Participant Observation and Interviewing Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define participant observation and identify best practices associated with it. Describe what makes a good informant for anthropological research. Describe best practices for conducting an interview from an unbiased and emic perspective. Explain the concept of ownership of cultural information. Identify the rights of study informants. List practices required by institutional review boards before research can begin. Describe the aim of long-term research projects in anthropology. Participant Observation Working in the field often places anthropologists in settings very different from what they are familiar with. Upon first arriving at an unfamiliar field location, it is common for anthropologists to feel out of place and uncomfortable as they adjust to a new culture and environment. Many anthropologists keep a daily log of their feeling and impressions in their new environment. Researchers studying other cultures practice a method called participant observation , which entails directly participating in the activities and events of a host culture and keeping records of observations about these activities. Researchers may create various types of records of their interactions as participants and their observations about the host culture and environment. These might take the form of field notebooks, computer files, digital recordings, photographs, or film. Researchers working in the field may also collect objects that will remind them of the culture they are studying, often memorabilia such as maps, tourism brochures, books, or crafts made by the people they are observing. Some researchers regularly record impressions of activities while they are occurring so that they do not forget to make note of important aspects of the culture. But many researchers will wait to take photos, draw images, or write in their notebooks until after an activity is over so that they do not disturb the culture through their efforts at documentation. In either case, it is important that researchers be respectful and responsible and always ask for permission from subjects before taking photos or recordings. Many researchers will have gathered signed permission from their subjects before beginning their research and will work with a documented plan that has been approved by their institution before going into the field. Interviewing Informants An important source of information about a culture is interviews with various people who grew up in that culture. Interviews can be uncomfortable for people, and it is important that researchers do all they can to help subjects feel at ease. Researchers will normally conduct an interview in a familiar space for the informant, such as the informant’s home. They will help the subject ease into the interview by participating in introductory and hosting protocols followed in that culture when a visitor comes to someone’s home. The researcher will start off the interview with the exchange of pleasant comments and will introduce themselves by explaining who they are, where they come from, and why they are doing this research. Then the interview may commence. Interviews can be short or long, and there may be follow-up meetings and further interviews based on how knowledgeable the informant is. Many informants are chosen because they are deeply conscious of multiple aspects of their culture. This type of insider information is vitally important to an anthropological research project. In addition to interview questions, survey questions may also be asked during these meetings. The use of recording equipment, for both audio and video recordings, is common during interviews. However, such equipment may be considered intrusive by some, and their use is always at the discretion of the informant. Express permissions must always be obtained both to create a recording and to use a recording in future projects. Ethnographic researchers engage with the cultures they are studying by spending time with their people. Here Josphat Mako, a Maasai man, greets Stuart Butler. Butler spent two months with Mako, walking between Maasai villages and visiting with residents to learn about both traditional customs and contemporary practices and challenges. (credit: “2015 06 24 Walking with the Maasai JPEG RESIZED 0025” by Make It Kenya Photo/Stuart Price/flickr, Public Domain) Ethical Considerations Contemporary sociocultural researchers and anthropologists must follow protocols established by an institutional review board (IRB) as well as any research protocols specific to the culture being researched. For social science research, IRBs are committees housed within a university that must review and approve research plans before any research begins. There may also be a parallel review process within the host culture. The proposed research is normally fully planned out before the review process can begin, with specific information about the type of research that will be conducted, including examples of questions to be asked, potential risk factors to subjects, plans for emotional support for subjects, means of protecting the identity of subjects, language used to fully disclose the intent of the project to subjects, and the final plan for archiving the research data. Many Indigenous nations have their own research protocols , and foreign countries will have their own research protocols and processes for securing permission to conduct research as well. Researchers conducting sociocultural, medical, or clinical studies must gain written consent for all interviews from their informants, and they must be transparent as to why they are conducting research and how it will be used in the future. There are normally various levels of protocols pertaining to research, based on the potential to cause stress or harm to the subjects. At the highest level, full disclosure and signed permission as well as complete anonymity of the subjects involved in the project are required. A research plan should also specify whether recordings, notes, and data will be archived for future use or destroyed at the end of the project. Content gathered from research may make its way into articles or books or become part of a vast body of anonymous data available to other researchers. These possibilities should be discussed with collaborators. Collaborators are usually anonymous unless they choose to allow their names to be used. Many researchers now assign to their subject culture significant rights to review reports and edit and correct erroneous information and interpretations as well as ownership rights of the final product and the research data. Alternately, researchers may destroy research data once the project is over so that it cannot be used in ways other than what was originally intended. Long-term research projects are becoming the norm for many professional researchers, who establish trusting relationships with collaborators over the length of their careers. During the early years of anthropology, it was almost unheard of for researchers to establish long-term relationships with the subjects of their research, but many scholars began to view short-term relationships as exploitative. Long-term relationships involve a regular return to the subject culture, on an annual or semiannual basis, to follow up on projects and programs. Researchers often include their subjects in the planning and administration of their projects and will at times seek a research objective based on the needs of their subjects. This type of research is more open-ended and often has an applied focus, seeking to solve problems and issues identified as significant by the collaborating culture. Those who engage in this type of research make it a primary aim to help the collaborating culture rather than to seek information pertinent to their personal projects. This type of open-ended research has been developed in response to the criticisms of Indigenous scholars such as Vine Deloria Jr. , who questioned whether early anthropologists did anything beneficial for the people they studied. A researcher working in this fashion will listen closely to the concerns expressed by those they are studying and aim to identify a project that will ultimately help the collaborating culture address issues identified as important, either by directly working toward a solution or by offering significant insights into the causes and subtleties of the issue. The researcher will include members of the culture in their team, and the results of the research will be given to the people for their use. Researchers working in this manner may still publish their findings, but the subject community will be part of the decision-making regarding what is important and what should and should not be published. The subject community will also have control over any projects that develop based on the findings. In some cases, the researcher is required to submit all manuscripts intended for publication to a committee formed by the collaborating culture for review, correction, and approval. Many Indigenous anthropologists who are tribal members are required to submit their publications to their tribal council for approval before they publish. Contemporary anthropological researchers often assign ultimate ownership of the material they collect to the culture-bearers who provided the information. In fact, there are scholars today who, when publishing findings, assign authorship to the community they worked with and assign themselves the role of editor or compiler. An example is the text Chinuk Wawa: Kakwa nsayka ulman-tilixam laska munk-kemteks nsayka / As Our Elders Teach Us to Speak It , which is authored by the Chinuk Wawa Dictionary Project and published by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, with the scholar Henry Zenk acknowledged as the compiler of the information. Intellectual property protocols in many countries now assume that ownership of ethnographic content is assigned to the informants. Informants have rights, both legally and per IRB policies, to both participate and not participate in a study and to have their data removed from a study if they choose. Ethical researchers will listen to their informants, and if they are at all worried about the effect their findings will have on their informants or other people, they will either pull the data out of the study or find a way to make it completely anonymous. No researcher wants to have their informants adversely affected by their involvement in a research project. The IRB-informed consent paperwork, which must be signed by all informants, should address these concerns and allow the informants to freely choose their level of participation. institutional review board a university research committee that reviews biomedical or social science research proposals to determine if they appropriately protect human participants, informants, and subjects. interview a method of research in which the researcher asks questions of an informant to gain information about a person, society, or culture. open-ended in the context of anthropological research, describes a research method whereby the researcher allows informants to answer questions without a limit in time or subject. participant observation an anthropological research method in which the researcher enters a cultural community and collects information through observation of and participation in the culture.

