemonic culture, asserted their right to pick and
choose from global culture the customs they wanted to follow, and
resisted attempts by other members of the groups to which they
belonged to police their beliefs and behavior (see Chapter 2).
The charge of Western cultural imperialism-that Western
cultures were dominating and destroying other culthres, produc-
ing global cultural homogenization--did not hold up to scrutiny.
The notion of cultural imperialism denies agency to non-Western
people who make use of Western cultural forms. It also ignores
the fact that many non-Western cultural forms have been adopted
by members of Western societies (sushi, for example). Finally, it
ignores the fact that cultural forms sometimes bypass the West
entirely as they move from one part of the world to another (movies
from India, for example, have been popular in Africa for decades).
These are all examples of the active reconciliation of cultural prac-
tices from elsewhere with local practices in order to serve local
purposes: That is, they are examples of indigenization-sometimes
also called domestication or customization (see Chapter 2).
The rate of cultural borrowing followed by indigenization has
speeded up enormously under conditions of globalization. This has
led many social scient~ststo describe the process as dtural hybrid-
ization. The emphasis in discussions of cultural hybridization is on
forms of cultural borrowing that produce something completely new
from the fusing of elements of donor and recipient cultures. Rather
than speaking of dependency and cultural loss, ths discourse empha-
sizes creativity and cultural gain. It acknowledges the agency of those
who borrow and helps discredit the notion that "authentic" cultural
traditions never change. This approach offers a new angle from
whch to consider such phenomena as cargo cults. Rather than being
viewed simply as curious products of culture contact, cargo cults
began to look hke creative attempts by colonized groups deprived of
the promised benefits of capitalist colonialism to make sense of their
deprivation and to overcome it by innovative religious means.
-
;17F
 I
Ei&68 int h e # i c ~ & , ~ f '
y @pi& to M&p:arn.&orru citizens lwd forums, that cultural groups have rights oftheir m,&isthct
. ., .,, &om the heights of ,&I&h&i&d ma&@@, i% & z&&@~.
ahtad

..
legitimacy on their being run by repsesentatives of the "nation."
The pressures to assimilate recalcitrant minorities may range from
ethnocide, or the dellberate destruction of a cultural tradition, to
genocida, or the mass murder of an entire social or cultural group
whose presence is seen as threatening ta those who run a a t e as
has lrreea.documented in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, the bme~
Yugdavia, Rwanda, and els~where.(See discu:ussion of ethnocide
and genocide in Chapter 6.) in the face of such intergroup violefxce,
anthropologists and other social scieatists have struggled to define
ways of dealing with the differences rhat divide culnval and politi-
cal group that sannot avoid hsving to d d with one another. Is
it possible to imagine a way of managing culmral or politieal dif-
ferences fn warn &at dm not lead to, viokmt conflicts. that do not
rqfi&e s i P & a ,&&&&,a7 :&dt :dhowpeople of different
! ~ & & Q ~ &toS~tr..c0mfa~t&1p dh e differehces 6f others?
6iie zecent saggestion bas Gea-thtttthe hontemp6rar,y multi-
sultuqal challenges may bmet:$.~e$l~dpi way ;co promote among
all.dae.value~ofccismepditanism. <3asm~pdlitanismre6ers n,being
at ease in mane thanone eulswal &&bagel t was promoted by the
Stoic o$ &kc 'and revived by the philoso-
pher Emmanuel Kant d ~ & & 'E&fi&teilment. For Kant, to be
a cosmbpditan ,megnt to, & ' e ~ & & ~ t i d in the ways of Western
Eur6pe, a d it Was applit.$t,:&gBs m1y. Those who would pro-
mote cosfnopolitaaismto:da~;he,ye~e'~, want to extendthe concept
to include the a l t ~ a ~ v e : * $ & ~ ~ q p E t a n i sofmnonelitessuch
s" as
pmor migrants who maaage: ~ : d ~gracefully g l with the culturally
hybrid experiences &ST mmkter. and the multiple perspectives
they must juggle,Whens;m~&ep%i~d ehemselves answeeable todif-
fment.gtbu.psof p ~ q &:&&.;&fferent values and practices,
To cultivate t ~ ' & g ~ . ~ ~ c o s ~ o p awareness
o l i t a n is often dif-
ficult. Par one thing, @xfquiresmore than simply being open to or
inclusive of orherP~nlmsS Many anthropologistswould argue that
it also requires ac;%q~p$tWging the legacy of ineq4aalitybequeathed
an many af t l i . e ~ ~ . people
~ + " s by c ~ l o ~ & s mEn. sd,dition, it
reqd.ces re~~g&@m &at the cosmopolitanism oe,&e: future must
involve abtiqg hi@ztErom individuals and gr~ttp'swhose views
have not beg&%@&owledged in the past. For &mple, it may welI
,.I *,
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 by the senses. The m r e ~ ~ b a oi p ethese ph-ma ms&e&%act
mm&?J naums & ~ r ~ $hvmap&q,, k : ~ ~ &
cal or s p j r i d causes. Du6kheikn echoed chiswhen lae laf&G&a
char sacidtam ?odd be explained only ky0rheh su~lalMarns:-b&
&c&we'~emed~errist&t w fapid ctiangk,; bq%&h& it:t&dtkiadg",
RIGINALLY, ANTHROPOLOGY AIMED to be a science of cul- it did so in:a pattiernedw-d lawlike:rn~nacr;~ h u~qk:S&kc$.',
s ~
ture. Its early practitioners modeled themselves on the most
successful scientists of their day-the physicists, chemists, and espe-
cially the biologists. As much as possible, they aimed to adopt the
methodology of science and described their activities using scien-
tific terminology. Thus, important late-nineteenth-century scholars ,-
like Lewis Henry Morgan and Herbett Spencer were most expllclt
about the fact that their work involved a search for the laws of
society and culture and that discovering such laws would permit
them to describe the relationships of material cause and effect that
underlay social and cultural phenomena.
Since their day, the applicability of the scientific method to
the study of human social and cultural life has been questioned.
Although some cultural anthropologists maintain that the scien-
tlfic method is appropriate to anthropology, many of their col-
leagues have concluded either that human cultural life is not an
appropriate subject matter for "scientific" analysis or that, if it
is, science itself must be reconfigured and its methodology revised
to provide accounts of human cultural life that are not d~storted
beyond all recognition (also discussed in Chapter 1).

as Science
12.1 ~nthro~oIo,g
Why did early anthropologists think that culture could be stud-
ied scientifically? If we believe E. B. Tylor, it was because culture
was patterned, orderly, lawltke. As Tylor famously said, if law is
anywhere it is everywhere. Like physlcal scientists and social scien-
tists such as Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) and Emile Durkheirn
(1858-1917), Tylor and other early anthropologists believed that
the phenomena of culture--languages, customs, techmques, timals,
and so forth-were material phenomena, phenomena that existed in
the world and were tangible and measurable and could be registered

