Preliminary Contents

UNIT 1. Anthropological Perspectives

1. Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomamo, Napoleon A. Chagnon, from Yanomamo: The Fierce People, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1992

Although an anthropologist’s first field experience may involve culture shock, Napoleon Chagnon reports that the long process of participant observation may transform personal hardship and frustration into confident understanding of exotic cultural patterns.

2. Lessons from the Field, George Gmelch, from Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, Macalester, 2003

By introducing students to fieldwork, George Gmelch provides them with the best that anthropology has to offer—an enriched understanding of other people and cultures along with a glimpse of oneself and what it means to be an American. Fieldwork is a matter of mutual acceptance and mutual economic benefit.

3. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari, Richard Borshay Lee, Natural History, December 1969

Anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee gives an account of the misunderstanding and confusion that often accompany the cross-cultural experience. In this case, he violated a basic principle of the !Kung Bushmen’s social relations—food sharing.

4. Tricking and Tripping: Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS, Claire E. Sterk, Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS, Social Change Press, 2000

As unique as Claire Sterk’s report on prostitution may be, she discusses issues common to anthropologists wherever they do fieldwork: how does one build trusting relationships with informants and what are an anthropologist’s ethical obligations toward them?

5. Gardening Tips, Lee Cronk, The Complex Whole: Culture and the Evolution of Human Behavior, Westview Press, 1999

The concept of cultural relativity has been an important anthropological principle for understanding other people’s ways. The author cautions, however, that we must not move from using culture as an explanation of behavior to using it as a moral justification for behavior, that we should not slide from an “is” statement to an “ought” statement. To do so, says Cronk, is to commit the “naturalistic fallacy,” the idea that if something is “natural” it must therefore be “good.”

6. One Hundred Percent American, Ralph Linton, The Study of Man, Appleton–Century Company, Inc., 1936

For a complete understanding of American culture, we must acknowledge all of those contributions made by people from distant times and distant places. Given the current debates in Europe and the United States over immigration policy, this “dated,” but timely piece by Ralph Linton reminds us of the importance of diffusion or borrowing, from one culture to another.

UNIT 2. Culture and Communication

7. Who’s Speech is Better?, Donna Jo Napoli, Language Matters: A Guide to Everyday Questions About Language, Oxford University Press, 2003

Although we cannot explicitly state the rules of our language, we do choose different rules in different contexts. Depending on the situation, we manipulate every aspect of language, from simple differences in pronunciation and vocabulary to the more complicated phrasing and sentence structure.

8. Fighting for Our Lives, Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture, Random House, 1998

In America today, there seems to be a pervasive warlike tone to public dialogue. The prevailing belief is that there are only two sides to an issue and opposition leads to truth. Often, however, an issue is more like a crystal, with many sides, and the truth is in the complex middle, not in the oversimplified extremes.

9. “I Can’t Even Open My Mouth”, Deborah Tannen, from I Only Say This Because I Love You, Random House, 2001

Since family members have a long, shared history, what they say in conversation—the messages—echo with meanings from the past—the metamessages. The metamessage may not be spoken, but its meaning may be gleaned from every aspect of context: the way something is said, who is saying it, or the very fact that it is said at all.

10. Shakespeare in the Bush, Laura Bohannan, Natural History, August/September 1966

It is often claimed that great literature has cross-cultural significance. In this article, Laura Bohannan describes the difficulties she encountered and the lessons she learned as she attempted to relate the story of Hamlet to the Tiv of West Africa in their own language.

11. Body Art As Visual Language, Enid Schildkrout, Museum of Natural History Publication for Educators, Winter 2001

As a visual language, body art involves shared symbols, myths and social values. Whether as an expression of individuality or group identity, it says something about who we are and what we want to become.

UNIT 3. The Organization of Society and Culture

12. Understanding Eskimo Science, Richard Nelson, Audubon, September/October 1993

The traditional hunters’ insights into the world of nature may be different, but they are as extensive and profound as those of modern science.

13. The Inuit Paradox, Patricia Gadsby, Discover, October 2004

The traditional diet of the Far North, with its high-protein, high-fat content, shows that there are no essential foods—only essential nutrients.

