3.6: Insider, Outsider, and Identity

Think back to our early definition of culture. Culture is the system of shared values, beliefs, behaviors, and artifacts, transmitted from one generation to the next, that the members of a group use to cope with their world and with each another. Also recall from biological anthropology the universal human practice of categorizing things—including other people! Notice that this definition of culture mentions 'members', but largely describes something outside of our individual selves. It also doesn't tell us what to do when we find ourselves part of more than one 'system' at the same time. In the modern Western world, we tend to consider our 'selves' to be the central point on a Venn diagram of cultures, societies, and/or roles—and we often refer to this position as our 'identity.'

The concept of identity and the concept of culture are closely linked and both culture and identity influence who we consider to be 'insiders' and who we consider to be 'outsiders.' To better understand identity, we will look in this chapter at two broad cultural categories (among many) which we today often use to define ourselves: race and gender. (Others we could use include class, nationality, ability, religion, occupation, and even age group.) As a baseline, it is important to note that the key difference between 'cultural categories' and 'identities' is that cultural categories are made by and about groups (the way insiders define outsiders) while identities are self-conceptions made by and about individuals. This does not mean that they are totally separate, of course. Race and gender provide very clear examples. Our self-conceived identity is often derived directly from our cultural assumptions.

As we've seen already, anthropologists are fond of pointing out that much of what we take for granted as “natural” in our lives is actually cultural—it is not grounded directly in the natural world or in biology but invented by humans. We saw this briefly with regard to race as biological anthropologists now understand it. Recall the paradoxes of culture. Because culture is invented, it takes different forms in different places and changes over time. Living in the twenty-first century, we have witnessed how rapidly and dramatically culture can change. Similarly, many of us live in culturally diverse settings and experience how varied human cultural inventions can be. We readily accept that clothing, language, and music are cultural—invented, created, and alterable—but often find it difficult to accept that race, gender, and other conceptions of self and other are likewise deeply embedded in and shaped by culture.

These ideas are further complicated by the fact that 'identity' itself is even seen by some anthropologists as a decidedly 'modern' concept. Prior to the popularization of philosophies by thinkers like René Descartes and John Locke who emphasized the individual, even the concept of a personal identity was somewhat foreign to most everyone. For example, the connection between same-sex sex—a behavior—and the idea of ‘homosexuality’ or ‘sexual orientation’—which we today often consider part of a person's identity—is actually surprisingly new, historically speaking. For example, there is an ongoing debate among literary historians “whether William Shakespeare was gay.” One of the most compelling arguments I have read is that it is essentially just a bad question. Supporters of this argument suggest Shakespeare likely had sexual relationships with other men but can’t be considered “gay” given the cultural understanding of sex and sexuality in Europe at the time. Essentially, sex between men was seen, then, as a behavior and not an identity—homosexual acts were culturally recognized, but ‘to be’ (if you’ll allow the Shakespeare pun) a homosexual wasn’t considered ‘a thing.’

This can be a difficult concept to wrap our heads around given how important identity feels to us in today's modern world. We even sometimes describe American teen years as a "search for identity." To begin, then, it can be helpful to begin with a baseline definition of 'identity' that we can then approach from a cultural perspective. For these purposes identity is one's learned, personal and social affiliations, categories, or in-groupings. We are enculturated into our identities. This is to say, all features of our identity (including race and gender) are culturally defined. Notice that identities and their components are both plural. We are not limited to a single identity, even at a given time or place. Instead, our cultures define who is an 'insider' and who is an 'outsider.' The attributes, behaviors, or ideas that make up these definitions are largely arbitrary. But in turn, we use those same attributes, behaviors, or ideas applied to ourselves in order to form our identities.

In this chapter, we will look first at race, since we already saw (through biological anthropology) how it is culturally constructed despite its tendency to embed in our culture. Next, we will look at gender which, similarly, is closely related to but ultimately separate from biological 'sex' (which itself is much more complicated than we often first assume). And finally, we will look at the concepts of sub-cultures and deviance. These are concepts that we use to describe identities or behaviors that inhabit the grey areas between 'insiders' and 'outsiders.'

Race

Anthropology was sometimes referred to as the “science of race” during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when physical anthropologists sought a biological basis for categorizing humans into racial types. Since World War II, important research by anthropologists has revealed that racial categories are socially and culturally defined concepts and that racial labels and their definitions vary widely around the world. In other words, different countries have different racial categories, and different ways of classifying their citizens into these categories. At the same time, significant genetic studies conducted by physical anthropologists since the 1970s have revealed that biologically distinct human races do not exist. Certainly, humans vary in terms of physical and genetic characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape, but those variations cannot be used as criteria to biologically classify racial groups with scientific accuracy.