Social Sciences


Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify differences between quantitative and qualitative information. Provide an example of how an anthropologist might model research findings. Describe the steps of the scientific method. Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Information Quantitative information is measurable or countable data that can provide insight into research questions. Quantitative information is one of the most direct ways to understand limited, specific questions, such as how often people in a culture perform a certain action or how many times an art form or motif appears in a cultural artifact. Statistics created from quantitative data help researchers understand trends and changes over time. Counts of cultural remains, such as the number and distribution of animal remains found at a campsite, can show how much the campsite was used and what type of animal was being hunted. Statistical comparisons may be made of several different sites that Indigenous peoples used to process food in order to determine the primary purpose of each site. In cultural research, qualitative data allows anthropologists to understand culture based on more subjective analyses of language, behavior, ritual, symbolism, and interrelationships of people. Qualitative data has the potential for more in-depth responses via open-ended questions, which can be coded and categorized in order to better identify common themes. Qualitative analysis is less about frequency and the number of things and more about a researcher’s subjective insights and understandings. Anthropology and other fields in the social sciences frequently integrate both types of data by using mixed methods. Through the triangulation of data, anthropologists can use both objective and frequency data (for example, survey results) and subjective data (such as observations) to provide a more holistic understanding. Modeling Many anthropologists create models to help others visualize and understand their research findings. Models help people understand the relationships between various points of data and can include qualitative elements as well. One very familiar model is a map. Maps are constructed from many thousands of data points projected onto a flat surface to help people understand distances and relationships. Maps are typically two-dimensional, but we are of course all familiar with the three-dimensional version of a world map known as a globe. Maps and globes are built on data points, but they also include qualitative information, such as the colors used to represent various features and the human-assigned names of various geographical features. Other familiar types of models include graphs, calendars, timelines, and charts. GPS is also a significant modeling tool today. GPS , or the Global Position System , is increasingly used in archaeology. A model of a research site can be created using computer programs and a series of GPS coordinates. Any artifacts found or important features identified within the site can mapped to their exact locations within this model. This type of mapping is incredibly helpful if further work is warranted, making it possible for the researcher to return to the exact site where the original artifacts were found. These types of models also provide construction companies with an understanding of where the most sensitive cultural sites are located so that they may avoid destroying them. Government agencies and tribal governments are now constructing GPS maps of important cultural sites that include a variety of layers. Layering types of data within a landscape allows researchers to easily sort the available data and focus on what is most relevant to a particular question or task. Wild food plants, water sources, roads and trails, and even individual trees can be documented and mapped with precision. Archaeologists can create complex layered maps of traditional Native landscapes, with original habitations, trails, and resource locations marked. GPS has significant applications in the re-creation of historic periods. By comparing the placements of buildings at various points in the past, GPS models can be created showing how neighborhoods or even whole cities have changed over time. In addition, layers can be created that contain cultural and historic information. These types of models are an important part of efforts to preserve remaining cultural and historic sites and features. The Science of Anthropology Anthropology is a science, and as such, anthropologists follow the scientific method . First, an anthropologist forms a research question based on some phenomenon they have encountered. They then construct a testable hypothesis based on their question. To test their hypothesis, they gather data and information. Information can come from one or many sources and can be either quantitative or qualitative in nature. Part of the evaluation might include statistical analyses of the data. The anthropologist then draws a conclusion. Conclusions are rarely 100 percent positive or 100 percent negative; generally, the results are somewhere on a continuum. Most conclusions to the positive will be stated as “likely” to be true. Scholars may also develop methods of testing and retesting their conclusions to make sure that what they think is true is proven true through various means. When a hypothesis is rigorously tested and the results conform with empirical observations of the world, then a theory is considered “likely to be accurate.” Hypotheses are always subject to being disproven or modified as more information is collected. hypothesis a supposition that is subjected to research in order to be proven or disproven through data collection. qualitative data nonnumerical data, such as language, feelings, or impressions, that is normally collected when the researcher is at the research site. research question a question that can be proved or disproved through research and observation. retesting the scientific practice of conducting experiments or research more than once in order to determine if the findings are accurate. Retesting helps eliminate human and other errors in testing and create a range of accuracy. scientific method a method of expanding knowledge by asking questions, creating a hypothesis, collecting data, and presenting well-reasoned findings based on evidence. statistics the science of collecting and analyzing numerical data in large quantities and inferring proportions in a whole from those in a representative sample, or the numerical data collected and analyzed in this manner. theory a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something.