14. Ties that Bind, Peter M. Whiteley, Natural History, November 2004

The Hopi people offer gifts in a much broader range of circumstances than people in Western cultures do, tying individuals and groups to each other and to the realm of the spirits.

15. Too Many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples, and No Watermelon at All: Three Object Lessons in Living with Reciprocity, David Counts, from The Humbled Anthropologist: Tales From the Pacific, Wadsworth Publishing, 1990

Among the lessons to be learned regarding reciprocity is that one may not demand a gift or refuse it. Yet, even without a system of record-keeping or money being involved, there is a long-term balance of mutual benefit.

UNIT 4. Other Families, Other Ways

16. When Brothers Share a Wife, Melvyn C. Goldstein, Natural History, March, 1987

While the custom of fraternal polyandry relegated many Tibetan women to spinsterhood, this unusual marriage form promoted personal security and economic well-being for its participants.

17. Death Without Weeping, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Natural History, October 1989

In the shantytowns of Brazil, the seeming indifference of mothers who allow some of their children to die is a survival strategy geared to circumstances in which only a few may live.

18. Our Babies, Ourselves, Meredith F. Small, Natural History, October 1997

Cross-cultural research in child development shows that parents readily accept their society’s prevailing ideology on how babies should be treated, usually because it makes sense in their environmental or social circumstances.

19. Arranging a Marriage in India, Serena Nanda, from Stumbling Toward Truth: Anthropologists at Work, Wareland Press, 2000

Arranging a marriage in India is far too serious a business for the young and inexperienced. Instead the parents make decisions on the basis of the families’ social position, reputation and ability to get along.

20. Who Needs Love! In Japan, Many Couples Don’t, Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, February 11, 1996

Paradoxically, Japanese families seem to survive, not because husbands and wives love each other more than American couples do, but because they perhaps love each other less. As love marriages increase, with the compatibility factor becoming more important in the decision to marry, the divorce rate in Japan is rising.

UNIT 5. Gender and Status

21. The Berdache Tradition, Walter L. Williams, Spirit and the Flesh, Beacon Press, 2000

Not all societies agree with the Western cultural view that all humans are either women or men. In fact, many Native American cultures recognize an alternative role called the “berdache,” a morphological male who has a nonmasculine character. This is just one way for a society to recognize and assimilate some atypical individuals without imposing a change on them or stigmatizing them as deviant.

22. A Woman’s Curse?, Meredith F. Small, The Sciences, January/February 1999

An anthropologist’s study of the ritual of seclusion surrounding women’s menstrual cycle has some rather profound implications regarding human evolution, certain cultural practices, and women’s health.

23. Where Fat Is a Mark of Beauty, Ann M. Simmons, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1998

In a rite of passage, some Nigerian girls spend months gaining weight and learning domestic customs in a “fattening room.” A woman’s rotundity is seen as a sign of good health, prosperity, and feminine beauty.

24. We Call Ourselves Americans, Laura Zimmer-Tamakoshi, Cultural Diversity in the United States, Bergin & Garvey, 1997

To lump together millions of so-called “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants” is to ignore so many varieties of ethnic and gender experiences within the United States and to gloss over some very significant differences in power and privilege as well.

UNIT 6. Religion, Belief, and Ritual

25. Eyes of the Ngangas: Ethnomedicine and Power in Central African Republic, Arthur C. Lehmann, Magic, Witchcraft and Religion, Mayfield Publishing Co., 2001

Because of cost, availability and cultural bias, many people rely on ethnomedical or traditional treatment of illness rather than biomedical or Western treatment. Actually, says Lehmann, both systems are effective in their own ways and should be integrated in developing primary health care in the Third World.

26. Ancient Teachings, Modern Lessons, David A. Taylor, Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 109, no. 5, 2001

Although indigenous knowledge rarely comes in the form of scientific data and often involves complex narratives, health professionals of the twenty-first century may gain new tools by combining the best of science with the best of the old ways.

