Cultural Anthropology A Perspective on the Human Condition

Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, Tenth Edition, encourages students to think critically about culture and to view the world in new ways. The authors incorporate cutting-edge theory into solid coverage of traditional topics and pay special attention to issues of power and inequality in the contemporary world, including gender inequalities, racism, ethnic discrimination, nationalism, caste, and class.

Covering the material in fourteen chapters, Cultural Anthropology fits well into a semester-long introductory course structure. "In Their Own Words" commentaries expose students to alternative perspectives from non-anthropologists and indigenous peoples, and "EthnoProfile" boxes provide maps and ethnographic summaries of each society discussed at length in the text. The book also features many pedagogical aids, including a glossary; chapter summaries, review questions, and key terms at chapter ends; and annotated suggestions for further reading.

Emily A. Schultz is Professor of Anthropology at St. Cloud State University.

Robert H. Lavenda is Professor of Anthropology at St. Cloud State University.

Preface

Chapter 1. What Is the Anthropological Perspective?
What Is Anthropology?
What Is the Concept of Culture?
What Makes Anthropology a Cross-Disciplinary Discipline?
Biological Anthropology
--In Their Own Words: Anthropology as a Vocation
Cultural Anthropology
Linguistic Anthropology
Archaeology
Applied Anthropology
In Their own Words: What Can you Learn from an Anthropology Major?
Medical Anthropology
The Uses of Anthropology
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Part I: The Tools of Cultural Anthropology

Chapter 2. Why Is the Concept of Culture Important?
How Do Anthropologists Define Culture?
--In Their Own Words: The Paradox of Ethnocentrism
Culture, History, and Human Agency
--In Their Own Words: Culture and Freedom
Why Do Cultural Differences Matter?
What Is Ethnocentrism?
--Ethno Profile 2.1: Tswana
--In Their Own Words: Human-rights Law and the Demonization of Culture
Is It Possible to Avoid Ethnocentric Bias?
What Is Cultural Relativism?
How Can Cultural Relativity Improve our Understanding of Controversial Cultural practices?
Genital Cutting, Gender, and Human Rights
Genital Cutting as a Valued Ritual
Culture and Moral Reasoning
Did Their Culture Make Them Do It?
Does Culture Explain Everything?
Culture Change and Cultural Authenticity
The Promise of the Anthropological perspective
CHAPTER SUMMARY
KEY TERMS
FOR REVIEW
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 3. What Is Ethnographic Fieldwork?
--Ethno Profile 3.1: Managua
Why Do Fieldwork?
What Is the Fieldwork Experience Like?
A Meeting of Cultural Traditions
--Ethno Profile 3.2: Blackston
--Ethno Profile 3.3: El Barrio
Ethnographic Fieldwork: How Has Anthropologists' Understanding Changed?
The Positivist Approach
Was There a Problem with Positivism?
--Ethno Profile 3.4: Trobriand Islanders
Can the Reflexive Approach Replace Positivism?
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropological Ethics
Can Fieldwork Be Multisited?
What Is the Dialectic of Fieldwork?
How Are Interpretation and Translation Important Aspects of Fieldwork?
--In Their Own Words: Who's Studying Whom?
How Can Anthropologists Move beyond the Dialectic?
--In Their Own Words: Japanese Corporate Wives in the United States
The Dialectic of Fieldwork: Some Examples
--Ethno Profile 3.5: Komachi (mid-1970s)
--Ethno Profile 3.6: Banaras
What Happens When There Are Ruptures in Communication?
--Ethno Profile 3.7: Utkuhikhalingmiut (Utku Inuit)
What Are the Effects of Fieldwork?
How Does Fieldwork Affect Informants?
--Ethno Profile 3.8: Sidi Lahcen Lyussi
How Does Fieldwork Affect the Researcher?
Does Fieldwork Have Humanizing Effects?
--In Their Own Words: The relationship between Anthropologists and Informants
Where Does Anthropological Knowledge Come From?
How Is Knowledge Produced?
Is Anthropological Knowledge Open Ended?
--In Their Own Words: The Skills of the Anthropologist
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 4. How Has Anthropological Thinking about Cultural Diversity Changed over Time?
Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Origins of Ethnography
Capitalism and Colonialism
The Fur Trade in North America
The Slave and Commodities Trades
Colonialism and Modernity
The Colonial Political Economy
--In Their Own Words: The Anthropological Voice
Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter
What Explains Human Cultural Variation?
--In Their Own Words: The ecologically Noble Savage?
Evolutionary Typologies: The Nineteenth Century
Social Structural Typologies: The British Emphasis
Doing without Typologies: Culture Area Studies in America
How Do Anthropologists Study Forms of Human Society Today?
Postcolonial Realities
Locating Cultural Processes in History
Analyzing Cultural Processes under Globalization
The Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Medicine
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Part II: The Resources of Culture

