Community, Development, and Broadcast Media Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain how radio is associated with different themes and audiences than print media. Define the concept of community radio. Explain how community radio gives expression to local forms of identity and social action. Define the notion of Indigenous media. The media scholar Marshall McLuhan is famous for his aphorism “ the medium is the message ” (1964, 23). What he meant by this is that each genre of media has its own set of features that suggest certain uses and kinds of content. In contrast to print media, radio allows for real-time talk and discussion as well as music. Radio reaches beyond the limited audience of avid readers who have time to focus on text to wider audiences of listeners who may be too busy to read or have not had access to formal education. As an oral medium, radio lends itself more readily to linguistic diversity. In places where many languages are spoken, often the language of state is the only one that circulates in written form, while the rest function as spoken languages only. Print media may therefore be limited to dominant languages, while the oral genre of radio can provide content in alternative and even multiple languages. Finally, while reading print media is largely a solitary and silent experience, radio provides a shared and noisy experience. A personal experience shared by Jennifer Hasty illustrates this. In Ghana, I could nearly always hear a radio blasting from someone’s compound or kiosk or car. Radio was woven into daily life, a sort of auditory backdrop to everyday work and leisure. News headlines were read out each day on the morning talk shows, generating discussions in households and buses as people made their way to work. On the popular radio talk shows, Ghanaians from all walks of life called in to broadcast their perspectives on the issues of the day. Even during the music shows, listeners participated with heartfelt requests dedicated to friends, lovers, and family members. Because of its distinctive features, the genre of radio is not as narrowly focused as print media on themes of political economy such as nationalism and democracy. While including attention to current events, radio typically provides listeners with a wider variety of content, including music, talk shows, drama, and quiz shows. In an effort to provide relevant content to the broadest spectrum of listeners in an area, local radio stations design their programming to reflect the tastes and issues of particular communities. Certainly, print media does this to some degree, but the audience for print media constitutes a narrower segment of the community. Radio attempts to address the community as a whole. Commercial and state radio are dominant forces in the media landscapes of most countries, but an alternative form, community radio , has been growing rapidly in recent decades. Community radio refers to radio stations that are community owned and operated, staffed by groups of professionals and volunteers. The involvement of local volunteers allows for community participation in programming, production, and on-air performance. Community radio stations often focus on local current events, educational programs, and development initiatives. Typically, they are low wattage with minimal range and thus are nonprofit. In places where people want to start up a community radio station but lack the capital and technological know-how, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and development organizations have provided support in partnership with community organizations. Such collaborations between community groups and foreign NGOs have made possible the start-up of community radio stations in many countries, including Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Throughout Africa, community radio stations sponsored by government and/or NGOs have been used to educate rural peoples about farming methods and spread public interest health messages. In Thailand, the global leader in community radio, more than 7,000 independent radio stations have been started since 2001. Established in 1997, the Nepalese station Radio Sagarmatha was the first independent community radio station in South Asia. The station was started by the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists in an effort to break the government monopoly on radio and provide better coverage of community issues. Regulated by government, Radio Sagarmatha is not allowed to address political or economic issues. Focusing instead on community development, the station features daily discussion programs addressing such issues as public health, education, women’s empowerment, and workers’ concerns. Though not explicitly political, the station identifies itself as the defender of democracy and free speech in Nepal, giving voice to the people. In 2005, the army raided the studio, seizing equipment and arresting staff for rebroadcasting a BBC interview with a politician. The station reemerged after the incident and remains on air today. With 2.5 million regular listeners, Radio Sagarmatha is one of the largest and most successful community radio stations in the world. Community radio stations in Brazil have faced similar forms of government regulation and harassment. Anthropologist Derek Pardue (2011) describes the expansion of community radio in the wake of political liberalization in the 1980s. As of 2013, there were 4,700 community radio stations operating in Brazil, an increase of 70 percent since 2002. Moreover, approximately 5,000 such stations have been shut down by government, their equipment confiscated and management prosecuted as felons. Associated with free speech and political activism, community radio attracts involvement by counterculture artists and performers such as the hip-hop communities of impoverished favela neighborhoods in São Paulo. Through community radio, local hip-hop artists narrate their stories of hardship and heroism, defining their spatially marginal neighborhoods as economically and politically marginalized periferias (peripheries). Pardue describes how community radio gives hip-hop artists and other community members a platform for demonstrating their awareness of social issues and command of information. Using slang that signals racial and class identities, they publicize otherwise unreported events and perspectives such as police violence and gang activities, providing a much more inclusive public sphere than commercial media. In Australia, more than 400 independent radio stations broadcast in 70 different community languages. Many of these community radio stations have been started by Indigenous Australian communities as a means of cultural survival and language preservation. Indigenous media refers to the use of media by Indigenous communities for community identity, cultural representation, and activism. In the 1990s, some Indigenous broadcasters developed the ability to link community radio stations together in regional and national networks. As many Indigenous community stations featured call-in request programs, the linking of stations allowed a person in one community to publicly greet a relative in a faraway community with a song dedication. Anthropologist Daniel Fisher (2009) describes how radio has become a way for Indigenous Australian people to celebrate kinship connections in the context of kin dispersal due to government policy, travel, work, and incarceration. Throughout the 20th century, Indigenous children were seized from their families and sent to state institutions and foster homes in order to assimilate them into White Australian settler culture. In the present, Indigenous family ties are further troubled by the disproportionate numbers of young men incarcerated in Australian prisons. In this context, call-in request shows have become wildly popular on Indigenous radio networks, as relatives phone in to dedicate emotionally charged songs about love, separation, and loss to relatives in distant places. Inspired by a wide variety of social issues, community radio is catching hold in the United States as well. In response to the domination of American radio by large media corporations, the US Congress passed the Local Community Radio Act in 2010, authorizing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to provide licenses to low-powered community radio stations. A group of community organizers in Madrid, New Mexico, just outside of Albuquerque, was awarded a license and began broadcasting KMRD 96.9 in 2015. As an alternative to commercial radio programming, KMRD, like many community stations, features more diverse and locally relevant content. Local DJs host call-in and talk programs about community issues and spin a wide variety of music, including alternative, pop, techno, garage, folk, and western. Local bands get frequent airplay, stimulating the local music scene. On Monday nights, you can hear a program devoted to African music, hosted by the author of this chapter. Those not within range of the station can listen to KRMD online . Over a thousand new community radio stations have emerged as a result of the Local Community Radio Act. community radio radio stations that are community owned and operated, staffed by groups of professionals and volunteers. Indigenous media the use of media by Indigenous peoples for community identity, cultural representation, and activism. “the medium is the message” the notion that each genre of media has its own set of features that suggest certain uses and types of content.