One of the biggest reasons so many people continue to believe in the existence of biological human races is that the idea has been intensively reified in literature, the media, and culture for more than three hundred years. Reification refers to the process in which a cultural concept or idea is so heavily promoted and circulated within its culture that it begins to take on a life of its own. Over centuries, the notion of biological human races became ingrained—unquestioned, accepted, and regarded as a concrete “truth.” As we have already seen, studies of human physical and cultural variation from a scientific and anthropological perspective have allowed us to move beyond reified thinking and toward an improved understanding of the true complexity of human diversity.

The reification of race has a long history. Especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, philosophers and scholars attempted to identify various human races. They perceived “races” as specific divisions of humans who shared certain physical and biological features that distinguished them from other groups of humans. This historic notion of race may seem clear-cut and innocent enough, but it quickly led to problems as social theorists attempted to classify people by race. One of the most basic difficulties was the actual number of human races: how many were there, who were they, and what grounds distinguished them? Despite more than three centuries of such effort, no clear-cut scientific consensus was established for a precise number of human races.

Two major types of “race classifiers” have emerged over the past 300 years: lumpers and splitters. Lumpers have classified races by large geographic tracts (often continents) and produced a small number of broad, general racial categories. Splitters have subdivided continent-wide racial categories into specific, more localized regional races and attempted to devise more “precise” racial labels for these specific groups. Racial labels, whether from a lumper or a splitter model, clearly attempt to identify and describe something. So why do these racial labels not accurately describe human physical and biological variation? To understand why, we must keep in mind that racial labels are distinct, discrete categories while human physical and biological variations (such as skin color, hair color and texture, eye color, height, nose shape, and distribution of blood types) are continuous rather than discrete.

Physical anthropologists use the term cline to refer to differences in the traits that occur in populations across a geographical area. In a cline, a trait may be more common in one geographical area than another, but the variation is gradual and continuous with no sharp breaks. A prominent example of clinal variation among humans is skin color. Human skin color does not occur in just 3, 5, or even 50 shades. The reality is that human skin color, as a continuous trait, exists as a spectrum from very light to very dark with every possible hue, shade, and tone in between.

Just because the idea of distinct biological human races is not a valid scientific concept does not mean, and should not be interpreted as implying, that “there is no such thing as race” or that “race isn’t real.” Race is indeed real but it is a concept based on arbitrary social and cultural definitions rather than biology or science. Thus, racial categories such as “white” and “black” are as real as categories of “African” or “Adolescent” or “Atheist.” Many things in the world are real but are not biological. So, while race does not reflect biological characteristics, it reflects socially constructed concepts defined subjectively by societies to reflect notions of division that are perceived to be significant. Some sociologists and anthropologists now use the term social races instead, seeking to emphasize their cultural and arbitrary roots.

Race is most accurately thought of as a socio-historical concept. Michael Omi and Howard Winant noted that “Racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded.” In other words, racial labels ultimately reflect a society’s social attitudes and cultural beliefs regarding notions of group differences. Put another way, race is one among many ways we culturally define insiders and outsiders. And since racial categories are culturally defined, they can vary from one society to another as well as change over time within a society.

Ethnicity

The terms race and ethnicity are similar and there is a degree of overlap between them. The average person frequently uses the terms “race” and “ethnicity” interchangeably as synonyms and anthropologists also recognize that race and ethnicity are overlapping concepts. Both race and ethnic identity draw on an identification with others based on common ancestry and shared cultural traits. A race is a social construction that defines groups of humans based on arbitrary physical and/or biological traits that are believed to distinguish them from other humans. An ethnic group, on the other hand, claims a distinct identity based on cultural characteristics and a shared ancestry that are believed to give its members a unique sense of peoplehood or heritage.

The cultural characteristics used to define ethnic groups vary; they include specific languages spoken, religions practiced, and distinct patterns of dress, diet, customs, holidays, and other markers of distinction. In some societies, ethnic groups are geographically concentrated in particular regions, as with the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq and the Basques in northern Spain.

A collage of different ethnic groups: Afar man, Tuareg man, San man, Inuit man from Canada, Terena indigenous man from Brazil, Kazakh man, Japanese man, Rajasthani man (India), Buryat man, Malay man, Arab man from Qatar, Sami man from Norway, Swedish man, Italian man, Tongan man, Indigenous Australian (Source: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Ethnicity refers to the degree to which a person identifies with and feels an attachment to a particular ethnic group. As a component of a person’s identity, ethnicity is a fluid, complex phenomenon that is highly variable. Many individuals view their ethnicity as an important element of their personal and social identity. Numerous psychological, social, and familial factors play a role in ethnicity, and ethnic identity is most accurately understood as a range or continuum populated by people at every point. One’s sense of ethnicity can also fluctuate across time. Children of Korean immigrants living in an overwhelmingly white town, for example, may choose to self-identify simply as “American” during their middle school and high school years to fit in with their classmates and then choose to self-identify as “Korean,” “Korean American,” or “Asian American” in college or later in life as their social settings change or from a desire to connect more strongly with their family history and heritage. Do you consider your ethnicity an important part of your identity? Why do you feel the way you do?