2 02
discipl~neof anthropology. Evolutio~larythought in nineteenrli-
century biology is ordinarily associated w ~ t hCharles Darwin
41809-82), but cultural evolutionary thought actually predated
Darwin's 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species and was
already well developed in the work of Darwin's contemporary
Herbert Spencer. Spencer thought that human societies could use-
fully be compared to living organisms and stressed that, over time,
like living organisms, societies increased in both size and internal
complexity. Spencer's ideas had parallels with the work of his con-
temporary, Lewis Henry Morgan. Morgan is best remembered for
two key contributions to the development of anthropological the-
ory: his emphasis on patterned variation in kinship terminologies,
which led him to speculate about the different forms human fami-
lies might assume in different societies, and his attempt to connect
these patterns of family organization to patterns of subsistence in a
universal evolutionary sequence. The sequence he proposed drew
together many contemporary ideas about the evolution of culture,
including the idea that all cultures everywhere either had evolved
or would evolve through the same sequence of stages: Savagery,
Barbarism, and Civilization (also discussed in Chapter 8).
Morgan recogn~zedthat his scheme was tentative in places and
required more evidence to sustain certain claims. Nevertheless, l ~ k e
other cultural evolutionists in this period, he was convinced that
he had discovered underlying laws of cultural change and that bet-
ter empirical evidence collected by future researchers would refine
the patterns he had exposed. . , .
In a scientific world where s hope to reduce complex
effects to simple causes, theor ral evolution were chal-
lenged by other theories &at claimed to explain the diversity of
human social life in different ways. One of the strongest competi-
tors ~nthe late nineteenth century was the argument that biological
differences between different human populations explained their
different ways of life or, put another way, that a group's way of
life was determined by its distinct, innate biological makeup. This
approach, called biological determinism, is also known as scientzfic
racism, for it claimed to have emp~ricalevidence that supported
both the existence of biologically distinct human populations, or
sews, and the relative ran!&@ of these races on a scale of SUI@$#
dwiv end inferiority. Not surprisingly, this Eurocentric f r m
m k wumed that light-skinned European races were supri
inned &ican or Asian or Native American races be
ter had been conquered and dominated by the former.
I. ,Late-nineteenth-century evolutionary anthropologists never
fully separated themselves from the biological determinists. Even
though their defense of a universal set of cultural evolutionary
stages presupposed a cammon humanity and common destiny
shared by all the peoples of the world (which they sometimes
described as the psychrcunity of mankind), they believed that this
common potentiality had not been equally developed in all living
I
I
I
human populations and that its actual degree of realization was
indicated by the stage of cultural evolution a particular society
had achieved. Thus, although the descendants of people whose
way of life was class~fiedas "savage" might one day achieve the
same level of sophistication as a contemporary people classified
as "barbarian," there was no question of considering them equal 1
at the present time. People living at a more highly evolved level of
culture were simply viewed as more highly evolved people than
those living at lower levels. Not until the twentieth centurv
the work of North American anthropologists l k e Franz
his students would scientific racism be rejected as an ex] L*
of human cultural diversity (also discussed in Chapter 2)
II
12.3 Early-~wentieth-century~ ~ ~ r & c h e s
Although unilineal evolutionary schemes were built on valid
observations about changes in human subsistence strategies and
incorporated empirical evidence about kinship that has proved
reliable over time, these schemes also included (as all scientific
theories do) considerable speculation. As the twentieth century
began, German anthropologists were offer~nga very different uni-
versal theory of culture change, based on the supposedly regular
spread of various cultural items from group to group by diffusion,
or borrowing. Some proponents of both views were b e c o d 0
increasingly extreme in their claims. In the face of this e x t r e e A
I fLd.
In
\ ''A
Boas in the United States denounced both theories. In the best
scientific fashion, he used em-pirical ethnographic and historical
evidence to expose the inadequacim of both forms of redtuction-
ism. Boas agreed that cultures changed over time, but sueh change
could not he confined to passage t~hougha single sequence afpm-
gressive evolutionary stages. Rather, historical evidence showed
that rdtures sametimes simplified over time, instead of becomiqg
more complex, and in any case could easily slup stages by bomw-
in8 advanced' cultural inventions from their neighbors. Similarly,
althaugh cultures are Eull of cultural isems or activities, called cul-
ture traits, b o ~ ~ o m from
d nedboring societies, anthropologists
go .tab fa^: if thw,amumqthar most laurnan groups are incapable ef
inventing m&ng on their own and must await the innwations
that s p e a d f r m a few fayored sites of cultural creativity. Boas
poiated aut that some social problems-how to organize kinship,
for example-have only a few possible solutions and are &ely to
be independently discovered again.and again by widely separated
p%oples.
B ~ a sand his students rejected both extreme evolutionary
schemes and extreme diffusion schemes, preierring to focus on
the distinct histories of change in particular human societies, an
approach that came to be called historical partia&uism. By com-
paring the culture histories of neighboring peoples, they were able
to trace the limits of diffusion of many cdtitlral traits, eventually
producing maps of culture areas far smaller and more complex
than the vast maps of the German diffusionists.
The theoretical extremism that h s rejected was also rejected
in England and. France at abatrt the same time. Although not rul-
ing out the passibility of o w &a$ bdng able to construct a theory
of cultural evolution, anthqq@~o~sts like Bronislaw Malinowski
(1884-1942) and A. R, Rq@Me-Brown (1881-1955) in England
and sociolo~is~ilflthrog~10@etEmile Durkheim and his colleagues
in France declared a rn~riaeiumon speculations about cultural
evolution unsuppo1::te'd by empirical evidence. All urged thaz
re9eareh focus instead On living societies in Qrder oo collect pre-
eiselp the kind of &miled empirical evidence k t might one day
enable the~conbtrumiotlof a plausible theary.of ~uI,turalevolution.
Malinowski set an example with his own field research in rhc
Trobriand Islands. Not only was he a pioneer inmodern participant-
observation field methods, but he also set sandards for tbe edee-
tion of ethnographic data that had a lasting, inflnence on sulasequent
generations of anthropologists. His approach was to classify the cw-
toms and beliefs he learned about in &field in terms of the function
each one performed in the satisfaction ofwhat he called basic human
r;lee$s (alsodiscussed in Chapter 8). For this reason, his-research pro-
gram became known as functionalism. MalinowsWs main goal in
much of his ethnographic writing was to debunk contemporary ste-
reotypes of "savage" peoples as i r r a t i d , compulsive slaves to their
passions, and so he emphasized repeatedly how orderly and well
organized Trobriand life was and how customs that appeared irratio-
nal to i w r a n t outside& ~ u l actuahly
d be shorn to play important
function6 in meeting the T r o b r i d Islanders' basic human needs, i
The heoretiaal reqonse c~fmthet; and French anthro-
- .
function in preserving the structure Q$ the society itself. Heace, this
schoal of thought came to be called sgcudural futlrctionalistf!.Heavily
influenced by ;he writings of Durkheim, Iladcliffe-Brown was its
most tireless promoter in Britain. Structural-functionsliets were
concerned with what kept societies from fallrng apart (discussed
in Chapter 7), and they could demonstrate that a variety of~social
practices described by ethnographers-witchcraft accusations, kin-
stup organization, myths* and the Lieperfarmed this function.
In the mid-mentie& cemury, an aoagonism developed between
stsuaural-hcti~nalis~ Bxitisb social anthropologists (as they called
themselues) aqdMorth American cultural anthropologists, In retro-
spect, the anragonism seem rather trivial, but for many anthropolo-
gists at the time the-issue was whether anthropology would be taken
seriously as a s~ience.As we have seen, British social anthropolov
gists, via Radckffe-Brchwn, who was influenced by Durkheim, too&
sociew as their d&ni~gconcept. To them, human bodies arrange:
in space inparticdm wnfigurations constituted the uaques:tiD~@
reality that m ~ bcf~haped
a by material laws of eause and e.fFB8
operating in thela& i@
t realm. North American anthrqol
however, focused on the concept of culture-the ideas, beliefs, shaped human behavior, hduding the construccien nf p a p t h h c
values, and meanings that different groups of people developed to
-
- their understandina of their lives and themselves.
express
For a British social anthropologist, nothing codd be lees materid
and thus possess less causal -power than ideas, beliefs, and values, Bdr
the mosr outspoken.of t h a culture was a by-product, or a rational.
h t i ~ of
n material social arrangements that had nothing to do with
culture but were instead the inevitable outcome of the operation of
universal social laws (the necessity of maintaining social solidarity
so that the social goup endures overtime) that automatically forced
, ..
living human organisms into particular social configurati~nsin par- ; . ,: . .,: ......
. ,:iy ., :, , .,,dj?,"..:
, ,>+j
' ,:.. .
O,!,: ;h ,+:. , .,;?:::a>,$,: >.>>k+i!h!#.& ..
ticular Eit.cmStances. Bur North American cultural anthropologists
colttltered such ar&umemt~by emphasizing the power of culture to
shap~,daspettsof pebples'hes, including the ways they organized - -
their sodeties.
To counter the social determinism advocated by some structural-
functionalists, some cultural anthropologists proposed a form of cul-
aathropoh@ns ,to.b.omow, insights from ilinguistics i n a~ernpt&-,
to e%pJaimhaw:odfure , d d ~ ~ Q ~ e : o u t c&.this
s g e was-hedewli 3
tural deterdnism. For example, A, L. Kroeber (187.6-1960), one of
Boas's students, argued that culture was a superorgdc phenomenon
(to be contrasted with inorganic matter and wganic Be). That is,
although culture was carried by organic human h&s, it existed in an
impersonal realm apart from them, evolvingaccotdhg to its own inter-
nal laws, utlafferted by laws governing nodiving matter or the evolu.
tion of living organisms, and essentially bermd the control of human
beings whom it molded and on whom, in a sense, it was parasitic.
The views of social determinisis aad cultural determinists were h
so extreme in part because they cmp'letely rejected any explanation
of society or culture that mouldlbxa%eits origins - either outside human ,. m&&,d&&~t.&~P&!to~apply&si&s fro
individual$ in some n p ~ t 7h, a t e r i a l , personalized force Like Gad auisti~s:k~.~d~sag&is~,~mt&y&~d~.byFrenchr
or within human in&v?d&b in the psychologicai structure of their
minds. Dwkheim, RadcWe-Brown, and Kroeber, each in his own
way, struggled rte defend the view that sociocultural beliefs and
practices constituted a dstinct scientific subject matter that had to
be explained in its ewn terms by specialistswho undasrood how it
operated-that is, by social (or cultural) scientists lrkethemselves.
In North Amwica, cultural anthropologis~sdeveloped a series
of thcoretiral peispectives based on their convictidn that culture
 I
anthropology for his structural studies of myth (myth is discussed in Chapter 3) assume oh.t culturos are rnonw&thicamd tbat~rihiwd
in Chapter 5 ) .
LEviviGtrauss collected multiple variants of numerous myths
from indigenous societies in the Americas and appeared to be, on
the surtace at least, as interested in explaining oultural diversity as
other contemporary cultural anthropologists. But he parted,~om-
pmywith those anthropologists, such as ethnmfiehtists, who used
hguistio methods to psoduce more detailed and accurate descrip-
tions; of culture but who still thought of culture as a historically
contingent set of learned beliefs and practices. Instead, L6vi-Strauss
saw surface diwrsity as the by-product of much simpler underlying
processes of thmght romed in the structure of the h m mind
itself. Lhi-&%auss argued that, because all human beings were
in>ers of che same species, they possessed the same innate mental
S:ttucture$.The most obvious of these structures, he asserted, was
the midency to elass& phenomena in terms mf binary oppositions,
like male-female, @&day, upidom, o* miaddbody. Lkvi-,Strauss
argued that the diversity of ctllraral pha~menstarouad the world