Social Sciences


Broadcasting Modernity and National Identity Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify ways in which governments and development organizations use broadcast media. Detail forms of modernity conveyed by broadcast media in non-Western contexts. Explain the cultural significance of soap opera. Describe the relationship between broadcast media and religious identities and experiences. Broadcast media are, of course, not always grassroots tools of community expression and development. Even outside of the commercial domain, forms of radio and television are produced by development organizations and state governments to address specific development goals, a more top-down model of community broadcasting. Throughout the 1980s, a radio project for delivering basic education was carried out in the Dominican Republic by the US Agency for International Development. The project was designed to reach schoolchildren living in mountainous and isolated regions of the country. Gathering around radios in community centers, children listened to lessons on reading, math, science, and history. Students were given worksheets and books to supplement the radio lectures. Eighty-two community learning centers were established by 1982. Over time, local community groups and the Dominican government contributed funding to keep the project going. Similar programs to use radio for basic education have been established in other countries, including Mexico and Kenya. As with radio, the potentially broad reach of television beyond literate audiences has made it useful as a medium of education, particularly for students lacking access to conventional brick-and-mortar schools. In most countries outside of western Europe and the United States, broadcast media were initially developed by the state because local elites often lacked the capital to start radio and television stations. In the 1960s, the newly independent African states used their newly formed state broadcasting corporations to consolidate diverse and distant populations as a united audience for national messages and initiatives. In her research, communication scholar Carla Heath (1996) shows how Ghanaian children’s television programs serve as a means of cultivating a distinctively modern national culture that embraces innovation and change while remaining grounded in Ghanaian cultural values. For one program, By the Fireside , Ghanaian schoolchildren were recruited to act out Ghanaian folktales, discussing how their moral messages could be applied to contemporary Ghanaian life. Against a background depicting a rural village, children in simple smocks and African-print clothing opened the show with songs and dances, then engaged in greetings, jokes, and riddles with the two adult storytellers. As a storyteller narrated a tale, the children acted out certain scenes and commented on the themes of the story in musical interludes. After the story, children were called upon to recite the moral lessons they had learned. In this way, traditional stories were summoned to discuss such contemporary issues as corruption, political conflicts, and juvenile delinquency. Heath argues that such programs promote a distinctive form of modern citizenship rooted in local morality and wisdom. Anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) similarly demonstrates how elites have used television dramas to cultivate the ideal of the virtuous modern citizen among women, youth, and rural people in Egypt. One serial drama, Hilmiyya Nights , focused on the lives of a group of characters from the traditional neighborhood of Hilmiyya in Cairo. The show dramatizes their fortunes and relationships from the 1940s, when Egypt was ruled by King Farouk and the British, all the way up to the Egyptian reaction to the US-led Gulf War of 1990. Rather than focusing solely on personal desires, trysts, and betrayals, as American soap operas do, the social lives of the Hilmiyya Nights characters were embedded in historical and political events, making the show a powerful form of commentary on Egyptian national life. Driven by its project of upliftment, the overall theme of the show was one of national unity. Characters from all classes were led astray by the temptations of sex, money, and power, but they inevitably came to see the errors of their ways, putting love of country above all personal desires. Interviewing women who watched Hilmiyya Nights , Abu-Lughod discovered that their love for the show had little to do with the uplifting messages about Egyptian citizenship. In fact, some identified strongly with the most problematic female characters, who schemed and connived in pursuit of sex and money. Soap opera is a popular format targeted to female audiences in many parts of the world. In India, anthropologist Purnima Mankekar (1999) examined a number of television serials produced by the state television station, Doordarshan, in the 1980s and 1990s. In a well-rounded holistic analysis, Mankekar examines production, text, and reception, the latter an aspect often neglected in media studies. Mankekar interviewed the writers, directors, and producers of these programs and subjected the programs themselves to a fine-grained textual analysis. Her focus, however, was audience reception. Among the questions she asked were how Indian middle-class women viewed these programs, what sense they made of the content, and how they discussed the themes and issues and applied them to their own lives. Indian state television has always worked to cultivate an idealized notion of Indian womanhood, implicitly defined as Hindu, middle-class, north Indian, and upper caste. Mankekar’s analysis focuses on two Hindu epic dramas, The Mahabharat (1989–1990) and The Ramayan (1987–1988). Through these dramas, state television constructed those ideals for the intended audience of Indian women. These epics feature two ideals of womanhood: Sita, who is demure, compliant, and self-sacrificing, contrasted with the enraged Draupaudi, whose reckless husband’s political gamble results in her public humiliation. In interviews with Mankekar, women viewers discussed how they identified with each character in different ways and in relation to different contexts of their own lives. As the programs aired in the midst of rising Hindu nationalism in India, they became a means of asserting Hindu forms of heritage and morality as well as gendered identities. While in the West, modernity is typically associated with rationality and secularism, many media anthropologists have studied how radio and television enable distinctly modern expressions of religious beliefs and experiences. Media anthropologist Katrien Pype (2015) has conducted research on television dramas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a focus on the importance of religious themes and emotional forms of engagement. In one drama, The Heart of Man , two sophisticated urban women become witches in order to harm their romantic rivals. As a result of their occult rituals, one of the women goes blind, leading her to confess her sins to an evangelical pastor. The pastor grants her forgiveness and exorcises the demons from her body. So powerful were the depictions of witchcraft that some viewers reported feeling as if they had become bewitched themselves just by watching the show. Viewers interpreted their emotional responses as signs of the deeper meanings of the program. Not merely entertainment, Congolese television dramas structured by such tales of evangelical redemption are experienced as episodes in an ongoing spiritual war between the Holy Spirit and the devil. Though fictional, such television programs connect with the worldviews of evangelical Christians through the conduit of emotional and bodily response.

Social Sciences


Digital Media, New Socialities Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define the concept of sociality. Explain how digital media enable new forms of sociality. Identify how digital media shape friendships and romantic relationships. Define the concept of media ideology. Provide a detailed example of the illicit use of digital media. As much of this textbook demonstrates, anthropologists most often conduct research on topics involving face-to-face sociocultural interaction such as public ceremonies, religious rituals, work, political activities, and forms of economic exchange. Over the past 30 years, however, anthropologists have begun to conduct research on forms of culture in which face-to-face interaction has been replaced with screens and keyboards. In the Internet era, media anthropologists explore how people connect with others digitally, forming collective identities based on characteristics such as common interests, gender, race, ethnicity, and religion. Some anthropologists are interested in the entirely new modes of social interaction made possible by the Internet, such as hacking, blogging, and creating and sharing memes. Digital media also reshape other domains of sociocultural practice, such as shopping, financial transactions, transportation, religious worship, and kin relations. Encompassing the whole realm of social interaction, cultural anthropologists use the term sociality to describe how people construct and maintain their personal and group relations. Anthropologists are curious about how new forms of digital media function as tools of sociality. Digital Socialities: Personal and Political How do you talk to your friends on a day-to-day basis? How do you arrange to meet up as a group? If you’re an American, it’s very likely that texts and social media are involved in your communication and coordination with your friends. Studying American teens from 2004 to 2007, scholar Danah Boyd found that social networking sites such as Facebook were key to the formation of new friendships and the consolidation of friend groups, while texting deepened one-on-one relationships (Ito et al. 2010). In fact, friendship was the primary reason given by teens for engaging in digital forms of media (rather than, say, looking up information for school projects or texting their parents about where they are at midnight on a Friday night). Of course, the social preoccupation of American teens is not new, nor is it surprising. But digital media provide new modes of engagement, such as the “always on” texting of best friends or social media “friends” who are not really friends at all but strangers or even enemies. Social media also provide new tools for authoring self-identity as well as the ability to search out information about others that may undermine their own professed identities. While American teens generally embrace social media and texting as ways of building friendships, they are considerably more troubled by the role of digital media in the other side of social relationships: breaking up. In an undergraduate class one day, anthropologist Ilana Gershon asked her students, “What counts as a bad breakup?” (2010). Expecting stories of lying and infidelity, Gershon was surprised to hear so many students complain about breakups via text or Facebook. Anyone who has ever signed into a social media site to discover that their sweetie’s relationship status has