Anthropology Times

“Seeking the Ancestors: Forging a Black Feminist Tradition in Anthropology” by A. Lynn Bolles
(This is the first in a series of essays presented in Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

As I have felt more acutely aware of the value of the sense of shared experience, I particularly enjoyed this historical overview of black women in anthropology. When Bolles writes about why black women study anthropology, I understood and felt every word of it. She writes of how black women are attracted to anthropology’s embrace of its own eclecticism and of its holistic approach that draws on perspectives from multiple disciplines, *and because it can be used as “a tool to locate the sources of inequality, and in some instances, as a place where one could participate in finding a ‘cure’.”  She also speaks to some of my concerns when she writes that black women anthropologist do not receive appropriate recognition in the anthropological canon, that their intellectualism is held suspect, and that they often feel strongly driven to exert a corrective influence on theoretical and historical perspectives in anthropology. In light of these concerns, I have considered that as a black woman, my views on culture (in the public arena) might be better respected if I had an advanced degree in physics than if I had an advanced degree in anthropology as such a degree would be seen by the wider public as more convincing proof of my intellectualism.

Continuing that line of thought, I have often wondered whether as a black woman I should study a subject like physics because I can. Bolles commentary on the black intellectual tradition speaks directly to my reasons for thinking this. She quotes Leith Mullings as summarizing the goals of the tradition thusly: “(1) the charge of uplifting the race, (2) dealing with the social and material condition of the race, and (3) finding ‘a cure for inequality’.” So my question to myself has been, given the view of the study of physics in the wider public, whether I would do more to further the stated goals by increasing the number of black women with advanced degrees in physics. A female physicist (Kawtar Hafidi) with whom I felt some commonality regarding her childhood joy in studying math expressed similar considerations: “[My father] said, ‘What will you do with literature? It’s not useful to the country. Since you are good at everything, you should do science.’ So he convinced me, and I went ahead with science, because I thought I could help my country this way. So I started mathematics and physics in university.” As a black child who excelled in academics, it was impressed upon me early that I had to consider how what I studied and how well I did in school reflected on black people generally. During the many years that I spent (mildly) philosophically opposed to further study in academia, I wondered whether I should feel obligated to return due to the above mentioned considerations.

Yours truly,

S.

*edited to add

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I imagine that it’s common with Anthropology and others areas of social research that when one studies at a certain level it may give rise to sensations of out-of-body experience. Concentrated study of how we live and think and interact can create such a disconnect with the sense of self. In this way I think study in areas such as math and physics may be easier… at least for me. At the moment, working math problems is calming for me in a way that reading anthropology is not, but I could see this changing. I enjoy the anthropological perspective, the vast scope of the field, the natural appeal to interdisciplinary approaches… but I fear serious study might be a quick road to insanity.

I think that press coverage of anthropology adds to my anxiety when thinking about further study in the field. I believe anthropology (along with sociology and psychology) suffers a lot more from poor coverage in the popular press. Unfortunately, a lot of culture commentators with no background in social fields get billed as culture experts and a lot of “experts,” people from top schools, put out crap research (for financial gain?) that gets top coverage because of the hotness of the topic. Sometimes it’s hard to keep even the obviously bad stuff separate when thinking about the field generally. At times it’s hard to distinguish whether seemingly reputable people are being deliberately deceitful or whether the methodologies are just that faulty. I wish there were more rigorous methodology classes earlier in social study. This past year of reading in anthropology has been helpful in pointing me toward where to look for “real” anthropological research.

I haven’t come up with a plan for reading anthropology in the new year. I will likely take a few weeks off as I am cramming to hopefully take a chemistry placement test so that I don’t have to take Intro to Chemistry. It may turn out that I will want to read some anthropology to break up the chemistry study such that I will post like normal until I come up with a plan.

See you in the new year,

S.

