Artist’s depiction of a woman hunting, created in 1565. Contrary to some long held beliefs, women have always played a role in hunting game. (credit: “Illustration of activities of Lapps and Finns: Men and women hunting with bows and arrows on snowshoes; “women hunt...as nimbly...or more than men” by Illustration of activities of Lapps and Finns/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
Imagine a research project that contains these three members:
Randy Haas discovered the 9,000-year-old grave of a teenager buried with a hunting tool kit in the Andes mountains of Peru. Haas found that this hunter from long ago was a young woman. This discovery has upset the notion that hunting was the exclusive activity of men throughout human evolutionary history.
Daniel Miller is part of a global team researching how people use smartphones in various parts of the world, including Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, China, Ireland, Italy, Japan, East Jerusalem, and Uganda. The team is exploring how smartphones take on different functions in different cultural contexts. Focusing on Ireland, Miller theorizes that smartphones become a kind of personal avatar, expressing and enacting the specific social identity of the user.
Red-tailed monkeys, the subject of anthropologist Michelle Brown’s study, are primates that are found in Central and East Africa. This red-tailed monkey lives in Uganda. They are social animals and live in groups of 8-30 individuals. (credit: “Schmidt's Red-tailed Monkey” by Mehgan Murphy/Smithsonian’s National Zoo, CC0 1.0)
Michelle Brown spends long days observing blue monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, and baboons in a conservation park in Uganda. She records the behavior of these primates as they find food, communicate, and fight with one another. She collects urine and feces to analyze hormone levels, intestinal parasites, and DNA. She wants to understand how primates compete as individuals and groups for access to various foods in their environment.
What kind of research project could encompass such a diversity of topics and methods? Since this is an anthropology textbook, you can probably guess. Though they conduct research on vastly different topics, all three are anthropologists. How could the work of these researchers be united in one academic discipline? The reason, as we will see, is that anthropology is vast.
Hopefully, as you read these examples, you were also thinking about the description of science on the previous pages. You might begin to think about the extent to which these sorts of research projects fit into that description. We know already that anthropology, the study of human-kind, is guided by a central narrative and set of research commitments. Anthropology aims to overcome bias by examining cultures as complex, integrated products of specific environmental and historical conditions. Anthropologists use many different research strategies in their efforts to represent people from cultures very different from their own.
Perhaps because of the 'messiness' of studying something as complex as human culture, some have criticized the discipline as non-scientific. Add to this that anthropology explores controversial topics that may challenge individual assumptions and values. The goal is to understand the full experience of humanity, including elements that may seem unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Like science more broadly, however, anthropology more plainly teaches a set of skills for setting aside personal perspectives and keeping an open mind while learning about the diversity of human practices and ideas. As discussed further throughout this text, this does not mean abandoning individual personal values, but rather suspending judgment temporarily while learning to understand the perspectives of others.
Because asking questions (or forming hypotheses, if you prefer) about humans results in such a vast array of questions and related methods for investigation, the larger discipline of anthropology is often broken down into its four-subfields. The rest of this chapter presents a basic introduction to each of them as well as the over-arching aspects of anthropology (like 'holism') which unite them. The rest of this textbook then presents a chapter on each of these same four fields. We were given a look at them at the very beginning, but here they are again:
Biological (sometimes called Physical or Evolutionary) anthropology,
Cultural (sometimes called Social) anthropology,
Archaeology,
and Linguistic anthropology.
Bones, Stones, Thrones, and Tones
We have a rhyming pneumonic device for remembering the four fields and the central emphases that define them. Biological anthropology emphasizing the morphology of the human body and all that goes with it is described as looking at 'bones.' Archaeology often looks at how past humans used their environment including, perhaps most famously, the building of structures and the creation of tools, so they are given 'stones.' Social anthropology's emphasis on power structures, relationships, rituals, and other cultural features is represented by 'thrones.' And linguistic anthropology's emphasis on communication—including ideas like accents and inflection—gets 'tones.' Taken together, we are bones, stones, thrones, and tones.
Shared Commitments
Anthropology is a vast field of study. Anthropology is unique in both its enormous breadth (it is interested in virtually everything) and its distinctive focus (humans). Put simply, anthropology is the study of humanity across time and space. Anthropologists study every possible realm of human experience, thought, activity, and organization. Remember our ouroboros; human as we are, we can only engage in social and natural worlds through our human minds and human bodies. Even engagement with nonhuman realms such as astronomy and botany are conditioned by our human senses and cognition and varies across different societies and times.
You may be thinking, If anthropology is the human aspect of absolutely everything, then does anthropology encompass the other social disciplines, such as political science, religious studies, and economics? This is not the case. Certainly, anthropologists are frequently multidisciplinary, meaning that while their research and teaching are focused within the discipline of anthropology, they also engage with other disciplines and work with researchers and teachers in other fields. But the way that scholars in the other social disciplines approach their subject matter is different from the way anthropologists approach those same subjects.
The distinctive approach of anthropology relies on a central narrative, or story, about humanity as well as a set of scholarly commitments. This central story and these common commitments hold the discipline together, enabling anthropologists to combine insights from diverse fields into one complex portrait of what it means to be human.
Anthropology is everything, but it’s not just anything. Anthropology is the study of humanity guided by a distinctive narrative and set of commitments.
Anthropologists are great storytellers. They tell many, many stories about all aspects of human life. At the heart of all of these stories is one fundamental story: the “story of humanity,” a rich and complex narrative. A narrative is a story that describes a connected set of features and events. Do you recognize a parallel between story/narrative and hypothesis/theory? Narratives can be fictional or nonfictional. The narrative of anthropology is a true story, a factual narrative about the origins and development of humanity as well as our contemporary ways of life. The central narrative of anthropology can be summarized this way:
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.
Three features of this narrative are especially important to anthropologists. These features form three central commitments of anthropology. In academic study, a commitment is a common goal recognized by the scholars in a discipline. In anthropology, these are:
Exploring sociocultural diversity
Understanding how societies hold together
Examining the interdependence of humans and the rest of nature
Exploring Sociocultural Diversity
As the narrative suggests, humans in a diversity of conditions create a diversity of cultures. Rather than trying to find out which way of life is better, morally superior, more efficient, or happier, or to make any other sort of judgment call, anthropologists are committed to describing and understanding the diversity of human ways of life. Setting aside judgments, we can see that humans everywhere create culture to meet their needs. Anthropologists discover how different cultures devise different solutions to the challenges of human survival, social integration, and the search for meaning.
What are you wearing today? What about your professor? Are they wearing a bathrobe and slippers, or perhaps a cocktail dress with stilettos? You can be (almost) certain not. But why not? You might assume that what Americans wear for class is completely normal, but this assumption ignores the question of what makes something “normal.”
Ghanaian professionals wearing local fashions to promote the national textile industry. (credit: “Ghanaian Ladies” by Erik (HASH) Hersman/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
In many countries, for instance, university students typically wear dress shirts with slacks or skirts to class. Many Ghanaian students would not dream of wearing ripped jeans or tight leggings to class, considering such casual dress disrespectful. American students put much more emphasis on comfort than on presentation, an overall trend in American dress. Even in office settings, it is now acceptable for Americans to wear casual clothing on Fridays. In the West African country of Ghana, “casual Friday” never caught on, but office workers have developed their own distinctive Friday dress code. As the local textile industry became threatened by Chinese imports, Ghanaian office workers began wearing outfits sewn from locally manufactured cloth on Fridays, creating a practice of “National Friday Wear.”