changed to “single” knows the kind of confusion and heartache caused by using digital media in this way. Perhaps not the best use of texting—on both sides. In societies all over the world, digital media have become essential elements of social interaction. (attribution: Copyright Rice University, OpenStax, under CC BY NC-SA 4.0 license) Intrigued by the ambiguities of digital etiquette in the realm of romance, Gershon wrote a book exploring how Americans use digital media to manage and even terminate ambiguous or troubled relationships. At the heart of the matter, according to Gershon, are media ideologies —that is, sets of ideas about the functionality of digital media and their relationship to other forms of communication, such as the telephone and face-to-face conversation. For some Americans, using digital messaging to break up is an ideal way of avoiding an intense emotional scene. This notion relies on a media ideology in which different forms of communication can usually be substituted for one another in the interests of efficiency and ease of use. For others, however, the text breakup is unfair, disrespectful, and cowardly, as the breaking-up process is made into a unilateral speech act rather than a consensual act based on dialogue. Digital media allow the breaker-upper to avoid witnessing the consequences of their action. In this media ideology, different forms of communication are appropriate to different forms of social action and cannot be substituted for one another without careful consideration of the emotional consequences. In societies all over the world, digital media have become essential elements of social interaction, from the most personal and romantic relationships to larger, more public collectivities. Both media anthropologists and communication scholars have contributed to an effort to de-westernize media studies by exploring the use of digital media in contexts outside of the United States and western Europe. In societies with repressive governments, traditional media and face-to-face political action are often tightly controlled, making digital media important tools of social interaction and political resistance. Media scholars Annaelle Sreberny and Gholam Khiabany (2010) highlight the crucial role of blogging in popular expression and political activism in Iran over the past several decades. There are more than 700,000 blogs in Iran, many of them authored by women. Suppressed in the public arena, Iranian intellectuals have embraced blogging as a way to express their ideas. Though many Iranian blogs are devoted to personal reflections or commentary on entertainment or sports, Sreberny and Khiabany show how bloggers often convey subtle political messages in their seemingly personal writing. Like Egyptian and Indian soap operas, Iranian blogs are always embedded in sociopolitical contexts, whether they are explicitly political or not. Some blogs are, in fact, stridently political, and many political bloggers have been jailed by the government as dissidents. Similarly, bloggers in Central and South America form activist communities working for social justice and equality (Arriaga and Villar 2021). Afro-Cuban activist Sandra Abd’Allah-Alvarez Ramírez blogs on issues of race and gender in Cuba. Journalist Silvana Bahia operates an organization in Brazil that works to spread the tools of digital technology to diverse communities, in particular Afro-Brazilian women. She has been involved in efforts to teach programming to women, showing them how to apply digital skills to further social projects. She envisions a more inclusive digital sphere that brings in the perspectives of Black, LGBTQ+, low-income, and disadvantaged groups. Digital Shadowlands: Illicit Media Digital media enable and enhance social interaction, deepening relationships and activating imagined communities for social change. However, these new forms of media have a darker side. Digital media are also a tool for piracy, smuggling, scams, human trafficking, and illegal forms of pornography. Frequently, these illicit forms operate across the gulf of global inequality separating wealthy societies from poorer ones. Human trafficking, for instance, often involves abducting youth from impoverished rural communities and smuggling them into urban and wealthier communities to be forced into prostitution. Piracy, on the other hand, often involves making illegal copies of music and movies produced in wealthier countries available to people in poorer communities who may not otherwise be able to afford them. The digital shadowlands provide opportunities for those left out of legal, mainstream opportunities in the digital economy. Sakawa is a troubling example of this. Around 2010 in Ghana, a new social group emerged. People began to notice that some young men in their twenties were enjoying a very luxurious lifestyle: driving expensive cars such as Lexuses and Range Rovers, wearing designer clothing and shoes, drinking champagne, and living in enormous mansions. How were they becoming so wealthy? During this time, Ghana was experiencing an oil boom, but that wealth was concentrated among older elites. The vast population of poor and working-class people have not benefited all that much from oil wealth. Commonly, young men with little education are unemployed, with very little chance of ever escaping poverty. This new class of conspicuously rich young men were not particularly educated or well-connected, but they had discovered a new way to make money. Combining digital media with spiritual techniques, they had invented a new moneymaking scheme called sakawa . A Hausa term meaning “putting inside,” sakawa refers to magically enhanced Internet fraud, mainly targeting foreigners. Before they become sakawa practitioners, these young men are often unemployed, sleeping on the streets, not knowing where their next meal is coming from. Often, they report noticing very stylish and well-fed young people apparently making lots of money by doing something in Internet cafés. Sometimes the scammers actively recruit such targets, teaching them Internet skills to carry out the elaborate schemes. The typical con is pretending to be a woman romantically interested in men from Europe, the United States, or Asia. Another, less common scheme involves using fake documents to persuade foreigners to invest in gold, timber, or oil concessions. Even more important than technological skills are the sophisticated social skills involved in creating strategic online personalities, cultivating trust with foreign White men in faraway places, and knowing just how and when to make requests for money. Many scammers report practicing these techniques for several weeks or months with only modest success, then learning about the “spiritual side” of sakawa. In order to become magnificently wealthy, sakawa practitioners believe it is necessary to become apprenticed to a spiritual leader who can guarantee great success in exchange for performing certain rituals on a regular basis. New apprentices are often instructed to sleep in coffins and anoint their bodies with special medicines. Some are required to have sex with several women each day and deliver their undergarments to the spiritual leader. Some must chew live cockroaches, lizards, or maggots. Ghanaians are horrified by rumors of incest and human sacrifice as scammers are said to perform more and more difficult forms of spiritual service to their masters. Though many refuse to reveal the exact nature of these rituals, numerous sakawa boys report that their efforts to extract money from foreigners suddenly became much more successful after performing them. With sudden windfalls from scamming, sakawa boys often throw epic parties and buy expensive gifts for their friends. In his documentary film Sakawa , Ghanaian filmmaker Ben Asamoah depicts the practices and communities of sakawa in Ghana. A trailer to the documentary film Sakawa by Ben Asamoah can be watched on YouTube . After a time, the thrill of this lifestyle wears off, and sakawa boys come to feel enslaved by the constant ritual demands of their spiritual leaders. If a sakawa boy refuses to perform assigned chores, however, he may break out in a rash, suffer paralysis, or become deaf or mute. Some report that friends have died when attempting to quit sakawa. Sakawa is widely condemned in Ghanaian society. Government officials, journalists, and religious leaders have all spoken out against it, and the police have even arrested and prosecuted some sakawa scammers. Many Ghanaians lament the unbridled celebration of wealth as a marker of social status, arguing that children should be instilled with traditional values of hard work, honesty, and modest living. Sakawa may seem like a shocking and unusual combination of digital media with supernatural beliefs and practices, but at the root of this phenomenon is a set of contradictory beliefs about wealth and power found in many cultures and historical periods. Consider the German legend of Faust, based on a 16th-century German alchemist. According to the legend, Faust, a bored and depressed scholar, makes a pact with the devil through the devil’s emissary, Mephistopheles. The deal is that Mephistopheles will help Faust gain access to all worldly pleasures, including sex, power, and knowledge. In return, Faust will be required to turn his soul over to the devil after several years. Forms of this Faustian bargain have emerged in many other parts of the world, particularly as societies are drawn into new forms of wealth and inequality in the global economy. For instance, anthropologist Michael Taussig (1980) conducted research on beliefs about the devil among people working in the sugar plantations of Colombia and the tin mines of Bolivia. Some wage laborers on sugar plantations were said to enter into contracts with the devil to increase their productivity, helping them make fast money. Most often, they bought flashy clothes and liquor with their newfound wealth but could not establish enduring prosperity. Taussig describes how workers in the Bolivian tin mines created a shrine to the devil to ensure their safety and help them find rich tin deposits. Taussig argues that people in peasant farming societies feel a sense of unease about capitalist forms of work, wealth, and inequality. To agrarian peoples steeped in communal values, it seems unfair that some laborers become wealthy while others work just as hard and fail. And yet, young people are drawn in by the compelling allure of money and commodities associated with labor in the globalized capitalist economy. According to Taussig, this conflicted feeling of unease gives rise to widespread beliefs about serving the devil for temporary gains. Poster for the 1926 film Faust , directed by F. W. Murnau and based on German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s telling of a German folktale. According to the legend, Faust makes a pact with the devil to gain access to worldly pleasures in return for his soul. As globalization spreads access to wealth and material goods around the world, scholars have observed the spread of stories about people serving the devil for temporary