Gender

Like race, gender and sexuality are topics that any culture assumes their version of is more universal than it is. This is further complicated for these topics because of their relationship to biological sex—which, though it is easy to hastily say comes down to a binary arrangement, is actually much more complicated. Even this can be more culturally defined than we think.

We may struggle with the idea that the division of humans into two and only two categories, “male” and “female,” is not universal, that “male” and “female” are cultural concepts that take different forms and have different meanings cross-culturally. Similarly, human sexuality, rather than being simply natural is one of the most culturally significant, shaped, regulated, and symbolic of all human capacities. The concept of humans as either “heterosexual” or “homosexual” is a culturally and historically specific invention that is increasingly being challenged in the United States and elsewhere. Part of the problem is that gender has some biological component—however flexible. We do have bodies and there are some male and female differences, including in reproductive capacities and roles, albeit far fewer than we have been taught. Similarly, sexuality, sexual desires and responses, are partially rooted in human natural capacities.

However, in many ways, sexuality and gender are like food. We have a biologically rooted need to eat to survive and we have the capacity to enjoy eating. What constitutes “food,” what is “delicious” or “repulsive,” the contexts and meanings that surround food and human eating—those are all cultural. Gender and sexuality, like eating, have biological components. But cultures create systems of meaning that often barely resemble what is innate. We experience gender and sexuality largely through the prism of the culture or cultures to which we have been exposed and in which we have been raised.

Gender vs. Sex

In the West, the development of terms like “sex” and “gender” itself reflects shifting cultural beliefs about biology and identity. Historically, sex referred to both biological differences and sexuality, with males and females seen as inherently distinct in capacities and desires. These views were shaped by Judeo-Christian beliefs and the emergence of ‘scientific’ thought. By the 19th century, women’s sexuality was reduced to reproduction, and gender roles were strictly tied to heterosexuality and what was considered “conventional” behavior. These ideologies conflated sexual preference and gender roles, portraying deviations like “homosexuality” as biological abnormalities. Over time, increasing recognition of gender as separate from biological determinism has expanded the understanding of gender beyond male and female.

Decades of research on gender and sexuality, including by feminist anthropologists, has challenged these old theories, particularly biological determinism. We now understand that cultures, not nature, create the gender ideologies that go along with being born male or female and the ideologies vary widely, cross-culturally. If we think back to subsistence strategies, what is considered “man’s work” in some societies, such as carrying heavy loads, or farming, can be “woman’s work” in others. What is “masculine” and “feminine” varies: pink and blue, for example, are culturally invented gender-color linkages, and skirts and makeup can be worn by men, indeed by warriors. Hindu deities, male and female, are highly decorated and difficult to distinguish, at least by conventional masculinist U.S. stereotypes.

Women can be thought of as stronger (“tougher,” more “rational”) than men. Phyllis Kaberry, an anthropologist who studied the Nsaw of Cameroon in the 1940s, said males in that culture argued that land preparation for the rizga crop was “a woman’s job, which is too strenuous for the men” and that “women could carry heavy loads because they had stronger foreheads.” Among the Aka who live in the present-day Central African Republic, fathers have close, intimate, relationships with infants, play major roles in all aspects of infant-care, and can sometimes even produce breast milk.

Ultimately, biologic sex is a different phenomenon than gender. Gender is a set of culturally invented expectations. It constitutes a role one assumes, learns, and performs, more or less consciously. It is an “identity” one can in theory choose, at least in some societies, although there is often tremendous pressure, as in the United States, to conform to the gender role and identity linked to your biologic sex.

Gender tends to be an identity. Sexuality can be an identity (particularly in the West), but this isn't always the case.

This is a profound transformation in how many of us think about both gender and sexuality. The reality of human biology is that males and females are shockingly similar. There is arguably more variability within than between each sex, especially taking into account variations in physical traits among human populations globally.

Biology does not exist in a vacuum. Biological traits, including gender differences, are influenced by culture. Height is affected by diet and access to food, both linked to socioeconomic status. Other biological traits, like body hair, can, through cultural means, be used to exaggerate gender differences, whether through growing beards or using shaving or waxing to remove body hair. Since so much of what has been defined as biological is actually cultural, or has a major cultural component, the possibilities for transformation and change are nearly endless! That can be liberating, especially when we are young and want to create identities that fit our particular configuration of abilities and preferences. It can also be upsetting to people who have deeply internalized and who want to maintain the old gender ideology.

