1. Culture and Ethnography
April 8 & 11, 2005

2. Culture Is . . . Learned (Enculturation) Shared Symbolic
Taken for Granted
All-Encompassing
Actively Used
If human life is a game, culture is the rules to the game.
Process of learning and teaching culture is called enculturation.
Have you pissed off your parents on purpose?

3. Definitions of Culture
“Knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society.”
“A system of symbols and classifications for interpreting the world.”
Note about relationship between individual and society.

4. Definitions of Culture
Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
That which keeps us from being as bad as we are capable of being.
Who are we and where do we come from?
Why are we here?
War of all against all—it benefits everyone if we follow the rules.
In the beginning comes next

5. Culture is made up of… Identity Race Ethnicity Class Religion Language
Gender
Sexuality
Politics
Economics
Nationality
Subsistence
Government
Education
Family Units
Too Many Others…

6. How do we study culture: Method
Participant Observation
Conversation/Interviews
Surveys
Life Histories
Genealogies
Problem-oriented
Longitudinal

7. How do we study culture: Method
Induction: deriving general principles from particular facts or instances.
Opposite of scientific method
What does it mean to be human?
Use particular information to derive transferable insights into different circumstances.

8. Participant Observation

9. How do we study culture: Theory
Functionalism: how cultures function
Structuralism: basic underlying structures of human mind
Poststructuralism/Postmodernism

10. Functionalism Malinowski: Kula Ring Ritualized reciprocity
Change; Disruption; Agency

11. Structuralism Claude Levi-Strauss
Basic Mental Structures: Binary Oppositions
Genealogy; Marriage; Kinship
Myth; Music; Art
Time; Agency

12. Structuralism

13. Poststructuralism No pretense of holism or objectivity
Deconstruction, textual analysis
Impossible to step outside culture to view it objectively

14. How do we study culture: Ethics
Institutional Review
Protect consultants
Informed Consent
Preservation
Publish
Advocacy

15. How do we write about culture?
Ethnographic Realism
“to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world”

16. How do we write about culture?
Interpretive Anthropology:
Cultures are meaningful “texts” that natives constantly “read”
Ethnographers must decipher the text
Wink or Blink?

17. How do we write about culture?
Experimental Ethnography
All peoples and cultures have already been discovered
We must write about them in historical contexts (Mama Lola in Brooklyn)
Work of art and science
Dialogic, creative exercise

18. How do we write about culture?
Ethnographic Realism
Impossible to achieve
Interpretive Anthropology
Valuable, but limited
Experimental Ethnography
Fact or fiction? Neither? Both?

19. How do we write about culture?
Time and tense:
Ethnographic Present
Romanticized
Frozen in time
Past tense