Social Sciences


Collections Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify and explain the issues and needs of archival collections. Identify and explain the issues and needs of three-dimensional collections. Describe current controversies regarding ownership of anthropological artifacts and human remains. Recall two pieces of legislature pertaining to questions of ownership. Define provenance and describe its importance in anthropology. Not all anthropological research is done in the field. There is much to be learned from the collections of manuscripts and artifacts housed in universities and museums. These collections make it possible for anthropologists to study human cultures within the setting of special research laboratories that have been designed to preserve and organize materials collected and perhaps interpreted by scholars of the past. Archives Archival collections contain published, re-created, or original manuscripts that are deemed significant enough to be placed in conditions designed to preserve them against damage or loss. Such collections may contain correspondence, maps, drawings, original drafts of books, rare books, or other papers and media that need special care. Photographs are a major resource in many archives, and they need special handling. Preservation policies of archival collections include practices such as keeping resources out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. While archives offer researchers a great range of valuable resources, they typically impose rather strict policies on those wishing to access these resources. Researchers typically must wear gloves when handling materials to prevent damage from the oils and acidity of human skin. Normally, archival collections do not circulate (i.e., cannot be removed from the host site), and researchers may have to apply for permission to enter the site or use any information. Archives may charge varying rates to make copies of material or to use images of the resources in their collection for publication. To access some archives, researchers must plan ahead by scheduling a time to visit and making previous arrangements to access specific collections. Some sites do not allow researchers to scan materials using flatbed scanners, instead stipulating the use of non-flash photography or overhead scanning. Some archives do not allow the patron to scan, photograph, or copy a manuscript in any way, with all arrangements for copies and reproductions having to go through the archive’s staff. The first step in archival research is typically to review a list or similar finding aid that indexes and describes the resources available in a collection. These descriptive aids can help researchers determine whether a collection contains resources that fit their needs and can make a visit to a selected archive more efficient and worthwhile. Finding aids have become so well constructed that they may provide researchers with enough information to enable the researcher to request copies of specific materials and avoid the effort and expense of traveling to the archive in person. Most archives offer downloadable finding aids of their most important collections on their websites, and there may be additional printed finding aids available on request. Most archives will make requested copies for a moderate fee and will mail or email researchers a packet of the reproduced materials. The cost of procuring such copies is almost always much less than the cost of traveling to an archive site and paying for housing and meals. However, if a collection is potentially full of material important to a research project, it may be better to visit in person. Three-Dimensional Collections Three-dimensional collections of objects such as basketry and pottery are normally housed separately from manuscript collections. Such collections may host tens of thousands of individual cultural objects. These collections typically require much more care and management than manuscript materials. Extensive planning goes into determining the best way to contain and store each type of object in order to slow deterioration over time, with special attention paid to both the temperature and the moisture levels in storage areas. Handwoven baskets will be supported so that their fibers are not under stress, and all organic objects will have been previously frozen, perhaps several times, to destroy any insects that may live in the fibers. Collections of animal and human remains utilized by biological anthropologists or archaeologists must be properly stored and controlled against further degradation by reducing temperatures and maintaining moisture controls. Some very ancient organic collections may need to be chemically stabilized so they do not degrade. Objects made from organic materials—such as wooden canoes, basketry, reed sandals, or human remains—are particularly prone to degradation. Organic artifacts that have been sealed away from contact with the air for centuries, such as boats found on the bottom of a river or lake, will degrade fast once exposed to the air, so they may be kept permanently frozen or preserved with an ammonium glycol solution to stabilize decay. This pair of yucca sandals, collected in 1875, is an example of an organic artifact of the Southern Paiute people. Yucca is a perennial plant with large tough leaves that can be used for various purposes. (credit: “Sandals, Southern Paiute, yucca, collected in 1875 – Native American collection –Peabody Museum, Harvard University – DSC05570” by Daderot/Wikimedia Commons, CC0) All objects in collections storage must be well organized to make them accessible for further research opportunities. Collection materials that have been used to make claims about human experience or evolution must remain accessible to future researchers in case there are challenges or additional questions about their findings. In addition, if an anthropologist who donated and is responsible for overseeing a collection at one institution should die or move to another research institute, there needs to be a plan for the period of retention for the collection, or the time that the collection will remain in the archive. Many biological and cultural collections have been preserved in repositories since the day they were collected, with no plans to ever remove them from an archive. There are collections in the Smithsonian Institution that have been there since the institution was built in the 1850s. These collections continue to grow at museums and universities around the world. In the early 20th century, many museums adopted the practices of painting objects with lacquer and spraying organic collections with pesticides such as DDT to prevent insect damage. These solutions were proven to ultimately be harmful. Lacquer tends to alter the color and chemical structure of objects and is thus not a good preservation material, and DDT and other pesticides pose health threats to humans. Both museum staff and tribal members who receive repatriated objects and human remains are very concerned about the hazards these chemicals pose to humans—and to the environment, if they should be reburied. Efforts to clean many collections are underway. Ownership A question being asked by both anthropologists and subjects of research today is who owns the objects housed in material collections. In the past, anthropologists or their host institutions assumed ownership of anything they collected, along with the right to publish images of materials and sign over ownership of the objects to collections repositories. In recent decades, tribal peoples and other subjects of research have begun asking questions about whether such objects really should be considered the property of these repositories. Many of these artifacts were not even collected by scientists but rather donated or sold by collectors, some of whom removed the artifacts from burial sites. Artifact hunting is a common cultural practice in some countries, such as Peru, where many people dig in Inca sites to locate artifacts to sell. Questions of ownership become particularly pressing when the objects in question are human remains. Until the 1960s, tribal peoples in the United States had little or no power to repatriate their ancestors. Repatriation is the process of restoring human remains and/or objects of religious or cultural importance to the peoples from whom they originated. In the United States, repatriation is executed under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ( NAGPRA ), passed into law in 1990. Prior to 1990, Indigenous peoples in the United States had no legal means to claim return of any of the millions of human remains that had been collected and placed in museums and archaeological collections since the 19th century. Another important piece of legislature is the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) , passed in 1966. The act was passed to ensure that federal agencies would identify and take actions to protect and preserve the nation’s historic sites and locations. It especially impacted Indigenous communities and their cultural and historical resources. Section 106 of the NHPA requires that federal agencies follow a formal review process before undertaking any type of development project (36 CFR 800). This process includes identifying what the actual undertaking is, such as the development of a road or other major capital project. Once this is established, the agency must make a good-faith effort to identify any historic resources (50+ years of age) in the area and determine if they are eligible for protection under the NHPA. After this identification measure is completed, the agency must initiate consultation with the state historic preservation officer (SHPO) or tribal historic preservation officer (THPO) and other interested groups and individuals. This step can include a variety of meetings or activities and a period of notification that a project is going to commence, during which feedback is requested by the lead federal agency. Public meetings might be held, with speakers selected to introduce and describe the project. During the consultation period, correspondence and feedback is welcomed from concerned tribes, institutions, or individuals. Tribes and other community groups with an interest in any cultural objects likely to be found on the site are required to be consulted. Successful consultation often takes place during the earliest planning stages of a project. Lack of early consultation can lead to a failure to identify historic resources of cultural and religious importance. The process places the burden of determining the potential effects of the project on the federal agency, according to three established categories: no potential to effect, no adverse effect, and adverse effect. The agency must then seek concurrence from appropriate SHPOs and THPOs and potentially other consulting parties. If there is an adverse effect, the agency, the SHPO and/or THPO, and other consulting parties will negotiate mitigation terms and solidify them into a memorandum of agreement to ensure completion of the agreed-upon mitigation measures. In most cases, Native groups do not believe that archaeological excavations alone are an appropriate mitigation measure, but each community has its own interpretation of what is appropriate. Generally, anytime a road is built or a building is constructed, there needs to be a section 106 review of the project because of the likelihood of encountering Native American cultural sites in almost all locations in the United States. Through the consultation process and cooperation between SHPOs and THPOs, decisions are made as to the status and disposition of any cultural objects recovered from cultural sites. Tribes typically advocate for the non-disturbance of human remains and the return of cultural objects to the concerned tribes. The NHPA is not perfect, as it does not completely halt construction that will destroy a cultural site and does not apply to collections placed in repositories before 1966. In the early 20th century, the United States made it illegal for nonscientists to remove artifacts from archaeological sites on federal lands under a law called the American Antiquities Act (1906). More recently, NAGPRA made it possible for tribes to repatriate objects covered under the act, such as human remains and funerary objects. Under this law, more than 20,000 sets of remains had been repatriated as of 2010, but millions of artifacts and sets of additional remains are still in repositories. In addition, there are human remains and funerary objects of US origin in collections worldwide that are not subject to NAGPRA repatriation. One problem surrounding repatriation is that many artifacts and remains lack clear provenance , or detailed information about where they were found. Lack of clear provenance also limits an