was a surface divergity, the output produced by people with iden-
tical mental scru(+ures who were, working whth different kinds of
natural and cultural resources. All people thus were engaged in a
hni
d of cultural tinkering, what he called bricolage, in which they
combined and contrasted elements of their experience in complex
constructions rooted ins miversal set of human mental structures.
Structuralismwas immensely innuenrial inside as well as outside
anthropology. Litemry a3timYin particular, seized upon structural-
ism as a theoretical too&tthat.tdd help them dissect thestructure
of literary or artistie wxk, Bbt LLOvi-Strauss and other structuralists
also had their critics. l b d ~aiticism mostly concerned the valid-
ity of particular st&%&dhaalysesof myths or other cultural phe-
nomena. Different an@@@,using what they thought were the same
structuralist methodsa &qaently produced different analyses of the
same cultural ma&%eli. leading critics to raise the question of just
how *scientific? s&&wsl analysis actually was and how much it
depended on the a d y a 9 ' own interpretive style.
Later criticism$, w'luch fed into postmodernism, pointed out
thar structdralistd (sot unlike the Chomskyan linguists mentioned
 particular social orders. In her most famous book, PuriQ and
Danger (1966), she explored widespread beliefs about pucity and
pollution in different societies, arguing that pollution was b s s
understood as "matter out of place" within a particular symb*
order. Douglas drew attention to the ways in which a particulk&,'
society's ideas about purity and pollution were regularly based @
a metaphoric connection between the human body and sociew
She argued, for example, that symbolic practices that appea&
to be concerned with protecting vulnerable human bodies fr*
pollution were actually concerned with keeping vulnerable soci94
structures from falling apart. Social vulnerabilities were symbol& .
cally represented as bodily vulnerabilities as when the orifices a$
the body were seen to stand for points of entry into or exit from
the body politic. Thus, food taboos des~gnedto protect individual
bodies from ingesting polluting substances could be understood
as a symbolic way of protecting a vulnerable social order from
dangerous outside forces. Douglas's work focuses on forms of
symbolism that appear to be universal in human cultures, an
emphasis that sets her apart from both Turner and Geertz, who
both paid far more attention to the particular symbolic practices
of specific societies.
Victor Turner (1920-83) was pained as a structural-functional&
in England but became dissatisfied with examining abstract social
structure. Rather than emphasizing people's unthinking conformity
to the underlying principles that ordered their society, Turner's work
emphasized practice and performance. His work came to focus on
socul dramas: people's concrete interactions and conflicts in every-
day social life. Turner Sowed how social dramas not only offered
anthropologists insight into the structure of a given society but also
revealed how people in that society made sense of their lives. Turner's
interest in social dramas led him into studies of ritual (see Chapter $),
pilgrimage, and theater. In all of these studies, he was concerned
with how the symbols of a particular group of people-those "things
that stand for other thingsn-were used as stores of meaning and as
resources for social action. For Turner, what mattered were not the
symbols themselves but what they meant to specific people and how
they led to action in specific social situations.
Lie Turner, Cliffod Eacrtz (1926-20061 wa inaere~mdh
symbols and their interpretation. For Geertz, culture was a system
I
C Seymbols
~ and meanings that are publicly displayed in objects ind
,'i d o n s . Drawing on literary theory more than on dr;anla t h e m ~ ,
Geertz came to see cultures as made up of texts, "stories thar peo-
ple cell themselves about themselves." In his view, the anthropol-
ogist's job is to learn to read those texts, not the way natives did
' because it was impossible to get inside the natives' heads, but from
within the same cultural context. Geertz proposed the phrase thick
descriptzon for this process of finding the local meanings of cultural
texts and in so doing drew attention to the fact that written texts
were the typical product of ethnographic fieldwork. Beginning in
the early 1970s, many anthropologists increasingly came to see
that their task was to write about other societ~es,not merely to
collect and analyze data, and that their ethnographies should be
understood as texts to be read alongside the natives' own texts.
Both Geertz and Turner were influential outside of anthropology
in such branches of the humanities as religious studies and literary
theorv. Indeed. a common complaint about Geertz's work was that
by relying so heavily on the interpretive s M s of the anthropologist, it
- - more like literary criticism than social science.
made the field appear
The mid-twentieth century also saw a revival of evolutionary
g-t in North American cnltural anthropology. The new evolu-
tionary anthropology rejected biological determinism, together with
the racist evolutionary scheme that went with it. At the same time,
evolutionary anthropologists accepted current biological theories of
evolution by natural selection and argued that human biolog~calevo-
lution, like the biologtcal evolution of all organisms, involved adap-
tation to the environment. If varying modes of human adaptation
were not the outcome of variations in human biology, some anthro-
pologists reasoned, then perhaps the environments themselves were
responsible for human cultural dversity. Anthropolog~stswho ask
such questions today usually are described as doing one or another
kind of ecological anthropology (see Chapters 7 and 8).
Ecologists and ecologically inclined anthropologists generally
analyze particular human populat~onsas parts of ecosystems; that
is, they are one group of livlng organisms that, together wlth ohm
organisms, make their living within a given environmental setting.
Ths setting is called a system because it exhibits regularities in terms
of the variety and size of ddfaent populations and the resources they
depend upon to survive and reproduce. These regularities are usu-
ally described in terms of a patterned flow and exchange-of energy.
Stable ecosystems are ones m whch each population occupies its
own niche; that is, all coresident populations make thejr livings *in
different ways and do not compete with one another.
An importint founder of ecological approaches in cultwal
a&;opohgy was Julian Steward (1902-72). His analytic frame-
work, which i6 called cdtural ecology, studied the ways in wht&
spcci&rhumanaultutesinteracted with their en~ironment.Steward
was an edutionwy thinker: He argued that cultural change over
timewas conditioned by the specific kinds of cultural developments,
particularly in eubsistence technology, available in a given society
and the ways in which members of that culture used their technol-
ogy to obtain what they aeeded to survive from the particular envi-
ronment in which they lived. As cultural systems changed the way
they interacred vith their environments, thus changins their adap-
tations, they evolved to new levels of sociocultural integration,
Steward did not believe in the universal stages of cultural evo-
lution supported by his contemporary Leslie White (1900-75).
For White, cultural evolution was a genezgl Qrocess encompass-
ing all the cultures of humanity. White recast the major stages
af cultwal evolution proposed by oiaa~mnrh-centuryanthropolo-
gists (and by Karl Marx) in term* @f b w much energy per capita
per yeat was captured by partiw4ar cultural systems. For White,
cultures evolved as they cap&uredmore energy or as their tech-
nologies hproved, or b.p*&,Wing these criteria, White identified
three major evolutionwfi~ningpoints: (1)the domestication of
phnts and animals ,(&e agricultural ievolution of antiquity), (2)
the beginnines of m&ani%ation (linked to the "fuel revolution"
at the beginning d the nineteenth century), and (3) the techno-
lqgical harness% of atomic energy in the mid-twentieth century.
Steward:s a p p ~ ~ a ctoh cultural evolution, by eonbast, has been
described as multilineal evolutionism. Stewand focused not on
global evolutionary trends but ratha on pa~icularsequences of
restrict human agency just as much as the kinds of biological pro-
gramming,claimed by the biological determinists.
By &awing attention to emiogical factors that affect cultural
adaptations, ecological anthro>p@logists have -attempted to &ow
the inadequaries of cultud theories that take no account d . n h i
material. csnditions of human life. Three other theoretical ~ Q P &
meat@+^ -.the latter half of the twentieth c e r n q v each .rather d&+
fame-kom the e,cological approaches described previously, alsa
tried.to =gue for th~oriesof cultwe ,&attake the material warid
&to acoount.
Ode SL& ~tti&pt.. pya$: .the;cdtural materialism Q $ Marvin
Harti.s.4192?1&(?@!j,+,:a ithe~feticalperspeotive. rooted ,in Harris's
Idios~nemkhmtE;ngs: if $@rxj,Engeks,,White, and Steward. He
kc oram what h e sees "as die mbravagant claims of cqLmal
$"bibsS
determinists by poinrhg. out the m r i a i constraints with which
aBy culmal adaptation must come to' terms. H e : a m p t s to show
that partiizu.lar .customs,that ,shock or d i q w us today, such as
warfare, :cannibaliim, or infanticide, wme, Snvsn&d to ensme
huinafi survival in some pasf habitat. ki&t:fh@&,these are .cultural
inv*enrims,-theirinventorsare: :~TXC$Q41&seiaixs of why they are
doing what they do thstl are '&p.bma~ be&@ described by some
behavioral ecologists. In be& css!@, moreover, the same kinds of
self-interestcalculations are said tq goyern the selection of partic-
ular practices. Indeed,. bath .~v.t.c~r.a'l.~cologyand cultwal mate-
w!Wba&ll~~
rialism take an essetlr.llall~ approach ro the explanation
of the evolution of c&d~.&kefsity: In any given. case, behav-
iers are selected becab* :they m d e r the greatest good for either
a particular individd ;ib&&i:aral ecology) or the group ccultural
materialism).
A second b r a d mb :$&.eridism that has bees influential in
recent culturat an&r&Bw is the historical materialism based an
the writings of &:#I M b ~ a n his d followers. The main feature dis-
tinguishipg H a ~ ~ f s % : ~ d tmaterialism
'id from Marxian !historical
materialism is .&e-@$leb d "thematerial forces of history. Whereas
Hamis's appr;~%c&.mpains cultural adaptatia ox evolution in
terms of local 'crq&&~s, the Marxian approach explains cultural
evolution in ~~wod~-Mstorical terms,; after all, M a x was another
nineteenth-century unilineal evolutionist. But the ways in which he
differed from other unilineal evolutionists made him an inspiration
for anthropologists dissatisfied with accounts of culture chmge
that did not take into accoqnt social m d political mdkct, doid-
nation, and inequaldty (discussed in Chapters 7,8, md 11).
attributed large-scale sociocultural change to tht niotkit~~ oat of
material contradictions within the orgatlization af aociety (itsrela-
tions of production). Ecological constraints ace less imp~reanit&$d
the social constraints and contradictions generat4 by a p%rrtsulw,
culturally constructed mode of production (lor example, betwem
landowners and the people who own no land and 80 must rent
from the owner). Marxian ideas were also attzactive because, io
at least some of his writings, Marx suggested that human being
could exercise agency--could "make histary"-albeit not mdar \
conditions of their own choosing. The material constraints of his-
tory limited the action they could take, limited even the alternativa
they could imagine to the p r m t order, but did not necessarily
turn theminto puppets unable to affect their cultural surroundings:
Although the political hopes inspired by histo~ialmaterialism
have dimmed considerably with the end of the cold war, M a d s
crucial insights into the workings of capitalism and the mecha-
nisms of domination continue to offer theoretical inspiration to
some anthropologi~s.
A third attempt to develop a theory of culture that takes the
material world into account may he seen in political ecology. As
we noted in Chapter 7, political ecologists draw attention to the
waF .in bmm ~r,~up.s, strug$@,with one another for
trol of(-d$ &al) ma'terhi resources.. They frequently pro%k&
ethnograp#& a ~ m m t a &ow why a particular lot? . g f ~ ~ @ $ l
economic difficulties are due n ~ ~ tthe i o backwardness d t h e i r ~ d b
tural ecolo&aal practices,but-rather to the fact that politi~al'in'terr
ventiaps by oumhtas have deprived them of the resourres *hay
ome *couldCOW oa:to help them secure their subsist en^.^^. 8-
jjolitical ecols&ts have pointed out that the ma.tegial ~,depkc&ib
experienced b ~ . ? ~ i . . l l o csocial
a l groups is occasicx%aU~
of their o m deCisiwtO live with depciva,tionrather t h e :i?u@&&
te politicaldcmhavibn; this choice has heen called n.,.
~ -
 . . - ~ . . -.
of resir-6; were inspired
~ewLw~i~ra
past, m m p~Lika1
~
n i - ,mb~,!@pQ,