So which way is better, the American way or the Ghanaian way? Anthropologists understand that neither way is "better" and that each addresses a need within a particular culture. Casual Friday is great for Americans who crave comfy leisurewear, while National Friday Wear is great for Ghanaians who want to boost their local economy and show their cultural pride.
Anthropologists recognize not only diversity across different cultures but also the diverse experiences and perspectives within a culture. Do you ever buy used clothing at thrift shops, or do you know people who do? An old green men’s trench coat bought at a vintage clothing store may be a favorite of a college student. The mother of that student may not feel the same way and offer to buy their child a new coat much to the distress of the owner of the coat! To people who have grown up in the 1930’s and 1940’s, used clothing was associated with the hard times of the Great Depression. For the newer generations, used clothing is a way to find unique, affordable clothing that can stretch the boundaries of mainstream style. Although people in a culture share a general set of rules, they interpret them differently according to their social roles and experiences, sometimes stretching the rules in ways that ultimately change them over time.
A Ghanaian trader in her secondhand clothing shop (credit: “Market Woman - Kejetia Market - Kumasi - Ghana - 03” by Adam Jones/flickr, CC BY 2.0)
In Ghana, most used clothing is imported from the United States and Europe in large bales that local vendors purchase and sell in market stalls. A person from the United States or Europe is locally referred to as an obruni. Used clothing is called obruni wawu, or “a foreign person has died,” reflecting the assumption that no living person would give away such wearable clothing. Many Ghanaians love to pick through the piles of obruni wawu in the market, thrilled to find recognizable brands and unusual styles. Some, however, associate obruni wawu with poverty. The stalls that sell obruni wawu are often called “bend-over boutiques,” referring to the subservient posture adopted by customers rifling through the piles of clothing on the ground. Obruni wawu is suitable in some situations but certainly not in others. A particular Ghanaian movie included a scene where a man trying to woo a much younger woman. When the man gave his would be girlfriend a bag full of obruni wawu as a gift, it caused the audience to burst our laughing. The gift was humorous and inappropriate to the audience.
As with clothing, different cultures come up with different solutions to common challenges such as housing, food, family structure, the organization of work, and finding meaning in life. And people in every society discuss and argue about their own cultural norms. Anthropology seeks to document and understand the diverse range of solutions to common human challenges as well as the diversity of conflicting perspectives within each culture.
Understanding How Societies Hold Together
Just as the various parts of our bodies all work together (the brain, the heart, the liver, the skeleton, and so forth), the various parts of a society all work together as well (the economy, the political system, religion, families, etc.). Frequently, anthropologists discover that changes in one realm of society are related to changes in another realm in unexpected ways. When farmers in Ghana began growing cocoa for export during the colonial period, the agricultural shift dramatically altered gender relations as men monopolized cash crops and women were relegated to vegetable farming for their families’ consumption and local trade. As men benefited from the profits of the cocoa trade, relations between men and women became more unequal.
Anthropologists have a favorite word for the way that all elements of human life interrelate to form distinctive cultures: holism. Sometimes those parts reinforce one another, encouraging stability; sometimes they contradict one another, promoting change.
Forms of Solidarity
This analogy of parts working together (like organs) comes from Emile Durkheim's concept of 'organic solidarity' (named for those 'organs' rather than the sense of 'living matter'). Durkheim proposed this along with a contrasting form of 'solidarity.' The other he called 'mechanical solidarity.'
Durkheim observed that smaller, more egalitarian, societies operated on shared beliefs, practices, and a collective conscience. They are 'mechanical' because the members are like the roughly interchangable components of a machine. In other words, their 'solidarity' is more automatic. In contrast, larger, more stratified, societies operate on inter-dependence of roles and the functional relationship of individuals. The 'organs' of an organism cannot be swapped out like the cogs of a machine and no part of the system can survive without the others.
In either case, the 'whole' of a given 'society' is defined in part by the way its form of 'solidarity' holds it together.
Anthropologists are curious about how different cultures create different categories of people and use those categories to organize the activities of social life. In many farming societies, for instance, men do certain kinds of agricultural work and women do others. In societies where land must be cleared in order to sow crops, men often chop down trees and clear the brush while women do the planting. In societies that utilize large-scale industrial farming, migrants or people of a specific ethnicity or assigned racial category are often recruited (or forced) to perform the manual labor required to grow and harvest crops. In industrial capitalist societies (like the United States), one group of people owns the factories and another group works the machines that produce the industrial products.
Relations between groups can be cooperative, competitive, or combative. Some cultures promote the equality of social groups, while many others reinforce inequality among groups. Holism is not the same as harmony. Anthropologists are interested in how society holds together but also in the conditions that can cause conflict, change, and disintegration.
You may have heard the word polarized used to describe the sense that two different groups in American society are moving farther and farther apart in their values, opinions, and desires. Some suggest that the contradictory perspectives of these two groups threaten to tear American society apart. Others suggest that Americans are united by deeper values such as freedom, equal opportunity, and democracy. Using holism to understand this issue, an anthropologist might consider how the perspectives of each group relate to that group’s economic experiences, political convictions, and/or religious or moral values. A comprehensive use of holism would explore all of these aspects of society, looking at how they interact to produce the polarization we see today and suggesting what might be done to bring the two groups into productive dialogue.
We'll look at holism in more detail in the coming pages. For now, we might use the following definition:
Definition: Holism
The perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind, body, individuals, society, and the environment interpenetrate, and even define one another; the anthropological view that the whole of a culture is greater than the sum of its parts.
Examining the Interdependence of Humans and Nature
As our narrative suggests, anthropologists are interested in the natural environment, the way humans have related to the natural world over time, and how this relationship shapes various cultures. Anthropologists consider how people in different cultures understand and use the various elements of nature, including land, water, plants, other animals, climate, and space. They show how people interact with these elements of nature in complex ways.
Archaeologists working in prehistoric sites all over the world have documented how prehistoric people understood celestial objects and used them to navigate their waterways, create calendars and clocks, regulate farming activities, schedule religious ceremonies, and inform political leaders. This area of study is called archaeoastronomy. In Chaco Canyon in the American Southwest, archaeologists have discovered that buildings in the major settlement areas were aligned so that certain windows would provide perfect vantage points to view the sun and moon at pivotal times of the year, such as solstice and equinox. The Sun Dagger, consisting of two whorl-shaped petroglyphs (stone etchings) on Fajada Butte, is precisely positioned under a rock crevice so as to indicate the solstices and equinoxes when the sun shines through the crevice. Unfortunately, tourist foot traffic at the site has altered the width and direction of the crevice so that the Sun Dagger no longer marks these celestial events accurately.
The Sun Dagger at Fajada Butte (credit: National Park Service/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
The people of Chaco Canyon may have been particularly attuned to the features of their environment as they constructed their complex civilization in the challenging environment of the high desert. With scarce rainfall and brief growing seasons, their survival depended on accurate identification of opportune planting and harvesting times. With the onset of a 50-year drought, farming became more and more precarious. Eventually, the ancient peoples of Chaco were forced to abandon the area.
Some anthropologists study how people interact with the plants in their area. The field of ethnobotany examines how people in different cultures categorize and use plants for food, shelter, tools, transportation, art, and religion. Ethnobotanists also conduct research on plants used in healing to discover the relationship between cultural practices and the pharmaceutical properties of these plants. Some examine the cultural use of psychoactive plants such as mushrooms and peyote in religious ritual. For instance, anthropologist Jamon Halvaksz studied the controversial use of marijuana among youth in New Guinea (2006). Young people told Halvaksz that marijuana helped them work harder, overcome shame, and understand ancestral stories. Critics of the practice told Halvaksz that marijuana dried the blood of people who used it, making their offspring weak and feeble. Marijuana use has generated similar controversies in other countries, including the United States, with some arguing that the drug provides relaxation and pain relief while others claim it interferes with cognitive abilities and motivation.