Functional Theories of Grammar
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 13: 97-117 (Volume publication date October 1984)
J Nichols
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

This article is for functional theories of grammar what I would like to have for anthropology generally. It lays outs the basics and then goes through a list of all the players, their perspectives, and their works. I enjoyed Nichols’ careful use of words, the pain she takes to explain exactly her use of the word “functional” in the text of this article and how the use of that word might differ across texts and perspectives. I’ve found it difficult lately to tear myself away from my math and science, physics, and chemistry review. I did not give this article the attention I would have liked given how nicely comprehensive it was even though under 20 pages. The use of jargon was not too heavy, but it was present beyond my immediate abilities.

Still I felt a kinship reading it as the approach seems of the type I took toward conversation as a child. About functional grammar Nichols writes: “It analyzes grammatical structure, as do formal and structural grammar; but it also analyzes the entire communicative situation: the purpose of the speech event, its participants, its discourse context.” I used to spend a lot of time observing how people used words in different situations, how context and mood and participants affected word choices. I would take these observations into account when formulating verbal responses. I especially took note of the extra communicative elements that were indicated by the choice of words, but didn’t necessarily follow from the dictionary definitions of the words. As a result, I tended to have a longer than usual pause before responding, and I tended to speak slowly even by Southern standards.

Starting some time in college, I made efforts to be more natural in conversational pace and style. In the process I lost a lot of the observation skills I had gained. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the gains toward being more natural were worth the loss of those skills. I wish I had kept more written notes as a child.

Over the past year or so, there have been several review articles that I tagged to revisit. This one will join that list. Perhaps for the coming year I will pick 6-12 articles to revisit and make a bigger effort to explore some of the resources mentioned.

With sweetness,
S.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SYMBOLS
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 27: 329-346 (Volume publication date October 1998)
John E. Robb
The publishers share an abstract here.

My dearest Simone,

In a previous post, I implied that study for a job or as part of a dispassionate continuation of a previous path of study might be wrong reasons to study. At the moment, these are not the main reasons that drive me, but I don’t think that they are wrong reasons.

I had hoped reading this article that I might find a point of view on the archaeology of symbols with which I identified. I did not. I felt an upsurge of some of my general uncomfortableness with anthropology/archaeology. There often seems to be a disingenuous relationship between theory and data; there’s this sense that if a certain theoretical perspective only has round holes, then only round pegs matter and all other shapes of pegs are ignored. The starting/middle point doesn’t seem to be which theory can explain the most data, but rather which theory and data go together to make the tidiest package. Let the cherry picking begin. These issues exists in every discipline, but my impression is that they are a more pernicious problem in anthropology.

Robb presents three approaches to symbols in archaeology. They are symbols as tokens, symbols as girders, and symbols as tesserae. Looking at the first and taking note that the author says it remained unquestioned and unamended for a long time I see an example of my thinking that anthropologists often blur the line between “this is what we can say” and “this is all there is to say.” On symbols as totems, Robb writes, “According to many archaeologists symbols serve primarily as instruments of communication … As one recent discussion puts it, ‘Symbols including icons, rituals, monuments, and written test all convey and transmit information and meaning to their viewers…’ Thus a sumptuous headdress signals a special status, an exotic artifact boasts about long-range connections, a monument represents a capacity to command labor.” I find it easy to believe when Robb writes that “this approach has long since proved its value in archaeology.” I can almost hear the meeting discussing the fact that those who fund research like clear ideologies that render easily quantifiable findings. Though I found this view of symbols shallow and expedient, I don’t necessarily agree whole-heartedly with the reaction from “Marxists and interpretive archaeologists, who argued that symbols do not merely represent and disguise power relations but actually constitute them…”

About symbols as girders, Robb writes, “In contrast to the information transmission view, many archaeologists have explored how symbols constituted and structured the mental and social world of ancient people … humans orient themselves in the world, think and act through learned culturally specific structures that recur wherever they organize themselves and their material productions.” I do find this a better starting point than the former view of symbols as totems. It reads like a more genuine attempt at saying something more real though less tangible. Of course, I’ve always had rationalist leanings. Robb mentions that “without strong Durkheimian assumptions about elementary social structures, Levi-Straussian assumptions about elementary mental structures, or Marxist assumptions about hegemony, identifying cultural structures alone usually does not satisfy social-minded archaeologists.” He goes on to write that many have combined structuralists approaches with other approaches to form a more workable model.

