Anthropology of Social Change: Margins, Performances, Publics (S0E08a)

2019-2020

Section A. Setting the scene

Part 2. ‘The Anthropologist’: an audiovisual introduction to

anthropology in times of climate change

20 February 2020
 ASC-02

Section 1. Setting the scene

Session 2: ‘The Anthropologist’: a visual introduction to anthropology and the

Anthropocene

Audiovisual: ‘The Anthropologist’ (2015; Seth Kramer, Daniel Miller) on Margaret Mead,
anthropology and climate change.

the anthropologist 2
 ASC-02

Cultural anthropology and climate change: from Mead to Crate

Intro:
- Two generational ‘sets’ of mother-daughter anthropologists:
(a) Margaret Mead & Mary Catherine Bateson, and
(b) Susie and Katie Crate
- Susan Crate’s multi-sited work in the anthropology of climate (change) is presented in
dialogue with her teenage daughter Katie.
- Margaret Mead’s work and life as a public anthropologist in 20 th century US is
presented through the stories of her daughter Mary Catherine, now a 77-year-old
cultural anthropologist.
- The main theme of the film is climate change, which is above all a concern of Crate’s, but
the underlying message that connects Mead and Crate is the issue of social and cultural
change and the question of how people around the world will be able to
incorporate/accommodate (climate) change into their social, economic and cultural life
worlds.

the anthropologist 3
 ASC-02

- Interconnections between the two mother-daughter pairs, the Meads and the Crates:
1. Intergenerational interest/dialogue, combination of admiration and distance.
2. Concern with cultural change: the potential of human beings to reinvent
themselves
3. Shared commitment to a public, engaged anthropology that speaks to publics far
beyond those within the walls of academia.
- The film also contains a double absence – the fathers:
- Katie’s father is a certain Mr. Yegorov: apparently someone Susan met during her
fieldwork in Siberia. He is largely (but not entirely) absent from the film.
- Marie Catherine’s father is Gregory Bateson, a very prominent public
anthropologist. Marie Catherine wrote a joint biography of her parents.
- That Gregory Bateson is left out of the film is somewhat puzzling when considering that
he was deeply interested in, and inspired Mead’s work on embodied culture and cultural
transmission.
See e.g. Balinese Character (Bateson and Mead 1942).
“This is not a book about Balinese custom but about the Balinese and the way in which
they, as living persons, moving, standing, eating, sleeping, dancing, and going into
trance, embodying that abstraction which (after we have abstracted it) we technically
call culture.” (1942: xii)
the anthropologist 4
 ASC-02

- Moreover, Bateson addressed issues of ecology (in the broad sense of the term) in his
seminal book Steps to an ecology of mind (1972), which was widely read and appreciated
also outside academia, and developed methodological tools which are now used in the
Anthropocene literature (see next week: Overheating)
- Whatever the case may be, the presences and absences may indicate that
intergenerational transmission is never straightforward, and as we shall see, even less so
in the Anthropocene.

the anthropologist 5
 ASC-04

A brief note on Margaret Mead (1901-1978)

Works further on the idea of enculturation: differences between peoples are usually cultural
differences imparted in childhood. This leads to a concern with how a human infant is
transformed into an adult member of a particular society.
Mead’s theoretical ideas evolved directly from her field investigations. Between 1925 and
1939 Mead participated in five field trips and studied eight different societies.
• First (8-month) field research was in Samoa in 1925. Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), was
the extremely popular outcome, and her results remain controversial (exoticising).
• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) (Samoa, Native American, New
Guinea) was important because at that time in the US sex roles were viewed as inevitable,
natural characteristics of gender differences. Mead showed that these behavior patterns
were extremely malleable and reflected cultural differences.
• Field research with Gregory Bateson in Bali in 1936–1938 and again in 1939 and among
the Iatmul of New Guinea in 1938. The Balinese research on the cultural bases of
personality is notable for its use of photography as a research tool, and it resulted in
Balinese Character.
• Mead was a public intellectual, outspoken on all major societal issues. E.g.
A rap on race (1971) – conversation with James Baldwin (e.g. South Africa 1:14:00 – etc.)
the anthropologist 6
 ASC-04

Relevance of ‘The Anthropologist’ (TA) for this course

1. TA is an accessible introduction to anthropological work (field research,
analysis/interpretation, dissemination)
2. TA highlights how the issue of tradition and change, transmission and transformation
were/are at the heart of the anthropological project
3. TA brings in climate change or the Anthropocene as overall setting (‘finite world’) in
which social change is key factor (of climate change, of mitigation or not). Which were
the pre-climate change compelling settings of change? (modernization, industrialization,
capitalism, world wars,…)
4. TA addresses the key terms of this course in enlightening ways:
1. situates change is situated in the ‘marginal’ global spaces
2. focusses on people’s local understanding and (cultural) creativity (reflexivity)
3. explores elements of ‘glocal subjectivation’ (or becoming subject in the
Anthropocene)

the anthropologist 7
 ASC-02

Break-out group assignment:

1. Does this film contradict or confirm your ideas about anthropology and the work of
anthropologists (research, analysis, dissemination)?
2. “Considering both the unprecedented urgency and the new level of reflexivity that
climate change ushers in, anthropologists need to adopt cross-scale, multistakeholder,
and interdisciplinary approaches in research and practice.”
“I argue for one mode that anthropologists should pursue—the development of critical
collaborative, multisited ethnography, which I term “climate ethnography.” (Crate 2011:
175)
1. Give examples of (a) cross-scale, (b) multistakeholder, and (c) interdisciplinary
approaches in TA
2. Give examples of (a) critical, (b) collaborative, (c) multisited ethnographic work in
TA

the anthropologist 8