Our relationship with nature is reciprocal. Nature shapes humanity, and humanity shapes nature. Exploring how nature shapes humanity, anthropologists speculate about how aspects of the environment have shaped the emergence and development of human biology, such as our ability to walk, the shape of our teeth, and the size of our brains. Dramatic climactic shifts over the past several million years have forced periods of rapid biological and cultural adaptation, resulting in new hominin species and new skill sets such as language and toolmaking. In more recent archaeological time periods, environmental characteristics have shaped religious beliefs, gender relations, food-getting strategies, and political systems. Environmental forces can trigger the beginning or the end of a society. Some archaeologists study how natural events such as volcanic eruptions and droughts have led to mass migrations and the collapse of empires.
Our reciprocal relationship with nature also works the other way around; that is, humans shape nature. Our environments are shaped by the food-getting methods of our societies as well as the way we acquire and trade resources such as oil, natural gas, diamonds, and gold. Many anthropologists explore how contemporary ways of life change the natural world at local, regional, and global levels. Farming dramatically impacts ecosystems with the clearing of prairies, wetlands, and forests. Fishing can deplete certain species, changing the whole ecosystem of rivers and coastal waters. Responding to population pressures, people construct dams to channel water to emergent cities. The redirection of water transforms regional ecosystems, turning wetlands into deserts and deserts into resource-hungry cities.
Some scholars use the term Anthropocene to describe the contemporary period of increasing human impact on the ecosystems of our planet. Large-scale pollution, mining, deforestation, ranching, and agriculture are causing dramatic environmental disruptions such as climate change and mass extinction of plant and animal species. Many anthropologists are studying these problems, focusing on how people are working locally, regionally, and globally to promote more sustainable ways of living in our natural world.
Defining the Four Fields
Let’s recall 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.
Researching this argument is a vast endeavor requiring many complementary approaches and techniques. Anthropology comprises four main approaches, the four subfields of our discipline: biological, archaeological, cultural, and linguistic (bones, stones, thrones, and tones). Each subfield specializes in exploring a different aspect of the common narrative. Combining insights from the four fields gives us a rich and complex understanding of any specific issue you could name such as gender, inequality, race, medicine, industry, and the environment. Let’s take a look at each subfield and then, since it is both an important example and one we can all relate to on some level, examine how the subfields combine in the study of racial categories and relations.
Biological Anthropology 🦴
Biological anthropology focuses on the earliest processes in the biological and sociocultural development of human beings as well as the biological diversity of contemporary humans. In other words, biological anthropologists study the origins, evolution, and diversity of our species. Some biological anthropologists use genetic data to explore the global distribution of human traits such as blood type or the ability to digest dairy products. Some study fossils to learn how humans have evolved and migrated. Some study our closest animal relatives, the primates, in order to understand what biological and social traits humans share with primates and explore what makes humans unique in the animal world.
The Dutch primatologist Carel van Schaik spent six years observing orangutans in Sumatra, discovering that these reclusive animals are actually much more social than previously thought (2004). Moreover, van Schaik observed that orangutans use a wide variety of tools and pass down skills to their young. By studying these primates, van Schaik and other biological anthropologists gain insight into the origins of human intelligence, technology, and culture. These researchers also warn that habitat loss, illegal hunting, and the exotic pet trade threaten the survival of our fascinating primate cousins.
Biological anthropologists frequently combine research among primates with evidence from the human fossil record, genetics, neuroscience, and geography to answer questions about human evolution. Sometimes their insights are startling and unexpected. Anthropologist Lynne Isbell argues that snakes have played a key role in the evolution of human biology, particularly our keen sense of sight and our ability to communicate through language (Isabell, 2009). Isbell’s “snake detection theory” posits that primates developed specialized visual perception as well as the ability to communicate what they were seeing in order to alert others to the threat of venomous snakes in their environment. She points to the near-universal fear of snakes shared by both humans and primates and has documented the prevalence of snake phobia in human myth and folklore. Isbell’s research highlights how human-animal relations are central to humanity, shaping both biology and culture.
Not all biological anthropologists study primates. Many biological anthropologists study fossilized remains in order to chart the evolution of early hominins, the evolutionary ancestors of modern humans. In this field of study, anthropologists consider the emergence and migration of the various species in the hominin family tree as well as the conditions that promoted certain biological and cultural traits. Some biological anthropologists examine the genetic makeup of contemporary humans in order to learn how certain genes and traits are distributed in human populations across different environments. Others examine human genetics looking for clues about the relationships between early modern humans and other hominins, such as Neanderthals.
Forensic anthropology uses the techniques of biological anthropology to solve crimes. By analyzing human remains such as decomposed bodies or skeletons, or tissue samples such as skin or hair, forensic anthropologists discern what they can about the nature of a crime and the people involved. Key questions are who died, how they died, and how long ago they died. Often, forensic anthropologists can discover the age, sex, and other distinctive features of perpetrators and victims. Looking closely at forms of bodily trauma and patterns of blood or bullets, they piece together the story of the crime. They work on investigative teams with law enforcement officers and medical experts in ballistics, toxicology, and other specialties. Forensic anthropologists often present their findings as witnesses in murder trials.
Not all of these crimes are contemporary. Sometimes, forensic anthropology is used to understand historical events. Excavating the historic Jamestown colony of early English settlers in North America, archaeologist William Kelso found a human skull in the midst of food remains. Noticing strange cut marks on the skull, he called upon Douglas Owsley, a forensic anthropologist working for the Smithsonian Institution, to help him figure out what the markings meant. Owsley determined that the markings were evidence of intentional chopping to the skull with a sharp blade. He concluded that the skeleton belonged to a 14-year-old girl who had been cannibalized by other settlers after she died. This interpretation corroborates historical evidence of severe starvation in the colony during the harsh winter of 1609–1610.
Archaeology 🪨
Archaeologists use artifacts and fossilized remains to explore how environmental and historical conditions have produced a diversity of human cultures – the study of archaeology. Artifacts are objects made by human beings, such as tools or pottery. Fossils are the remains of organisms preserved in the environment. Archaeologists have developed careful methods of excavation, or removing fossils and artifacts from the ground, in order to learn as much as possible about how people lived in times before and after the development of writing. They are interested in how people met basic needs such as clothing and shelter, as well how they organized their societies in family groups, trade networks, and systems of leadership. Many archaeologists seek to understand how humans lived in relation to the natural world around them, altering the environment at the same time that the environment was shaping their evolution and social development.
A group of archaeologists led by Tom Dillehay spent seven years excavating a set of sites in northern Peru, charting the development of human society in this area over a period of 14,000 years (2017). They traced the society from the early ways of life to the emergence of cities and early states, discovering how people there developed fishing, farming, and herding strategies that led to increased sociocultural complexity. The team collected data on the plants and animals of the area as well as the buildings, tools, cloth, and baskets made by the people. They concluded that the people who lived in this area placed a high value on cooperation and living in harmony with nature.
Some archaeologists focus on more specific topics in more recent time periods. Archaeologist Eric Tourigny examined the graves at pet cemeteries in the United Kingdom from 1881 to 1981(2020). Looking at the epitaphs on the gravestones of the pets, Tourigny noted a change from earlier Victorian ways of thinking of pets as friends to later, more modern ways of conceptualizing pets as members of the family. He noted, too, that epitaphs expressed an increasingly common belief that pet owners would be reunited with their pets in the afterlife.