Left: For a Sikh, the practice of keeping a beard for men is part of the religious observance of Kesh—a commandment to keep all hair uncut (Source: Copyright Yann Forget / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA. Right: A 1920s American advertisement for "ZIP," a hair removal product aimed at women and encouraging the removal of female body hair (Source: Motion Picture Magazine / Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons.

Other forms of Gender Around the World

One common assumption is that all cultures divide human beings into two and only two genders, a binary or dualistic model of gender. However, in some cultures gender is more fluid and flexible, allowing individuals born as one biologic sex to assume another gender or creating more than two genders.

Examples of non-binary cultures come from pre-contact Native America. Anthropologists such as Ruth Benedict long ago identified a phenomenon of “two-spirit” people, individuals who do not comfortably conform to the gender roles and gender ideology normally associated with their biologic sex.

The third gender category of some form of “two-spirit” is found in over 150 Native American cultures. In terms of bodies, the most common two spirits would be assigned as having a male body at birth, but some would be assigned as physical females or intersex. In most Native American cultures, two spirit people do some women’s work and mix together roles, dress, and behavior of both men and women. Since they are neither male nor female, they are often seen as mediators between men and women and/or between physical or spiritual worlds. This idea is often connected to the group’s cosmology. For example, among the Navajo, the creator, Changing Woman, has both male and female aspects. Two spirit people are an example of where variation in bodies or gender identity is sanctified and not viewed as a threat or an exception.

Similarly, the Zuni people of New Mexico, beginning in the pre-contact era, lived in a relatively gender-egalitarian horticultural society. Individuals could choose an alternative role of “not-men” or “not-women.” A two-spirited Zuni man would do the work and wear clothing normally associated with females, having shown a preference for female-identified activities and symbols at an early age. In some, but not all cases, they would marry a man. Early European ethnocentric reports often described it as a form of homosexuality. Anthropologists suggested more-complex motivations, including dreams of selection by spirits, individual psychologies, biological characteristics, and negative aspects of male roles (e.g., warfare). Most significantly, these alternative gender roles were acceptable, publicly recognized, and sometimes venerated.

A well-known example of a non-binary gender system is found among the Hijra in India. Often called a third gender, these individuals are usually biologically male but adopt female clothing, gestures, and names; may eschew sexual desire and sexual activity; and go through religious rituals that give them certain divine powers, including blessing or cursing couples’ fertility and performing at weddings and births. Hijra sometimes undergo voluntary surgical removal of genitals through a “nirvan” or rebirth operation. Some hijra are males born with ambiguous external genitals.

Research has shown that individuals with ambiguous genitals, sometimes called “intersex,” are surprisingly common. Scholars estimate that intersex individuals constitute at least two percent of human births. So what are cultures to do when faced with an infant or child who cannot easily be “sexed?” Many Western cultures ultimately force children into one of the two binary categories, even if it requires surgery or hormone therapy. But in other places, like India and among the Isthmus Zapotec in southern Oaxaca, Mexico, they created a third gender category with an institutional identity and role to perform in society.

These cross-cultural examples demonstrate that the traditional rigid binary gender model in the United States is neither universal nor necessary. While all cultures recognize at least two biological sexes, usually based on genitals visible at birth, and have created at least two gender roles, many cultures go beyond the binary model, offering a third or fourth gender category. Other cultures allow individuals to adopt, without sanctions, a gender role that is not congruent with their biological sex.

Gender Roles

Even societies with a binary gender system exhibit enormous variability in the meanings and practices associated with being male or female. Sometimes male-female distinctions pervade virtually all aspects of life, structuring space, work, social life, communication, body decoration, and expressive forms such as music. For instance, both genders may farm, but may have separate fields for “male” and “female” crops and gender-specific crop rituals. Or, the village public space may be spatially segregated with a “men’s house” (a special dwelling only for men, like a “men’s club”) and a “women’s house.” In some societies, even when married couples occupy the same house, the space within the house is divided into male and female areas.

Women and men can also have gender-specific religious rituals and deities and use gender-identified tools. There are cases of male and female foods, rains, dances, hairstyles, and communication forms (including words, verb forms, pronouns, inflections, and writing systems); one example is the Nu Shu writing system used by some women in parts of China in the twentieth century). Gender ideologies can emphasize differences in character, capacities, and morality, sometimes portraying males and females as “opposite” poles on a continuum.

