Anthropology Times

Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers: Current Theoretical Issues in Ecology and Social Organization
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 12: 193-214 (Volume publication date October 1983)
A Barnard
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

No particular thoughts jumped out at me while reading this article. I think it’s mostly that my thoughts are elsewhere at the moment. I made quick notes of things that I would like to read more on later. It also occurred to me that I should come up with a concrete list of books that I would like to read before the end of the year. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture by Marvin Harris is now high-up on that list. This work wasn’t specifically referenced, but Marvin Harris was mentioned. Before, during and after reading an article I tend to Google (capitalized?) people and concepts, and I was reminded that I would like to read more Harris.

I would also like to read more on James Woodburn’s immediate-return and delayed return systems. Barnard writes that “immediate-return economic systems are characterized by a behavior and attitude which rejects the notion of surplus,” while “delayed-return systems, in contrast, allow for planning ahead.” Woodburn was mentioned in a discussion of new typologies to characterize modern hunter-gatherer societies, but Barnard makes the point that this typology can be applied to all societies. I thought of the stories told in childhood that taught that hoarding behavior is good and virtuous. “The Ant and the Grasshopper” was a frequently repeated story in my elementary school. The ant spent the summer hoarding food for the winter while the grasshopper spent the summer singing and dancing. The story was not taught with nuance in my school. The ant was unquestionably good and responsible and the grasshopper was reckless and bad. The message seemed to be hoard or die – or be helplessly dependent on the kindness of strangers. The Wikipedia article on the tale seemed a good starting place for a discussion of the responses to and various versions and nuances of the tale.  I would like to read more on Woodburn’s typology with fables like this one in mind.

It’s late and I’m tired, so I’ll leave you with that.

Ever yours,

S.

Language and World View
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 381-404 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Jane H. Hill and Bruce Mannheim
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest lady,

It’s approaching the one-year mark on my friend’s death. May is the month of his birth and his death. For the last several months I’ve found myself repeating more frequently the phrase, “I feel his presence.” I have a feeling associated with saying those words. I find that I’m unsure what those words mean or what that feeling means. I don’t have the same feeling in saying, “I remember him,” or “This reminds me of him.” I wonder whether I have the same facial expressions and intonation as the people I observed saying those words in my childhood. Is the feeling the same feeling they had?

I am fascinated by the conversations people have without thinking, with how much of life is scripted. There are so many intimate and personal moments and interactions that have these settled upon words. When I was younger, I made bigger efforts to avoid the scripts with a surprising amount of “success.” I now often feel that I am missing shared cultural “stuff” because I didn’t wholly internalize some of the scripted phrases.

I do feel a certain comfort in saying, “I feel his presence,” despite not knowing what it means. I wonder what all goes into which scripted phrases are heavily internalized and which are not? We all have certain popular words and phrases with which we don’t identify, right?

In elementary school, kids often had discussions about confusing words/meanings in common cultural expressions. It seemed that by middle school, these conversations dried up. Kids were less concerned about what the expressions meant and more concerned with using them correctly.

I read “Language and World View” to get a sense of what types of things were being said and which names were being mentioned (the same as with every article). Of course there was much mention of Boas, Sapir ad Whorf – all on my to-read list for this topic. There was also mentioned of someone else who more recently made my to-read list, George Lakoff. Some time ago, I bookmarked a YouTube video of a lecture he gave somewhere (George Lakoff “The Brain and Its Politics”).   Haven’t watched it, yet.  I even checked out some of his books from the local public library, but I didn’t get around to reading them (still working on regaining the ability to devour books). Anyway, one of the nice things about reading these review articles is that I not only get a brief discussion of some of ideas put forth by Lakoff, the authors also pointed me toward someone, Naomi Quinn, who offers criticisms of Lakoff. So, there was a little bump in my excitement to read both scholars.

I’ve been saying for quite some time that I need to widen my reading. This is becoming more pressing. I enjoy reading the review articles, but I find that I’m growing more and more bored with the way that I interact with the text. I feel as though I’m having the same five thoughts over and over. I’m trying not to be overly harsh with myself since I said that I was giving myself a year to casually graze in anthropology. And, there is something building from doing this reading… I trust.

Ever enjoying the sweetness and light of you,
S.

Status and Style in Language
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 14: 557-581 (Volume publication date October 1985)
J T Irvine
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

My mind was instantly filled with various language experiences just from reading the title of this article. I am learning that I will likely continue reading articles on linguistics after my year of self-study, so I could stand to read some type of basic introduction to linguistics.

During a discussion of studies on variance in language-use according to caste in India, Irvine writes that sometimes speakers would attempt to “caste-climb” by using speech forms associated with higher ranks and how this dynamic was “at odds with the stereotypical picture of Indian castes as rigid, immutable strata, unchallengeable and unmanipulable.” This idea of status climbing by changing the manor of speech put me in mind of several language experiences I had/observed while living in London. Several times before class or during breaks in law school lectures I heard a concern repeated. The speaker said to her group that they had to be careful not to socialize with Oxbridge people who hadn’t gone to the proper (pre-university) schools, in other words, those who weren’t genuinely members of the upperclass. The speaker seemed concerned that a non-upperclass person might try to use the prestige of having gone to Oxbridge combined with having adopted an acceptable accent to “class-climb.” One of the most vocal speakers on this matter was an upperclass person from the Indian subcontinent. I wonder whether she had a special sensitivity due to experiences in India. (Note: Many applications for upper-level jobs required the applicant to list schools as far back as middle school for similar reasons.)

American movies sometimes show Londoners with widely different accents getting together as couples or being members of the same family without comment. The reality that I observed was much different. Several times I observed (middle class) Londoners who seemed to be from similar economic backgrounds, in similar places in their careers and otherwise compatible refuse to date each other because of a difference in accent – at times a level of difference that wouldn’t seem significant to an American ear. It seemed some couples made due if they had the same accent, but their parents had different accents; but it was a source of discomfort.

