Interpretive approaches to culture continued I Geertz thick description and humor II Raymonde Carroll What are cultural misunderstandings When do they occur What is her definition of culture How do you do cultural analysis Why is it hard Where do stereotypes about others come III Stereotype Exercise from 1 Quiz 2 Summary video https www youtube com watch v dWeh0b OBuuE warning display of Swastika appears 3 Why study other people if we are cultural too p 14 displacing the dulling sense of familiarity with which the mysteriousness of our own ability to relate perceptively to one another is concealed from us Understanding a people s culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity renders them accessible setting them up in the frame of their own banalities it dissolves their opacity 4 How does this relate to icc Why do we care p 24 the whole point of a semiotic approach to culture is to aid us in gaining access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can in some extended sense of the term converse with them Your own words 5 Discuss with your neighbor Pick a group of people that interests you that you would like to study Using Geertz s semiotic interpretive approach write a couple sentences about what you would look for and where you would look for culture How would you go about it 6 Is cultural analysis ever done Why is it turtles all the way down p 29 7 Geertzian interpretive approaches culture and humor 8 Geertz From the Native s Point of View In short accounts of other peoples subjectivities can be built up without recourse to pretensions to more thannormal capacities for ego effacement and fellow feeling But whatever accurate or half accurate sense one gets of what one s informants are comes from the ability to construe their modes of expression what I would call their symbol systems Understanding the form and pressure of to use the dangerous word one more time natives inner lives is more like grasping a proverb catching an allusion seeing a joke or as I have suggested reading a poem than it is like achieving communion 9 Geertz style Cultural Analysis of Humor 1 Think of something you find hysterically funny an episode of a tv show a funny movie an episode of Saturday Night Live a YouTube clip or your favorite joke What is it 2 Who else would get it Who wouldn t 3 Go to the funniest part What is the semiotic the signal within a larger code component of it 4 What do you have to know to get your joke What are the underlying cultural premises that makes this funny 10 What the analysis of humor tells us about culture 11 What happened to Raymonde Carroll in Nukuoro 12 Raymonde Carroll Chief story by the fifth day as I was giving my daughter some baby food under the same watchful eyes the chiefly calmly announced that he had decided actually upon our arrival that he would take her in adoption and that he felt the time had come to tell me 13 Baby example Invisible premises on her side Invisible premises on chief s side 14 Cloth example Invisible premises on her side Invisible premises on woman s side 15 xii recognize those areas in which cultural misunderstandings can easily occur and can cause pain because they are not recognized as cultural as owing to differences in cultural presuppositions of which we are unaware to implicit ideas we harbor within ourselves unknowingly to the way we see the world one which was learned but which seems to us natural or evident or which appears to go without saying 16 Gift giving in cultural context s 17 Gifts morality reciprocity exchange 18 Awkward Gift exchanges https www youtube com watch v aQlhrrqT QmU list PLa1OzIr mCmzYsZ7YYu7fIlD4yNyKs Zhc index 2 19 Her notion of culture 20 Culture as invisible premises 21 Carroll s version of Thick Description 7 remembering the experience in detail by seeing in slow motion imagine a context in which this experience is no longer shocking or unpleasant but normal 22 In class Describe a time when you had to give or receive a gift where you felt awkward or unsure What underlying principles premises informed the giving or receipt of the gift What made things unsure or awkward 23 What it means to say that cultural analysis doesn t involve value judgments Those people are so rude superficial f riendly 24 Where stereotypes come from according to RC 25 p 4 Following an intercultural experience which bothered or annoyed me I will have a tendency to say things like The French are Or Americans are In other words if stereotypes are hardy it is not because they contain a grain of truth but rather because they express and reflect the culture of those who espouse them 26 What steps did she take to understand what happened to her 27 If you practice cultural analysis will you stop having your own cultural reactions 28 Exercise about Common US Stereotypes of other Nationalities French British German 29 Limitations to Carroll 30 Role of history cultural frames are not static Implicitly defines culture as nationality Role of power relations in intercultural interactions Other ways one might understand emergence of stereotypes in icc 31 How has your current understanding of culture changed so far Why is it a tricky notion What are some pitfalls What do you still find confusing 32