In societies that are highly segregated by gender, gender relationships sometimes may be seen as hostile or oppositional with one of the genders (usually female) viewed as potentially threatening. Female bodily fluids, such as menstrual blood and vaginal secretions, can be dangerous, damaging to men, “impure,” and “polluting,” especially in ritual contexts. In other cases, however, menstrual blood is associated with positive power. A girl’s first menstruation may be celebrated publicly with elaborate community rituals, as among the Bemba in southern Africa, and subsequent monthly flows bring special privileges. The Navajo carry out a puberty ceremony called Kinaalda to transition a girl to a woman in correspondence with her first menstrual cycle. In some small-scale societies (like the Sambia or Simbari in Papua New Guinea), menstrual bleeding is considered so powerful that men perform ritualized self-induced nose-bleeding called “male menstruation.” The meanings of these rituals are quite complex.

A Western, male-dominated binary can limit our ability to understand alternative models of gender—including other binary-dominated frameworks. Not all binary cultures are segregated by gender; nor does hostility necessarily accompany gender separation. Nor are all binary cultures deeply concerned with regulating female sexuality and marriage. Premarital and extra-marital sex can even be common and acceptable, as among the !Kung San and Trobriand Islanders.

Different need not mean unequal. The Lahu of southwest China and Thailand exemplify a complementary gender system in which men and women have distinct expected roles but a male-female pair is necessary to accomplish most daily tasks. A male-female pair historically took responsibility for local leadership. Male-female dyads completed daily household tasks in tandem and worked together in the fields. The title of anthropologist Shanshan Du’s book, Chopsticks Only Work in Pairs (1999), encapsulates how complementary gender roles defined Lahu society. A single chopstick is not very useful; neither is a single person, man or woman, in a dual-focused society.

Like the Lahu, the nearby Na believe men and women both play crucial roles in a family and household. Women are associated with birth and life while men take on tasks such as butchering animals and preparing for funerals. Every Na house has two large pillars in the central hearth room, one representing male identity and one representing female identity. Both are crucial, and the house might well topple symbolically without both pillars. As sociologist Zhou Huashan explained in his 2002 book about the Na, this is a society that “values women without diminishing men.”

Anthropologists have also encountered relatively androgynous gender-binary cultures. In these cultures, some gender differentiation exists but “gender bending” and role-crossing are frequent, accepted, and reflect circumstances and individual capacities and preferences. Even cultures with well-defined gender roles do not necessarily view them as fixed, biologically rooted, permanent, “essentialist,” or “naturalized” as occurred in the traditional gender ideology in the United States. Gender may not even be an “identity” in a psychological sense but, rather (and perhaps more commonly across human history), a social role one assumes in a particular social context.

In recent decades, anthropologists have come to understand that this “social context” includes food acquisition and child-bearing—namely, that the concept of “man the hunter” is a myth. All cultures have creation stories that address the origins of males and females, their relationships, and often explain the dominance of one gender over the other. Scientific theories in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shaped by Darwinian ideas, perpetuated the belief that male dominance is universal, rooted in evolutionary biology and the “hunting way of life.” This view argued that men, as hunters and providers, developed traits like strength, aggression, and leadership, while women, engaged in child-rearing, became dependent on men for survival. These ideas, reflected in cultural stereotypes, suggested that men are naturally suited for leadership and women for domestic roles, shaping societal attitudes about gender roles, from household dynamics to political participation.

However, decades of research have challenged these theories, particularly the notion that hunting was central to early human survival and male dominance. Studies on primates and early foraging societies reveal that female roles were much more active, with women often gathering the bulk of food and sometimes hunting themselves. Gender roles were not universally tied to hunting or biological determinism, and in many societies, both men and women contributed equally to survival through cooperation and shared responsibilities. The historical assumptions about male superiority and female passivity, deeply rooted in patriarchal narratives, have been debunked by evidence showing the complexity and flexibility of early human social structures.

Sexuality & Sexual Acts

Note

This section contains descriptions of sexual acts that Western readers may find objectionable. The key take-away is that sexual acts, sexual attraction, and the link between gender, sex, and sexuality are not universal or easy to define.

Unraveling the hunting-way-of-life scenario, especially female dependence on males, undermines the naturalness of the Western (United States) “nuclear family” with its male-provider-protector and female-domestic-child-care division of labor. As we saw in the previous chapter, more than one hundred years of cross-cultural research reveals the varied forms humans invented for “partnering”—living in households, raising children, establishing long-term relationships, transmitting valuables to offspring, and other behaviors associated with family. Once again, the universality and evolutionary origins of the American family is more fiction than fact, a projection of our cultural model of family and gender on the past and the entire human species.

Like gender, sexuality has a biological component—if only to the extent that sex organs are biological simply by being organs. There is also a biological relationship between parents and offspring—again, more obvious in the case of the mother since the baby develops in and emerges from her body. Nevertheless, DNA and genes are real and influence the traits and potentialities of the next generation. Beyond those biological realities, culture and society seem to take over, building on—or ignoring—biology. We all know there are biological fathers unaware of or not concerned about their biological offspring and not involved in their care and biological mothers who, after giving birth, give up their children through adoption or to other family members. We also know that reproduction is only a small fraction of sexual attraction, roles, and behaviors.