understandings are not silenced by generalizations. They call into

question the supposed universal truths of "scientific anthropology."
(Table 12.1 lists the key theoretical positions in anthropology.)
Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, many anthropologists have
realized that, for all their political attractiveness, extremist positions
are qnsatisfactory. The issqes are complex, however, because some
kinds of progressive politics, such as the condemnation of geho-
cide, seem to rest squarely on the assumption that all human bei'ngs
everywhere are bearers of universal human rights that nobody can
be permitted to ignore. It is precisely in the area of humanrights that
the critics of interpretivism have made their most powerful argu-
ment. If all action is culturally relative, they argue, then one has no
grounds for in~ernatisnalcondewation of leaders of nation-states
who persecute their own citizens. If post-modernists have their way,
they conclude, and all forms of culture are assumed to be eqqdy
valuable, then the grounds for moral outrage at genocide evaporate.
Indeed, the leaders of genocide campaigns frequently attempt to
silence internatilanal critics by defending their actions as culturdly
., 4
appropriate for their societies, and they accuse their critics of eth- males because yowmg p.+e and women r e b e l to talk *o &.
nocentrism or impaialismi Some cultural anthropologists are quite Eiqpgiose flh&E&mgn~tah +&&qn writes afi q M e q h @ , m &
openabout the stbPping points beyond wbich their a&dysis catkot
go. For hose of a traditional positivist bent, it may be deterministic
theories that attempt to construct scientific bases for ra&m ftr s c m
isni or other forms of social inequality. For those of an intespretfdst
bent, itmay be. forms of relativism that WOUMexplain amp, say,
-
*uovmtv or violence against women
One of the reasons why many contemporary anthropolog?@s
insist on.wa&ing the aavow line between positivism and interpre-
ti&m is .~h?g
, . that hese is -noi h p l e r+lation between
a p g. & ~ . h iF l g ~ , @ ~.&&n@
, ,.,I.. &&~ 4 panti~ulatpolitical
,. . ~- .aJai&g,
ag&da. .~~ .~ , +hat ~ ~ r n e ar;e
d . ~%atmalpeacemakersb" for
ex;mqxiev3might be a juFrtifi&o.n fez p@ momen in highpoliti- .,
~ a l ~ o i hhuthas
e. more o&en 'hen used (at.least in the West) a's a
justification for keeping w o m e , n ~ ~ t ~ i dpditics
supposed incapacity ~6
e o f because of their
.to.& war. .@e&oa&le scholarship (as
it is based, rbaders tni'gh.fexpect them rb o£feh &&rent repes&b
rions of the -way the X oeo& h e rhcir lives. k o p k :wko&& 'b
4
'-
,,

well as politics) thu~r&~uicrnp~$jfig&te attenion to

what Donna Haraway (194&).ci:aRst l ~ ~ , , ~ i & i @knowledgesd pro-
duced hy'&fierently oriented ok@e1:ss+p g g g ~ din different h m s
of knowledge production; Takiq~&w&1enta:tionof observers into
account also makes $or bette~ EDXexam~le. - recent
. work on
thehistory of anthropol~w2;h&3:kr:&&tt@light the significance of
Intellectual -Drecursors wh~~@@@$b &$been overlooked in *ast his-
tories of'the field but wb*&@&h~tions to the ongoing develop-
ment of anthrapolo~bar(4.~n;%ital. They range from Karl M&
and Max Weber to W;. R: $@I@,@' $O?S and Z o ~ Nede
a Hmston;
Attention to thep-@&&pr~qil &tuated observer-to his or her
sta&p;oimt-bdds h, &bh&$ts. that emerged when cultural
anthropologists begaa x& pay attention to the reflexive dunen-

d
sion of fieldwork.. W - a a o g n i z e d that making clear the liistori-
cal, social, cultur@l,.f;' %$d,and economic contexts niithin which
scholarly res.ear&.&~@g~ducted can actually in~~e@stq fiatherthan
desr~se., out aJai&, h~<re:cognize h rof knowl-
where a - p a r t i ~ ~,set.
edge clairns:ar%:@ta~p.sarid where they are w e a h t i For esarnplej
E+nogra,phef i%,!&$,emations about the,cdtuce 'dthe X people.
may be base$ &&Idwork he conducted exclnFriveLy among adult
construct meanings in the historical and cultural contexts of their
own changing lives. This enduring commitment to hecognizing the
reality of other pa$pectives and taking them seri0us1y keeps cul-
tural anrhropolagy- a vibrant, excitislg, tad c o m p e h g dis&p$i%e
*ith gre%tpotential for allowing human beings to come co'killg~
and Gndenstand themselvps better.
IIX, '
,.... ,,.. : j , <;;,:'::;:.;:>:, 8 7,(c .,,,):, s ; ~ : ' , : . ~ ; ~ ~ , : : ;
,<!:,I!,:< ,, ;+Tc" ,?,:,rdi
'I. ,r,.r, .. '
'.I., > .,: ,' : . . /.II,,I ,,. 1 ... . ,. /.,

12-6 New Directions in the T~epttj-r~rst

. .- .
Cen$u.ry ,, United-Staates.and Edope among
There are na u n ~ b i -.g u o u rules
s for how & walk the line between who engage in the ctunplex wock of constnu&tingcelationhihtps
the extram$ @fdaerininis~(whepher biologi~al,cultural, ecolog- new ncighborc even asthey &nth& m rilanage relathns:wkh?s@
i=+19 .cjs @p&. ..~~
. . &@d&@ exrtemq @f rds&8m;-in the wake of
,&-
,