gains. (credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, UFA/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) For some young people around the world, digital media have provided paths to astonishing success and wealth, often through global relations and transactions. While new forms of digital trade and technological innovation may provide some well-educated and well-connected elites with a means of getting rich, the vast majority of young people in both wealthy and poorer countries are largely left out of the opportunities of the digital economy. Sakawa may seem like a disturbing form of digital delinquency to many Ghanaians and foreigners alike, but it dramatizes the widespread sense of unfairness and inequality in Ghanaian society as a whole. The phenomenon of sakawa suggests that disadvantaged groups must combine supernatural forms of power with their computer and social skills in order to get ahead. Hard work alone is never enough. The unfairness of this situation is symbolized by the ultimate doom faced by many sakawa scammers: unable or unwilling to keep up with the demands of their supernatural masters, they fall ill and die. Exploring how forms of media intersect with economic, political, and religious realms as well as gender, ethnicity, and identity, anthropologists take a holistic approach to mass media. Studying photography, news media, broadcasting, and digital media, anthropologists discover the cultural contexts of media production and reception as well as new forms of sociality and transaction. As media technologies become more deeply embedded in people’s lives and instrumental to social relationships and communities, the holistic lens of anthropology is key to understanding the profound sociocultural changes brought about by media innovations. Summary Anthropologists use long-term ethnographic fieldwork and holistic perspectives to study media genres such as photography, film, radio, television, and digital media. In visual anthropology, gaze theory is used to think about the relationship between viewers and the people depicted in photographs, particularly in terms of gender, power, and cultural identity. Anthropologists studying news media focus on the construction of national public spheres of official ideology and political contest. Radio is often used by communities for more participatory and community-based forms of communication. Many anthropologists study how soap operas and other television programs promote forms of ethnicity, gender, and nationalism. Digital media construct entirely new forms of sociality, including illicit shadow forms of impersonation and scamming such as sakawa. Make a Photographic Documentary Create a photographic documentary of a social event, such as a party, meeting, class, or other community gathering. Before the event, make a list of shots necessary to show what’s really going on at the event. What people should you photograph? What actions should be depicted? What is socially significant about the event, and how can you convey that meaning through photos? As you prepare your final product, consider how the photos should be presented. Should they be altered or edited in any way after you take them? How should they be organized? Should they be presented in the order you took them or in some other order? Critical Thinking Questions Suggested Readings Askew, Kelly, and Richard R. Wilk, eds. 2002. The Anthropology of Media: A Reader . Malden, MA: Blackwell. Ginsberg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain . Berkeley: University of California Press. Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “The Objects of Soap Opera: Egyptian Television and the Cultural Politics of Modernity.” In The Anthropology of Media: A Reader , edited by Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk, 376–391. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Anas, Anas Aremeyaw. 2013. “How I Named, Shamed and Jailed.” Filmed February 2013 in Long Beach, CA. TED video, 12:34. https://www.ted.com/talks/anas_aremeyaw_anas_how_i_named_shamed_and_jailed. Arriaga, Eduard, and Andrés Villar, eds. 2021. Afro-Latinx Digital Connections . Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Askew, Kelly, and Richard R. Wilk, eds. 2002 The Anthropology of Media: A Reader . Malden, MA: Blackwell. Buckley, Liam. 2000. “Self and Accessory in Gambian Studio Photography.” Visual Anthropology Review 16 (2): 71–91. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.2000.16.2.71. Fisher, Daniel. 2009. “Mediating Kinship: Country, Family, and Radio in Northern Australia.” Cultural Anthropology 24 (2): 280–312. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2009.01132.x. Flaherty, Robert, dir. 1922. Nanook of the North . Video, 77:57. https://archive.org/details/nanookOfTheNorth1922. Frost, Randall. 2021. “Printing.” In The Gale Encyclopedia of Science , edited by Katherine H. Nemeh and Jacqueline L. Longe, 6th ed., vol. 6, 3583–3587. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. Ganti, Tejaswini. 2012. Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gershon, Ilana. 2010. The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ginsburg, Faye D., Lila Abu-Lughod, and Brian Larkin, eds. 2002. Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain . Berkeley: University of California Press. Habermas, Jurgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society . Translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press. Hasty, Jennifer. 2005. The Press and Political Culture in Ghana . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Heath, Carla W. 1996. “Children’s Television in Ghana: A Discourse about Modernity.” African Affairs 96 (383): 261–275. https://www.jstor.org/stable/723861. Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, Danah Boyd, Rachel Cody, Becky Herr Stephenson, Heather A. Horst et al. 2010. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jacknis, Ira. 2020. “Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology.” Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press, last modified July 29, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0250. Jenkins, Paul. 1993. “The Earliest Generation of Missionary Photographers in West Africa and the Portrayal of Indigenous People and Culture.” History in Africa 20:89–118. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171967. Lutz, Catherine A., and Jane L. Collins. 1993. Reading National Geographic . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mankekar, Purnima. 1999. Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man . New York: McGraw-Hill. Mead, Margaret, and Gregory Bateson, dir. 1951. Trance and Dance in Bali . Video, 21:40. https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs02425201/. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16 (3): 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6. Pardue, Derek. 2011. “Place Markers: Tracking Spatiality in Brazilian Hip-Hop and Community Radio.” American Ethnologist 38 (1): 102–113. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41241503. Postill, John. 2006. Media and Nation Building: How the Iban Became Malaysian . New York: Berghahn Books. Pype, Katrien. 2015. “The Heart of Man: Pentecostal Emotive Style in and beyond Kinshasa’s Media World.” In New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa , edited by Rosalind I. J. Hackett and Benjamin F. Soares, 116–136. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schäuble, Michaela. 2018. “Visual Anthropology.” In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology , edited by Hilary Callan. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1969. Spitulnik, Debra. 1993. “Anthropology and Mass Media.” Annual Review of Anthropology 22:293–315. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2155850. Spray, Stephanie, and Pacho Velez, dir. 2013. Manakamana . Cambridge, MA: Sensory Ethnography Lab, Harvard University. Video, 118 min. Sreberny, Annabelle, and Gholam Khiabany. 2010. Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran . London: I. B. Tauris. Taussig, Michael T. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Tiffany, Sharon W. 2005. “Contesting the Erotic Zone: Margaret Mead’s Fieldwork Photographs of Samoa.” Pacific Studies 28 (3–4): 19–45. http://ojs-dev.byuh.edu/index.php/pacific/article/view/2120. Faustian bargain the idea that a person can engage in evil supernatural activities in order to gain access to worldly desires such as wealth, sex, and/or knowledge. media ideologies sets of ideas about the uses and functions of a particular genre of media. sakawa magically enhanced Internet fraud, mainly targeting foreigners. sociality participation in social relations; how people construct and maintain their personal and group relationships.

Social Sciences


Introduction The Colosseum in Rome played a role similar to a professional football stadium today. Here, tens of thousands of Romans gathered to view competitions that not only entertained but also contributed to a sense of belonging and identity. (credit: “Colosseum” by Rennett Stowe/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Think about the last concert or sporting event that you attended, observed on television, or watched on social media. What was the last piece of art that you saw in person, online, or on social media? Did you consider that your experience was likely a culmination of tens of thousands of years of human evolution? Would you consider graffiti on the sides of train cars to be art? Is a pickup game of football in the neighborhood sport? Figure 16.1 depicts a famous structure connected to sport that is now more often viewed as an art object—the Colosseum of Rome. The Colosseum served a role in ancient Roman society similar to an NFL (National Football League) stadium in contemporary American culture. Here gladiators battled animals such as lions and bears for the entertainment of a crowd of tens of thousands made up of all levels of Roman society. As you read about the sociocultural diversity in art, music, and sports highlighted in this chapter, remember the central narrative of anthropology: Human beings have developed flexible biological and social features that have worked together in a wide variety of environmental and historical conditions to produce a diversity of cultures . Art, music, and sports have been and continue to be important elements of every culture on earth, helping to create a sense of collective identity and helping societies to hold together. Art, music, and sports both reflect the sociocultural diversity found around the world and have played roles in effecting cultural change. Art, music, and sports have shaped the evolution of societies, and the evolution of a societies has influenced art, music, and sports in turn. As you read this chapter, consider your own experiences with art, music, and sport. Consider what you are familiar with and what you appreciate. Reflect also on the art, music, and sport in your society that are not particularly interested in or moved by. Where do these preferences come from? To what degree are they individual and to what degree do they reflect connections to your culture and to the subcultures within it?