Even the concept of sexual ‘attraction’ can be problematic from a culturally relative perspective. The connection between sexual relationships, marriage or formal bonding, and sexual relationships—ideas about “the one” or “soulmates,” for example—are not universal.

For the purposes of our understanding this week, we might simply say that ‘sexuality’ describes how a culture maps gender roles onto sexual behavior. Therefore, the sexuality of a culture depends on how the culture defines sex, gender, and sexual behaviors!

The concept of “homosexual men,” for example, exists in our culture because we map sexual attraction between ‘males’ to that term—and typically use that term ‘male’ in that mapping to refer to individuals who are both male in terms of sex and gender. In cultures where a man (by biological sex characteristics) may have the role of a woman (such as in a “third gender”), a man being sexually attracted to this individual may not be seen as homosexual.

The Sambia (Simbari) until relatively recently, practiced a number of rituals for boys’ initiation to manhood. These included stealing them from their mothers, bloodletting from the nose as mentioned above, self-infliction with stinging nettles, and, important to understanding 'sexuality,' ritualized fellatio of adult men. The Simbari believed boys were not born with semen but had to acquire it in this way. From the outside perspective, the boys must perform oral “sex” on adult men to ingest semen. But the Simbari never saw it this way. This ritual obligation was not sexual. In fact, the Simbari have particularly strong views against this sort of act among adult men. They do not see the act as sexual in its ritual context and in fact have a strong cultural taboo against the practice outside of that context because of their beliefs regarding the power and potency of semen. In their theory of human development, semen is a crucial substance for healthy male growth, for eventually marrying a woman and fathering children, and for becoming a “real man.” Ultimately, the act of ingesting semen in this way is decidedly not a sexual act—to the degree that to do it as a sexual act is taboo.

Some individuals in India practice “female-female sexuality” or “male-male sexuality.” While this might involve a deep relationship and intimate sexual behavior, it refers to behavior and social relationships, not some internal, fixed, fundamental identity. In some cultures, whether one is “homosexual” or “heterosexual” is not linked simply to engaging in same-sex sexual behavior. Instead, as among Brazilian males studied by anthropologist Don Kulick, your status in the sexual relationship, literally and symbolically, determines whether you are the inserter or the penetrated.

Complex Categories & Identity

For over two thousand years female and male bodies were not conceptualized in terms of difference. For example, medical texts from ancient Greece until the late eighteenth century defined male and female bodies as similar with the only difference that female bodies have genitalia on the inside. It is not until the late 18th century that we get the concept of sex as we think about it currently–biological differences in males and females–with a focus on difference instead of similarity.

Ultimately, “complex” does not begin to describe the types of variation that exist in gender and sexuality throughout the world, but this cultural reality is often hidden behind a modern (Western) attempt to describe human sex as having purely biological bases. As with race, gender and sexuality help illustrate that nothing cultural is ever 100% biological.

Same-sex sexual and romantic relationships (which can be different) probably exist in every society, but categories like “gay,” “lesbian,” and “bisexual”—and whether there are further categories beyond that—are cultural constructions. They reflect culturally specific beliefs about gender, sexuality, and how sexual preferences develop. As with the ongoing debate around Shakespeare, in many cultures same-sex sex is a behavior, not an identity. Sexual behavior need not correspond to an internal sense of “who you are.” It is something you do, an activity you engage in, for certain purposes, which may or may not be sexual.

Sub-Cultures & Deviance

This sort of thinking about sex and gender raises some interesting questions about the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly in the United States. If nothing else, that it raises these questions illustrates a point we all already know—that being "an American" is much more of an identity than a culture. Does the queer community and/or ally community constitute a "subculture?" But, if so, what culture is it a subculture to?

According to many sociologists, the dominant culture of a society is the one exemplified by the most powerful group in the society. Taking the United States as an example, Andersen, Taylor and Logio (2015: 36-37) suggest that while it is hard to isolate a dominant culture, there seems to be a “widely acknowledged ‘American’ culture,” epitomized by “middle class values, habits, and economic resources, strongly influenced by . . . television, the fashion industry, and Anglo-European traditions,” and readily thought of as “including diverse elements such as fast food, Christmas shopping, and professional sports.” Philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah (1994: 116) is more pointed, emphasizing America’s historically Christian beginnings, its Englishness in terms both of language and traditions, and the mark left on it by the dominant classes, including government, business, and cultural elites.