. ... - d:esa
~ e.i ,p,sm@
~ e d & ~ s e ro
' @-
irt q ,e&aqd ~ t h rpiilogisps
~ t have commit-
& a~rSa n g e . i n t prdjecns.. &o,bably ,no form
of . ~ & u ~:dm: & o p @ l ~bdng~pra~ticed % d a y$8 carried :out. in
ignorance of or indifference to ktacwmections that have
been broughtinto egsrence since the ead &$the-coldwar. But such
s b;e s ~ d i in
. h t . e r c w ~ i $ m .can d R&ys., accouifts .of d o ~ & i i ~ p &
: ~mg s d f & &it ignoic. hi%to@,
and
,&me tiltural anthto@i).)~@~f~~o'~'t: &e& 'ethnography among
a @v& local 'bdigentnss" ,popda.tiop i~@ pa,&ctllar location and
hcnson die way global fo~cesan.&~i~~fitt~ibtis have come t o affect
the lives mf & locd ~ o ~ & & &i@W "' example, wotk by ethnog-
raphers workimg in .sites from dhe;h a z o n lowlands to highland
Papua New Guinea has.dwwixm;t:edthearrival of miners, loggersi
and other optsidm who '&&*,.and challenge local people $or
access t o their resources, ,$&&%@&e$the ethnography chr0,~de.S
the destruaian left in fhg &m~chencounters; often ethnog-
taphers; use their sp&& p@ktq&nsKipswith the. threatened indig-
enous.goupsto beco@p:%lp-iul:adxmcates and d e h d e r s in a var'ietp
06 diffezent settine, fkynxs&e media to courts of natioiid and
international law..Th&bhnkmay include invelvemerrt in national
and international.s~@d,.movements as ethnographers and those
with whom together with like-mindedactivists and
alkes esn the i~&ti4~ w@@nd,, or international level tcr prevent envt-
tonmental degtnkam br to protect tultuial ot hman rights. In
thesekinds o f ~ ~ ~ r i n ~ ~ forms ~ ~ a rof~collaboraiive
ious research and
echno,graph.iaq @
& we becoming iiic~e~sing1y~:oommon.~
 topics. For example, anthropological studies ~f h a and tcchnd-
ogy have become increasingly numerous and influential. Beginning
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, scientific laboratories. clinics, and
hospitals became increasingly important as settings for ethnographic
research. Such work has had an important impact in medtcal anthro-
-
pology, especially studies focusing on bioscience and biotechnology.
This work is concerned with not only scientific theories and prac-
rices, such as stem cell research, hut also scientific apparatqses and
procedures that mgy directly intervene in people's L.vt:spanchi%M&&
tility treatments, new imaging technologies, advances in organ t r a m
plantation, and the product~onof sophisticated artificial implants
prostheses. The unprecedented nature of these developments remi.
lady raises ethical issues about the appropriateness of the re sea^&
or the procedures as well as how it d be funded, who will benefit
fromit, and what its negative impacts arelikely to be. Developments
in biotechnology also blur the boundaries between "nature" and
"culture," encouraging ordinary people who have experienced in
vitro fertilization or organ transplantation, for example, to refashion
the way they understand their own biological and cultural identi-
ties. Many anthropologists are concerned with understanding and
documenting such changes and their potential social, polltical, and
economic consequences.
Insights from sclence studies have been influential among a d r
ropologists whose interests are only tangentially concerned with
science and rechnology themselves. In some cases, this is b e c a m
certain concepts originally cjeveloped in the context of the a n t k -
pology of science and technology seem t a illummate the eth&
graphic materials the anthropologist is studying. For exam&
some work in science studies has drawn attention to the role i$
distributed agency in the production of scientific knowled&
This work argqes that successful sc~entificprojects and succm-
ful technologies are both heterogeneous assemblages of c o m p -
cents, human and nonhuman, living an$ nonliving, all of whi&
exercise some degree of agency, thereby contributing to the f i M
outcome. Despite their often divergent interests, these componetg8
bave been brought together in a way that allows them to worki@
,whThe loss or breakdown of any companent removes its agenq*
withdraws its contribution, and may destabilize the entire assem- . I #, I
blage, whether it be a smoothly functioning piece of technology or
the structure of knowledge claims in a particular scientific field.
The notion of a heterogeneous assemblage characterized by
distributed agency has been important to some anthropologists
who trace the emergence and development of new kinds of social,.
economic, and political structures in the context of globalization.
A good illustration is Anna Tsmg's recent analysis of rain fores~"
destruction and environmental activism in Indonesia, presented in
her book Frictton: An Ethnography of Global Connection (2005).
Tsing recounts how, for a short time in the late 1980s and early:
1990s, local villagers, "nature-lovingm university students, a hand-
ful of national bureaucrats concerned with burnishing their "mod-
ern" environmentalist credentials, and international environmental
movements were able to forge an alliance that successfully kept
international loggers out of a particular part of the Indonesian
rain forest. This short-lived alliance was surprising, both becaqse
it took hold when Indonesia was ruled by a dictatorship and
because it held firm even though different allies at different lev-
els had very different nnderstandings of what the alliance was all
about. When the dictatorship ended, the alliance fell apart. These
complex global assemblages, described in Chapter 11, represent
alliances between players and institutions that forge global connec-
tions with one atrother despite the sometimes extremely divergent
interests that otherwise divide them. Such forms are theoretically
interesting because of the way they contrast with complex hierar-
ch~calforms of social organization that have historically been the
focus of much theoretical work in the social sciences.
For Further Reading
THEORY
Behar and Gordon 1996; Bernard 2000; Darnell 2001; Geertz 1975;
Harrison and Harrison 1999; Knauft 1996; Kuper 1996; McGee and
Warms 2007; Moore 1997; Moore and Sanders 2006; Rosaldo 1989
As we saw earlier, an ethnography is a scl~olarlywork about a
specific way of life. It is based on the author's lived experience with
a specific group of people over a period of time, ideally at least
a year. Ordinarily, an ethnography is based on ltnowledge of the
other way of life that is both deep and broad-anthropologists try
to learn as much as they can about as much of their hosts' way
of life as possible. The anthropologist may then write a general
description of the way of life or (as is more common today) explore
a particular problem of importance in anthropology from the per-
spective of the people whom he or she knows. Ethnography is there-
fore a kind of writing; it is not just a straightforward reporting of
"the facts." Some of the same techniques that readers have learned
for reading in other genres can be applied to reading ethnography.
An ethnography is an exercise in representing a set of beliefs and
practices, and this raises issues of ethics, politics, and interpreta-
tion. In this appendix, we offer you some suggestions for getting as
much as possible from your reading of ethnographies.