On symbols as tesserae, Rob writes, “Meaning does not reside in artifacts or in people but in the moment of interaction between the two… symbols’ meanings do not exist outside of the moment in which people apprehend them and assemble them into meaningful formations … Because symbols’ meaning is not fixed but contestable, social life involves continual struggle over alternative interpretations of important symbols.” This view seems overly narrow to me in part the way Robb cites in that “all of symbolic life becomes superficial, without historical or psychological roots – a transitory juxtaposition of images on a screen.” Thoughts come to mind of how many advertising strategies rely on the fact that symbols’ meaning do exist outside of the moment in which people apprehend them.

Reading this article I feel that my need to read a book that has a comprehensive overview of anthropological theories and the views of the major players becomes more pressing. Here’s one person’s anthropological timeline that includes links to Wikipedia articles on people who shaped the development of anthropological thought: History of Anthropology Timeline.

Yours truly,
S

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I’ve picked two articles to read before the end of the year along with finishing my review of America Day by Day. I continue to look for ways to integrate my study of anthropology with my study of physics.

The Archaeology of Symbols
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 27: 329-346 (Volume publication date October 1998)
John E. Robb

Functional Theories of Grammar
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 13: 97-117 (Volume publication date October 1984)
J Nichols

Until Monday,
S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I am looking to find more clarity on what I want to do next in anthropology. I could probably continue grazing forever, but that’s a good way to eventually lose interest in an area of study. I haven’t come up with a firm plan. I’m thinking that I will pick three to five areas to study in greater detail. Areas to which I am immediately drawn include symbols in archaeology, linguistics and theory. I don’t think I’m suited to study linguistics, but I will still look a little closer. I know that there are additional review articles on the these topics – I may finish out the year reading in those areas and come up with a new plan for the new year.

I also continue to work on a plan for my physics study website/blog. I am starting to get ideas for some of the short tutorials that I plan to post. I am reading one of the more popular physics textbooks for science majors and I have been taken in by the sense that this book was written for how I learn and how I approach problems and study. I will likely write more on this text on my physics study site. I won’t be able to take a physics class until the fall. I want to take full advantage of the wait time to get a good head start.

I will be taking a math class during the coming spring semester and I’ve started review for that as well. I’m undecided as to whether I will take a chemistry class, so for the moment my chemistry review is on pause.

I’ll do a mid-week update with the articles I plan to read during the rest of the year.

Ever devoted,

S.

INTERROGATING RACISM: Toward an Antiracist Anthropology
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 34: 667-693 (Volume publication date October 2005)
Leith Mullings
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I thought it would be nice to read a journal article again. Seeing as I have been thinking about what it would mean to me to be a female, black anthropologist, I looked for an article by a female, black anthropologist. Reading the article, I was reminded of a conversation with a black, male student encouraging me toward an academic career because of the importance of black students having black role models in academia. I was reminded because I felt an immediate sense of shared experience reading this article that alleviated in small part my hesitancy in thinking about continuing study in anthropology. Mullings writes that “many cultural anthropologists, in distancing themselves from the truly barbaric consequences of biological racism, have become ‘race avoidant’ (Brodkin 1999, p. 68), considering race to be socially constructed, but in the process ignore racism.” This statement left me wondering whether this avoidance then lead to less mention of black anthropologists in the majority of introductory cultural anthropology courses seeing that black anthropologists tend to write a lot about racism and racial topics.