Chapter 5. What Is Human Language?
Why Do Anthropologists Study Language?
Language and Culture
Talking about Experience
What Makes Human Language Distinctive?
--In Their Own Words: Cultural Translation
What Does It Mean to "Learn" a Language?
Language and Context
--Ethno Profile 5.1: Java
Does Language Affect How We See the World?
What Are the Components of Language?
Phonology: Sounds
Morphology: Word Structure
Syntax: Sentence Structure
Semantics: Meaning
Pragmatics: Language in Contexts of Use
Ethnopragmatics
--Ethno Profile 5.2: Samoa
What Happens When Languages Come into Contact?
What Is the Relation of Pidgins and Creoles?
How Is Meaning Negotiated in Pidgins and Creoles?
What Does Linguistic Inequality Look Like?
What Are the Controversies Surrounding the Language Habits of African Americans?
--In Their Own Words: Varieties of African American English
What Is Language Ideology?
What Are the Controversies Surrounding the Language Habits of Women and Men?
What Is Lost If a Language Dies?
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Language Revitalization
How Are Language and Truth Connected?
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 6. How Do We Make Meaning?
What Is Play?
How Do We Think about Play?
--Ethno Profile 6.1: Aymara
What Are Some Effects of Play?
Do People Play by the Rules?
How Are Culture and Sport Related?
How Is Sport in the Nation-State Organized?
--Ethno Profile 6.2: Brazil
Sport as Metaphor
--Ethno Profile 6.3: Cuba
How Are Baseball and Masculinity Related in Cuba?
What Is Art?
Can Art Be Defined?
"But Is It Art?"
"She's Fake": Art and Authenticity
How Does Hip-Hop Become Japanese?
--Ethno Profile 6.4: Japan
How Does Sculpture Figure in the Baule Gbagba Dance?
The Mass Media: A Television Serial in Egypt
--In Their Own Words: Tango
What Is Myth?
--Ethno Profile 6.5: Cairo
How Does Myth Reflect-and Shape-Society?
Do Myths Help Us Think?
What Is Ritual?
How Do Anthropologists Define Ritual?
What Makes a Child's Birthday Party a Ritual?
How Is Ritual Expressed in Action?
What Are Rites of Passage?
How Are Play and Ritual Complementary?
--In Their Own Words: Video in the Villages
--Ethno Profile 6.6: Yoruba
How Do Cultural Practices Combine Play, Art, Myth, and Ritual?
--Ethno Profile 6.7: Sinhalese
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 7. What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Religion and Worldview?
--Ethno Profile 7.1: Guider
What Is a Worldview?
How Do Anthropologists Study Worldviews?
What Are Some Key Metaphors for Constructing Worldviews?
--Ethno Profile 7.2: Dinka
What Is Religion?
How Do People Communicate in Religion?
How Are Religion and Social Organization Related?
--Ethno Profile 7.3: Fang
Worldviews in Practice: Two Case Studies
Coping with Misfortune: Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande
--Ethno Profile 7.4: Azande
Are There Patterns of Witchcraft Accusation?
Coping with Misfortune: Listening for God among Contemporary Evangelicals in the United States
--In Their Own Words: For all Those Who Were Indian in a Former Life
Maintaining and Changing a Worldview
How Do People Cope with Change?
Anthropology in Everyday Life: Lead Poisoning among Mexican American Children
--Ethno Profile 7.5: Kwaio
--In Their Own Words: Custom and Confrontation
How Are Worldviews Used as Instruments of Power?
Is Secularism a Worldview?
Religion and Secularism
Muslim Headscarves in France: A Case Study
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Part III: The Organization of Material Life