object’s usefulness to researchers. In many cases, wide regions are provided as the origin of an artifact, making it unclear which specific tribal culture it relates to. Objects that, for example, are labeled as coming from “New York” may have been created by members of dozens of tribes or bands of tribes. In general, the more specific a provenance is, the better. Narrowing an object down to Buffalo, New York, reduces its possible tribal sources to just a few. Objects that have too broad of a context are nearly impossible to repatriate because repatriation is supposed to return an object or human remains to the original tribe. In 2010, NAGPRA was expanded to allow for groups of tribes to repatriate objects of wide regional association back to a previously agreed-upon reburial or repatriation location. Under this expanded version of the law, a greater number of objects and human remains will be able to be returned to their communities. Concerns about ownership have also been raised regarding the ethnological and ethnographic research collected in millions of documents in hundreds of research collections around the world. Some tribal peoples have raised concerns that this material represents their ancestral intellectual knowledge and that it was taken from them without full disclosure of how it would be used. Many anthropologists published books and/or made tenure at their universities based on such research. Meanwhile, little was done with the information to help the tribal peoples it described, who were struggling under political and legal pressures to assimilate. In some cases, tribal peoples have implemented research projects utilizing these manuscript collections that have the explicit goal of helping their people with cultural recovery efforts. One example of Indigenous peoples utilizing archive materials to their advantage is offered by Oregon’s Coquille Indian Tribe , which made use of archival documents to successfully restore their tribe to federal recognition in 1989 after the tribe was declared “terminated” by the federal government in 1954. Their restoration bid was made difficult by the fact that the records of their tribal culture were collected in faraway archives. Essential to the tribe’s success was George Wasson Jr. , son of the aforementioned George Wasson who was aided by Leonard Frachtenberg. Wasson Jr. designed and implemented an effort to collect copies of anthropological manuscripts pertinent to the Coquille tribe from the Smithsonian Institution. In 1995, 1997, and 2006, the Southwest Oregon Research Project —a project initiated by the Coquille Indian Tribe, University of Oregon anthropologists, and students from western Oregon tribes—collected 150,000 pages of documents about the tribes of western Oregon from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Archives. These materials have since become a major collection at the University of Oregon’s Knight Library Archives, special collections division, and additional copies have been given to 17 regional tribes. These projects are examples of the repatriation of intellectual knowledge to the tribes that the information was collected from. Many libraries now have policies that allow concerned tribes to repatriate their intellectual knowledge in the form of copies of collection materials for little or no cost. Recordings of songs represent a particularly sensitive and special type of cultural artifact to many tribal people. Archives have historically not been very attentive to the concerns of tribes regarding their collections. For more information, consult the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials. Summers Collection and the Grand Ronde Tribe by author David Lewis The Summers Collection is a collection of more than 600 Native objects from the West Coast of the United States, collected by the Reverend Robert Summers, an Episcopalian minister. A large portion of the collection, some 300 objects, was collected from the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation, which is close to where Summers lived in McMinnville, Oregon. In the 1870s, Summers would regularly visit the people of Grand Ronde and purchase objects they had in their homes or were using. Most of these objects are woven baskets and trays made in a traditional manner, many predating the formation of the reservation in 1856. Sometime in the 1890s, Summers passed his collection on to his associate Reverend Freer, who donated the collection to the British Museum in 1900. The collection has remained part of the British Museum collections since then. The value of this collection lies not only in the objects and their unusually good preservation but also in the care Summers took to document the people he purchased them from, their use, and their cultural background. It was unusual in early anthropology for a collector to be so comprehensive in documenting material collections. Summers was likely aided by his wife, who was a professional botanist and would have been meticulous in her work documenting botanical collections. In the 1990s, the Grand Ronde tribe became aware of the Summers Collection at the British Museum . In 1999, representatives of the tribe visited the museum, viewed the collection, took photos of all objects related to the tribes, and copied all the notes they could. Since then, the tribe has worked through a series of museum curators to see if it would be possible to repatriate the collection to the Grand Ronde. The British Museum is one of the largest repositories in the world, holding sacred and cultural objects from numerous nations, many once part of Britain’s extensive colonial empire. The British Museum rarely allows repatriations, fearful that allowing one to occur would set a precedent resulting in multiple other cultures submitting claims. Still, curators of the North American collections have suggested that something could be worked out if there were a book deal to help publicize their collections and significant enough publicity. In 2018, the Grand Ronde tribe was able to negotiate the loan of some 16 objects from the collection. The objects were placed on display in the new Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center in Grand Ronde. While there, the objects were studied by cultural experts who focused on understanding how they were made and how they might be able to replicate the techniques. There are no protocols for international repatriation . The Grand Ronde tribe had to work diplomatically to form negotiated agreements and establish a beneficial relationship with the British Museum. After more than 100 years of assimilation, many traditional skills had been lost to the Grand Ronde people. The opportunity to regain some of this lost ancestral knowledge by studying these cultural goods is a rare gift. Participant Observation When practicing participant observation, researchers immerse themselves in a cultural context and make observations and notes about what occurs. This activity is structured to take place in a few hours and can be accomplished in your community. Spend about an hour in a public place, such as a mall or store, coffeeshop, park, bus, train, or library, and observe what people around you are doing. Take notes about their actions, interactions, clothing, foods, mannerisms, and anything else that might seem interesting. Note characteristics and mannerisms pertaining to culture, language, ethnicity, masculine and feminine roles, and age-related roles. Try not to be conspicuous, and do not record conversations unless they are spoken quite loudly so as not to be intrusive. If anyone asks what you are doing, just explain that you have an assignment in a college course to make an anonymous report on local culture. Return home and write a two-page reflective report on your research. In the report, give specifics of what you witnessed, and analyze how you personally responded to different cultures or mannerisms. About two-thirds of the report should be ethnographic reporting, and one-third should be analysis. Try to eliminate your personal bias or admit when you have one, and identify when you are basing your analysis on personal opinions. Pay attention to the need to maintain the anonymity of your subjects as if this were an actual anthropology fieldwork assignment. Do not identify people by name; instead, use pseudonyms. As a final step, give a five-minute presentation about your experience that summarizes the high points of your participant observation. Summary Chapter 2 discusses how anthropologists gather information. All of the subfields of anthropology conduct fieldwork in some form to gather information, each subfield may use different methods of conducting research. The concept of working in “the field” was traditionally based on the practice of traveling to distant regions to study other cultures within their native environmental contexts. In recent decades, “the field” has broadened to include diverse settings such as one’s hometown (as in urban anthropology), the Internet (visual or virtual anthropology), or collections in university archives and museums (ethnohistory or museum anthropology). Research methods for cultural anthropology and archaeology are covered in detail. the chapter explores the issues that need to be considered when analyzing information gathered during research. This includes the biases of the anthropological researcher. Also covered is some of the history of the research methods used in anthropological study and how fieldwork and methods have changed over time. Critical Thinking Questions Suggested Readings Boas, Franz. (1974) 1982. A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883–1911 . Edited by George W. Stocking Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Boyd, Robert T., Kenneth M. Ames, and Tony A. Johnson, eds. 2013. Chinookan Peoples of the Lower Columbia . Seattle: University of Washington Press. Gross, Joan, ed. 2007. Teaching Oregon Native Languages . Corvallis: Oregon State University Press. Kenoyer, Louis. 2017. My Life, by Louis Kenoyer: Reminiscences of a Grand Ronde Reservation Childhood . Translated by Jedd Schrock and Henry Zenk. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press. Konopinski, Natalie, ed. 2014. Doing Anthropological Research: A Practical Guide . New York: Routledge. Lewis, David G. 2009. “Termination of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon: Politics, Community, Identity.” PhD diss., University of Oregon. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/10067. Lewis, David G. 2015. “Natives in the Nation’s Archives: The Southwest Oregon Research Project.” Journal of Western Archives 6 (1). https://doi.org/10.26077/e5e5-e0b1. Sapir, Edward. (1949) 2021. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press. Spradley, James P. (1980) 2016. Participant Observation . Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. (1905) 2003. Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806 . Vol. 7. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/aj/id/16212/rec/7. Bibliography Adams, William Mark. 2004. Against Extinction: The Story of Conservation . London: Earthscan. Boas, Franz. (1974) 1982. A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883–1911 . Edited by George W. Stocking Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cole, Douglas. (1985) 1995. Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Hale, Horatio. 1846. Ethnography and Philology . Vol. 6, United States Exploring Expedition during the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, under the Command of Charles Wilkes, USN . Philadelphia: C. Sherman, 1844–1874. Hodgen, Margaret T. (1964) 1971. Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hymes, Dell. 1980. “What Is Ethnography?” In Language in Education: Ethnolinguistic Essays , 88–103. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1851. League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois . Rochester, NY: Sage & Brother. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433081750949. Stocking, George W., Jr. 1966. “Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective.” American Anthropologist 68 (4): 867–882. NAGPRA the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), a US law that protects human remains and cultural and ceremonial objects and artifacts from collection and requires the return of such items already collected to the originating tribes. NAGPRA also allows for the repatriation of the same materials from museums and other repositories. provenance the location of an artifact when it is first found. The provenance is normally recorded when the artifact is in situ, or before it has been removed. repatriation the process of returning human remains, associated funerary objects, and ceremonial items to the originating culture. three-dimensional collection a collection of objects or artifacts.

