1. Chapter 3 Anthropology and Intercultural Relations

2. Introduction Culture Common sense Cultural Misunderstandings
Human capacity to differentiate
Categorize the world of experience
Assign meanings to the categories
Common sense
Unstated assumptions shared amongst communities
Cultural Misunderstandings
Different common senses amongst different groups
Intercultural Relations
Flows of symbols across the global landscape

3. Cultural Misunderstandings in an International Milieu
Complexities of many beliefs or common senses
Misunderstandings occur
Both sides are correct, just different points of view
Misunderstandings on a larger scale
Not always at the interpersonal level
Happens often in politics

4. What is Culture?
Humans generate meanings or models to understand the world around them
Culture is a learned system of meanings through which people orient themselves
Culture is…
Symbolic
Shared
Learned
Adaptive

5. Culture is Symbolic
Humans understand and manipulate the world using symbols
Words, gestures, clothes…all symbols
Symbol: something that stands for something else to someone in some respect
Symbols are arbitrary
We know the meaning only if we were taught it

6. Culture is Shared Ideology Generation of similarity
Mobilization of cultural symbols to
Create inequities
Sustain inequities
Resist inequities
Generation of similarity
Establish common beliefs in a community
Organization of difference
Effort to regulate behavior according to ideology

7. [Figure Ideology involves the mobilization of cultural symbols toward political ends. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]

8. Culture Is Learned
Enculturation: Passing on culture to new generations
Formal learning (institution)
Informal learning (watching, listening, participating)
Embodiment
How we speak, eat, move, etc.
Unconscious behaviors learned through doing.

9. [Figure Most enculturation involves informal learning—the learning we engage in simply by participating in everyday activities. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]

10. Culture is Adaptive Cultural learning is a lifelong process
Adapt to internal and external pressures
Diffusion of ideas through direct and indirect contact
Culture does not cease to be culture because it adapts
Globalization does not change cultures, it is an integration of cultures

11. Levels of Culture Culture is deeper than what is seen
But what is seen does play into culture
Culture exists on three different levels
Everyday practices
Reasons and logical explanations for those practices
Assumptions about how the world works

12. Cultural Practices
Everyday actions through which people in a particular community get through their day
The things we say
The tools we use
The things we buy
The ways we behave around other people
This level of culture is sometimes called artifact

13. Cultural Logics
Underlying mechanisms behind human action in a certain community
Nature acts as a constraint to human action
There is always an explanation for the failure of cultural logics

14. Worldview
Refers to the assumptions people have about the structure of the universe
Fundamental principles and values that organize and generate cultural logics
Expressive culture
How we show ourselves to ourselves
Art, poems, stories, rituals
Sometimes described as an encompassing picture of reality

15. [Figure As cultures increasingly come into contact with each other through economic globalization, there is little evidence that a shared world view is coming into existence. Rather, we find an increasing organization of diversity. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]

16. Intercultural Relations
Cross-cultural encounters have powerful transformative effects on social systems and individuals
Cultural diffusion through trade, books, etc.
Intercultural relations are about societies and people
Refugees, migrants, tourists, soldiers account are a few of the many people that influence other cultures
Culture shock
Unpleasant, sometimes traumatic feeling that comes with cultural misunderstandings
People deal with culture shock in different ways

17. [Figure Rituals, play, art, sports, theater, novels and movies are all part of expressive culture, in which world views are articulated and elaborated in symbolic forms. Photo by Mark Allen Peterson.]

18. Studying Culture: The Anthropological Perspective
Anthropology is the empirical study of what it means to be human
Not defined by its subject matter
May cover other fields of study
Defined by perspectives
Comparative
Holistic
Empirical
Evolutionary
Relativistic

19. Comparative Perspective
People tend to define what they are accustomed to as normal
Might seem normal to one group but not to another
Comparison allows for the questioning of normalcy
Anthropology studies the differences

20. Holistic Perspective
Anthropologists assume that all aspects of life are intertwined
Breaking down or simplifying human tendencies does not make sense
Example: Stephen Lansing’s study of Balinese agriculture revolution

21. Empirical Perspective
Anthropology is a science in which data is collected through observation or interaction
“Fieldwork”
Participant observation refers to long-term engagements with a host community
Anthropologist enters into everyday life with the community
Learns through interaction

22. Evolutionary Perspective
All communities are in continual processes of historical change
Adapt to population pressures, environmental changes, wars, technological advancements, etc.
The evolutionary assumption reminds us that traditions had histories

23. Relativistic Perpective
Assumption: all human societies offer data of the same type
Controversial and misunderstood
One system is not better than another
Reverts to ideas on common senses
Methodological relativism
Data as institutions that serve particular social functions in a specific time and place, embedded in complex webs of meanings
Theoretical relativism
An assumption that all human actions make rational sense when understood in their own contexts
Philosophical relativism
Whatever people do is right for them

24. Anthropology and International Studies
Anthropological perspective’s five key dimensions to international studies:
Importance of culture in explaining human actions
Urges a more sophisticated approach to cultural boundaries
Reminds us there are usually more than two points of view
Encourages us to think on a smaller scale
Emphasizes the importance of people in international studies