Cultural Anthropology 👑
Cultural anthropology is devoted to describing and understanding the wide variety of cultures referred to in anthropology’s central narrative. Cultural anthropologists explore the everyday thoughts, feelings, and actions of people in different cultures as well as the cultural and historical events that they consider important. Examining social discourse and action, cultural anthropologists seek to understand unspoken norms and values as well as larger forces such as economic change and political domination. Cultural anthropologists also study how different societies are structured, including the roles and institutions that organize social life.
Cultural anthropologists often live for many months or years in the societies they study, adopting local ways of living, eating, dressing, and speaking as accurately as possible. This practice is called fieldwork. Anthropologists who undertake fieldwork might write an ethnography, an in-depth study of the culture they have been studying. Classic ethnographies of the early 20th century often portrayed the cultures of non-Western peoples as harmonious and unchanging over time. Bronislaw Malinowski, a pioneer of the long-term fieldwork method, spent nearly two years studying trade and magic among the Trobriand peoples living in what is now the Kiriwina island chain northeast of New Guinea. His ethnography, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), describes how Trobrianders undertook canoe voyages from island to island for the ceremonial exchange of white shell bracelets and red shell necklaces among different island groups, an exchange system known as the kula ring. Curiously, these highly valued objects had no use whatsoever, as no one ever wore them. Rather, the exchange of bracelets and necklaces functioned as a means of enhancing social status (for the givers) and reinforcing trade relationships. Malinowski argues that this form of exchange took the place of warfare. Exploring the kula ring in great detail, Malinowski also learned about many other aspects of Trobriand culture, such as the making of tools and canoes, farming practices, gender roles, sexuality, and magical beliefs and practices.
Today, cultural anthropologists tend to focus more on issues involving conflict and change, such as suicide bombing in Afghanistan (Edwards 2017), a creationist theme park in Kentucky (Bielo 2018), sperm donation in Denmark (Mohr 2018), and garbage pickers in Rio de Janeiro (Millar 2018). Often, anthropologists explore overlooked and marginalized perspectives on controversial issues, shedding light on the cultural complexities and power dynamics involved. Anthropologist Tracey Heatherington was interested in why some people were resisting the creation of a conservation park on the Italian island of Sardinia (2010). The central highlands of Sardinia are home to many endangered species and old growth forests, as well as local herding peoples who fiercely resisted the appropriation of their homeland. Heatherington’s research identified three competing perspectives: those of global environmentalists, the national government of Italy, and the local people of Sardinia. The global environmentalists view the Sardinian highlands as a delicate ecosystem that should be protected and controlled by environmental experts. The Italian government sees in the same land an opportunity to develop ecotourism and demonstrate the Italian commitment to environmentalism. The local peoples of Sardinia treasure their homeland as the foundation of their way of life, an intimate landscape imbued with history and cultural value. As the controversy drew these three perspectives together, Western-led global environmentalism combined with national government to undermine the legitimacy of local knowledge and authority. Heatherington describes how stereotypes of Sardinians as ignorant and culturally backward were used to delegitimize their resistance to the conservation park, drawing our attention to forms of ecological racism that lurk in the global environmental movement.
Linguistic Anthropology 🎵
As you might guess, linguistic anthropology focuses on language. Linguistic anthropologists view language as a primary means by which humans create their diverse cultures. Language combines biological and social elements. Some linguistic anthropologists study the origins of language, asking how language emerged in our biological evolution and sociocultural development and what aspects of language might have given early hominins an evolutionary advantage. Other linguistic anthropologists are interested in how language shapes our thinking processes and our views of the world. In addition to its cognitive aspects, language is a powerful tool for getting things done. Linguistic anthropologists also study how people use language to form communities and identities, assert power, and resist authority.
Linguistic anthropologists frequently conduct the same kinds of long-term, immersive research that cultural anthropologists do. Christopher Ball spent a year living and traveling with the Wauja, an indigenous group in Brazil (2018). He describes the many routine and ritualized ways of speaking in this community and how each kind of talk generates specific types of social action. “Chief speech” is used by leaders, while “bringing the spirits” is used for healing the sick. Ceremonial language is used for giving people names and for conducting exchanges between different indigenous groups. Ball, like many linguistic anthropologists, also examined public speeches, such as the ones delivered by Wauja leaders to protest a dam on a nearby river. Ball also analyzed the forms of language used by state officials and development workers to marginalize and subordinate indigenous groups such as the Wauja.
Language is central to the way we conceptualize ourselves and our lives. Have you ever been asked to write an essay about yourself, perhaps as part of a school assignment or college application? If so, you might have used different phrases and concepts than if you’d been chatting with a new acquaintance. The purpose and intended audience of our language use shapes the way we represent ourselves and our actions.
Anthropologist Summerson Carr examined an addiction treatment program for homeless women in the Midwestern United States, looking at the role of language in the therapeutic process (2011). After observing therapy sessions and self-help meetings, she describes how addiction counselors promote a certain kind of “healthy talk” that conveys deep cultural notions about personhood and responsibility. As patients master this “healthy talk,” they learn to demonstrate progress by performing very scripted ways of speaking about themselves and their addiction.
How the Four Fields Work Together: The Example of Race
With their unique methods and emphases, the four fields of anthropology may seem like completely different disciplines. It’s true that anthropologists from the four fields don’t always agree on the best approach to sociocultural inquiry. Biological anthropologists often see themselves as “hard” scientists committed to studying humanity through the scientific method. Cultural anthropologists rely on the “softer” methods of observation, participation, and interviews. Someone who studies the genetic distribution of blood types and someone who studies an addiction treatment program may have a difficult time finding common ground.
Increasingly, however, urgent concerns such as inequality and climate change have highlighted the importance of an integrated approach to the study of humanity. The issue of racial inequality is an excellent example. Beginning with an approach from the cultural side of our discipline, many anthropologists explore what we think we know about the concept of race. How many racial categories do you think there are in the world? How can you tell a person’s racial identity? What do you know about your own racial category? In the end, anthropologists largely conclude that the contemporary concept of 'race' we know is relatively new—but the aspects of humanity foundational to its existence have been around just as long as we have.
Biological anthropologist Jada Benn Torres and cultural anthropologist Gabriel Torres Colón teamed up to explore how people use genetic ancestry testing to construct notions of collective history and racial belonging (2020). For instance, if you learn through genetic testing that your ancestors most likely came from Nigeria, you might begin to feel a certain identification with that country and with the continent of Africa as a whole. You might begin to feel that you have less in common with the people of your country of citizenship and more in common with the people of your country of ancestry, a racial connection perhaps felt as more fundamental than the sociocultural connection to your home culture. While concerned about the potential for spreading misconceptions about racial categories, Torres and Colon also note that racialized solidarity across national boundaries can foster transnational movements for social justice. Such research shows how we actively construct our concepts about race using biological information about ourselves, all the time believing that those concepts are embedded in nature.
Figure 1.6 This map shows the predicted skin colors of people based on the levels of ultraviolet radiation in the areas where they live. (CC BY 4.0; Rice University & OpenStax)
Importantly, biological anthropology demonstrates that our common notions of race are inaccurate. Biological anthropologists such as Agustín Fuentes (2012) and Nina Jablonski (2006) have looked carefully at the global distribution of human traits such as skin color, facial features, hair texture, and blood type, among other markers, in order to determine if humans are indeed grouped into discrete categories based on race. Short answer: biologically speaking, there are no real racial categories. Each human trait varies along a spectrum, and the various traits are mixed and matched among people in ways that make racial distinctions impossibly inaccurate. As an example, take the issue of skin color, which is the most common way people assign race. Jablonski demonstrates that skin color varies along a spectrum, from pinkish beige to dark brown, with people throughout the world having skin of every possible shade between those two. Originally, humans evolving on the African continent had dark skin to protect them from the direct ultraviolet light of the sun. As some early humans migrated north into environments with less direct sunlight, their skin lightened to allow the absorption of vitamin D from the much weaker sunlight.