Social Sciences


Anthropology of the Arts Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the anthropological approach to understanding art. Provide three examples of material artifacts of art. Identify forms of prehistoric art and describe how anthropologists have interpreted those forms. Provide two examples of purposes that art serves in a society. Define visual anthropology and describe its role in understanding culture. Describe the relationship between visual representation and cultural expression and memory. Provide three examples of body art and describe the cultural meaning of each. The anthropology of the arts can include various approaches to interpreting art forms, including analyses of the symbolic meanings represented, the mediums through which art is disseminated, and even how the art is manufactured. Art is strongly anchored in the human experience. How Do Anthropologists Approach Art? You might be asking yourself, How does art reflect or guide the study of anthropology? The simple answer is that art is created by humans. While definitions of art vary and have historically been narrowly construed to fit within a Western understanding of the term (Morphy and Perkins 2006), a constant element has been the intentional application of imagination, creativity, and skill. Art is created with intent. Art is a representation of the human experience, and anthropologists approach the study of art the same way they do any other aspect of human existence. Anthropologists take a holistic approach to any given topic, situating that topic among the broader context of a culture—its “language, environment, economy, religion, family life, governance and so on” (Plattner 2003, 15). All of these details are implicitly and inextricably embedded in the products of a culture, which cannot be fully understood and appreciated without some awareness of them. This is particularly important in regard to the arts, which rely so heavily on a shared cultural vocabulary. As Stuart Plattner (2003) asserts: Anthropologists think that artistic production . . . should be looked upon, not simply as applied aesthetics, but as an activity embedded in an art world , a complex set of social relationships. . . . It is wrong to focus on the unique art object, and ignore the complex set of human relationships which contributed to its creation. (15) Anthropology lends itself to examining both the how and the why of the arts. Art is studied by anthropologists through methods such as observation, interviews, focus groups, and site assessments. Anthropological study of art includes ethnographic studies as well as inquiries in physical anthropology and archaeology (e.g., Upper Paleolithic cave paintings, Aboriginal rock paintings, etc.). Consider the work that is required to analyze an artistic creation or sporting event through these anthropological techniques. Such work could include unearthing and evaluating artifacts of ancient societies, interviewing theatrical performers, or attending a game or match. The study of art, music, and sports requires the same holistic, wide-ranging approach as do all other anthropological studies. What is art? Who defines it? What is the difference, if any, between a cultural practice and a piece of artwork? These are all valid questions to consider when exploring the arts with the goal of better understanding human cultures. The modern understanding of art began in the 18th century, when the word art shifted from referring to any specialized skill (e.g., art of gardening) to referencing the fine arts (Kristeller 1990). Anthropologists consider that art has historical, economic, and aesthetic dimensions. Consider painters in ancient Roman times, who often had patrons of their work who supported their livelihoods. It could be said that such painters were people of lesser means; however, with a patron’s support, they could earn a wage for expressing their talents. And in aesthetic terms, art provides a representation of what is considered beautiful within a certain cultural context. The subfield of anthropological archaeology has approached the study of arts from its own specific perspectives. Archaeologists cannot observe how an art object was created or used and are unable to ask its creators or consumers the types of ethnographic questions that other cultural anthropologists may rely on. Archaeologists possess specialized knowledge pertaining to the sociohistorical and cultural contexts of early art. Their research on these art pieces provides other anthropologists with a starting point for analyzing older art. It also provides them with a more well-rounded understanding of the functionality and purposes of early art. Material artifacts of art can include many of the things people interact with at home, work, or school. These include artifacts that are the results of various people’s representations of the world, such as the architecture of the building one lives in or a favorite coffee shop. They can also be relics from ancient times, such as weapons, tools, and cave drawings. These relics can be found in the research and reports that art historians, anthropologists and archaeologists use to analyze the symbolic and cultural meaning of art. Iconographic study is the study of the visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a person, cult, or movement. Art is an expressive behavior that encompasses and expresses cultural worldviews, social status and hierarchy, myth, and cosmology. These baskets, created by the Yokuts people of Central California and photographed by Edward Curtis, are one of many types of material artifacts of art that anthropologists rely upon when attempting to understand culture. (credit: “Baskets in the Painted Cave—Yokuts” by Edward S. Curtis/Library of Congress, Public Domain) Studying Prehistoric Art Much of what anthropologists consider prehistoric art consists of artifacts and materials used to facilitate the work necessary to sustain life. It also includes cave paintings created tens of thousands of years ago. Examples of such cave paintings are the Upper Paleolithic cave art dated to 40,000 to 64,000 years ago, which features stenciled figures of animals and artifacts, though not usually humans. These prehistoric cave drawings are located in the Magura cave in Bulgaria. While cave drawings typically focus on large animals such as cave bears, horses, and bison, the drawings in the Magura cave include both humans and animals, and provide information about the solar calendar, religious festivals and other customs. (credit: “Prehistoric drawings in the Magura cave, Bulgaria” by Nk/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) This rock art, often called cave art, served as a medium to archive the human experience, tell a story, and depict how prehistoric peoples saw the world around them. Figure 16.3 above demonstrates how someone saw animals that were being hunted—and, unusually for this type of art, the people doing the hunting. These drawings served as a communication tool, historical archive, and artistic representation of a period of time and the human experience of the people who were there. Interpreting Art Visual art can be viewed as important evidence in attempting to understand a culture. Throughout time, visual art has been used to convey the human experiences of a vast range of cultures. This art provides modern anthropologists with valuable perspectives on other cultures and other times that could be hard to gain access to through other means. The image of the Kangxi emperor in Figure 16.4 conveys pride, wealth, and strength, characteristics that this artist connects to the China’s Qing dynasty, depicting the emperor as its representative. This image articulates the successes of this culture at that particular point in history. Detailed analysis of works of art can contribute to the sophistication with which anthropologists understand both individual cultures and the shifting nature of human cultures in general. This painting of a Kangxi emperor is an expression of the wealth and strength of the Qing dynasty. (credit: “Armoured Kangxi Emperor” by Author of Qing Dynasty/Originally from sina.com/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Spiritual Art Other forms of visual art are significant to spiritual and sociocultural practices and beliefs. One example is the mandala, a symbolic diagram consisting of various geometric patterns that represents the universe. Mandalas are a cultural practice in Tibet, India, Nepal, China, Japan, and Indonesia (Tucci [1961] 2001) and can be traced back to the fourth century CE. Typically square or circular in shape, they are used in Hinduism and Buddhism to focus attention during meditation. One significant variation on the mandala is the sand mandala, a beautiful arrangement of colored sand that originated in India and is now a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Specially trained Buddhist monks create elaborate patterns with the sand, beginning in the middle of the diagram and using concentric circles to work their way to the edge. Once constructed, the sand mandalas are then ritualistically destroyed in recognition of the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and the transitory nature of existence. Visual Anthropology Visual anthropology is a subfield of anthropology and itself a form of anthropological inquiry. It includes the study of art as represented in photography and film. The field largely arose with the invention of the camera, as anthropologists started to document Indigenous groups of the time on film. Some of the best-known figures in the field of visual anthropology are Edward Curtis , whose images of Native Americans are discussed in detail in Chapter 19: Indigenous Anthropology, and Robert Flaherty , whose 1922 film Nanook of the North is frequently shown in introductory anthropology courses as an early example of documentary filmmaking. While visual anthropology is often confused with ethnographic film, tfilm representations are only a small part of what the subfield encompasses. Visual anthropology is the study of all visual representations produced by human cultures, including dances, plays, and collections of art, from the beginning of time. In recent times, it has become a standard practice to use visual arts to articulate one’s feelings, thoughts, and interpretations of things seen, heard, and witnessed. Many cultures practice visual arts and use them in a variety of scenarios. They may be used to capture a certain mood, a cultural trend, or a historical event. As mentioned above, film and photography played a major role in the development of visual anthropology as a field. Film can be used to capture images of art, such as cave paintings, sculptures from Roman times, or modern-day theater. Further, film itself has become an important form of art. Film provides an artistic representation of the human experience as seen by its directors, performers, editors, and all who contributed to its development. The field of visual anthropology has had a significant impact on how anthropologists look at art. It also has become a driving force in how anthropologists view sociodemographic evolution, or the evolution of human societies with respect to combinations of social and demographic factors. The visual anthropology of art transcends generations, centuries, cultures, and other delineating categorical definitions. Consider Figure 16.5, which depicts tourists in the French Louvre, crowding around and photographing Leonardo da Vinci ’s famous painting the Mona Lisa . This photograph portrays the dimensions and complexity of the anthropology of art. It transcends the time of the Mona Lisa and is itself an expression of the human experience in a more