In contrast to the dominant culture of a society, say sociologists, are the various subcultures, conceived as groups that are part of the dominant culture but that differ from it in important ways. Many sociology textbooks are quick to propose race and ethnicity as important bases for the formation of subcultures. Other commonly mentioned bases include geographic region, occupation, social or economic class, and religion. Although this way of thinking about the connections between culture and groups has now fallen somewhat out of favor among cultural theorists, it is still common in basic sociology texts. The alternative is looking at group membership in terms of identity.

A subculture develops when a portion of a society shares many of the core cultural assumptions of the larger culture but approaches them differently. Music-based subcultures are a ready example. If 'rock music' is seen as a broader culture defined by a particular 'attitude,' its subcultures might include grunge, punk, heavy metal, goth, etc. which manifest that same overall attitude in similar but different ways.

In contrast, deviance is a behavior, belief, or appearance that violates a society' or culture's norms or expectations. As in many aspects of sociology and anthropology, there are no absolute answers about deviance. What people agree is deviant differs in various cultures, and it may change over time. Tattoos, vegan lifestyles, single parenthood, breast implants, and even jogging were once considered deviant in the West but are now widely accepted. The change process usually takes time and may be accompanied by significant disagreement, especially for social norms that are viewed as essential. For example, divorce affects the social institution of family, and so divorce carried a deviant and stigmatized status at one time. Marijuana use was once seen as deviant and criminal, but U.S. social norms on this issue are changing.

Consider race and gender/sexuality with regard to deviance. Both may be aspects of a person's identity—but which may be considered deviant (rightly or wrongly)? What impact must it have on a person's identity (and wellbeing) for some element of that identity to be considered outside the norm? And note that what is considered deviant is entirely based on the culture itself. Just as eating cow meat is considered deviant in Hindu culture but commonplace in many other cultures, what is deviant in our current society is only so because it falls beyond our baseline expectations. A same-sex relationship is seen as deviant (outside established norms) within a religious conservative subculture in the United States but remains well within the bounds of norms and expectations within any of the 150+ Indigenous traditions with some version of "two spirit" people.

Anthropology draws its study of 'deviance' from sociology. According to sociologist William Graham Sumner, deviance is a violation of established contextual, cultural, or social norms, whether folkways, mores, or codified law (1906). It can be as minor as picking your nose in public or as major as committing murder. Although the word “deviance” has a negative connotation in everyday language, we recognize that deviance is not necessarily bad. In fact, from a structural-functionalist perspective, one of the positive contributions of deviance is that it fosters social change.

As norms vary across cultures and time, it also makes sense that notions of deviance change. Sixty years ago, public schools in the United States had dress codes that often banned women from wearing pants to class. Today, it’s socially acceptable for women to wear pants, but less so for men to wear skirts. And more recently, the act of wearing or not wearing a mask became a matter of deviance, and in some cases, political affiliation and legality. Whether an act is deviant or not depends on a culture's response to that act.

Anthropologists are primarily concerned with the cultural aspects of deviance and their role in our responses to it. When a person violates a social norm, what happens? A driver caught speeding can receive a speeding ticket. A student who wears a bathrobe to class gets a warning from a professor. An adult belching loudly is avoided. All societies practice social control, the regulation and enforcement of norms. The underlying goal of social control is to maintain social order, an arrangement of practices and behaviors on which society’s members base their daily lives. Think of social order as an employee handbook and social control as a manager. When a worker violates a workplace guideline, the manager steps in to enforce the rules; when an employee is doing an exceptionally good job at following the rules, the manager may praise or promote the employee.

The means of enforcing rules are known as sanctions. Sanctions can be positive as well as negative. Positive sanctions are rewards given for conforming to norms. Negative sanctions are punishments for violating norms. Sociologists also classify sanctions as formal or informal. Although shoplifting, a form of social deviance, may be illegal, there are no laws dictating the proper way to scratch your nose. That doesn’t mean picking your nose in public won’t be punished; instead, you will encounter informal sanctions. Informal sanctions emerge in face-to-face social interactions. For example, wearing flip-flops to an opera or swearing loudly in church may draw disapproving looks or even verbal reprimands, whereas behavior that is seen as positive—such as helping an elderly person carry grocery bags across the street—may receive positive informal reactions, such as a smile or pat on the back.

Given this framework, anthropologists are most keen to interpret informal sanctions—and particularly those embedded in other cultural forms. Consider the example of body hair removal for women in the 20th century in the United States. A sociologist and an anthropologist would look at this situation very similarly. But, where a sociologist might focus more on the structures and functions of society that explain the pressure for women to remove their body hair, an anthropologist would be much more interested in the broader ideas, values, and beliefs that feed into those structures. An anthropologist would be more inclined to look at the ritual of removing body hair or the use of body hair as a symbol for manliness—hence that ritual removal by women.