Not far into the article, Mullings mentions several early African American anthropologists including St. Clair Drake, Allison Davis, Hortense Powdermaker and Eleanor Leacock all of whom worked to interrogate racism. Thinking of early anthropology peopled with black faces spoke to me, and even a slender section on racism in introductory texts might lend a greater sense that anthropology, not just the black anthropologists, was looking to speak on issues that greatly impact my life. Mullings wrote that she thought that anthropology had theoretical perspectives and methodologies particularly suited to interrogating and investigating racism and would do well to do more work in this area.

This tendency to avoid discussion of racism in the discipline and in introductory courses may add to an uneasiness as far as being able to discuss issues of racism within anthropology departments and/or the discipline as a whole; this being of particular interests if one were, as a black person, considering a career as an academic. Going in one would expect that such departments would be overwhelmingly white and middle class and not necessarily the most welcoming if one were not that. My first anthropology professor stated at the beginning of class that being a white, middle class woman that was the perspective she knew and that was the perspective from which she taught and that if you were not that, you may not identify with a lot of what was discussed or how it was discussed (this was a women’s studies class). Did I feel uncomfortable and excluded? Yes, but most of the time this was the type of perspective one faced in mostly white environments and often without any acknowledgement that the comfort/inclusiveness of those environments was limited as a result.

Until next time,
S

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

So over this time of my convalescence, it has become more clear to me that I will pursue further study at the academy. I don’t have the most positive view of academia, but over the years I have never achieved the level of study I would have liked on my own. In addition, more so than any other time I have been possessed with the thought that I want to get it right– I want to study something because I want to study it and not in consideration of a job or what seems to make sense based on what I have studied thus far. A dispassionate overview of my self-study tendencies over the past 15 years or so suggests that I would most want to study physics. This past week my thinking about what it would mean to me to be a black anthropologist was put on the back burner in favor of my thinking about why I’ve never considered returning to physics in an academic setting.

At first I thought it strange that I would be deciding between physics and anthropology; but as I was reading a review of an anthropology book, I was reminded that Franz Boas was a physicist. I won’t be applying to graduate school for at least another year and a half, and I’ve decided to take math and physics classes during that time. I have spent the week doing design work for a blog to document my experience of returning to science as an older student. I will write more about this later.

I plan to continue my study in anthropology and writing here at Anthropology Times. I’m on the lookout for areas where anthropology and physics intersect.

Until next time,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I’ve been thinking more about further studies.  I rolled in my head the thought of myself as a black, female anthropologist.  And the thought of it rubbed me the wrong way.  Part of my distaste has to do with the history of racism in the field as discussed in the post “Stuff White People Like: Anthropology, apparently” over at Zero Anthropology.   Another consideration was this sense that as a black person studying anthropology, one can’t just study anthropology, one has to be an active and aggressive ambassodor for genuine cultural diversity.  While I might encounter difficulties as a black woman studying physics, interacting with the mostly white and male population in that field, I wouldn’t be also burdened with the same kind of sense of needing to fix physics at a fundamental level or the sense that the average physicist I encountered wasn’t really thinking like a physicist.  In the Fall 1997 issue of Michigan Today, anthropology student Jennifer A. Scott says, “Many of us Black anthropology students and students from formerly colonized countries say that we are trying to ‘decolonize anthropology.’ We mean that we are trying to extend the field beyond the regional area where we conduct our research to include the academy, itself, as an object of anthropological inquiry.”  The article in Michigan Today presents the views and thoughts of three female anthropology students.

I’ve spent the week browsing around the net and I have more links.  I’ve also written much more on the topic inside my head.  When it came time to put words actually on the page, I was slow/hesitant to do so.  I’ll write more next week.

Yours truly,

S.

Letters to My Tutor…
Reading: America Day by Day, The Second Sex

My dearest Simone,

I badly planned my reading of America Day by Day in that the book had to be returned to library last week. I got it back just today, so not enough time to get back into it. I wasn’t sure when it would wind its way back into my temporary possession, so I started an initial glance at The Second Sex. I haven’t read the work before, but I’m certain that I’ve read excerpts and certainly I have read writers who were heavily influenced by this book.

