ANTH1101 Learning Culture 21 September 2012 Cultural anthropological point of view trying to look at both your own and unfamiliar cultures as both an outsider and an insider Emic v Etic views o Emic perspective is held by members of that cultural group Insider s awareness of what goes on my o Etic perspective is held by outsiders through their own ideas and concerns their o Cultural anthropologists strive to achieve an emic understanding of the culture they study then translate it into etic terms so that other outsiders will learn to understand and appreciate that culture o Ex Chinese Table Manners o Culture shock The shock of otherness Rabinow 1977 Feelings of anxiety panic confusion loneliness and depression that is often experienced in a foreign or unfamiliar cultural setting Arising in part over uncertainty about what is culturally appropriate Often including moral or aesthetical disgust towards aspects of the foreign culture o Body Ritual among the Nacirema Horace Miner 1956 About ethnocentrism and the cultural perspective o Exoticization of other cultures How are others being portrayed How do our portrayals of others reflect our own values o Emic and etic in describing our own culture ethnoelimination Cultural study of bodily waste Elliott Oring From Uretics to Uremics A Contribution toward the Ethnography of Peeing Use formal language urinate micturate excrete medical settings Vulgar language take a piss Baby talk wee wee tinkle number one used by some children and women Euphemistic language I need to powder my nose going to the john dropping the kids off at the pool Personal Peeing Space Peeing is a private activity For men peeing is the most common primary intended activity when entering a public rest room Urinals are chosen in order to maximize personal peeing space ANTH1101 21 September 2012 Only violated when men are friends acquaintances speak in a normal speaking voice Demeanor and masculinity During peeing eyes are front Hands play a limited part at sides behind back on hips in pockets or are rested on flushing mechanism Analysis Oring explains these patterns as the result of three American cultural values privacy masculinity and coolness Privacy o Children learn to urinate defecate in private bathroom is the most private room o In public restrooms behavioral patterns attempt to preserve the illusion of privacy Masculinity o Peeing space is reinforced by American masculine taboos against expressing interest in other men o Peeing becomes a sexual display o Shaking behavior is associated with fears of appearing unmasculine by being seen to have inadequate control of bodily functions looks like peed one s pants o Value that attempts to publicly deny that privacy and masculinity are bathroom issues o Many anxieties generated by having to urinate in public are not to be acknowledged why urinal 5 is not chosen when someone is at 1 Coolness o American Schoolrooms Learning the Nightmare Jules Henry 1963 School is an institution for drilling children in cultural orientations The function of education has never been to free the mind and the spirit of man but to bind them School disciplines children into the same neuroses that bind the rest of the culture Creates the essential nightmare that drives people away from something failure and toward something success Learning at many levels at once In a society where competition for the basic cultural goods is a picot of action people cannot be taught to love one another through fostering competition itself Learning to criticize Social meritocracy Norris Johnson o Analyzing Space another anthropological take on elementary schools ANTH1101 21 September 2012 o Contrast Child Care in China Bruce Dollar 1989 Childrearing practices across China focus on solidarity and mutual health reflective of its communist culture Teachers encourage cooperation sharing and altruism ANTH1101 Kinship 21 September 2012 A classic anthropological concern Biological and cultural Every society has a way of naming and recognizing a sense of organic continuity being of the same blood as someone else and some sense of mutual obligation and or solidarity Quite popular during the 1960s The state now functions in place of family in many ways Three ways to acquire kin relations o Consanguinal kin relations are based on shared blood that is o Affinal kin relations are kin relations based on marriage that is in biological relatedness usually Assumed blood relations laws broadly defined Mothers and fathers in law o Fictive kin relations identify an unrelated individual as a member of the kin group Godparent family friend gangmember Aspects of the study of kinship o Every culture chooses which kin relationships are important to recognize No universal standard o Kin terms are the role labels used in different societies to classify kin Hundreds of categories to define kin relationships o Kinship terms usually correspond with categories to which an individual has some allegiance or obligation o Kinship systems emphasize different factors of differentiation Sex of relative of ego Generation Affinity Collaterality e g does mother s sister mother Relative age