he parts OF an ~ t h n o ~ r a ~ h ~
How is an ethnography put together? While each ethnography has
its own unique characteristics, there are several stylistic features
that m a n y ctthnographies share. Ethnographies generally begin
wir 11 :I ~ > ~ ' r f , ~ill
c ~wliir-I1
r., I lit. ;iirthor may "set the scene," i i 1 t r o c l 1 1 c . c -
228 APPENDIX
him- or herself, explain how the field research to be reported came
about, and thank a set of people for their help. The preface can
be useful to a reader even if he or she doesn't recognize any of the
names at the end. It can give the reader an idea about the purpose
of the ethnography and why the author wrote it. The reader can
learn if the ethnography is a revision of the author's doctoral dis-
sertation or a new work, written after the author received his or
her doctorate. It can give the reader an idea of how long ago the
author was in the field and perhaps what theoretical directions the
author might talze.
The preface is usually followed by an introductory chapter that
tends to have two major parts: an entrance narrative and the aca-
demic context of the work. The entrance narrative dates back to the
earliest classic ethnographies in anthropology-both Malinowski's
Argonauts of he Western Pacific (1922) and Raymond Firth's We,
7'be 'Tikopia ( 1936), for example, begin with entrance narratives
that are wcll known in arlthropology. In the entrance narrative, the
author invites the reader to join him or her in experiencing the first
impressions of the field-what things looked like at the beginning,
sounded lilze, smcllcd like; what the local people looked like and
how the anthropologist was received at first; and how he or she
lived. This narrative is useful in several ways: it gives the reader
a sense of the author as a person, acquaints the reader with the
author's field situation, and orients the reader to the ethnography.
At the same time, it also serves as a way for the author to establish
a ltind of complicity with the readers, to introduce them t o the
author's legitinlacy as a trustworthy source-to convince readers
t h a t they can have confidence in what the author will argue in the
rest of the book. At the most basic level, this is the equivalent of
saying, "I was there. Trust me."
The other part of the introductory chapter can be difficult for
nonspecialists to get through. In a sense, what makes an ethnography
an ethnography is that it is part of an ongoing debate within anthro-
pology. Ethnographers do not just write about their experienccs-
their work is ordinarily intended to address current issues witllitl
the discipline of anthropology. Writing an ethtlogrnphy tlr:lr i \ i l o f
just for classroom use, then, ohlipr\ tlir iit~tllo~. 1 0 \111~11 0111 WIII,I.L.
liis o r I ~ c rworl, l i t \ i l l LIII~LIS:II ,i~ltI~ro\~c~lc~gy;
Wllo C I I ilie~
APPENDIX 229
scholars who have influenced him or her? What are the theoretical
f
issues that the author plans to address? These issues are dealt with
early in an ethnography and take the form of a section in which the
author reviews (1)the regional and theoretical literature, indicat-
ing the strengths and weaknesses of work by other scholars among
the same or related people, and (2)the strengths and weaknesses of
theorists who have addressed similar issues. This can be challeng-
ing for nonspecialists because they usually do not have very much
experience with the theoretical issues involved, nor do they recog-
nize any of the names that are being cited by the author (for other
anthropologists, this section is very important because it provides
hints and clues as to the directions that the author will take in the
rest of the ethnography). A further difficulty is that the author may
choose t o use a highly elaborated theoretical language in this sec-
tion. You need to ask yourself (or your instructor) how much of
this section is required reading. At the very least, you might want
to try to apply the theoretical approaches discussed in Chapter 12
in order t o put the arguments that the author is making into a
theoretical context. It is not necessary t o memorize the names of
other scholars that are cited in this part of the text, but it is useful
to try to follow the argument that the author is making. This sec-
tion may be one of the points that your instructor will choose to
discuss in lecture to help the class make sense of the lzey issues t o be
raised in the ethnography.
The style of most ethnographies now changes abruptly as the
author shifts to the presentation of data and interpretation of those
data. Here is the heart of the ethnography as the author presents a
set of descriptions and analyses that will simultaneously represent
aspects of a way of llfe and make an argument about their meaning.
Here, the author has carefully and intentionally chosen the order
and topics of the chapters. A book is always composed-some
material included, other material left out-to make the points that
the author wants made. Part of your job as an intelligent reader is
to try to figure out why the author has structured the book in this
particul,~rway.
It1 sonw c,l\cR\,o f coursc, the :iatl7or tcllc the rcndcrs in thc prcf-
t r c why ~ I I ( . c.l~,rl>t(*r.\
;Ice the j ~ ~ r r i ~ c l11011 ,11.(. i l l t I i ( ~ortl(a~i l l whit I1
othej they sf@ fe~nd,l~cltscrilletlrrtt.\ rc,ltlers I l ~ v ct i ) t ~ vto f i g ~ i t ro \ ~ t
 d
230 APPENDIX
the logic. Sometimes the sequence of chapters is chronological, fol-
lowing a ritual, agricultural, or calendrical cycle, or based on the
anthropologist's own acquaintance with the community. More com-
mon, perhaps, is a sequence of chapters based on the complexity
of the topics to be raised, beginning with the most straightforward
and ending with the most complex, or where the topics of later
chapters require information that can only be presented in earlier
chapters.
Another common format is to begin with the environmental
setting or history of the coinmunity or people who are the subjects
of the ethnography, and then once the historical and ecological
background is established, the author turns to the social and cul-
tural worlds of the community. In other cases, authors may choose
to arrange their chapters by the emotional difficulty or cultural
unfamiliarity of the topics presented. Authors nlay feel that all the
details of their arguments must be presented first before getting to
material that their readers might find difficult to accept without
the necessary background. Alternatively, they may have coiicluded
that their readers need to know and sympathize with their infor-
mants before readers are introduced to aspects of informants' lives
that might be difficult for readers to understand or accept.
There are many other ways to structure an ethnography, but in
all cases that structure is something to which the author has given
considerable thouglit. This doesn't mean that the author is always
successful, by the way. Once they have figured out the logic, read-
ers may decide that the author has not presented the material in a
way that convinces them, satisfies thein ("I wish she had written
'in greater detail about . . . "), or explains to them what the author
wanted them to l a o w ("I still don't understand why the people in
the ethnography do . . . "). Sometimes authors may have omitted
material that readers consider important. Sometinies there may be
too much material that readers find tangential or that becomes
overly repetitive. In other cases, readers may have had experiences
that differ so much from the ethnographer's interpretation that
they cannot accept either the accuracy of the ethnography or the
universality of the claims ("I was in high school at thc s:imc timc'
the author was doing his research in n high sc.liool. Wi. tlid tIli11{:~1
APPENDIX 2.j I
very differently. Maybe what the author found was true in that
school because it was not like other high schools.").
Following the body of the ethnography is the conclusion. Here,
the style often changes again, as the author attempts to tie up the
loose ends, summarize, and connect the body of the work with
the theoretical issues, which are set out in the introduction, that
motivated him or her. Sometimes this is also a place where authors
may return to a style that resembles the style of the first chapter
because they wish to situate their work in the context of other
work on similar topics: There may be more discussions of theory,
more citations of work by other scholars, and an attempt to make
a statement that is more general and abstract than anything in the
preceding chapters. Here, your job is to try to figure out where the
concluding remarks come from. Do tliey seem justified, based on
what has been presented before, or does the author go too far or
not far enough? Does the author connect the ethnographic chap-
ters to the conclusion in a way that makes sense to you? Having
finished the book, do you feel that you know something about the
world that you had not known before? That you have gotten a
sense of "being there"?
he Use OF ~ n d i ~ e n o uand
s ~ o c aTerms
I
One of the most distinctive stylistic features of ethnographic writing
is the use of indigenous or local terms. Readers of ethnography may
have been talzen aback and perhaps puzzled by this ethnographic
usage; they may even find it malzes reading the ethnography more
difficult. There are several reasons why ethnographers may use many
indigenous or local terms. At one level, it is further proof to the
readers that authors know what they are talking about-they have
learned the language that the local people use and they can d e ~ n -
onstrate this in their writing. Also, there may be other people who
speak that language who read the book. Whether thc langu;~gc.i l l
question is the Kiriwinian that Malinowski learned in thv '1'rohri;iiirl
Islands in 1915-18 or the German that Daphne Berdahl 11rt.d it1 tilt.
small town of Kella in the 1990s, scholarly professioil,~li~~n rc.ql~ir-r\
I h ; l r ethnographers record information about t l i t * I , I I I ~ I I ~ I ~ ~ot
\
234 APPENDIX
being socially or culturally abnormal or inferior or may see only
differences, losing sight of the commonalities that they may share.
For example, a text that only includes photographs of people in
"traditional" costume can leave the impression of quaintness or
exoticism: that this is how people dress on a daily basis, even when
the traditional costume is only worn once a year or just for pho-
tographs. In recent years, anthropologists have critically examined
the use of photographs in ethnography and consider very carefully
the photographs they include with their own work. It is impor-
tant to remember that photographs do not speak for themselves.
Photographs are ambiguous, which is why they are given captions
or discussed in the text of the ethnography itself.
As you read an ethnography with photographs, you might ask
yourself some questions about the way that these images are treated.
Are there extensive captions? Do the captions refer to the text, and
does the text refer to the photographs? Are the photographs of
people? Places? Both? How much of the scene is included in the
photographs (that is, are most of the photographs close-ups of peo-
ple, or are the people always surrounded by their environment)?
Do the photographs draw you into the society or do they distance
you? Are there things in the text that you wish were illustrated
with a photograph? Can you figure out why the author chose the
photographs that appear in the book? Do the photographs make
you want to go where the ethnographer has been? Do you feel that
you know the society better having seen the photographs?
why A r e YOU ~ e a d i n g ~ hfthnography
is
(and HOW s h o u l d YOU Read ~ t ) ?
Even before you open an ethnography, you should ask yourself (and
perhaps your instructor, too) why you are reading it because why
you are reading it will affect how you read it. The goal of reading
an ethnography is not to memorize the multitude of details that
are found within it. Frequently, the goal of reading an ethnography
is to get a sense of a way of life very different from your own as
well as to learn how the people described in the ethnography rnnI<c.
sense o u t of their livcc. Thc explicit foc-~~s
0 1 tilt* c.1 I ~ r i o ~ r ; ~ 1lli1:llt
l>l~y
be economic activities or kinship reckoning, but your first ~ : o , t l
ought t o be to look for overall patterns rather than to rernr.~t~l~t,l
details like the term for "Father's-Sister's-Daughter marriage" ( 1 1
the exact sequence of events in spirit possession.
You might be asked t o read more than one ethnography i r l
order t o compare the ways of life of peoples on different colii i
nents or with different ways of making a living, or t o find o 1 1 t
what has happened to people whose ancestors used to farm 1 ~ 1 t
who now work in a factory in Malaysia or Mexico. You might
also be reading an ethnography set in your own world, and thc
instructor's goal may be to get you to think about the ways in
which your way of life, like that of other people elsewhere, is also
a social and cultural construction. Even if your instructor has not
told you why you are being asked to read this ethnography or spe-
cifically what to look for, you can often figure this out if you think
about what the instructor has been discussing in class or where
this ethnography is placed on the course syllabus.
In all cases, you should read actively and with paper and pen-
cil handy. As noted above, all writing in anthropology is part of an
ongoing dialogue within the field, and you should make yourself
part of that dialogue: Reading is active, not passive. If you don't
understand what the author is saying, make a note either on paper
or in the margin of the book (only if it's yours, of course!). If you
don't agree with something that the author has written, make a
note. If you are really impressed with something that the author
has written, make a note. If you want to know more about some-
thing the author has written, make a note. You and the author
are in this together, and what you write in (and about) the book
becomes part of the text.
Although it is difficult t o do, especially when you are just
starting out, think about what the author may have omitted or
not discussed. Does the author not write about men? Or women?
Does the author talk about globalization or the effects that
nation-building efforts may have had on the people about whom
you are reading? Does the author ignore or pay attention to conflicts
within the group the ethnography is about? Are thcrc topics t l ~ l t
you would like to know more about? Is t1ic.l-c. ; I I I ~ ~ I I ~ I It l~ i ; , ~ t W O I I I ~ I
236 APPENDIX APPENDIX 237

make this book speak more directly to you? 1

who they are, how they were received both personally and politi-
One final set of questions to ask has to do with the ethnog- cally, who they were able t o spend time with, who paid for their
rapher him- or herself. How does the ethnographer appear in the research, how it was managed and carried out, and what parts of
book? What role does the ethnographer take? Does the ethnogra- it may have been used by or objected to by local people of vari-
pher give the impression of being a detached, outside observer, or ous kinds. They do this so that the significance of their data will
does the ethnographer take a political position? Was the ethnogra- be neither under- nor overestimated. Knowing who collected the
pher an advocate for the people or working in an applied way with data, how it was collected, from whom, and how it was inter-
or for a group of people? Does the ethnographer take a position preted makes the significance of ethnography stronger and more
about any of the issues that are raised? What does the ethnographer precise.
reveal about him- or herself? About the purposes of the research? That said, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that a key
About how it came about? About who paid for it? About the nature factor motivating ethnography itself is an undeniable fascination
of his or her interactions with the people in the study? In some with the varied ways of life people continue to make for themselves
cases, particularly in older ethnographies, the author appears as a in different geographic, historical, political, and cultural settings.
character in the entrance narrative and then never makes another Ethnographies reveal the soinetimes surprising inventiveness and
entrance. 111 other cases, the ethnographer is one of the characters resilience of people facing challenges of many kinds. Reading
in the book, sometimes as an observer, sometiines as a narrator, ethnography is an excellent pathway into the richness of the
sornetiilies as solmeone whose experiences become part of the data human experience. Enjoy!
being collected. More recently, ethnographers and their informants
have begin to cowrite ethnographic texts based 011 the field work
that they did together. It will be valuable to you to think about the
effect these strategies have on your reading and on the ethnography
more generally.
It has been a long time since ethnographies were taken at face
value. Contemporary ethnographers are aware as never before that
their texts are not innocent documents-they are not simply objec-
tive reports of the heaps of data that the ethnographer collected
like ripe fruit on the trees of knowledge. They are part of an ongo-
ing debate within the discipline of anthropology; they are based on
an unequal, carefully negotiated relationship between the ethnog-
rapher and the set of people with whom he or she worked; they are
necessarily partial (there were subjects left unstudied and events
that the ethnographer did not or was not allowed to see); and they
have political implications. They can be used by governments, by
political groups within the society, and by scholars in other fields
for purposes not intended by the ethnographer. As a result, eth-
nographers have become increasingly diligent about positionilig
themselves and their research in explicit contexts. They 111;11i~*C , ~ C . ; I I ,
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 basic personal~tystructure, 5 5 legal, 196
Baule, 83 substantivc, I ')t,
behav~oralecology, 149, 215 civilization, 1.iL, I ii,L[I:l
Benedict, Ruth, 54, 209 civil law, 124
berdache, 106 clan, 160, 16 1
Berdahl, Daphne, 232 class, 97-98, 10.1, I 44, 1 19
bifurcat~on,164 classes, 143
b ~ man,
g 122 clientage, 98
bilateral descent, 157 code, 36
bilateral k~ndred,157-158 code-switching, 43
b~local,170-1 71 coercive power, 1 1 1
biolog~caldeterm~n~sm, 204 cognatic descent, 157
bioscience, 224 cognition, 6 1
biotechnology, 224 cognitive capacitirs, 63
b~rth,155 cognitive styles, 63
blended fam~ly,176 cold war, 4, 10, 3.4 I, 147, i 4 # , 1 :{.I,
bloodwealth, 116 186, 188, 190, 219,121.
Boas, Franz, 17, 18, 26, 37, 39, 54, collaborative ethnogri~pky,
Key terms are defined on boldfaced page numbers. 57,133,205,206,208 collaterality, 164
body language, 36 colonialism, 180, 194
bonobos, 22 colonial period, 26
Aboriginals, Australian, 69, 85 ambilocal, 171 bourgeo~s~e, 97, 98, 142 colonial rule, 122
Abu-Lughod, 188 anccstor cult, 70 Brahm~ns,96 comadre, 99
accommodation, 191 Anderson, Benedict, 28, 32, 83, 127, B r a d , 101, 187 commodity chain, 190
acculturation, 192 129 Breton, 49 communicative conlpct ctice, 3%
acephalous, 121 animism, 69 br~colage,210 con~munitas,75
achieved status, 9 1 anthropological linguistics, 34 bride servlce, 173 compadrazgo, 98
adaptation of resistance, 217 anthropology, 2 br~dewealth,173, 177 compadre, 99
I