recent time, including how humans relate to visual artifacts from an older time in history. Because of its age, the Mona Lisa image is in the public domain and can be copied and reproduced anywhere. The painting has become the subject of many parodies or memes. A meme is an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations. The prolific production of memes of the Mona Lisa has kept the image relevant in society over a long period of time. Read more on the memes that have been created of the Mona Lisa here. Have We Over-Hyped the Mona Lisa? The Mona Lisa is five centuries old and still captures the imagination. (credit: “Mona Lisa” by Bradley Eldridge/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) The Appreciation of Art Neuropsychologist Dahlia Zaidel has proposed that people’s appreciation of aesthetics stems from their cognitive and affective processes. This simply means that people are attracted to art on the basis of preexisting conditions and that their interest in art evolves through time as they have new experiences, develop appreciation for new things, and otherwise mature as humans. Appreciation of art is a biological and neurological response. People’s individual perspectives are innately grounded in biology and nature and neurology and nurturing. Think about someone you find attractive and the attributes of theirs that you find beauty in, or consider the last piece of clothing you bought because you liked how it fit, how it looked, or how others appreciated it. Attraction is a response based on a myriad of biological attributes that each individual person possesses and has since birth. These are anchored in laws of attraction. Humanity’s attraction to art is as biologically founded as attraction to other things (Zaidel et al. 2013). Perhaps this is why some people like various types of art from different time periods that depict the human experience. Pottery Traced back to the Neolithic period, pottery is considered one of the oldest inventions of humankind. Pottery is an art form created by many cultures for both aesthetic and functional purposes, including storing and cooking foods, carbonization (the formation of carbon from organic matter), and ritualistic practices. It has long been an important artifact type in archaeology. Pottery is an example of a practical object that also contains features of artistic beauty. One example is the Acoma pottery created by the Pueblo culture. Acoma pottery is functional and was not created purely as what we would now consider to be works of art. However, the pottery itself is a material art. Much can be learned about a culture by analyzing both the functionality of a particular piece or style of pottery and the imagery or stories depicted within its details and designs. Pottery, such as the 20,000-year-old pottery pieces found in ancient China depicted in Figure 16.6, has been crucial to understanding cultural history. The creation of pottery merges human knowledge and experiences, including artistic resources, emerging technological processes, and the needs of a population at a given time (P. M. Rice 2015). These pottery fragments were found in a cave in southern China and have been dated to 20,000 years ago. Pottery is viewed by anthropologists as both functional object and artistic expression. (credit: “Ancient Pottery” by Gary Todd/flickr, Public Domain) Though it serves a functional purpose, pottery throughout history has often been adorned with decoration, color, and other aesthetically attractive features. Decorated pottery is assigned a high value in many cultures, with people paying large sums of money for especially decorative pieces. Body Art Various forms of body art are a foundational form of expression in cultures all over the world. All cultures decorate and modify the human body in some way, whether temporarily or permanently. Anthropological frameworks can be used to understand body art as both a form of visual art and a cultural tradition. Tattooing is a form of body art that has been practiced for thousands of years. Tattoo is a Polynesian term. Polynesian tribes and people used tattoos to establish identity, personality, and status. The Maori, an Indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, have traditionally used tattoos as an expression of identity and cultural affiliation. Examples of this can also be found in the Tonga and Samoa warrior cultures, in which specific tattoo designs and placement on the body were used to demonstrate a warrior’s affiliation with a particular group of elite warriors. In the mid-20 th century, American sailors used tattoos to represent personal interests, aspects of their identity, and group affiliation. Such tattoos might include representations of a unit mascot, places individuals have visited, or things they found beauty in. One American sailor tattoos another aboard a ship during World War II. Tattooing is widely practiced by cultures around the world to express both personal and group identity. (credit: “Two sailors aboard the American battleship USS New Jersey in 1944” by Fenno Jacobs. Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Naval Photographic Center/National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) There is clear evidence of the practice of modifying the body with markings dating as far back as 5,300 to 3,000 years ago (Deter-Wolf et al. 2016; Shishlina, Belkevich, and Usachuk 2013). Such markings are still practiced by some of these same cultures today, such as the Maori people. Ötzi, a naturally mummified man found in the Ötzal Alps whose death has been dated to around 3250 BCE, is the first known tattooed human. His tattoos were of lines and crosses across his body. They are believed to have been made by creating incisions in the skin and rubbing charcoal into the incisions. Tattooing can be a way for individuals to express membership in a larger community. Not only are communities formed around having body art, but some may obtain tattoos as a mark of belonging to a certain community (e.g., tattoos of a cross as a symbol of the Christian faith). Tattoos in recent decades have come to serve many purposes, including memorializing loved ones, expressing aesthetic tastes, depicting personal histories, expressing emotions or feelings, and symbolizing rebellion (Dey and Das 2017). A modified approach to the classic tattoo can be found in the art of scarification. Scarification is the branding, burning, or etching of designs into the skin. Scarification marks often identify someone as being affiliated with subcultures or other groups. The practice is also used to represent individual growth or the growth and development of a group or subset of a society. The patterned scarification visible on the face of this man was formed through the intentional creation and controlled healing of wounds. This image was taken in what was then the Belgian Congo by Christian missionaries in the early twentieth century. Scarification has been used by many cultures to mark group identity. (credit: “Man with Scarification Patterns, Congo, ca. 1900-1915” by Unknown/USC Digital Library/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Makeup has been an expression of visual art since prehistoric times. It is used to enhance beauty, cover up flaws, and represent cultural ideals of what beauty is and should be. It is often a sociocultural delineation of wealth and success. Piercings are used for many of the same reasons and have been found in the earliest of ancient African mummies. They may be seen as an expression of individuality or of identity and affiliation. Another example of body art is body painting . In some cultures, body painting is limited to the face, while others cover their entire bodies. The painting of the whole body is a common practice among Indigenous Australian peoples (Figure 16.9). The purposes of this type of body art include, but are not limited to, subcultural identification and announcements of social status and accomplishments. The painting can be temporary or semipermanent, achieved through various types of paints and stains. Body painting follows uniform patterns and styles in some cultures and is independently driven in others. The specific designs might reveal an individual’s position within their family, membership in a group, social position, tribal identity, and even precise ancestral history (Layton 1989). These Aboriginal Australians have adorned their torsos with traditional body paint utilizing various conventions and motifs. (credit: “Aborigines on Palm Island, Qld - 1930s Perhaps” by Aussie~mobs/flickr, Public Domain) Henna art is another example of body painting. Henna paint is derived from crushed, milled, and sifted henna leaves. It is applied directly on the skin in intricate designs that leave a red or orange stain once the paint is removed. Henna body art is used in various cultures of North Africa, Somalia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent to adorn the hands and sometimes the feet of young women on special occasions, such as weddings and religious celebrations such as Eid al-Fitr (Chairunnisa and Solihat 2019). During weddings, women use henna to articulate cultural, familial, and religious affiliations. It is also used to accentuate the beauty of the bride and as a testament to the status of the family she is coming from and of the one she is marrying into. The elaborate patterns on these women’s arms are created using henna paste. After giving the paste time to stain the skin, it is washed away. The arm on the left shows the paste before washing, the arm of the woman on the right shows the color once the paste is removed. (credit: “Henna” by Rovich/500px/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0) The grooming of hair is also a culturally significant practice in societies throughout the world. The way one styles or displays their hair can symbolize many things, including membership in a religious sect, racial affiliation, and alignment with pop cultural trends. Hair also has been seen as an indicator of social status. From an evolutionary perspective, the quality and amount of hair one has indicates robustness and has contributed to mate selection and group identification. Hairstyles, hair volume, and hair coverings all have contributed to cultural identity and have been viewed as artistic representations of the lived experiences of people in myriad cultures and times. In some traditional Muslim cultures, hair is concealed by headscarves called hijabs. This representation of modesty has become an icon of Middle Eastern tradition and culture. Hairstyles are especially significant in African and African diasporic cultures. Hair played a significant role in ancient African civilizations, used to symbolize familial background, social status, tribal belonging, marital status, and spirituality. Hair-grooming practices, particularly time-intensive practices such as getting one’s hair braided, are often social activities. art the application of human creative skill and imagination to produce works intended to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power, typically but not exclusively in a visual form such as a painting or sculpture. body painting application of paint to the body iconographic study the study of visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a person, cult, or movement. meme an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations. scarification the branding, burning, or etching of designs into the skin. sociodemographic of, relating to, or involving a combination of social and demographic factors. tattooing a form of body art where a mark, symbol, picture or design is placed on the skin. Tattooing has been practiced for thousands of years.