Another concept important to understanding identity in anthropology is stigma. Stigma is distinct from but related to subculture and deviance. While subcultures represent alternative systems of meaning, practice, and identity that coexist with or challenge mainstream cultural norms while within the framework of the larger culture, and deviance refers to behaviors or attributes that violate those norms, stigma concerns the social consequences of such perceived deviations or other differences. Stigma is not always about deviance—other aspects like ability, class, and other statuses beyond a person's control may be stigmatized. Subcultures may actively cultivate difference as a form of resistance or self-definition, whereas stigma denotes a process of discrediting difference through moral judgment and social exclusion. Not all deviant behaviors are stigmatized, and not all stigmatized identities arise from deviant acts. Instead, stigma reflects the cultural and political work of classification we have seen already—how societies mark some identities as inferior, contaminated, or shameful to reinforce dominant values and social hierarchies.

In anthropology, stigma is the process of social labeling and boundary maintenance. Drawing from the work of sociologist Erving Goffman, the concept of stigma involves the reduction of a person from a “whole and usual” individual to one tainted by an attribute that discredits their social identity. This transformation is contingent upon culturally specific notions of purity, morality, and normalcy, through which certain characteristics—such as illness, disability, sexuality, or ethnicity—become grounds for exclusion. Stigma functions as a mechanism of social control, reinforcing conformity by linking moral worth to bodily and behavioral norms. Stigma is one example of the bassis for sanctions.

At the same time, anthropologists emphasize that stigma is not merely an individual burden but a socially embedded and politically charged phenomenon. It emerges within particular historical and cultural configurations of power, inequality, and value. Ethnographic studies have shown, for example, how the stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS, members of lower castes, or migrants reflects broader anxieties about social order, pollution, and belonging. Moreover, those who experience stigma often engage in subtle forms of resistance, reinterpretation, and community formation that challenge dominant discourses. In this sense, stigma is both a site of oppression and a potential ground for the rearticulation of identity and moral personhood within culture.

In 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations' (ERO) officers (here in West Palm Beach, Florida) have been increasingly deployed to U.S. cities. The agency’s practices—such as surveillance, detention, and deportation—materialize state definitions of legality and belonging, transforming certain immigrant identities into embodiments of criminality or threat. ICE operates not merely as an enforcement body but as a cultural instrument that reinforces symbolic boundaries between “citizen” and “alien,” legitimizing broader narratives 'insider' and 'outsider' that shape stigma among migrant communities. Your opinion of ICE's activities largely come down to your cultural definition of these boundaries. (Source: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Those who experience stigma do not passively internalize the devaluing judgments imposed upon them; rather, they often respond through practices of reinterpretation, resistance, and community-making that challenge dominant narratives. In the context of immigration in the United States, for instance, stigmatization frequently emerges through discourses that frame certain migrant populations—particularly Latin American, Middle Eastern, or African groups—as “illegal,” “burdensome,” or “culturally incompatible.” These labels function to morally and politically marginalize migrants, casting them as threats to national integrity or social cohesion. Yet anthropological research reveals that within these conditions of exclusion, migrants actively negotiate meaning and belonging, developing alternative moral and cultural frameworks that affirm their dignity and collective worth.

Such acts of resistance often operate subtly and symbolically rather than through overt confrontation. Immigrant communities, for example, reinterpret stigmatized identities through narratives of hard work, sacrifice, and familial responsibility—qualities that counter the dominant portrayal of them as socially parasitic or criminal. Religious congregations, neighborhood associations, and transnational networks provide spaces for the cultivation of moral legitimacy and mutual recognition, where members assert belonging through ritual, language, and shared memory. Cultural practices such as festivals, food traditions, or bilingual education initiatives serve not only to preserve heritage but also to reclaim public space and visibility in the face of exclusion. These forms of everyday resilience illustrate what anthropologist James C. Scott terms “infrapolitics”: small-scale, often hidden acts that contest hegemonic power. In this way, stigmatized immigrants transform the very symbols of marginality into resources for solidarity and self-definition, unsettling the boundaries between outsider and citizen, deviant and normative, imposed by dominant U.S. cultural discourses.

Recalling that even the idea that you have a 'personal identity' is itself cultural, you might look at it this way: anthropologists are often interested in the ritual, the symbol, and the shared ideas/values that produce identities and concepts of insider and outsider than we are the individual insiders or outsiders. Just like we approach religious beliefs from the perspective of believers and define kinship primarily using the terms the kinship groups themselves use, we approach and define "insiders" and "outsiders" as much as we can in the way "insiders" themselves do. This is to say, an anthropologist is particularly interested in a person's "identity" because that identity presents a variety of broader, insider, cultural leads to follow.