Today, if we look at people with deep historical connections to particular geographical areas, we find that skin color shifts gradually with location. Imagine setting out on a road trip from Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just a few degrees south of the equator in central Africa, and traveling all the way up to the city of Tromsø in Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. This 157-hour trip would take you through Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. If you were paying attention to the skin color of the indigenous peoples in each location, you would notice a gradual shift from deep brown in Kinshasa to lighter brown in Algeria to dark beige in southern Spain to lighter beige in Sweden. You might also notice other changes, such as more green and blue eyes and more red and blond hair, as you head into northern Europe. At no point in your trip could you identify a boundary between groups. Rather, you would see a gradual spectrum of change.
Whether looking at visible characteristics such as skin color or invisible genetic markers such as blood type, biological anthropologists have demonstrated time and time again that there is no scientifically justifiable way to divide the human population into racial categories. Any way you draw the lines, there will be more variation within categories than between categories.
Does this mean that race does not exist? In terms of biology, that is exactly what it means. But in terms of social reality, unfortunately not. Race does not exist in nature, but race does exist in our minds, our practices, and our institutions. Archaeological excavations of the material lives of various groups in the United States, including people from China and Ireland as well as enslaved peoples from Africa, show how notions of race shaped their whole ways of life: the buildings in which they lived, the clothing they wore, the property they owned, and the structure of their families (Orser 2007; Singleton [1985] 2016). In contemporary societies, cultural anthropologists studying forms of racial inequality in societies all over the world—including the United States, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Japan, Kenya, and Zimbabwe—have uncovered the different ways that each of these societies constructs racial categories and uses various criteria to assign (and often reassign) race to a particular person.
Moreover, in-depth ethnographies illuminate the severity of racism in the everyday lives of people of color in the United States and elsewhere. After three years of fieldwork on the West Side of Chicago, anthropologist Laurence Ralph documented the suffering of people in this Black neighborhood as they contend with discrimination, economic deprivation, gang violence, and political marginalization (2014). Ralph emphasizes that the people he observed dream of a better life for themselves and their children, in spite of these struggles, and describes how many turn to social and political activism in an attempt to make their neighborhood a better place for everyone who lives there.
Linguistic anthropologists are interested in how race is constructed and expressed through language. Marcyliena Morgan studied the underground hip-hop scene in Los Angeles, exploring how Black emcees and musicians craft linguistic codes that reference their experiences of police violence, urban unrest, gang activity, and gentrification (2009). Like Ralph, Morgan highlights the creativity and resilience of Black American communities in the face of enduring racism in American society.
Taken together, these various anthropological approaches to race provide more insight and understanding than any one approach ever could. Overturning the biological myth of race is essential to understanding the complex reality of human diversity, but it is not enough. It would be a mistake to pretend that racial categories do not matter just because the concept of race has no basis in biology. The combined work of archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and linguistic anthropologists demonstrates how the mythic notion of race has been used to exploit and marginalize certain people throughout history and into the present. We also see how people respond to racial subjugation with creativity and resilience, inventing cultural forms of resistance and mobilizing their communities through social activism.
Holism
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe. Nearly 210 million people had fallen sick with the coronavirus and more than 4 million had died as of August 2021. Medical researchers are still studying the long-term effects of this illness on the lungs and brains of people who have recovered. Some have discovered psychological effects as well, such as increased risks for depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
Beyond the medical realm, the effects of the pandemic reached into every aspect of our societies and our everyday lives. In societies all over the world, people were forced to remain at home, “sheltering in place” from the dangers of the disease. Businesses closed their doors to the public, and many shut down permanently, unable to pay their bills. By May 2020, nearly 50 million Americans had reported losing their jobs due to the pandemic. The epidemic of disease ballooned into an epidemic of grief as people mourned the loss of the those who had died and worried about those who had fallen sick. Stressed out by so many disruptions, some adults turned to alcohol and drugs, and addiction rates soared. Incidents of domestic violence escalated. Racial violence against Asian Americans increased as some Americans blamed China for the emergence and global spread of the disease. People everywhere reported feeling lonelier and more cut off from their friends and family members.
And yet there were also some positive consequences. Because people were not driving as much, air quality improved in many urban areas, giving relief to many people who suffer from asthma. Looking up into the night sky, some people were able to see stars for the very first time. Some people reported valuing their friends and family members even more now that they could not spend time with them in person. New social media technologies spread and many people learned to use existing technologies. People also became aware of the valuable contributions made by “essential workers” in drugstores, hardware stores, and grocery stores as well as hospitals and nursing homes.
How did a virus cause so many changes? The various elements of society are entwined in a complex whole. Dramatic changes in one area, such as epidemic disease in the realm of public health, can trigger a chain of effects throughout other social realms, such as the family, the economy, religion, and the political system.
You’ll recall the word holism from our earlier discussion about anthropology’s commitment to understanding how the many parts of society work together. Holism is a distinctive method of analysis that foregrounds the ever-changing relationships among different realms of culture. You likely put this together already, but the holism of anthropology is also a key piece to what holds together its otherwise disparate four fields! Given a particular 'whole,' each of the four fields lends its own perspective. In turn, this perspective is just one piece of the larger ('whole') puzzle. That definition again:
Definition: Holism
The perspective on the human condition that assumes that mind, body, individuals, society, and the environment interpenetrate, and even define one another; the anthropological view that the whole of a culture is greater than the sum of its parts.
Society as an Integrated Whole
In the 2010s, certain rural areas in Africa saw a significant drop in infant mortality, puzzling researchers who found no major improvements in healthcare services, parenting practices, or aid distribution. The key difference appeared to be the rise of mobile phone use, particularly mobile money transfers that made it possible for parents to quickly mobilize their family networks and get the funds necessary for medical care. This technological shift enabled families to quickly access financial help in emergencies, such as when a sick baby needed immediate medical attention. The connection between financial technology and infant survival illustrates how indirect factors can have a powerful impact on health outcomes.
Anthropology's holistic approach helps uncover this sort of hidden connection by examining all aspects of human society. For example, marriage practices vary widely across cultures and are influenced not just by morals or gender norms, but also by economic and subsistence strategies. In farming societies, polygamy (multiple spouses) may be practical due to the economic value of having many children to help with labor. In contrast, industrialized societies like the U.S. tend to favor smaller families and experience more marital instability due to economic pressures and the high cost of raising children. Today, this presents as ostensibly monogamous (one partner) marriages and low birthrate. Consider, however, the number of these marriages which end in divorce (near half) as well as the regularity with which 'monogamous' partnering is met with infidelity. Anthropologists recognize the complexities involved and make it not so simple as the difference between means of production and forms of marriage. At least, it is not just that.
These two cases show how deeply interconnected different social realms can be—something anthropologists are uniquely positioned to explore.
Sources of Contradiction, Conflict, and Change
Holistic analysis considers not only how the various features of culture hold together but also how change in one feature can generate cascading changes among others. Often, anthropologists begin their analysis by focusing on one significant change in the lives of a particular cultural group and then chart the ramifications of that change through various other realms of culture.