I came across Francine du Plessix Gray’s review of The Second Sex for the New York Times.  I was taken aback by the virulent hostility.  The light peppering of faint praise seems added only to enhance the intensity of the aggressive expression of distaste and disdain.  For instance in the opening salvo, Gray introduces us to early reviews of the work.  She notes two highly negative reviews from the Catholic Church and Albert Camus, then nestles in the middle that Philip Wylie thought the work, “one of the few great books of our era,” before ending with two reviews with the harsh accusations that the work was “pretentious” and “tiresome,” and “bespattered with the repulsive lingo of existentialism.”  Gray says nothing good about the work other than echoing certain accepted platitudes and spends the bulk of her review poorly critiquing Beauvoir’s views of women in the workplace, marriage, and motherhood.  I do not find my own beliefs on these matters perfectly instep with those of Beauvoir, and even I, who love her, could come up with better-reasoned arguments in opposition to some of her views.  At some point Gray offers up observations that boy toddlers reach for cars and guns over dolls as proof that Beauvoir was mistaken in her assertion that gender is learned.

I figured others had certainly been critical of Gray’s review.  In her post, “Curses and blessings,” Cynthia Haven made note of others who expressed a distaste.  Haven makes extensive reference to a letter by Marilyn Yalom, Senior Scholar with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, published in the New York Times following publication of Gray’s review.  Among other things, Yalom finds fault with Gray’s critique of the more recent English translation of the The Second Sex:

Yalom finally zeroes in on Gray’s lambasting the new translation, which the critic finds wordy and cumbersome.  Yalom counters:  “The Second Sex is — among other things — a philosophical text. Would anyone think of translating Heidegger so that he flows nicely, when he rarely does?”

Though critical of the  translation (by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier), Gray called the introduction to the new translation written by Judith Thurman, “splendid.”  Judith Thurman’s review of the new translation published in the New York Times just a few days after Gray’s is a much more balanced review.  Thurman provides biographical details that give better context to Beauvoir’s views.  Whereas Gray seems to characterize Beauvoir as a woman driven to hysterics by the lack of the right to vote and being denied access to birth control, Thurman details both the surrounding political climate as well as Beauvoir’s bourgeois upbringing including mundane truths of how her lack of a dowry dimmed her prospects for the [customarily arranged] marriage.  Whereas Gray sums up comments about Beauvoir’s love life with a conclusion that Beauvoir had a “pronounced sexual appetite,” Thurman provides both a more thorough and nuanced recount of Beauvoirs romances along with an acknowledgement that Beauvoir engaged in love as a thoughtful woman.  Thurman characterizes Beauvoir as a woman who loved also with her mind, whereas Gray gives brief, sultry details by way of making a cheap shot at Beauvoir’s supposed physicality.

Gray seems to cite Beauvoir uses of “derogatory phrases like ‘the servitude of maternity,'” as proof of Beauvoir’s “paranoid hostility toward the institutions of marriage and motherhood,” as if she has never read Aristotle or Aquinas as Beauvoir makes clear that she has in her introduction to The Second Sex.  Thurman picks up on themes from Beauvoir’s introduction and uses them to illuminate aspects of Beauvoir character.  Beauvoir writes how in Genesis Eve is depicted as having been made from a bone of Adam.  Thurman draws parallels between Beauvoir and the author of Genesis saying that Beauvoir “begins her narrative, like the author of Genesis, with a fall into knowledge.”  Prior to this statement Thurman notes that Beauvoir would object to her work being called a “feminist bible,” in that she dismissed religions, “even when they worship a goddess — as the inventions of men to perpetuate their dominion.”

Ok, rush to publish before midnight….

In love and friendship,
S.