27. The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual, Richard Sosis, American Scientist, March–April 2004

Rituals promote group cohesion by requiring members to engage in behavior that is too costly to fake. Groups that do so are more likely to attain their collective goals than are groups whose members are less committed.

28. Shamans, Mark J. Plotkin, Medicine Quest, Penguin Books, 2000

The Western tendency to disregard shamanic healing practices is supremely ironic when one considers the extraordinary therapeutic gifts they have already provided us and the invaluable potential that is still out there—if we can get to it before it disappears.

29. Drug Culture: Everybody Uses Something, Danny Monroe Wilcox, Cultural Diversity in the United States, Bergin & Garvey, 1997

Since prehistoric times, human beings have been using Pharmacologically active substances. They have generally done so in the belief that such substances are important to their well-being and that the experiences themselves, mediated through altered states of consciousness, have important meanings.

30. The Secrets of Haiti’s Living Dead, Gino Del Guercio, Harvard Magazine, January/February 1986

In seeking scientific documentation of the existence of zombies, anthropologist Wade Davis found himself looking beyond the stereotypes and mysteries of voodoo and directly into a cohesive system of social control in rural Haiti.

31. Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, Horace Miner, American Anthropologist, June 1956

The ritual beliefs and taboos of the Nacirema provide us with a test case of the objectivity of ethnographic description and show us the extremes to which human behavior can go.

32. Baseball Magic, George Gmelch, Elysian Fields Quarterly, All Star Issue, 1992

Professional baseball players, as do Trobriand Islanders, often resort to magic in situations of chance and uncertainty. As irrational as it may seem, magic creates confidence, competence, and control in the practitioner.

UNIT 7. Sociocultural Change: The Impact of the West

33. Why Can’t People Feed Themselves?, Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, from Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, Random House, 1977

When colonial governments force the conversion of subsistence farms to cash crop plantations, peasants are driven onto marginal lands or into a large pool of cheap labor. In either case, the authors maintain, they are no longer able to feed themselves.

34. The Arrow of Disease, Jared Diamond, Discover, October 1992

The most deadly weapon that colonial Europeans carried to other continents was their germs. The most intriguing question to answer here is why the flow of disease did not move in the opposite direction.

35. Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico, Camilla Townsend, The American Historical Review, June 2003

Contrary to popular belief, there is little evidence that the Aztecs seriously believed that Hernando Cortes and his men were gods returning from the east. Instead, the author explains, the origin and durability of the Myth provided an alternate explanation for what actually happened in the period of the Conquest. In addition, Camilla Townsend discusses what the indigenous people were actually thinking.

36. The Price of Progress, John Bodley, from Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1998

As traditional cultures are sacrificed to the process of modernization, tribal peoples not only lose the security, autonomy, and quality of life they once had, but they also become powerless, second-class citizens who are discriminated against and exploited by the dominant society.

37. Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide, Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Suceed, Viking Adult, 2004

What seemed on the surface to be a simple case of ethnic hatred turned out, on closer inspection, to involve excessive population growth, environmental degradation, a breakdown of traditional social cohesion, and political expediency.

38. A Pacific Haze: Alcohol and Drugs in Oceania, Mac Marshall, from Contemporary Pacific Societies: Studies in Development and Change, Prentice Hall, 1993

The relatively benign use of psychoactive drugs, such as betel and kava in the Pacific Islands, is deeply rooted in cultural traditions and patterns of social interaction. Today, as a result of new drugs and disruptive social and economic changes introduced from the outside, a haze hangs over Oceania.

39. From Baffin Island to New Orleans, Bruce E. Johansen, The Progressive, December 2005

As climate change threatens the Inuit’s way of life, it is becoming increasingly clear that the same phenomenon is wreaking havoc on the Gulf Coast. In framing the issues in terms of human rights violations, the Inuit are laying the groundwork for suing the United States.

40. What Native Peoples Deserve, Roger Sandall, Commentary, May 2005

What should be done about endangered enclave societies in the midst of a modern nation such as Brazil? The main priority, says Roger Sandall, must be to ensure that no one should have to play the role of historical curiosity and that those who want to participate in the modern world should be able to do so, whether on the reservation or off of it.