Chapter 8. How Are Culture and Power Connected?
Who Has the Power to Act?
How Do Anthropologists Study Politics?
What Is Coercion?
Coercion in Societies without States?
Domination and Hegemony
Power and National Identity: A Case Study
--Ethno Profile 8.1: Beng
--Ethno Profile 8.2: Tamils
Biopower and Governmentality
Trying to Elude Governmentality: A Case Study
--In Their Own Words: Reforming the Crow Constitution
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology and Advertising
The Ambiguity of Power
How Can Power Be an Independent Entity?
What Is the Power of the Imagination?
The Power of the Weak
--Ethno Profile 8.3: Bolivian Tin Miners
What Does It Mean to Bargain for Reality?
--Ethno Profile 8.4: Sefrou
--Ethno Profile 8.5: "Sedaka" Village
--In Their Own Words: Protesters gird for Long Fight over Opening Peru's Amazon
How Does History Become a Prototype of and for Political Action?
--Ethno Profile 8.6: Northern Peru (Rondas Campesinas)
How Can the Meaning of History Be Negotiated?
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 9. How Do People Make a Living?
What Are Subsistence Strategies?
What Are the Connections between Culture and Livelihood?
Self-Interest, Institutions, and Morals
What Are Production, Distribution, and Consumption?
How Are Goods Distributed and Exchanged?
Capitalism and Neoclassical Economics
--In Their Own Words: David Graeber on Debt
Modes of Exchange
Does Production Drive Economic Activities?
--Ethno Profile 9.1: Nootka
Labor
Modes of Production
The Role of Conflict in Material Life
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Producing Sorghum and Millet in Honduras and the
Sudan
Applying Production Theory to Social and Cultural Life
--In Their Own Words: "So Much Work, So Much Tragedy . . . and for What?"
Why Do People Consume What They Do?
--In Their Own Words: Solidarity Forever
The Internal Explanation: Malinowski and Basic Human Needs
The External Explanation: Cultural Ecology
Food Storage and Sharing
How Does Culture Construct Human Needs?
What Is the Original Affluent Society?
The Abominations of Leviticus
Banana Leaves in the Trobriand Islands
Changing Consumption in Rural Guatemala
How Does Culture Construct Utility?
--In Their Own Words: Fake Masks and Faux Modernity
Consumption Studies Today
Coca-Cola in Trinidad
What Is the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition?
Interplay between the Meaningful and the Material
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Part IV: Systems of Relationships

Chapter 10. What Can Anthropology Teach Us about Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?
How Did Twentieth-Century Feminism Shape the Anthropological Study of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?
--Ethno Profile 10.1: Mount Hagen
How Do Anthropologists Organize the Study of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?
How Are Sex and Gender Affected by Other Forms of Identity?
--Ethno Profile 10.2: Haiti
How Do Ethnographers Study Gender Performativity?
How Do Anthropologists Study Connections Among Sex, Gender, Sexuality, and the Body?
How Do Anthropologists Study Connections between Bodies and Technologies?
How Do Anthropologists Study Relations between Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?
How Does Ethnography Document Variable Culture Understandings Concerning Sex, Gender, and Sexuality?
Female Sexual Practices in Mombasa
--Ethno Profile 10.3: Mombasa Swahilis
Male and Female Sexual Practices in Nicaragua
Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Iran
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 11. Where Do Our Relatives Come from and Why Do They Matter?
How Do Human Beings Organize Interdependence?
What Is Friendship?
What Is Kinship?
What Is the Role of Descent in Kinship?
Bilateral Kindreds
What Role Do Lineages Play in Descent?
--Ethno Profile 11.1: Ju/'hoansi
Lineage Membership
The Logic of Lineage Relationships
What Are Patrilineages?
--Ethno Profile 11.2: Tiv
--Ethno Profile 11.3: Nuer
What Are Matrilineages?
--Ethno Profile 11.4: Navajo
Matrilineality, Electoral Politics, and the Art of the Neutral Partisan
What Are Kinship Terminologies?
What Criteria Are Used for Making Kinship Distinctions?
What Is Adoption?
--Ethno Profile 11.5: Zumbagua
Adoption in Highland Ecuador
What Is the Relation Between Adoption and Child Circulation in the Andes?
How Flexible Can Relatedness Be?
Negotiation of Kin Ties among the Ju/'hoansi
European American Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies
--Ethno Profile 11.6: Thailand
Assisted Reproduction in Israel
Compadrazgo in Latin America
--Ethno Profile 11.7: Israel
Organ Transplantation and the Creation of New Relatives
What Is Marriage?
Toward a Definition of Marriage
Woman Marriage and Ghost Marriage among the Nuer
Why Is Marriage a Social Process?
Patterns of Residence after Marriage
Single and Plural Spouses
--Ethno Profile 11.8: Ashanti
What Is the Connection between Marriage and Economic Exchange?
--Ethno Profile 11.9: Nyinba
--In Their Own Words: Outside Work, Women, and Bridewealth
What Is a Family?
What Is the Nuclear Family?
--In Their Own Words: Dowry Too High. Lose Bride and go to Jail 26
What Is the Polygynous Family?
--Ethno Profile 11.10: Mende
Extended and Joint Families
How Are Families Transformed over Time?
Divorce and Remarriage
--Ethno Profile 11.11: Alaskan Inuit
--In Their Own Words: Law, Custom, and Crimes against Women
How Does International Migration Affect the Family?
--Ethno Profile 11.12: Los Pinos
--In Their Own Words: Survival and a Surrogate Family
Families by Choice
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Caring for Infibulated Women Giving Birth in Norway
--In Their Own Words: Why Migrant Women Feed Their Husbands Tamales
The Flexibility of Marriage
Love, Marriage, and HIV/AIDS in Nigeria
--In Their Own Words: Two Cheers for Gay Marriage
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Part V: From Local to Global