Social Sciences


Anthropology of Music Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define ethnomusicology. Describe evidence of musical instruments in prehistory. Articulate the importance of sociocultural context to the understanding of music. Describe how music can form the basis of subculture and community. Evaluate the potential of music to impact processes of social change. Describe how cultural appropriation of music is related to social inequality and power. Music Music is found in wide-ranging settings and format, including chants, musicals, live performances, recorded performances, and spiritual rituals. In prehistoric times, music was used to communicate, to tell the stories of people and express important elements of cultures. Music articulates the human experience, focusing on what people want to remember about their history and what they desire for the future. It has been used to heal, to demonstrate power, and to archive the experiences of people. Present-day music is an extension and an evolution of the music that has come before. It is a medium that represents the depths of time, culture, and history. Prehistoric musical instruments, called music artifacts in anthropology, include woodwinds and percussion instruments of ancient nomadic tribes. These instruments began as rudimentary music artifacts and evolved into more sophisticated technological equipment invented and formed for the exclusive purpose of creating music. Ethnomusicology Someone who studies music from a global perspective, as a social practice, and through ethnographic field work is called an ethnomusicologist. The Society for Ethnomusicology defines ethnomusicology as “the study of music in its social and cultural contexts” (n.d.). Ethnomusicology is complex, requiring the work of many scientific disciplines. It requires study of many geographic areas, with a focus on the social practice of music and the human experience. Ethnomusicology is interdisciplinary, with a close relation to cultural anthropology. It is sometimes described as a historical research approach to understanding the cultures of people through their music. One well-known ethnomusicologist was Frances Densmore , who focused on the study of Native American music and culture. Frances Densmore was an American anthropologist and ethnographer. This image from 1916 shows her with Blackfoot chief, Mountain Chief. During this session, Mountain Chief listened to a song Densmore had recorded and interpreted it for her in Plains Indian Sign Language. (credit: “Piegan Indian, Mountain Chief, Listening to Recording with Ethnologist Frances Densmore” by National Photo Company/Library of Congress, Public Domain) Musical Instruments in Prehistory The field of ethnomusicology focuses on all aspects of music, including its genre, its message, the artist(s) who created it, and the instruments they used to do so. Have you ever considered why a particular musical instrument was created? Who made it? Why did they make it? What did they want it to do? How was it used? How did they dream up the design? Emily Brown (2005), formerly of the US National Park Service, studied the development of musical instruments in Ancestral Puebloan sites. Her study yielded insights into the types of instruments created. These included percussion and woodwind flutes that were used to create music culturally centric to the Puebloan people. Her study also yielded great insight into the structural hierarchy of those entrusted to manufacture music-making instruments. Not too dissimilar to today’s trade apprenticeships and master programs found in construction, Ancestral Puebloan people established a system of passing down the construction techniques central to creating musical instruments, ensuring that the knowledge would be carried on by future generations. Brown’s study connected music instruments to politics, music, social status, and social experiences. The Structure and Function of Music in Different Societies Music is grounded in the human experience. It is a theatrical expression of its creator’s thoughts and perceptions. The structure of music has evolved along with the experiences of the humans who created it. Examples of this can be found in the early 1800s hymns of Choctaw tribes. These hymns provide an artistic expression of traumatic experiences, referring to a time when the Choctaw people were removed from their homelands and relocated to reservation lands by the US government. They speak of both individual and collective experiences as these peoples made the arduous journey to their new locations. The songs speak about broken promises, the journey, and the fate of their people. This trading card, published by the National Parks Service, commemorates the forced journey of the Choctaw people to reservation lands, commonly known as the Trail of Tears. The Choctaw people have commemorated this same journey in hymns. (credit: “Trail of Tears for the Creek People” by TradingCardsNPS/flickr, CC BY 2.0) For enslaved people, music was a mechanism of emotional escape from difficult situations as well as a means of communicating with those speaking different languages during the Middle Passage, the journey from Africa to locations of forced labor. One of the most iconic spirituals, or songs for survival, is “Go Down Moses.” Harriet Tubman , the legendary Underground Railroad conductor, said that she used this spiritual as a way to signal to those who were enslaved in the area who she wanted to help escape to freedom (Bradford [1886] 1995). The song ostensibly speaks about the experience of the Israelites enslaved by the Egyptians in ancient times. For enslaved Black people in America, the song spoke directly to their own longing for freedom. The chorus of “Go Down Moses” is as follows: Go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land. Tell ol’ Pharaoh, Let my people go. Thus saith the Lord, bold Moses said, Let my people go, If not, I’ll smite your firstborn dead, Let my people go. Listen to this song on the Library of Congress website . Numerous populations have utilized music as a means of resistance. During the civil rights movement of the 20th century, Black artists such as Nina Simone , Aretha Franklin , and Sam Cooke used their music as a way to challenge structural inequity. Aretha Franklin, a Black singer, songwriter, and pianist, wrote and performed music anchored in the Black church that came to represent Black American culture. She achieved national and international fame for her rich voice and heartfelt performances, and she was able to use her artistic talents to bring a message of both hope and resistance to her audience. Her songs spoke to both where people were and where they wanted to be. Sam Cooke was an American singer who was given the nickname “King of Soul” by his fans and those in the music industry. Like many, he started out singing in church, but eventually his music and passion evolved to secular music. He is credited with having significant influence on the civil rights movement, and his music often explored themes of oppression and fighting for a cause. The music of his first band, Soul Stirrers, focused on stirring the listener’s soul to engage in the movement for racial equality. Sam Cooke’s performance outfit and instruments are on display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. The music of Sam Cooke had considerable influence on the Civil Rights movement. (credit: “Sam Cooke’s Outfit” by Steven Miller/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Perhaps no artist in recent times is better known for using music as a catalyst for social change than Bob Dylan . Dylan was a 1960s-era musical artist who spoke to many cultures and generations about injustice and the need for inclusion and change. His 1964 song “The Times They Are a-Changin’” urged politicians and voters to support the civil rights movement. He was also well known for his opposition to the Vietnam War. His music may have very well changed the course of history, given his influence on his fans’ thoughts, perspectives, and attitudes toward inclusion (Ray 2017). American musician and songwriter Bob Dylan popularized many protest songs, including 1964’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” (credit: “Bob Dylan” by F. Antolín Hernández/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Zora Neale Hurston 1861–1960 In this image, Zora Neale Hurston exuberantly plays a traditional drum. (credit: “Zora Hurston, Half-Length Portrait, Standing, Facing Slightly Left, Beating the Hountar, or Mama Drum” by New York World-Telegram & Sun staff photographer/Library of Congress, Public Domain) Personal History: Zora Neale Hurston was a Black American anthropologist, author, and filmmaker. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, to a sharecropper turned carpenter and a former schoolteacher. All of her grandparents were born enslaved. Hurston moved to Eatonville, Florida, an all-Black town, in 1892, at the age of two. She often referenced Eatonville as her home, as she had no recollection of her time in Alabama. She lived in Eatonville until 1904, when her mother passed. At the time, Eatonville was a well-established Black community with a booming economy. According to multiple accounts, Hurston was never indoctrinated into feeling racial inferiority. While she was a resident, her father was elected mayor of the town. All the shop owners and government officials were also Black American elites. In adulthood, Huston often used Eatonville as the setting of her stories. Huston left Eatonville due to a poor relationship with her stepmother. She enrolled in classes at Morgan College in Maryland, lying about her age of 26 to be eligible for a free high school education. She graduated in 1918 and attended Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, DC, before transferring to Barnard College at Columbia University. At Barnard, Hurston studied under Franz Boas as an undergraduate and graduate student. She also worked with other foundational anthropologists, including Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead . Area of Anthropology: In addition to her time in academia, Hurston was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance as a literary artist, working closely with Langston Hughes , among other writers. She was a pivotal literary artist whose work directly reflected the trials, tribulations, and successes of Black American communities and subsocieties that were often overlooked or exoticized (Jones 2009). Hurston was a cultural anthropologist who was passionate about southern American and Caribbean cultural practices. She spent significant time in these geographical areas, immersing herself in the diverse cultures of Black people in the American South and the Caribbean. Accomplishments in the Field: One of Hurston’s most notable anthropological works is Mules and Men (1935), based on ethnographic research she conducted in lumber camps in north Florida. One focus of this work was the power dynamics between the White men who were in charge and the Black women laborers, some of whom the men took as concubines. In addition to this work, Hurston studied Black American song traditions and their relationship to the music of enslavement and to the musical traditions of pre–Middle Passage Africans. Importance of Her Work: Hurston not only studied human society and culture as an anthropologist but was also an active participant in the arts. She was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, which was a flowering of Black culture centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Her most popular novel is Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937; Carby 2008). Her specific anthropological and ethnographic research focus areas were Black American and Caribbean folklore. She also worked for the Federal Writer’s Project, part of the Works Progress Administration, as a writer and folklorist. Hurston is now an iconic figure for the Association of Black Anthropologists and several Black anthropological studies journals. The Importance of Sociocultural Context in Understanding Music Ethnomusicologist Patricia Campbell (2011) proposes that children’s perspectives on musical interests are derived from their family, community, and environment. How did you learn about music you liked? What did your parents listen to, and what do you listen to? While you may have learned about and grown to like other music as you aged, your appreciation for music is founded in the sociocultural environment that you were raised in. Imagine growing up in a family that only listened to Bansuri bamboo flute music. Would you even know, for example, what rap music is? Music as a Basis for Subculture and Community The affiliation of music with identity became a common topic of inquiry in ethnomusicology in the 1980s, perhaps prompted by the music subcultures of the 1970s that arose among groups of people who did not identify with mainstream norms, values, or ideals. Among the music subcultures that emerged during that time was the punk subculture (Moran 2010). Though it was often seen as no more than youthful rebellion, the punk subculture formed its own community, values, and ideals founded in a do-it-yourself, or DIY, ethos. This can be found in the lyrics, music, and performances of punk groups such as the Ramones and the Clash , as well as more recent pop-influenced groups such as Green Day and Blink-182 . The lyrics tell stories of needing to break from common ideals and values in order to think and do for oneself. The rock band Green Day is one of many musical groups connected to specific subcultures in contemporary culture. (credit: “Green Day Concert Stage (Montreal) - Green Day Is Ever Green” by Anirudh Koul/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Cultural Appropriation Cultural practices important to communities are often integrated into the fabric of each person’s identity. Cultural appropriation is defined as the improper or disrespectful use of a meaningful element of a culture or identity outside of its intended cultural context by someone who is not a part of that culture or identity (Young 2008). The act of cultural appropriation by dominant cultures threatens to erase remaining parts of a culture that may already be jeopardized. Cultural appropriation is tied to social inequity in that it involves a socially dominant group using the culture of a marginalized group for exploitative or capitalist gain. The cultural significance of the appropriated elements is lost. While the act of cultural appropriation is centuries old, there has been a renewed call from marginalized communities in recent years to understand how and why this practice is harmful. Wesley Morris (2019) wrote an article for the New York Times ’ 1619 Project regarding the mass appropriation of Black music. Morris noted instances of appropriation by artists such as Steely Dan , Eminem , and Amy Winehouse , all White American or British music superstars. Musical appropriation is the use of one genre’s musical contributions in other music that is not of the same genre, style, or culture. The power of Black music to articulate the history, struggles, and marginalization of Black people has appealed to other social groups as well, many of them drawn to the ability of this music to communicate its message with clarity and boldness. Morris also discusses how, more recently, the appropriation of Black lyrics, songs, and musical presentation styles has become a method of addressing the need for integration and integrated culture. This can be seen in Black artist Lil Nas X ’s 2019 remix of his hit song “Old Town Road,” for which he teamed up with White country musician Billy Ray Cyrus to perform a duet. The song itself is a blending of cultures, musical and racial, and offers a social contribution to evolving efforts at inclusion. cultural appropriation the adoption, usually without acknowledgment, of cultural identity markers from subcultures or minority communities into mainstream culture by people with a relatively privileged status.

