An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
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An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology By C. Nadia Seremetakis An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology By C. Nadia Seremetakis This book first published 2017 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2017 by C. Nadia Seremetakis All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7334-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7334-5 To my students anywhere anytime CONTENTS Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part I: Exploring Cultures Chapter One ................................................................................................. 4 Redefining Culture and Civilization: The Birth of Anthropology Fieldwork versus Comparative Taxonomic Methodology Diffusion or Independent Invention? Acculturation Culture as Process A Four-Field Discipline Social or Cultural Anthropology? Defining Culture Waiting for the Barbarians Part II: Writing the Other Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 30 Science/Literature Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 36 On the “Native’s” Interpretation Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 40 Representation Refined A Note on Ethnopoetics Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 51 Natural, Naturalism, and Common Sense viii Contents Part III: Reading the Other or On Visual Communication Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 56 Reading and Violence Chapter Seven ............................................................................................ 62 The Eye Eats Structuralism, Universalism, and Peasant Particularities: On the Eye of the Other Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 75 Interlude: On Binary Oppositions in Anthropology Chapter Nine .............................................................................................. 77 (Re)Contextualizing the Visual Part IV: Institution versus Meaning Chapter Ten ............................................................................................... 84 Kinship Bonds: The African/Melanesian Debate in Modern Society Melanesian Examples Part V: Economy and Exchange Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 100 Economics and Economic Activity The Semantics of Money Uses Gift Exchanges The Trobriands Part VI: Signs, Communication, and Performance Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 116 Language and Culture Linguistic Method in Ethnography Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 123 Language and Disorder: On Aphasia Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 128 Verbal Art as Performance An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology ix Part VII: Cognitive Systems: Space and Time Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 136 Space Right and Left Gendering Space Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 158 Time and Its Transformations Time and Discipline Against Linearity Labor Discipline and Body Spaces in Development Part VIII: Symbolic Systems Chapter Seventeen .................................................................................. 170 Culture and Communication Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 173 Symbol, Ritual, and (De)Ritualization Deritualization Part IX: Ritual Passage Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 180 Initiation Rites Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 184 The Ritualization of Death Intersection: The Anthropological Definition of Pollution ..................... 194 Part X: Gender and the Cultural Construction of Difference Chapter Twenty One ................................................................................ 200 Binary Polarity in Historical Perspective Decentering Gender Concepts: Anthropology versus Feminism Chapter Twenty Two ............................................................................... 216 Performance Spaces and Bodily Practices: The Binary Codes Inverted x Contents Chapter Twenty Three ............................................................................. 222 Carnival Part XI: Emotions and the Senses Chapter Twenty Four ............................................................................... 230 Emotions in Anthropological Perspective Exchange as an Emotional Expression On Procreation Stories Exchanging Verses Emotions and the Self: Universalism, Particularism, and Nonsynchronicity Chapter Twenty Five ............................................................................... 246 On the Senses in Anthropology Author Index ............................................................................................ 256 INTRODUCTION This book is a comprehensive first part of a particular course in cultural anthropology. It engages young scholars and students in an interdisciplinary, critical dialogue with past and present directions in cultural–historical studies and disciplines. More specifically, it prepares prospective anthropologists, as well as interested readers in human cultures, for understanding key theoretical and methodological ethnographic principles and pursuing further what has been known as cultural anthropological perspectives. This book was generated out of course lectures in two continents over the past three decades. Both the choice and analysis of materials, focusing on various parts of the world as researched and studied by prominent scholars, were adopted to the occasional needs of students, beginners and/or advanced. They were also (re)formulated to meet the teaching and learning needs of young scholars or teachers of anthropology proper in European and those neocolonial settings in which academic anthropology, since its importation, has been limited to a British–oriented “social anthropology,” thus, leaving cultural anthropology and its history— especially the critical decades of the 1980s and 1990s—an underexplored and often unknown territory. In this sense, the present volume also adds a significant missing part in the discipline’s trajectory beyond its birthplaces. The content of this volume is not an exhaustive introduction to the discipline, nor does it present in a developmental sequence all central issues and theories of and in cultural anthropology proper. Rather, it is a contextually presented and critically analyzed background reading of relational material—a background necessary for a better understanding of significant contemporary and future ethnographic studies in anthropology, in particular, and cultural studies, in general. The representative works of influential field researchers and thinkers discussed include a wide range of cultural and social anthropologists, ethnologists, historians, philosophers, literary critics, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, sociolinguists, poets, and photographers/visual artists. 2 Introduction Through their fieldwork-based or/and theoretical studies, the engaged reader travels to cultures and parts of the world, such as Africa (South and West), the Amazon (Indians), contemporary America, Aboriginal Australia, Egypt, Europe (modern and late medieval), France (modern and early modern), Greece (modern, Ancient Greece, and Classical Athens), Ireland (Tory Island), Indonesia, Latin America, Malaysia, India, Sicily, the Mediterranean (16th c.), Melanesia (New Guinea), Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sweden. The scholars discussed include (listed alphabetically) Lila Abu-Lughod, Philippe Ariès, Mikhail Bakhtin, Richard Bauman, Ruth Behar, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Maurice Bloch, Franz Boas, Fernand Braudel, Susan Buck-Morss, Constantine Cavafy, James Clifford, Jean and John Comaroff, Alain Corbin, Salvatore Cucchiari, Loring Danforth, Stanley Diamond, Page duBois, Juliet Du Bouley, Jill Dubisch, Mary Douglas, Jeanne Favret-Sada, Steven Feld, Allen Feldman, Robin Fox, Michel Foucault, Jean Franco, Ernestine Friedl, Jonas Frykman, Clifford Geertz, Faye Ginsburg, Erving Goffman, Robert Hertz, Michael Herzfeld, Renée Hirschon, David Howes, Richard Huntington, Dell Hymes, Michael Jackson, Roman Jacobson, Fredric Jameson, Roger Keesing, Reinhart Kosseleck, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Edmund Leach, Claude Levi-Strauss, Shirley Lindenbaum, Orvar Lofgren, Nicole Loraux, Catharine Lutz, Charles Lyell, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, Marshall McLuhan, Peter Metcalf, Fred Myers, Aihwa Ong, Jonathan Parry, Sarah Pink,