For example, Anthropologist Attiya Ahmad studied South Asian women working as domestic laborers in Kuwait, highlighting how migration leads to profound personal and cultural transformation. These women must adapt to a new language, religion, gender expectations, and household norms, often becoming emotionally bonded yet socially subordinate in their host families. Though they migrate for financial reasons—supporting their families back home—their return is often fraught with tension. Changed by their experiences abroad, they are expected to resume traditional roles, leading many to feel alienated and seek alternative communities or spiritual fulfillment through Islamic teachings, sometimes converting despite family and employer disapproval.
Cultural change, as anthropology shows, often begins in one area and expands into others. The #MeToo movement, started in 2006, began as a call for solidarity with survivors of sexual harassment and has grown into a global campaign reshaping norms around gender and power. While it largely began in Hollywood, its influence spread to various sectors and across the globe, prompting both reforms and resistance. In countries like China and Nigeria, local interpretations of the movement reflect distinct cultural dynamics. Some critics argue the movement imposes uniquely 'American' values, as seen in France, where many push back against what they see as an attack on traditional flirtation. This illustrates how global movements are shaped—and sometimes resisted—by local cultural values.
While some anthropologists actively support the #MeToo movement, our methods of cross-cultural comparison call on us to set aside our personal values (at least temporarily) in order to more objectively understand how people in various cultural contexts interpret and act on the cross-cultural campaign against gender-based harassment and assault. This method of suspending personal values is key to understanding how all the elements of a particular culture interact with one another, including pressures from the outside.
Overcoming Ethnocentrism
Have you ever known somebody who seems to think the world revolves around them? The kind of friend who is always talking about themselves and never asks any questions about you and your life? The kind of person who thinks their own ideas are cool and special and their own way of doing things is absolutely the best? You may know the word used to describe that kind of person: egocentric. An egocentric person is entirely caught up in their own perspective and does not seem to care much about the perspectives of others. It is good to feel proud of your personal qualities and accomplishments, of course, but it is equally important to appreciate the personal qualities and accomplishments of others as well.
The same sort of “centric” complex operates at the level of culture. Some people in some cultures are convinced that their own ways of understanding the world and of doing things are absolutely the best and no other ways are worth consideration. They imagine that the world would be a much better place if the superior beliefs, values, and practices of their own culture were spread or imposed on everyone else in the world. This is what we call ethnocentrism.
Enculturation and Ethnocentrism
We are all brought up in a particular culture with particular norms and values and ways of doing things. Our societies teach us how to behave in given situations, how to take care of our bodies, how to lead a good life, and what we should value and think about. Our guardians, teachers, religious leaders, and bosses give us instruction about our roles, responsibilities, and relationships in life. By the time we are in our late teens or early twenties, we know a great deal about how our society works and our role in that society. Anthropologists call this process of acquiring our particular culture enculturation. All humans go through this process. It is natural to value the particular knowledge gained through our own process of enculturation because we could not survive without it. It is natural to respect the instruction of our parents and teachers who want us to do well in life. It is good to be proud of who we are and where we came from. (Note that while some people outside of anthropology use 'enculturation' in a pejorative sense, they tend to be referring to 'indoctrination.' It is important not to confuse the two.)
Definition: Enculturation
The process by which individuals learn and adopt the norms, values, behaviors, language, and customs of their culture.
Just as egocentrism is tiresome, it can be harmful for people to consider their own culture so superior that they cannot appreciate the unique qualities and accomplishments of other cultures. When people are so convinced that their own culture is more advanced, morally superior, efficient, or just plain better than any other culture, we call that ethnocentrism. When people are ethnocentric, they do not value the perspectives of people from other cultures, and they do not bother to learn about or consider other ways of doing things.
Beyond the sheer rudeness of ethnocentrism, the real problem emerges when the ethnocentrism of one group causes them to harm, exploit, and dominate other groups. Historically, the ethnocentrism of Europeans and Euro-Americans has been used to justify subjugation and violence against peoples from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. In the quest to colonize territories in these geographical areas, Europeans developed a variety of styles of ethnocentrism which have dominated popular imagination over the past two centuries. These styles each identify a cultural “self” as European and a cultural other as a stereotypical member of a culture from a specific region of the world. Using both of these styles of ethnocentrism, Europeans strategically crafted their own coherent self-identity in contrast to these distorted images of other cultures.
Primitivism and Orientalism
Since the 18th century, views of Africans and Native Americans have been shaped by the obscuring lens of primitivism. Identifying themselves as enlightened and civilized, Europeans came to define Africans as ignorant savages, intellectually inferior and culturally backward. Nineteenth-century explorers such as Henry M. Stanley described Africa as “the dark continent,” a place of wildness and depravity (Stanley 1878). Similarly, European missionaries viewed Africans as simple heathens, steeped in sin and needing Christian redemption. Elaborated in the writings of travelers and traders, primitivism depicts Africans and Native Americans as exotic, simple, highly sexual, potentially violent, and closer to nature. Though both African and Native American societies of the time were highly organized and well-structured, Europeans often viewed them as chaotic and violent. An alternative version of primitivism depicts Africans and Native Americans as “noble savages,” innocent and simple, living in peaceful communities in harmony with nature. While less overtly insulting, the “noble savage” version of primitivism is still a racist stereotype, reinforcing the notion that non-Western peoples are ignorant, backward, and isolated.
Europeans developed a somewhat different style of ethnocentrism toward people from the Middle East and Asia, a style known as orientalism. As detailed by literary critic Edward Said (1979), orientalism portrays peoples of Asia and the Middle East as irrational, fanatical, and out of control. The “oriental” cultures of East Asia and Middle East are depicted as mystical and alluring. The emphasis here is less on biology and nature and more on sensual and emotional excess. Middle Eastern societies are viewed not as lawless but as tyrannical. Relations between men and women are deemed not just sexual but patriarchal and exploitative. Said argues that this view of Asian and Middle Eastern societies was strategically crafted to demonstrate the rationality, morality, and democracy of European societies by contrast.
In his critique of orientalism, Said points to the very common representation of Muslim and Middle Eastern peoples in mainstream American movies as irrational and violent. In the very first minute of the 1992 Disney film Aladdin, the theme song declares that Aladdin comes from “a faraway place / where the caravan camels roam / where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face / it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Facing criticism by antidiscrimination groups, Disney was forced to change the lyrics for the home video release of the film (Nittle 2021). Many thrillers such as the 1994 film True Lies, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, cast Arabs as America-hating villains scheming to plant bombs and take hostages. Arab women are frequently portrayed as sexualized belly dancers or silent, oppressed victims shrouded in veils. These forms of representation draw from and reproduce orientalist stereotypes.
Both primitivism and orientalism were developed when Europeans were colonizing these parts of the world. Primitivist views of Native Americans justified their subjugation and forced migration. In the next section, we’ll explore how current versions of primitivism and orientalism persist in American culture, tracing the harmful effects of these misrepresentations and the efforts of anthropologists to dismantle them.
The Bias of Backwardness
Common to both primitivism and orientalism is the notion that European and Euro-American cultures are more advanced and civilized than other cultures. Since at least the 19th century, Euro-American thinking has been dominated by the idea that the various cultures of the world can be evaluated on a scale of sociocultural sophistication from least advanced to most advanced. Typically, Native American and African cultures were considered the most primitive, while those of Asia and the Middle East were thought of as slightly more developed but certainly not as civilized as the societies of Europe, which were ranked at the top as the epitome of human progress.
The astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has noted that even today popular culture has a tendency to look at Western civilizations in terms of their technological progress and sophistication and dismissing the intelligence and sophistication of ancient societies like the Egyptians or Andean indigenous peoples. Rather than recognizing their accomplishments as indications of their similar intelligence and engineering abilities (the much simpler solution), we develop obscure notions such as, "it must have been aliens."