Social Sciences


An Anthropological View of Sport throughout Time Learning Outcomes By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the anthropology of sports. Explain how sports are a form of performance. Identify the role that sports can play for young people. Sports are also deeply intertwined with the human experience. The anthropology of sports is a rapidly developing field that includes specialties such as physiological anthropology and human growth and development. Sports can be quite diverse; picture a Roman gladiator, a modern-day European football (soccer) player, and an ancient or recent Olympic competitor. Another example of a sport is Trobriand cricket, a bat-and-ball game played by Trobriand Islanders that had evolved considerably since its introduction by Christian missionaries at the turn of the 20th century. Sports are expressions of passions and reflections of the human experience. They have been practiced by many cultures throughout time and across the globe. This section will specifically focus on how sports have impacted human culture and how human culture has impacted sports in turn. It will consider the historical foundation of the culture of sports and briefly analyze the way people interact with sports today, examining how human culture and societal practices are influenced by not only individual athletes but also social structures. The Anthropology of Sports Anthropologists understand sports as a cultural performance. The term performance can describe a plethora of actions, including any that are artful, active, or competitive—and sometimes some combination of all of these. Anthropologist Ajeet Jaiswal (2019) describes the anthropology of sports as the study of human growth and development. If one conceives of sports as a sort of performance, one also sees that each performance is unique to the performer. Each athlete, even the most impressive and seemingly unique, is a part of a larger performance. Consider your favorite sport or athletic competition. How long has it been in existence? Does it have roots in ancient times? Often, athletes and sports personalities—from Roman gladiators to more recent English footballers, American basketball players, and Olympic athletes—are considered singularly talented at their respective sports; however, without the broader cultural context that has cultivated gymnastics, tennis, soccer, and basketball, these talents would have no stage on which to perform. Anthropologists who study sports do so within a larger context of sports and society. Interests of anthropologists researching sports might include archaeological research related to sports tools, cultural anthropological research pertaining to how humans interact with sports, or even biological/physical anthropological research on biological maturation or physical growth (Damo, Oliven, and Guedes 2008). A Roman bronze reproduction of Discobolus , by the ancient Greek sculptor Myron. Throwing the discus, still an event in contemporary track and field meets, has been traced back to the original Olympic Games in Ancient Greece. (credit: “Myron (fl c 460-440 BC) - Diskobolus (Discus Thrower), Plaster Replica with Broken Left Hand, Right, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, May 2013” by ketrin1407/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Sports artifacts such as the weapons of gladiators and tools used in old and recent Olympic sports have offered significant contributions to the anthropology of material art. Picture your favorite sport. It likely involves a specific tool that is a representation of that sport. Notable examples of such tools and artifacts include the lacrosse sticks of the Iroquois, hammers from the oldest Olympic hammer-throw competitions, and the modern-day American football uniform, which is designed for safety and decorated to represent affiliation, professionalism, and individual athletes. Sports have also offered theatrical performances since ancient times. Picture the gladiators of ancient Rome entertaining the wealthy who could afford the best seats or wealthy English footballers entertaining those who are likely less wealthy. The status reversal of sports entertainers and audiences in modern-day sports represents the dichotomous nature of social status and is just one of many examples of cultural change throughout time. The Evolution of Sports For most of documented human history, sports have been a significant part of the human experience for both audience and participants. Archaeological artifacts pertaining to sports, including colosseums, weapons, and artistic representations of competition, have been traced back to as early as 2000 BCE in China. These ancient sports featured competitions that tested the strength, stamina, and techniques of performers, such as footraces and physical fights. Today, many nations around the world participate in a version of the Olympic Games that were popular in the ancient Greek village of Olympia. Early events included a marathon run and wrestling. The Olympics were revived in the late 19th century, with the first modern games occurring in 1896 in Athens, Greece. Though rules and regulation may have been less stringent and defined in the sports of previous centuries, competition as entertainment has existed for millennia. These professional lacrosse players are take part in a game that originated with the Indigenous people of what is now Canada. (credit: “Tailgate Bayhawks Game Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium” by Maryland GovPics/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Sports can provide much more than mere entertainment to people and societies. Today, when thinking about modern sports, a person may think of professional athletes such as National Basketball Association (NBA) star Kobe Bryant or National Football League (NFL) great Walter Payton . In early competitions, the wealthy attended sporting events in which the athletes were typically not wealthy or privileged. In modern times, the commercialization of sports has largely reversed this trend, with “common” people attending sporting events to watch wealthy athletes compete. The business of sports has created opportunities for financial and cultural success for people with exceptional athletic abilities. The success of athletes such as Kobe Bryant created opportunities for other athletes, paving the way for the success of people who may not have otherwise thought it possible to experience the fame, notoriety, and financial success of a modern athlete (Chacko 2020). Ed Smith was a running back in college and the NFL in the 1930s. As homage to his skill, he was asked to model for the Heisman Trophy, which has immortalized the now iconic “stiff arm” pose he took. (credit: “A Quick Stop to See the First Ever Heisman Trophy Statue @UChicago” by Cole Camplese/flickr, CC BY 2.0) Youth Sports Recreational sports for youth are common in various cultures. This can be especially important in marginalized communities, where youth sports are often viewed as deterrents from (or alternatives to) potentially dangerous activities or preventive structures that support youth development and community by focusing on positive actions that reduce adverse social behaviors. Youth sports programs are often community-building initiatives. One such initiative is the NFL’s Play 60 program, which challenges NFL football players to engage in activities with underrepresented communities, encouraging kids of all skill levels to come together to play sports. Among Indigenous Americans, an aggressive style of basketball called reservation ball, or rezball for short, is prominent in reservation communities. Rezball is different from traditional basketball, as the techniques used encourage relentlessly aggressive play and quick shooting. For youth on reservations, this may be one of a limited number of recreation opportunities. Rezball is documented in the Netflix docuseries Basketball or Nothing and a 2009 ESPN story about the role of rezball in the culture of Native American children. performance a musical, dramatic, or other form of entertainment presented before an audience. rezball short for reservation ball, a style of basketball played in Native American reservation communities.

Social Sciences