as international discipline, 9-10 broccol~,199, 200 comparative, 3

adjudicate, 125
adoption, 157 apartheid, 29 1 bureaucracy, 99, 123 complex societies, 119
configurations of entire C I I ~ ~ L I P409
I,
aesthetic, 83, 84 applied anthropology, 8
affinal relationships, 156 arbitrariness, 37 Cambodia, 198 congregation, 74
affinity, 164 archaeology, 7 Cameroon, 145 conjugal family, 175
Africa, 18 art, 83 capitalism, 136, 138, 147, 187 consanguineal kin, 156
age grades, 95, 1 1 by appropriation, 84 cargo cults, 192, 194 consensus, 121
agency, 54,211,217 by intention, 84 Caribbean, 101 conspicuous consumption, 150-S 1
age set, 95 articulated style, 64 cash crops, 145 consumers, 143
agnatic, 159 art world, 84-85 caste, 96, 98, 119 consumption, 142, 148
agriculture ascribed status, 9 1 Castro, Fidel, 184 contagious magic, 76
extensive, 94, 134 authority, 99 chiefdoms, 118, 120 conversion, 8 1
intensive, 94, 135 avunculocal, 1 7 1 child-rearing practices, 58 core, 187, 189
mechanized industrial , 135 Azande, 78, 79 chimpanzees, 21,22 corvee, 182
AIDS, 4 China, 184, 187, 188 cosmopolitanism, 198
Alaska, 86 Balzhtin, Mikhail, 45-46 Chornsk~,Noam, 3 9 , 3 8 , 3 9 , 4 4 , 2 1 0 counterhegemonic, 128
Algeria, 181, 184 band, 117,120-21 Christianity, 69 courts, 124, 125
alienation, 143,184 barbarism, 132, 133, 204 citizenship, 196 creole, 48
alternative modernities, 13 h;~.;~c
h u m a n 11c.c.d<, 148. 107 flexible, 196 crime, 125
252 INDEX INDEX 253

criminal law, 124 distribution, 142 etic, 41, 62,209 global style, 64
cross cousins, 164, 165 divorce, 177, 178 Europe, 103, 190, 191, 198,223 gods, 70, 71
Cuba, 184 Dobzhansky, Theodosius, 19 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 78, 79,120-121 grammar, 36
cultural anthropology, 4 dogma, 70 evolution, 20 Gramsci, Antonio, 127, 128
cultural configurations, 54 domestication, 134 evolutionary, 3 Great Britain, 98
cultural determinism, 208 domestic groups, 133 exchange, modes of, 139 Greek, 34
cultural ecologists, 20 domination, 128 exogamy, 170 Grimm, Jakob, 34
cultural ecology, 112,214, 149 double-voiced discourse, 45 extended families, 176 Guatemala, 199, 200
cultural evolution, 133 Douglas, Mary, 211, 212 extensive agriculture, 117, 134 Guinea, 95
cultural hybridization, 31,194,195, 199 dowry, 174 Gumperz, John, 42-43,45
cultural identities, 102 Du Bois, W. E. B., 220 fact, 203
cultural imperialism, 182, 194 Durkheim, Emile, 93, 94, 141, 202, family, 175 Haraway, Donna, 220
cultural inheritance theorists, 20, 215 203,206,207,208 family by choice, 176 headman, 122
cultural materialism, 21 6 fast food, 151 hegemony, 128, 129
cultural pluralism, 191 ecological anthropology, 213, 149 feminism, 103-105 herders, 94
cultural relativism, 24 economic anthropology, 113 feminist approaches, 61 Herskovits, Melville, 113, 136, 192
cultural rights, 125, 196-97 econornic exchanges, redistributive, feuding, 115, 124 heterogeneous assemblages, 224
cultural universals, 1 7 118 fictive kin, 99, 163 heteroglossia, 45
culture, 4, 1 6 , 2 4 economics, 2 field dependent, 64 hidden transcripts, 128-129
colonial, 28 economic theory, neoclassical, 137 field independent, 64 historical linguistics, 35
evolution of, 19 economy, 137 fieldwork, 5 historical materialism, 216
global, 30 ecosystems, 213-14 Firth, Raymond, 228 historical particularism, 206
national, 28, 29 ecstatic religious experiences, 82 food producers, 134 HIV, 2 1
culture-and-persollality research, 55, Ecuador, 152 foragers, 94, 134 Hobbes, Thomas, 23, 53, 111
61, 64 egalitarian, 117 forensic anthropologists, 3 Hobsbawm, Eric, 127
culture inheritance theorists, 149 egalitarian societies, 94, 124 formal economy, 146 Hockett, Charles, 3 7
culture traits, 206 ego, 158 formalists, 136 holistic, 2
cybercommunication, 190 emic, 41, 62, 209 formalization, 123 human biology, 2
cyberculture, 189 emotion, 64, 65 Fortes, Meyer, 120, 121 human rights, 125, 196, 197, 199, 219
empires, 120 Foucault, Michel, 106 Hurston, Zora Neale, 220
dance, 85 empirical, 203 French, 49 Hymes, Dell, 39, 39, 41, 42,43,45
Darwin, Charles, 204 enculturation, 5 7 French revolution, 102 hypergamy, 174
dependence training, 60 endogamy, 96,170 Freud, Sigmund, 57, 58, 61
dependency theory, 185 Engels, Friedrich, 133 Fried, Morton, 94, 117 identity politics, 190, 194
descent, 156 Errington, Shelly, 84 functionalism, 92, 207 ideology, 128
bilateral, 157 ethnic group, 102, 105 imagined community, 28, 127
cognatic, 157 ethnicity, 101 gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, imitative magic, 76
unilineal, 159 ethnic psychoses, 5 9 106, 176-177 imperialism, 152
deterritorialization, 188 ethnocentrism, 23 Geertz, Clifford, 2 1 1 independence training, 60
development, 185 ethnocide, 103, 198 gender, 103, 104, 105 India, 86, 98, 187, 194
development anthropology, 8 ethnography, 6 kinship criterion, 164 Indiana Jones syndrome, 7
diachronic, 35 ethnolinguistics, 35 generation, 163 indigenization, 3 1
diaspora, 188 ethnology, 6 genocide, 18, 103,198,219 individualism, 52-53
diffusion, 205 ethnomusicology, 85 Germany, 198 Indonesia, 123, 187, 225
diglossia, 4 3 ethnopragmatics, 46-47 C;illigan's Island, 86 informal economy, 146
discourse, 44,45 ethnoscience, 41, 62, 209 j:IoI>;iI ;~ssc~nhl:ij;c~s, 148, 199-200 i ~ i f o r ~ i i : i.5~ ~ ~ s ,
distributed agency, 224 ethnoscmantii.\, 4 1 t ; ~ o ~ ~ , ~ l i r 1, ;5 ~I , ~IiNoc ) ~
, ~2.21
, i 1 1 i t i . 1 1 i o 1 1 , 0'7
254 INDEX INDEX 255