Early anthropology played a role in promoting this ethnocentric way of thinking. Nineteenth-century anthropologists detailed various hypothetical schemes charting the developmental stages that each culture would go through in its pursuit of the European ideal of civilization. One very prominent scheme was proposed by the British anthropologist Edward Tylor (1932-1917). Tylor suggested that each culture progressed from “savagery” to “barbarism” to “civilization.” Since the change from one stage to another could not be witnessed by the researcher, such “evolutionary” schemes were largely based on hypothetical conjecture, sometimes called “theorizing from the armchair.” It is important to note that this type of theory of 'linear cultural evolution' is a misuse of the term 'evolution' which is by no means linear.
While some anthropologists played a role in popularizing this way of thinking, others worked to expose it as misguided and inaccurate. The writings of American anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) highlighted the fact that no culture is isolated in its process of developmental change. Instead, each culture develops through interactions with other cultures, as new ideas and inventions diffuse from one culture to the next. Moreover, cultural change is not structured by an overall trajectory of 'progress' as defined by the European example; rather, cultures change in many ways, sometimes adopting new ways of doing things and other times reviving and reclaiming older ways. Through these varied patterns of change, each culture forges its own unique history. While Boas has his own problems, his thinking was much more in line with the thinking of anthropology we know today—so much so that he is considered by some the 'father of American anthropology.'
While it took some time to come back around, to some degree, all anthropology today borrows from these original ideas of Boas. An early student of Boas who pioneered this trajectory was Margaret Mead (1901-1978). Mead’s approach to anthropology emphasized the role of culture in shaping individual behavior, particularly through childhood socialization and gender roles. Unlike Tylor, who viewed culture as a progressive evolution from "primitive" to "civilized" stages, Mead rejected linear models and universal hierarchies. Instead, like Boas, she emphasized cultural relativism—the idea that each culture should be understood on its own terms. Through her fieldwork in Samoa and New Guinea, Mead argued that many traits thought to be "natural," like gender roles or adolescence, are actually culturally constructed, not biologically determined. While Tylor focused on broad comparisons and Boas on historical particularism, Mead centered her work on how culture directly shapes individuals’ lives, helping to popularize anthropology and bring attention to the diversity of human experience. We'll look again at cultural relativism shortly.
While the evolutionary schemes of 19th-century anthropology have been disproved, the underlying notion of sociocultural progress toward a Euro-American ideal is still a widespread form of ethnocentric bias outside of anthropology. Many people still refer to some countries as “developed” and “modern” and others as “undeveloped” and “backward.”
These labels are rooted in Euro-American values. Championing capitalism and technology, many Europeans and Americans view the generation of material wealth as the primary measure of the success of any society. The divide between the more and less “advanced” countries of the world is largely a distinction between the richer and poorer countries. European and American societies, which have become wealthy through the development of global trade and industrial capitalism, are considered the most successful. Societies that have not achieved the levels of wealth and technology associated with Euro-American industrial capitalism are sometimes labeled “undeveloped.” Societies that have not industrialized at all are sometimes called “premodern” or simply “traditional.”
As with older evolutionary schemes, this way of thinking relies on the notion that each society pursues economic development in isolation. The poorer countries of the world are told: if you work hard and apply the correct economic policies, then you too can become rich like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. But how did those countries become rich in the first place? Certainly not in isolation. The Boasian emphasis on cultural interaction also applies to economic change. To a large degree, European and American societies became wealthy by dominating other societies and keeping them poor. European countries constructed a system of global capitalism designed to make them very rich by extracting raw materials and human labor from their colonies. In fact, that was the whole impetus for colonialism.
Example 1
The cultural anthropologist Sidney Mintz is one of many who have studied how this happened. Mintz explored how European merchants designed a very lucrative system of production and consumption based on sugar (1985). As European consumers began developing a taste for sugar in the 17th century, European merchants developed sugar plantations in the New World using the labor of enslaved people transported from West Africa. Sugar produced on these plantations was exported to Europe and the rest of the world, earning a hefty profit for the European merchants who designed the system. Local people living in the places where sugar was produced did not benefit much from this trade, and enslaved people suffered and died for it. Similar systems were developed for the production of other global commodities such as cocoa, coffee, tea, and cotton. Some commodities required enslaved labor and others involved small farmers, but the basic structure of the trade was the same. The economies of many South Asian and African countries were designed entirely around the export of primary commodities, the production of which was controlled by European merchants who reaped the profits from this global trade. Many postcolonial countries still rely on the export of these primary commodities.
What do these historical processes mean for understanding the world today? European merchants and governments crafted strategic ways of thinking about the parts of the world they wanted to invade and colonize. To justify the development of the slave trade, the plantation system, and colonial rule, Europeans labeled many non-Europeans as backward peoples needing the civilizing influence of European domination. This form of bias persists in contemporary notions of backwardness applied to the poorer peoples and parts of the world.
In reality, the colonial system was a global mechanism for European merchants and governments to extract wealth from other parts of the world. European merchants took great care to maintain control over these forms of highly profitable trade, edging out local merchants and forbidding local competition. Even today, we see the remnants of this system in Euro-American domination of global trade. If the world seems divided between rich and poor, it is not because some countries work hard and others are “backward.” It is because the global system was founded on forms of inequality that endure into the present.
The Analytic Other and Cultural Relativism
By being a part of a culture, that means there is an “other” culture out there. In everyday language, we use the term “othering” as a means to recognize another individual or culture as fundamentally different from “us” and, because of those differences, possibly inferior and even dangerous. This is one of the dangers of doing anthropology, but, if we can avoid the trap of ‘othering,’ we can actually do the opposite and demonstrate the value of cultural differences. To do this, anthropology creates another kind of “other.” We study the Analytic Other, that is, people or cultures who are, owing to history, foreign to us, or whom we make foreign so as to study them with qualified objectivity. (“True objectivity” is unattainable, but, we can admit what we do and don’t know.) By examining the similarities and differences among various societies, anthropologists aim to understand the range of human behavior and cultural expression. This approach, in part, sometimes attempts to identify cultural ‘universals,’ or elements that are common across all human societies.
Definition: Analytic Other
A group, people, or culture which is foreign to us or whom we make foreign so as to study them with qualified objectivity.
When we begin to recognize the diversity of cultures 'out there,' we can see just how many “others” (analytic or otherwise) there are—even in our own communities. As a result of globalization, humans, with rapidly increasing cultural contact started to reveal the extent of that ethnocentrism we just learned about. Again, ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one’s own culture as superior to others and as a measuring stick by which to evaluate all others. Even in the early days of anthropology, “primitive” cultures were seen as “early” and therefore inferior along a ‘progression’ to civilization.
Thankfully, in the early 20th century, a handful of anthropologists decided it was time to use the study of “others” to examine their own cultures and to test assumptions that might be ethnocentric. For example, we just read about Margaret Mead. She published Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928 in which she examined the adolescence problem as originating in culture, not as a physical and inevitable result of hormones as commonly thought in the United States at the time. Through a comparative method, we can learn that while human populations face some common problems, such as growing up, each addresses those problems in different ways. Gradually, anthropology was no longer the study of “savages” or “primitives;” it became the study of all human cultures. As Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) pointed out in Patterns of Culture (1934), people of different cultures simply interpret life differently. Her observation implied that one cannot judge one culture as superior to another.
Ethnocentrism’s opposite, then, is cultural relativism: the idea that we should seek to understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their culture rather than our own. The guiding philosophy of modern anthropology is closer to cultural relativism (but even that is not without its problems—several topics are heavily debated). Anthropologists try not to judge other cultures based on their values. Instead, anthropologists seek to understand people’s beliefs within the system they themselves have for explaining things.