Social Sciences


Introduction Now and in the past, people have called many different types of dwelling home. Top left, tent on K Street in Washington DC; top right, Puye cliff dwellings near Espanola, New Mexico; bottom left, a water village, Brunei, Indonesia; bottom right the International Space Station (credit: top left “K Street” by Daniel Lobo/flickr, Public Domain; top right “Puye Cliff Dwellings” by BFS Man/flickr, CC BY 2.0; bottom left “The water village. Burnei” by Bernard Spragg. NZ/flickr, Public Domain; bottom right “The International Space Station after arrival of ISS Roll Out Solar Arrays” by NASA/NASA.gov, Public Domain) Though all humans have a set of basic needs, we meet those needs in very different ways in response to environmental conditions and social circumstances. For example, consider the basic human need for shelter. In places prone to flooding, people often build their houses on stilts, constructing patios and walkways to connect their houses together. In mountainous areas, people sometimes carve their houses into cliffsides. In societies with extreme inequality, some people live in luxury highrise apartments side-by-side with people who pitch their tents on the sidewalk. Humans have even constructed a complex dwelling adapted to the conditions of space, the International Space Center. Similarly, humans have a wide range of solutions to human needs for clothing, food, family life, health, and social order. In each society, the various solutions combine in a complex totality called culture. In this chapter, we explore the concept of culture, what it is and how to study it. Taking the need for shelter as a central example, we will see how culture is created and how it changes. We will learn about how different elements of culture interact with one another. As culture is a central concept in anthropology, our understanding of culture will guide our exploration of human lifeways throughout this textbook.