institutions, 92 Latin, 34 media, 86 niche construction, 20

intensive agriculture, 118, 135 law, 124 mediation, 124 nonconjugal family, 175
internal colonialism, 182 civil, 124 mediator, 116 nuclear family, 175
International Monetary Fund, 186 codes, 124,125 medical anthropology, 4,224 nurturance, 155, 157
international political economy, 186, criminal, 124 Melanesia, 192 Nyakyusa, 95
223 procedural, 124 Mende, 95
Internet, 189 substantive, 124 messianism, 82 objective knowledge, 10
interpretive anthropology. See lawyers, 125 Mexico, 184 openness, 3 7
symbolic anthropology Leacock, Eleanor, 104 migrant populations, 188 oracle, 70
interpretivism, 219, 220 leveling mechanisms, 140 migrants, 188-189, 191, 198 organic solidarity, 93, 99
Inuit, 69 levirate, 174 millenarianism, 82 organ transplantation, 156
invention of tradition, 127 LCvi-Strauss, Claude, 72, 209, 210 i Miller, Daniel, 151 original affluent society, 139
in vitro fertilization, 156, 162 Liberia, 95 modal personality, 56 origin myths, 7 1
Islam, 69 li~ninalperiod, 75 mode of productio~~, 143 orthodoxy, 70
Islamic societies, 172 lineage, 11 8, 160, 161 articulating, 147 orthopraxy, 74
Israel, 162 linguistic anthropology, 6, 34 modernism, 10 Otavalans, 152
Ivory Coast, 83, 95 competence, 3 8 modernity, 146 outcastes, 9 7
nationalism, 49 modernization theory, 183,185, 187
Jews, killship system, 162 performance, 38 modes of exchange, 139 paleoanthropologists, 3
joint families, 176, 178 linguistics, 34 money, 136 paralanguage, 36
Jones, Sir William, 34 long-distance nationalism, 195 monogamy, 171 parallel cousins, 164
judgcs, 125 monograph, 6 parole, 36
JuPhoansi, 31, 164 Maasai, 113 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 50, 132, 133, participant-observation, 6, 12
magic, 75, 76, 77 134, 183,202,203, 204 pastoralists, african, 113
I<ant, Emmanuel, 198 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 17,20,25, Morocco, 181 patrilineage, 159, 161
Kardiner, Abraham, 55, 60 37, 71-72, 75, 76, 77, 148, 150, morphology, 38 patrilineal, 159
ICcnya, 113 192,206,207,228,231,232 multiculturalism, 191, 193 patrilocal, 170
kilt, 127 mana, 70 multilineal evolutionism, 214 patron-client relationships. See
kindred, bilateral, 1.57 Mankelcar, Purnima, 86 multisited fieldwork, 12, 2 7 clientage
kinesics, 36 marriage, 154, 156, 168 myths, 71, 72,210 peasant, 144-146
kinship, 154 as alliance, 173 peasantariat, 146
k~nshipgroups, unilineal, 117 Marx, Karl, 97, 98, 133, 141, 142, narratives, 72 penal code, 125
kinship terminologies, 163 143, 144, 148, 214, 216,217, nation, 126 periphery, 187, 189
Kluclthohn, Clyde, 52-53 218,220 nationalism, 126, 183 personality, 54
ICnauft, Bruce, 232 material culture, 4 nation-states, 102, 126, 191 persuasive power, 112
Kpelle, 95 mating, 155, 169 nativism, 82 phonemes, 37
IZroeber, A. L., 208 matriarchy, 162 Nazis, 18, 198 phonetics, 38
Ksatriya, 9 7 matrilineage, 159, 162 negotiation, 116 phonology, 37
matrilineal, 159 neocolonialism, 181 photographs, ethnographic, 232
labor, 142 matrilocal, 170 neoliberalism, 186 physiology, 20
language, 6 , 3 4 Mauss, Marcel, 141 neolocal, 170 Piaget, Jean, 61
colonization and, 49 Mayr, Ernst, 19 neuroses, 5 7 pidgin, 47, 48
death, 50 Mead, Margaret, 25, 57, 104, New Age movements, 82 plural marriage, 171
family, 34 192,209 Ncw Guinea, 192 Polanyi, I<arl, 139, 140
ideology, 48 means of production, 143 11c.wrc.l~oductivetechnologies, politicxl ;~nihrol~olo~ists, 1 1 1, I I 0
revitalization, 50 mcc1i;inic;ll solitl;l~,ity,9 3 15.5- I56 poli~ic,;~l tx,olok;is~+,l ~ o s iM , I I . \ ~ S
2.II,H
languc, 36 111rx~l1:lltizt.tl I 45
i t ~ d u z i t ,tKric.l~liui.t.,
~~~l 1 H'1
N I L.II..I!:II;I, ~ olok:v~I I 3 * 2 17, J I K
~ l l ~ l i, lll i i*,
256 INDEX INDEX 2.57

political economy, 114 raiding, 115 self, 5 9 structural functionalism, 207

international, 186 Ranger, Terence, 127 self-actualizing individuals, 60 structuralism., 209., 211
politics, 111 rank societies, 94 self-awareness, 59 structurai violence, 66
polyandry, 172 reciprocity, 139 semantics, 38 subaltern, 183, 198
polygamy, 171 balanced, 140 semi-periphery, 187 subjectivity, 65
polygynous family, 175, 176 generalized, 139 September 11,2001, 190 subsistence strategies, 134
polygyny, 171-172 negative, 140 Service, Elman, 117 substantive law, 124
polytheistic religions, 70 redistribution, 118, 140 sex, 105 substantivists, 139
Poro society, 96 reflexive anthropology, 11 sex of linking relative, 164 sumptuary privileges, 119
positivism, 10, 13, 21.8, 220 relatedness, 154 sexuality, 106 supernatural, 69
postcolonial world, 183 relations of production, 143 sexual practices, 106, 107 superorganic, 208
postmodern condition, 190 relative age, 164 shamans, 58, 80 surpluses, 135
postmodernism, 10, 11, 13, 197,218, religion, 2, 68, 77 Sharp, Leslie, 156 surrogate parenthood, 156
222 religious rituals, 73 Sherbro, 95 sushi, 194
potlatch, 140 reterritorialization, 188, 189 shifting cultivation, 134 swidden cultivation, 134
power, 1 10, 1 11 revitalization, 81 Sierra Leone, 95 symbolic anthropology, 211
coercive, 111 revivalism, 82 situated knowledge, 220,221 symbols, 22
persuasive, 112 revolutionary movements, 184 slash-and-burn cultivation, 134 synchronic, 35
pragmatics, 46 rite of passage, 74 slavery, 101 syncretism, 81, 192
prayer, 74 ritual, 72-73, 95, 212 slaves, 119 syntax, 38
prehistory, 7 court, 125 Smith, Adam, 136,138
prestige, 119 power, and, 73 social Tanzania, 95
priests, 80 religious, 7 3 determinism, 208 theory, 203
1x:in1ary institutions, 55 role, 91, 92, 95, 99, 104, 158, 169 dramas, 212 thick description, 213
prirnatologists, 3 Rome, 198 mobility, 96 third gender, 107
prime movers, 1 19 Russia, 184 organization, 92 tradition, 146
procedural law, 124 Rwanda, 198 race, 101 transborder citizenship, 195
production, '142 stratification, 119 transborder state, 195-96
production for exchange, 145 sacrifice, 74 structure, 9 1 transhumance, 134
production for use, 145 Sahlins, Marshall, 53, 139, 152 society, 90 trauma, 66
projective tests, 56, 63 Samoa, 57 sociobiology, 149, 215 tribe, 120
proletarianization, 184 sanctions, 123 sociolinguistics, 4 2 , 4 3 tribes, 117, 120, 121
proletariat, 97, 98, 142, 146 Sande society, 96 sodalities, 95 Trobriand Islanders, 94, 207
protolanguage, 34 Sanskrit, 34 sororate, 174 Trobriand Islands, 75,206,232, 233
prototypes, 62, 63 Sapir, Edward, 33, 39, 39,40 South Africa, 29 Tsing, Anna, 225 4
psychic snity of mankind, 205 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, 40 South Asia, 96 Turner, Victor, 75, 2 1 1
psychologists, 55 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 35, 36,37, Soviet Union, 141, 184, 188 two spirit, 107
psychoses, 5 7 38,39,209 speech community, 4 1 Tylor, E. B., 69,202, 203
savagery, 132,204 Spencer, Herbert, 203,204,202
scarcity, 137 sperm banks, 156 unilineal cultural evolutionism, 203
schemas, 62, 62 state, 99, 110, 118, 120 unilineal descent, 159
race, 16, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 89, 100, science, 77 status, 91, 158 unilineal descent groups, 159
101,102,105 science studies, 224 achieved, 9 1 United Nations Declaration o n
cultural categories, 19 scientific racism, 204-05 ascribed, 9 1 Human Rights, 196
ethnicity and, 102, 102 Scotland, 127 Steward, Julian, 20, 112,214 United States, 9, 18, 82, 100, 154,
races, 205 secondary institutions, 5 5 Strathern, Marilyn, 105 1.56, 17.5, 176, I ')O
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 206,207 secret socictic-s,'15, ')O srr:~tifictlsoc,ic-tics,94, 98 I I I ( . I , ~1 .SO
II~,
258 INDEX

utilitarian, 216 Weber, Max, 220

uxorilocal, 171
Veblen, Thorstein, 150, 151
verbal performance, 43
verbal repertoire, 42
violence, 198
virilocal, 170
virtual communities, 189
voodoo doll, 76
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 186, 187
warfare, 115, 116
Washburn, Sherwood, 18
wealth, 119
wealth exchange, 124
Welsch, Robert, 85
westernization, 182
White, Leslie, 214
Whorf, Benjamin, 33, 39, 40
Wicca, 78, 82
witch, 79
witchcraft, 77, 78-79
Wolf, Eric, 184
World Bank, 186
world system theory, 186, 187, 188
world trade center, 190
World War 11, 18,25,40, 193
worldview, 68
Yugoslavia, 198