Definition: Cultural Relativism
The idea that we should seek to understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors from the perspective of their own culture rather than our own; understanding people’s beliefs within the system they themselves have for explaining things.
Example 1
A frequently cited example of analyzing the underlying premises is E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973), a British anthropologist who published Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (1937), a work of ethnography as theory. His study of the Azande of the southern Sudan was meant to indicate why and how Azande beliefs in magic and witchcraft made perfect sense according to Azande premises (and to many peoples everywhere who wanted to understand human ills such as disease and death). He avoided ethnocentric notions like “they are ignorant primitives.” His point was that their beliefs made sense given their premises, and that they were as logical as any other people. The main reason the Azande work is so much cited is that the main discovery is that we are all caught in our premises, our unchallenged assumptions.
The long-standing ethnocentric mistake in anthropology is somewhat surprising given the theories put forth by Franz Boas. Boas elaborated on cultural relativism and pushed hard against the common tendency to judge others by one’s own culture rather than by the basic assumptions of the culture being studied. During the development of anthropology in North America, the significant contribution made by the American School of Anthropology was cultural relativism. Boas is acknowledged for redirecting American anthropologists away from cultural evolutionism and toward relativism. He was staunchly opposed to the idea of biology shaping culture, certain cultures being more developed than others, and the idea of human races.
The patterns in culture presumed by cultural evolutionism (belief in a linear progression from primitive to civilized) were not found in the societies Boas studied. Instead, a better understanding of cultural differences was to be attributed to their social environments, a concept he called historical particularism. Boas attributed similar cultural patterns or behaviors to diffusion—sharing ideas with other cultures that came into contact—or some accident that had two cultures come up with the same idea.
Boas also encouraged holism. As we've seen, holism in anthropology has two meanings which are related to one another. One is that cultures are an integrated system. The other refers to an approach that maintains that it is impossible to understand humans by looking at only a part of their experience, e.g., only their biology or only their material culture. Anthropology takes a holistic approach to understanding the human experience—we must look at how everything interacts to reach an understanding of humans.
But, as it turns out, all people—including anthropologists—are ethnocentric to some degree. Why do we behave the way we do? Why do we believe what we believe? Most people find these kinds of questions difficult to answer. Often the answer is simply “because that is how it is done.” But anthropologists prefer the answer “that is the way it is done in our culture at this time.”
Ethnocentrism is not a useful perspective in contexts in which people from different cultural backgrounds come into close contact with one another, as is the case in many cities and communities throughout the world. People increasingly find that they must adopt culturally relativistic perspectives in governing communities and as a guide for their interactions with members of the community. (This is why intercultural communication is such an important part of business programs.)
The Challenge of Representing Others
The anthropological goal of looking at an "analytic other" and representing their point of view as an "insider" of that perspective is controversial. Is it truly possible to step outside your own identity to really understand a different perspective? How can a researcher from one culture possibly understand how it feels to be a member of another culture? Even anthropologists who study their own cultures may find themselves researching people from different classes, ethnicities, genders, or other categories. Is it possible to accurately represent the perspectives of people whose lives are so different from your own? Is it ethical? Is it valuable?
For decades, White European and American anthropologists conducted research and wrote ethnographies as if the challenge of representing cultures very different from their own was really no problem at all. Empowered by White privilege and ethnocentrism, many earlier anthropologists believed that long-term intensive fieldwork was enough to give them cross-cultural insight into the perspectives of the people they studied.
Too frequently, those anthropologists reduced the complexity of the non-Western cultures they studied to just one point of view, as if the people in that society all interpreted their cultural rules the same way and never disagreed or changed the rules over time. But every culture comprises multiple perspectives that often contradict one another, generating sociocultural conflict and change. I am sure you can almost instantly think of several examples in "American" culture!* Recognizing this situation, contemporary anthropologists often conduct research among several different subgroups and geographical locations, integrating insights from these various arenas into a comprehensive, dynamic, and holistic view of cultural complexity. Today, we describe two key perspectives anthropologists rely on for describing cultures called "emic" and "etic" perspectives. The emic perspective is an insider view, focusing on the local meanings, beliefs, and behaviors as understood by the people within the culture. In contrast, the etic perspective is an outsider view, analyzing cultural phenomena using an external, more hopefully objective framework. Good anthropological work balances these two perspectives—and acknowledges the strengths and limitations of each. This practice is called reflexivity.
Then there is the question of deep-seated bias, often operating unconsciously among researchers and the people they study. Consider the situation of a White American anthropologist conducting research in an African country previously colonized by Europeans. European colonialism left behind a legacy of White privilege in postcolonial African countries. Earlier anthropologists did not often recognize how racialized power dynamics might shape their research and writing, distorting their representations of the peoples they studied. In the 1960s, anthropologists began to think more carefully about these issues, realizing that an "insider’s point of view" (that of oppressed populations) is never perfectly achievable by those who share cultural foundations with the oppressors. As human beings, our own perspectives are conditioned by our own enculturation, our own ways of seeing and thinking about the world around us.
If an insider’s point of view is never really possible, should we give up on this aspirational goal of the discipline? In such a scenario, researchers would only study and write about people from the same sociocultural categories as themselves. So, for example, Americans would only research and write about other Americans. But are all Americans really members of the same sociocultural category? (*You have the answer to this if you provided those examples above.) Could an upper-class Asian American from Manhattan research and write about a poor Black community in the Deep South? Could a Latino man write about a group of Latinx/Latina/Latino people consisting of all genders? American culture is not unique in its complex array of identities. In all cultures, people have multiple identities as members of multiple sociocultural categories. While you may be an insider within your culture in some respect, you may be an outsider by some other measure. The ethical question of who can represent who is riddled with difficulties.
Moreover, resigning ourselves to studying “our own people,” whoever they might be, is tantamount to giving up on cross-cultural research and the insight, empathy, dialogue, and transformation that frequently result from it. Anthropological insights have been key to rethinking American notions of sexuality, family, and race, among so many other pressing issues. We need the skills of cross-cultural research now more than ever. While perfect representations of different communities and cultures may be impossible, many anthropologists now deploy innovative methods designed to address the problems of history and power at the heart of the discipline. The aim is not to achieve perfect ethnography but to work ethically and collaboratively to produce what contemporary cultural anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1944–) has termed “good enough ethnography.”
Faced with the challenges of representation, many anthropologists practice methods of collaboration with the individuals and groups that they study and with one another. Collaborative ethnography has a very long history in cultural anthropology, traceable all the way back to early Euro-American ethnographies of Native Americans. Often, anthropologists began their research by employing a local person as a translator or field assistant, a role that usually evolved into something much more cooperative. Today, anthropologists often collaborate with the cultures they study through participant observation. This is largely what it sound like, and we will learn more about it later on.
Beyond this, anthropologists today collaborate with the people they study in a number of other ways. Some involve local people as readers and editors of their work, sometimes including community responses in the published work. Some conduct focus groups to generate local feedback on particular chapters or topics. Some hold community meetings or forums to talk about the major themes and implications of their work. And some even collaborate with members of the local community as equal coauthors on books and articles. Such methods strengthen ethnography by ensuring accuracy, promoting multiple perspectives, and striving to make anthropological work more relevant to the communities being studied. Collaboration also draws attention to the personal side of ethnography. Instead of extracting ethnographic “facts” from the process of fieldwork, many contemporary anthropologists focus on describing particular people, insightful conversations, and cooperative practices encountered in their research. Rather than trying to work our way from the outside to become 'insiders,' these strategies help to bring the 'insiders' out. This produces a wider, more holistic, constellation of personal perspectives.