Social Sciences


The Homeyness of Culture Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the importance of culture to the concept of home. Identify the centrality of culture in the discipline of anthropology. Describe how each of the four fields deploys the concept of culture. Explain why culture feels familiar and “homey.” The floor plan of a typical 21st-century middle-class American house consists of many individual rooms, including three to four bedrooms, a large kitchen, a family room, and an attached garage. This floor plan depicts such a home. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) What place do you call home? For some people, home is a large, angular structure made of wood or brick, fixed on a permanent foundation of concrete, and rigged with systems to provide running water, electricity, and temperature control. Such houses have separate rooms for distinct activities, such as sleeping, bathing, eating, and socializing. Often, one bedroom is larger than the others and connected to its own bathroom. This is the “primary bedroom,” designed to accommodate a married couple while their children sleep in smaller bedrooms. The room for cooking (the kitchen) used to be separated from the room where people socialized (the living room or great room), as it was assumed that one person (the wife) would cook in the kitchen while another person (the husband) relaxed alone or with company in the living room. More recently, open-concept architecture has eliminated the wall separating the kitchen from the living room, as adults often cook together or socialize as one cooks and the other relaxes. In the 1960s, French scholar Pierre Bourdieu (1970) analyzed a typical house of a Kabyle family in northern Algeria. Traditional Kabyle houses were rectangular buildings made of stone and clay with tiled roofs. Inside, a waist-high dividing wall marked off one-third of the house. This marked-off section, set lower than the rest of the house and paved with flagstones, was the stable, where animals were kept at night. A farming people, the Kabyle kept oxen, cows, donkeys, and mules. Above the stable was a loft where women and children often slept, though arrangements for sleeping and marital sex tended to vary. These houses in Northern Algeria, built by the Kabyle people, are constructed of stone, and include open space for both animals and human inhabitants under a shared roof. (credit: PhR610/flickr, CC BY 2.0) The floor of the larger section of the house was higher and paved with a layer of black clay and cow dung that women polished with a stone. This part was reserved for human use. In this larger, elevated section, a large weaving loom sat against the wall opposite the door. Facing east, this wall with the loom received the most light in the house. Guests and brides were seated here, as it was considered the nicest part of the house. Opposite the dividing wall in the larger section was the hearth, surrounded by cooking tools, lamps, and jars of edible grain. With the loom and the hearth, the main area of human activity in the house was associated with the work of women. Bourdieu explained that men were expected to remain outside the house from dawn to evening, working in the fields and associating with other men in public spaces. Women were supposed to remain in the home. In Bourdieu’s analysis, the Kabyle house was divided into two realms: a dark, low realm associated with animals and natural activities (sleeping, sex, childbirth, and death) and a lighter, higher realm associated with humans and cultural activities (weaving, cooking, brides, and guests). Humans all over the world require a place to gather, work, socialize, and sleep. Some have Western-style houses, while others have compounds. Some live in tents made of wooden beams and covered with animal skins or cloth, in caves hollowed out of sandstone or volcanic rock, or in wooden structures built on stilts or in trees to avoid floods and predators. While these different forms of home are all designed to perform a common function as human living spaces, they are distinctively shaped by local environments and lifeways. Houses are most commonly built with locally available materials and designed to protect against local climatic conditions and predators. Over generations, people develop distinctive technologies to transform available materials into durable and functional homes. Different forms of family, different gender roles and relations, and different everyday activities determine the organization of space in these different homes. Dominant ideas about work, gender, marriage, parenting, hospitality, and status all shape the places we call home. Home, then, involves a combination of materials, technologies, social relationships, everyday practices, deeply held values, and shared ideas. In every culture, these features are uniquely combined to produce distinctive versions of home. Other combinations of features produce distinctive versions of clothing, food, work, and health. Growing up in a particular social group, a person learns these ways of living, eating, working, and so on and comes to consider them normal and natural. Anthropologists have a word for such integrated combinations of social and environmental features, and that word is culture . The ways of your culture are familiar to you, often so deeply ingrained that they come naturally. Culture itself feels like home. All four fields of anthropology are devoted to understanding human culture. Biological anthropologists are often interested in the emergence of culture in the course of human biological evolution. Archaeologists use material artifacts as keys to understanding the technologies, social practices, and ideas of ancient peoples. Cultural anthropologists often use participant observation to understand how the various features of culture fit together in contemporary societies. Linguistic anthropologists are interested in how language shapes and is shaped by other features in the constellation of culture. This chapter explores culture as a central concept in anthropology. We examine what distinguishes culture from other aspects of human experience and activity. In an effort to organize the vast array of things included in culture, we divide culture into three levels and consider how those levels fit together holistically—and what happens when they don’t. Finally, we identify a set of contradictions built into the concept of culture and see how those contradictions illuminate the nature of human social life. culture the whole way of life of a society, combining material objects, technologies, social relationships, everyday practices, deeply held values, and shared ideas.

Social Sciences


The Winkiness of Culture Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Provide E. B. Tylor’s definition of culture. Distinguish natural behavior from cultural behavior. Describe deliberate and nondeliberate ways that people acquire culture. Explain how biological processes can be shaped by culture. In the last section, we referred to culture as a combination of materials, technologies, social relationships, everyday practices, deeply held values, and shared ideas. Nineteenth-century British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1873, 1:1). That’s a lot to include in one concept! If all of that is culture, then what about human experience and activity is not culture? Consider this scenario. A student comes to class one day, and the instructor says, “I’ve decided that you’re all a bunch of failures and I’m flunking the entire class.” Imagine then that the instructor simply stands there after that announcement, blinking calmly as the class erupts in protest. Now imagine that same scenario with one very slight difference. The instructor announces, “I’ve decided that you’re all a bunch of failures and I’m flunking the entire class.” Then, as the class erupts in protest, the instructor calmly blinks one eye, leaving the other eye open. Would you take this woman seriously? In American culture, winking, related to the normal biological function of blinking, takes on special meaning in social interactions. (credit: Motion Picture News/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) What just happened there? Blinking is a biological compulsion common to humans everywhere. Humans blink to keep eyes hydrated and clear of debris. Humans are born knowing how to blink; nobody has to teach us. On average, humans blink 15 to 20 times every minute. Without realizing it, people are necessarily blinking throughout every conversation, every social interaction, every activity during the day. The people we talk to and interact with are also blinking constantly, so often that everyone is accustomed to ignoring it. Blinking does not affect the perceived meaning of speech or actions. But if someone deliberately blinks one eye, leaving the other one open, that’s a completely different matter. In fact, leaving one eye open makes a blink a wink. Winking is not a biological necessity. Humans are not born knowing how to wink, and it takes some practice to learn how to do it. Because it requires deliberate effort and people are not constantly doing it, winking can acquire special meaning in social interactions. In American culture (and many others), a wink often indicates that someone is joking around and that whatever they’ve just said or done should not be taken seriously. Of course, a wink can mean different things in different societies. Moreover, a wink can mean different things in the same society. If someone on a date takes their companion’s hand and gives a cute little wink, the person may have reason to hope the winker is not just joking around. American cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) used the example of winking to illustrate two important aspects of culture. First, culture is learned. Innate human behaviors—that is, behaviors that people are born with—are biological, not cultural. Blinking is biological. Acquired human behaviors—that is, behaviors that people are taught—are cultural. Winking is cultural. This means that cultural behaviors are not genetically inherited from generation to generation but must be passed down from older members of a society to younger members. This process, as you’ll recall from What is Anthropology? is called enculturation . Some aspects of enculturation are deliberate and systematic, such as learning the rules of written punctuation in a language. At some point in an English speaker’s childhood, someone explicitly told them the difference between a question mark and an exclamation point. Most likely, they learned this distinction in school, a fundamental institution of enculturation in many societies. Religious institutions are another common force of enculturation, providing explicit instruction in cultural rules of morality and social interaction. Extracurricular activities such as sports, dance, and music lessons also teach children cultural rules and norms. While a great deal of very important cultural content is deliberately conveyed in these systematic contexts, the greater part of culture is acquired unconsciously by happenstance—that is, nobody planned to teach it, and no one made an effort to consciously try to learn it. By virtue of growing up in a culture, children learn what certain actions and objects mean, how their society operates, and what the rules are for appropriate behavior. Going back to the cultural notion of home, did anyone ever explain to you why your childhood home was structured in a certain way? Did anyone ever point out the cultural assumptions about gender and family built into your house? Probably not. Now, imagine that you were taken away from your parents as a baby and adopted by a family far away, with a very different way of life situated in a very different environment. With your adoptive family, you might have been raised in a very different kind of home. Growing up, your everyday habits, activities, and expectations would have been shaped by the setup of that home. Living in that house, you would have wordlessly absorbed a set of assumptions about family, gender, work, leisure, hospitality, and property. And all of it would seem quite natural to you. Many forms of culture are passed down through a combination of deliberate and unconscious processes. Perhaps when you were a child, someone told you what a wink was and showed you how to accomplish one; or perhaps you just witnessed a few winks, figured out what they meant from their contexts, and then learned how to accomplish one through trial and error. Geertz pointed out that there are two important aspects to winking: the meaning and the action. As both are learned, both are cultural. But perhaps more importantly, both the standardized action of winking and the assumed meaning of this action are commonly known among members of a group. That is, culture is shared. Consider another aspect of human biology: dreaming. People in all societies dream, and no one has to teach them how to do it. Dreaming is biologically innate and spontaneously performed. Biological researchers hypothesize that dreaming helps the human brain process daily stimuli and convert recent experiences into long-term memories. As a biological necessity for brain health, dreaming is natural, not cultural. But why do people dream in stories? And why are those stories so often confusing, even troubling? In many cultures, people are perplexed by their dreams, never really knowing what the objects and situations they dream about are meant to indicate—or if they have any meaning at all. In other cultures, however, dreams are recognized as arenas of spiritual communication with supernatural beings. In Ojibwa culture , young people are encouraged to fast for up to a week in order to bring on special visionary dreams (Hallowell 1992; Peters-Golden 2002, 188–189). In such dreams, a young person may be approached by a guardian spirit who imparts knowledge for successful hunting, warfare, or medicine. People are discouraged from discussing the meaning of these dreams, but young people are taught to expect and anticipate this kind of dream, and they know how to interpret the content of such dreams without discussion. The widely shared ability to dream such dreams and the shared knowledge to understand their content makes dreaming profoundly cultural among the Ojibwa. Summing up, when an element of human experience or behavior is learned and shared, we know it is an aspect of culture. That delineates the concept of culture to some degree. However, the variety of things that are learned and shared by humans in groups is still quite enormous, as indicated by Tylor’s rambling list (knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, etc.). Instead of thinking of culture as one vast hodgepodge of things, it’s helpful to break that hodgepodge into three basic elements. These basic elements of culture are understood to come together in larger combinations, or aggregates.