Chapter 12. What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Social Inequality?
Class
Caste
Caste in India
--Ethno Profile 12.1: Gopalpur
How Do Caste and Class Intersect in Contemporary India?
--Ethno Profile 12.2: Marghi
Caste in Western Africa
The Value of Caste as an Analytic Category
Race
--In Their Own Words: As economic Turmoil Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungary's Gypsies
--In Their Own Words: On the Butt Size of Barbie and Shani
The Biology of Human Variation
Race as a Social Category
--Ethno Profile 12.3: Colonial Oaxaca (1521-1812)
Race in Colonial Oaxaca
Colorism in Nicaragua
Ethnicity
--In Their Own Words: The Politics of Ethnicity
Ethnicity in Urban Africa
Ethnicity and Race
Nation and Nation-State
Nationalities and Nationalism
Australian Nationalism
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology and Democracy
Naturalizing Discourses
The Paradox of Essentialized Identities
Nation-Building in a Postcolonial World: Fiji
Nationalism and Its Dangers
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 13. What Can Anthropology Tell Us about Globalization?
--Ethno Profile 13.1: Kayapó
--In Their Own Words: Amazon Indians Honor an Intrepid Spirit
--In Their Own Words: The Ethnographer's Responsibility
--In Their Own Words: Slumdog Tourism
Cultural Imperialism or Cultural Hybridity?
Cultural Imperialism
Cultural Hybridity
--In Their Own Words: How Sushi Went Global
The Limits of Cultural Hybridity
How Does Globalization Affect the Nation-State?
Are Global Flows Undermining Nation-States?
Migration, Trans-Border Identities, and Long-Distance Nationalism
--In Their Own Words: Cofan
--Ethno Profile 13.2: Rione Monti (Rome)
Anthropology and Multicultural Politics in the New Europe
How Can Citizenship Be Flexible?
What Is Territorial Citizenship?
What Is Vernacular Statecraft?
Are Human Rights Universal?
Human Rights Discourse as the Global Language of Social Justice
Rights versus Culture
Rights to Culture
Rights as Culture
--Anthropology in Everyday Life: Anthropology and Indigenous Rights
How Can Culture Help in Thinking about Rights?
Violence against Women in Hawaii
--Ethno Profile 13.3: Hawaii
What Is the Relationship between Human Rights and Humanitarianism?
Can We Be at Home in a Global World?
Cosmopolitanism
--In Their Own Words: Destructive Logging and Deforestation in Indonesia
Friction
Border Thinking
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Chapter 14. How Is Anthropology Applied in the Field of Medicine?
What Is Medical Anthropology?
What Makes Medical Anthropology "Biocultural"?
How Do People with Different Cultures Understand the Causes of Sickness and Health?
Kinds of Selves
Decentered Selves on the Internet
Self and Subjectivity
Subjectivity, Trauma, and Structural Violence
How Are Human Sickness and Health Shaped by the Global Capitalist Economy?
--In Their Own Words: Ethical Dilemmas and Decisions
Health, Human Reproduction, and Global Capitalism
Medical Anthropology and HIV/AIDS
The Future of Medical Anthropology
Why Study Anthropology?
CHAPTER SUMMARY
FOR REVIEW
KEY TERMS
SUGGESTED READINGS

Glossary
Bibliography
Credits
Index