Social Sciences


The Elements of Culture Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define the concept of material culture and provide examples of material culture. Provide a detailed example of cultural practices. Explain how cultural frames orient our experiences and actions. Describe how norms and values are threaded through culture. Explain how ideologies and worldviews shape our perception of the world around us. The complex whole of culture can be broken down into three categories: what we make, what we do, and what we think. The boundaries separating these categories are somewhat artificial because so much of cultural life involves all of these things at once. However, it’s useful to start with the basic building blocks of culture, then see how those blocks can be put together to produce more complex structures. Culture Is What We Make Museums are buildings where objects of historical, artistic, scientific, or cultural interest are displayed. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has one of the world’s largest collections of Native artifacts, including many two- and three-dimensional objects such as baskets, pottery, and preserved specimens representative of the lives of Native populations from all areas of the country. This basket, woven by Kucadikadi (Mono Lake Paiute) artist Lucy Telles, is an excellent example of the art of basket weaving. Telles, whose work was done in the early part of the twentieth century, is widely admired for her use of color and innovative designs. (credit: “Mono Lake Paiute Basket” by Ernest Amoroso, National Museum of the American Indian/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) People living in groups learn to craft the things they need in order to make a living in their environment. Early human ancestors learned how to make sharp blades useful for processing meat. They shared their knowledge of toolmaking in groups, passing those skills down to younger generations. Objects that are made and used by humans in group contexts are called material culture . All of the tools developed by early hominins (blades, arrows, axes, etc.) are examples of material culture. All of the artifacts discovered by archaeologists (buildings, pottery, beads, etc.) are examples of material culture. The specialized knowledge and skills used for making material culture are called technology . Today, the word technology is often used to refer to electronic devices such as smartphones and computers. For anthropologists, both smartphones and obsidian blades are forms of material culture produced through specialized technologies. That is, technology refers to the knowledge and skills required to make blades, phones, and other objects of material culture. Material culture is not just found in museums, of course. Material culture is all around. All of the furniture, appliances, books, dishes, and pictures on the walls in a typical American home are elements of material culture, and they reveal a great deal about the whole way of life of a society. Consider the toothbrush. It would be possible for people to clean their teeth with a found object such as a twig or leaf, or even with a finger. Ancient peoples often used a special chew stick, a twig with a frayed end. The bristled toothbrush was invented in 15th-century China and spread across Europe and into the United States, where it began to be mass produced in the late 19th century. Drugstores now feature many styles of toothbrush with an array of special features. Specialized teams design, manufacture, and market this wide variety of toothbrushes to consumers. Parents buy toothbrushes for their children and teach them the conventional techniques for brushing their teeth (little circles, two minutes, etc.). As adults, people often isolate themselves in a special room to brush their teeth in privacy. Even so, toothbrushing is a profoundly social act, relying on shared knowledge and observance of social norms for hygiene and health. Trees, rocks, microbes, and planets are all material objects, but they are not material culture unless they are made and used by humans in group contexts. For instance, a tree growing in a natural forest is not an object of material culture. However, an apple tree can be material culture if it is planted by a farmer in an orchard designed to produce fruit for human consumption. A microbe can be material culture if it is manufactured to improve human digestion or genetically engineered to fight cancer. This rock is on display in the British Museum. While a rock is not in and of itself material culture, this rock, which carries special meaning for those who view it, is. (credit: Archaeomoonwalker/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) On display in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a gray rock. This rock was simply found by humans and never shaped for any particular use. Sitting there in the museum, it has no specific purpose other than to serve as an object of popular contemplation. Though it is a fairly unremarkable lump of basalt, thousands of people stop to gaze at this rock, reading the sign that describes how it was obtained, marveling at its presence there in the museum. Why? What’s so interesting about a rock? This particular rock was collected by astronauts on the Apollo 12 mission to the moon. The rock serves as evidence of this magnificent feat of scientific engineering and a source of great pride to the culture that accomplished such a mission. We go to museums to view the items on display there, but clearly, the human activities surrounding those objects are what make them interesting to us. That is, culture is not just material objects—it’s also what we do and what we think. Culture Is What We Do Ahmed is a carpet seller in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar . Every day, people from all over the world come into his stall to examine, and sometimes buy, the carpets in his inventory. Anthropologist Patricia Scalco (2019) met Ahmed while she was conducting research on market exchange in Istanbul. She carefully observed the set of sales strategies he had crafted to respond to customer desires and knowledge. When anyone pauses at the entrance, Ahmed greets the potential customer and ushers the person into his stall. Bringing out a silver platter, Ahmed offers the customer a cup of tea, a welcoming gesture. As the customer browses, Ahmed initiates a carefully constructed conversation designed to determine what sort of person this customer is, what they are looking for, and what they really know (and do not know) about carpets. He pulls out various carpets from the stacks, unfurling them as he describes their distinctive qualities. Ahmed identifies this interaction as a sort of game he must play with his customers. European tourists in this Turkish marketplace are often inspired by the desire for handmade traditional crafts made by local rural ethnic groups such as the Kurds. These days, however, most carpets sold in the Istanbul market are industrially produced in Pakistan, India, and China. However, in his many years of selling carpets, Ahmed has learned that he must play to Western orientalist fantasies, weaving a distinctive story around the origins and manufacture of a carpet, in order to win a sale. Like other merchants in this market, Ahmed has a family to support, and he cannot afford to openly contradict the knowledge and desires of his customers. Centered on the material culture of carpets, Ahmed’s work illustrates the importance of what people do and what they think in the making of cultural life. What people do and what they think are nonmaterial elements of culture. In his everyday interactions with customers, Ahmed has developed a set of habitual practices involving gesture and speech. Anthropologists use the term cultural practices to refer to this form of culture. Routine speech communicates meanings and values (such as the “authenticity” of a carpet), while routine action organizes social events (such as, hopefully, a sale). People from all walks of life develop similar combinations of habitual action and speech that constitute the everyday culture of people in those circumstances. What do you do in the morning to get ready for the day? That is cultural practice. What do you do when someone comes over to your house? That is cultural practice. What do you do when you’re hungry? That is cultural practice. Some cultural anthropologists focus on these everyday practices as keys to understanding culture, while others are more interested in special events such as ceremonies and festivals. For instance, Carnival in Brazil is an annual festival of music and dance held every year to mark the beginning of the Catholic season of Lent. Parades of costumed dancers throng the streets of many cities, interacting with the audience and attracting crowds of followers. Cultural anthropologist Kenneth Williamson (2012) studied Carnival in Salvador, Bahia, in the north of Brazil. While Brazilian Carnival is framed as a national celebration, Williamson found that Carnival in the poorer and largely Black city of Salvador is distinctively animated by the politics of race. Local Carnival dance groups incorporate Black forms of movement such as capoeira, a combination of dance and martial art techniques created by Brazilian enslaved peoples. Forms of music and religion originating in Africa also contribute to the distinctiveness of Salvadoran Carnival. Carnival has become increasingly commercialized as a tourist attraction in Salvador, bringing in Black and White tourists alike. Black Brazilian activists complain that forms of Black culture are being appropriated and exploited as forms of cultural leisure with little understanding of their deep cultural meanings as expressions of resistance and survival. Meanwhile, most Black Salvadorans enjoy little benefit from the burgeoning tourist economy. The practices of Turkish carpet merchants and Brazilian Carnival participants are both ways of doing culture, every day and on special occasions. As we see in both examples, the materials and actions of culture are infused with patterns of thought, some shared and some controversial. These ways of thinking constitute a third element of culture. Culture Is What We Think Imagine that you are walking down the street and you see a building. You notice a mailbox next to a driveway. You follow a little walkway lined with flowers to a front door. Below your feet, you find a mat that says, “Welcome!” Peering through a window, you see a central room where two people are sitting on a couch, eating chips, and watching television. Off to the side, there’s a hallway. You can barely see the stockinged feet of a small person resting on a bed. A dog barks. What kind of place is this? Are you sure? How do you know? Now imagine you are walking down the street and see another building. There are neon lights in the front window and a large paved area to the side. As you enter the front door, a little bell jingles and young woman in a white blouse greets you from behind a long table. To one side of that table is a large black machine with buttons and numbers on it. The young woman carries a small leather folder in her hand and gives you an expectant smile. You look around to find a room full of people seated at tables of various sizes. Young people in white tops and black pants are scurrying here and there, some carrying giant platters. You hear music in the background. You smell something delicious. What kind of place is this? How do you know? In both scenarios, elements of material culture are combined with patterns of action and speech. In order to make sense of these two scenarios, we must use shared ways of thinking about them. What we know about the way of life in our society leads us to identify the first scenario as somebody’s home. What we know about the circumstances of eating in public leads us to identify the second scenario as a restaurant. These patterned, shared ways of making sense of situations are called cultural frames . Cultural frames tell people where they are, what role they they play in that context, and what forms of behavior and speech are expected and appropriate. There are cultural frames for places, times, events, and relationships. If a couple have been dating for over a year, they probably use a cultural frame for romantic relationships to structure their actions and expectations in that relationship. And if one of the romantic partners invites the other to spend a holiday with their family, the invited person will probably summon a cultural frame for that holiday to tell them what to expect and how to behave. Cultural frames are complex cognitive models that incorporate various roles and actions patterned in space and time. A cultural role is a conventionalized position held by a person or persons in a particular context or situation. Sociocultural roles are associated with certain behaviors and actions. For example, “mother” is a sociocultural role in the cultural frame of “family.” “Waiter” is a sociocultural role in the cultural frame of “restaurant.” While these roles are found in many cultures, the actions and behaviors associated with them vary significantly across cultural contexts. In cultures that celebrate Mother’s Day, it is conventional to send one’s mother a card along with flowers and/or a gift. Anyone who has ever been shopping for a Mother’s Day card has been bombarded with images and text that convey the stereotypical behaviors and preferences associated with motherhood. Many Mother’s Day cards feature pastel flower arrangements with birds, butterflies, and delicate calligraphy. The text lionizes the emotional and material work of motherhood, praising the constant care and sacrifice of the good mother. In return, the card promises eternal gratitude. This American Mother’s Day card from 1916 would still be considered appropriate today. The norm for a Mother’s Day card in the United States has not changed much in over a century. (credit: Northern Pacific Railway/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) The behaviors and actions associated with a sociocultural role are collectively called a norm . Norms are not necessarily “normal” in the sense that they represent the most common features and behaviors exhibited by people in a certain role. Do all mothers prefer pastel flower motifs over, say, images of books or sports? Rather, norms tend to be idealized, a fantasy about how people in a role behave—or how they should behave. Why do we associate flowers, pastels, cursive, and self-sacrifice with motherhood? The answer lies in another thinking element of culture: values . Cultural values are notions about what is good, true, correct, appropriate, or beautiful. A certain mainstream way of thinking about motherhood indicates that mothers should be delicate and feminine, concerned with beauty and decorum. Moreover, mothers should nurture and sustain growth. What better way of conveying these notions than through the imagery of pastel flower arrangements? Messages of gratitude describe the sort of behavior considered appropriate to mothers. A “good” mother is a mother who puts her children at the center of her life at all times, neglecting her own interests for the benefit of her family. In any culture, norms indicate how people should behave, and values explain why they should behave that way. For example, the norm for women in the 1950s was to get married and work in the home rather than have a job in the public workforce. Not that all women did this, or even most. Many mothers, particularly women of color, were obliged to work outside the home just to make a living for their families. Nonetheless, normative depictions of women as housewives dominated media and public discourse in mid-20th-century America, establishing this idealistic norm. Why were mothers supposed to stay at home? A set of “ family values ” appointed fathers as the breadwinning heads of household, while mothers were relegated to serving men by keeping house and caring for children. Thus, the values that came to be associated with motherhood were subservience, self-sacrifice, gentleness, and nurture—the very values we see celebrated on Mother’s Day cards. Norms and values can combine in larger models that depict how various social realms operate, such as the family, the economy, the supernatural, and the political sphere. These models are known as ideologies . An ideology identifies the entities, roles, behaviors, relationships, and processes in a particular realm as well as the rationale behind the whole system. Take democracy, for instance. The political ideology of democracy envisions a society of equal individual citizens who each cast a vote on proposals for government action. The majority vote wins. The essential roles in this ideology are citizen voters and government. The essential actions are voting and government action. The rationale is that government should obey the wishes of the citizenry. Is this how democracy really works, though? What about the influence of powerful organizations such as the media and large corporations? Moreover, in most democracies, people do not vote directly on government policies but rather elect representatives, who craft laws and then vote on those laws themselves. Those representatives are accountable to citizens through the process of voting, but they are also strongly influenced by lobbyists representing business interests and the campaign donations of wealthy individuals and groups. Obviously, this ideology is a simplification of the way any democratic system really works. Ideologies are always partial, foregrounding the perspectives of some people in society while obscuring the perspectives of others. A worldview is a very broad ideology that shapes how the members of a culture generally view the world and their place in it. Worldviews tend to span several realms, including religion, economics, and politics. A worldview provides an overarching model for the purpose and process of social life, depicting “how the world works.” Many West African cultures, for instance, are shaped by a worldview that identifies the rationale of society in the accumulation and distribution of material goods in extended families, communities, and the nation as a whole. People rise to leadership through their ability to accumulate wealth, but they are strongly obligated to distribute that wealth through their extended families and communities by funding the education and business ventures of family members and helping those in need. Beyond the family, the actions of political and business leaders are shaped by this worldview as well. A political leader is expected to support the generation of wealth while also making sure that the benefits are spread through the community. Moreover, leaders are expected to maintain relationships with departed ancestors who watch over their descendants. Through periodic rituals and offerings, leaders petition ancestors to bless their families and communities with prosperity and good fortune. cultural frames patterned, shared ways of interpreting situations. cultural practices routine or habitual forms of behavior. cultural role a conventionalized position in a particular context or situation. ideology a model that depicts how a social realm operates or should operate. An ideology identifies the entities, roles, behaviors, relationships, and processes in a particular realm as well as the rationality behind the whole system. material culture objects made or used by humans, such as buildings, tools, clothing, household items, and art. norm the cultural expectations, including behaviors and attributes, that are associated with a cultural role. technology specialized knowledge or skills required to produce objects of material culture. values cultural notions about what is good, true, correct, appropriate, or beautiful. worldview a very broad ideology that shapes how the members of a culture generally view the world and their place in it. Worldviews tend to span several realms, including religion, economics, and politics.

Social Sciences


The Aggregates of Culture Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain how elements of culture combine in aggregates. Give three detailed examples of cultural symbols. Explain how symbols are embedded in rituals. Describe how social structures organize important cultural processes. An aggregate is a combination of elements. What we make, what we do, and what we think all combine in larger aggregates of culture. For instance, it’s pretty clear that toothbrushes, moon rocks, restaurants, and Mother’s Day cards must be understood as aggregates of material objects, practices, and ideas. In order to fully understand the toothbrush as a cultural object , we must examine not only its design and production but also how people use toothbrushes and why they use them. A set of routine practices surround our cultural objects (brushing), and those practices are supported by cultural ideas (hygiene). Symbols A symbol is an object, image, gesture, vocalization, or event conventionally associated with a particular meaning. Anthropologist Jennifer Hasty was conducting fieldwork in Ghana during an election year. She noticed that the posters and pamphlets of one politician featured a broom. Confused, she asked a friend why a male politician would choose a humble domestic tool associated with women’s work as his political motif. Making a sweeping motion with her hands, she explained, “Because he is promising to sweep away all the corruption.” Turns out, he was the not the first to use this symbol. Over time, the broom has come to acquire political meaning as a symbolic anti-corruption tool in Ghana. Featured in political posters and pamphlets, brooms like these have taken on special meaning in Ghanian politics, where they are understood as a symbol of a politician’s intent to sweep away corruption. (credit: “Handmade Brooms at Granville Island Broom Co.” by Ruth Hartnup/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Colors, shapes, gestures, animals, plants—all of these commonly acquire specific cultural meaning. For a Hindu wedding, a bride typically wears a bright red sari, as red is an auspicious color associated with change, passion, and prosperity. White, on the other hand, is typically worn to Indian funerals. Symbols are useful cultural aggregates because they provide a kind of shorthand for expressing complex ideas. Consider the American bumper sticker shown in Figure 3.9. This popular American bumper sticker incorporates a variety of religious and social symbols. (credit: “Coexistence” by Rusty Clark/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Combining symbols from Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Christianity, paganism, women, men, and the peace movement, this sticker aims to promote multicultural diversity. Rather than listing the various religions, identities, and ideologies and describing the conflicts among them, the message simply incorporates their symbols into a word urging mutual tolerance. Although symbols have conventional meanings, they can mean different things in different contexts or to different people. Although the intended meaning of the above bumper sticker is diversity, some people interpret it as an emblem of radical atheism. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, some Americans started wearing safety pins to show their solidarity with LGBTQIA+ people, people of color, and others who had become targets of post-election harassment. For some, however, the safety pin symbolized pretentiousness and hypocrisy. Ritual Combining objects, actions, and meanings, ritual is a special kind of repeated, patterned action conventionally associated with a particular meaning. Rituals incorporate symbols and roles along with routinized activities such as gestures, music, and movement. Many rituals are performed by specialists in group settings to accomplish specific group or individual goals. Rituals bring together symbols, practices, and worldviews. Consider this popular American ritual. On the first Sunday in February, many Americans gather in each other’s homes to watch the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL) on television. So widespread is this practice that stores are nearly empty and many Christian churches cancel afternoon and evening activities. As a whole, the ritual consists of many roles and relationships as well as patterned actions and conventional meanings. At the heart of the action are the two teams competing against one another in a chaotic game featuring an oddly shaped ball carried forward in campaigns of full-frontal assault across a carefully marked field. The players are surrounded by referees, coaches, camera people, and cheerleaders, each group having a strategic role in the action. Surrounding the field are commentators who interpret and contextualize, giving meaning to the actions of the game. At home, some people watch the game closely, exclaiming with joy or disappointment and commenting on the comments of the commentators. Other people socialize with one another, watching the game intermittently. Vast amounts of food and drink are consumed by Americans on Super Bowl Sunday. Typical foods include potato chips, dips, barbecued chicken wings, and pizza. Beer is the beverage of choice for this occasion. An event celebrating competition, spectatorship, and consumption, Super Bowl Sunday is an effective ritual for reinforcing dominant values in a society structured by corporate capitalism. Notions of gender, race, and class are threaded through the various levels of play and consumption as well. In the Akan communities of central and southern Ghana, in West Africa, leaders perform a ritual called Adae that uses important cultural symbols and reinforces cultural commitments to authority, ancestors, and shared prosperity. In the Akan society, people are given special wooden stools to mark certain stages in life, such as puberty and marriage. A person’s stool is said to contain the personal power of the owner, symbolizing the life essence of that person. This stool is more than just a place to sit down. In the Akan society which created it, it is understood to represent the personal power and life essence of the person it was given to. (credit: “Stool (Dwa)” by Museum Expedition 1922, Robert B. Woodward Memorial Fund/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) When an eminent person dies, that person’s stool is enshrined in a special shed called a stool house, or nkonuafieso . Twice every 42 days (once on a Wednesday and once on a Sunday), a community leader makes a procession to the stool house of the ancestral leaders of the community. Entering the stool house, the leader must remove their sandals and lower the cloth worn draped around their shoulders, symbolizing their humility and respect for the ancestors. Then the leader greets the ancestral leaders one by one, making offerings of drink and food and asking for blessings and prosperity for the community. Special rituals called rites of passage are used to mark the movement of a person from one social status to another. Naming ceremonies, puberty rites, weddings, and funerals are all common rites of passage. Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1960) identified three stages in rites of passage: separation, transition, and incorporation. In the first phase, separation, individuals, or groups are taken out of their everyday social context, leaving their original social status. In the second phase, transition, people exist in an in-between state outside of conventional norms of dress and action. In this phase, people are often dressed in special costume, made to engage in unusual behaviors, and taught special forms of secret knowledge. In the third phase, people are brought back into society in a formal ceremony and introduced as subjects in a new social category. Initiation rituals are a common rite of passage in many societies. In many African societies that practice initiation, young people are gathered together in a group and taken to a special camp outside the town or village. This constitutes the separation phase. In the next phase, transition, members of the group are often dressed alike and made to follow a common set of rules and schedule of activities. They may be required to perform unusual feats, such as eating strange foods. Their bodies may be scarified or tattooed. Elders give them special knowledge essential to performing their future roles as women or men. For instance, girls may learn explicit lessons about conception and childbirth. Finally, when the transition is complete, initiates are returned to the town or village and presented as women or men. Often, the completion of initiation marks a young woman as formally eligible for courtship and marriage. Social Structure The way a society is formally organized is called social structure . Typically, a society organizes a set of routine activities and objects in space and time to accomplish a particular function, such as community decision-making, the production and circulation of goods, or religious observance. Social structure is the framework for those realms, designating when, where, how, and by whom these functions are accomplished. Social structures combine material culture (such as buildings) with practices (such as meetings) and ideas (such as the rules and procedures of those meetings). Consider the social structure of community decision-making, or the political realm. In some societies, community decisions are routinely made under the authority of a person inhabiting an inherited political office, called a chief or king (such as the Akans, discussed in the last section). Chiefs often have a council of community elders, the heads of local extended families. A chief is expected to consult with this council in all community matters. Other groups in society may represent the interests of youth, women, farmers, or traders. Each group will have its own leader who communicates directly with the local chief. Regular procedures govern how issues are raised and discussed and how decisions are taken. Together, the groups, roles, relationships, and procedures all constitute the social structure of the political system. Rather than seeing social structure as fixed and immobile, some anthropologists emphasize that people continually make and alter their social structures through everyday forms of interpretation, participation, and resistance. These processes mean that social structures are always subject to a variety of forces in a constant state of change. rite of passage a ritual that moves a person or group of people from one social category to another, often more highly valued one. Examples of rites of passage include naming ceremonies, initiations, weddings, and funerals. ritual repeated, patterned action conventionally associated with a particular meaning, often incorporating symbolic objects and actions. social structure the organizational framework for a particular realm of culture, such as the family, the economy, or the political system. Social structures combine material culture with practices and ideas. symbol an object, image, or gesture conventionally associated with a particular meaning.

Social Sciences