Part of legal study in the UK involved acquiring a two-year training contract with a law firm. Several of my classmates significantly shifted their speaking styles to match what might be expected at a perspective law firm. One friend  said that she did so unconsciously during a short internship at a law firm. She could not reproduce the same accent outside that law firm’s environment. She was from a well-to-do Taiwanese family which placed her outside the normal British accent scrutiny to a certain extent. It appeared that successfully adopting the right accent could make things a lot smoother for her than it would for a non-upperclass British person doing so.

Irvine didn’t engage in a detailed discussion of status and style in British English, but I believe she pointed to some relevant literature in the bibliography. I’m sure I will want to revisit her bibliography at a later date.

Thank you for your many kindnesses,

S.

The Past, Present, and Future of Flintknapping: An Anthropological Perspective
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 13: 187-203 (Volume publication date October 1984)
J J Flenniken
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

This article left me thinking of the various ways we make connections to the past.  Flenniken says,“As an anthropological term, flintknapping is simply the manufacture of stone tools by the reductive processes of flaking or chipping.” He also writes that “..flintknapping constitutes an anthropological concept whereby the processes of prehistoric flintknapping are better understood by modern flintknapping experiments.” He distinguished between people who simple make stone tools, artificers, and people like Donald Crabtree who are replicators, those who use the same tools, materials and methods employed by people of old (producing similar products and debris).

Shortly after reading this article, I was lost in thought about how magical it is to touch history in the way that replicators do. It’s one thing to visit the British Museum and gaze upon things that were used by such and such historical figure or to visit an historical site and touch structures and items that were used by early peoples. It’s quite a different thing to go through a similar process, to have the same considerations running through one’s mind, to make the same movements.

This connection to the past is one of the reasons that despite being tomboyish/bohemian as a child, I always loved wearing long dresses, hooped dresses, formal wear. In fifth or sixth grade I played the old woman on the “Old Woman in the Shoe” parade float. Yes, not exactly an historical figure, but … The music teacher loaned me a prairie-styled dress and bonnet to wear. I didn’t want to take the dress off. I loved gently lifting the skirt to walk up stairs. I loved the feel of the fabric brushing back against my legs with every stride. And somehow the feeling of being a bit out of place when walking among people in normal dress also highlighted the connection to a past time when most women wore such dresses and made such movements.

This connection is one of the great parts of reading your diaries. You share so many of your simple and grand thoughts, your simple and grand movements.

I’ll leave you with that.

S.

Shamanisms Today
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 21: 307-330 (Volume publication date October 1992)
Jane Monnig Atkinson
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

I’ve used the word “shaman” without much depth of thought as to what shaped the meaning of that word for me. When I think shaman, I think of someone who is especially observant, skilled at mediation (person to person or person to “spirit”) and less bound by the popular cultural rituals while at the same time putting off a sense of a greater awareness of the heart of the culture. I have little connection to Atkinson’s statement that “the identification so shamanism with altered states of consciousness has become so strong that indeed the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.” It’s not as though I have no association between shaman and person who engages in trance-like states; the one just doesn’t immediately call to mind the other. And while I associate shamanisms – the plural in use to say that definitions of shamanism vary by culture – with healing and spirituality, I don’t have a strong sense of those characteristics being absolutely required for use of the term. Perhaps this is because I haven’t had much contact with some of the early writing on shamanism?

Atkinson says that D. Holmberg and M. Taussig argue that shamans “engage in the disruption of order (conceptual, psychic, social), but shamans create and sustain order as well – the coherence and viability of their patient’s beings, the continuity of a community, or the well-being of a household.” This statement speaks well to my view of shamans being in touch with the heart of the culture, any culture. I don’t think of shamanism being a term to be applied to non-Western cultures exclusively. Even some of the more exoticized descriptions of shamanism aren’t that exotic to me because there was a lot of those types of behaviors integrated into the Christian practices where I grew up (Mississippi) – trance-like states involving communion with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, holy dancing, laying of hands to heal and the like. I think in rural Mississippi, Catholicism was a lot more exotic than most varieties of shamanism.

So it looks like I must stop here if I am to publish this before heading out to do my bit of volunteer work. This is a good change of pace from my usual mad dash to publish before midnight after returning home. Now if I could only be a little better about integrating outside reading…

S.

Language Socialization
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 15: 163-191 (Volume publication date October 1986)
B B Schieffelin, and E Ochs
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

In reading “Language Socialization” and thinking about how language is used to instruct about culture, I thought more on the baby talk exercises in my extended family. Schieffelin and Ochs write about how some children’s early encounters with language are more one-on-one, mostly caregiver to child, and how others have an early immersion into multi-person conversations and how the latter learn early that conversations can be complicated and multi-layered. They also speak about how children “must learn how to appropriately convey their feelings to others as well as to recognize the moods and emotions that others display.” It seems the baby talk exercises in my family meant immersion from birth into multi-person conversations for the infant as well as early instruction on reading and interpreting emotions and affect. Here’s something I wrote earlier:

When I was younger, there was much baby talk on behalf of the fetus and on behalf of the infant. Older people would talk on behalf of infants (much the same way one might talk in place of a stuffed toy for a child) at least through a time at which the infant was aware that the talk/speech had to do with her. There was an expectation that the older speaker would pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the infant when creating communication on behalf of the infant. Other would-be speakers might challenge poor interpretation and take up speaking for the infant with a “no, I don’t think that…” I remember these interaction being fun social experiences. Even very young children could give a go at speaking on behalf of the infant as long as the would-be speaker had the requisite language and observational skills.

I felt the whole experience helped communication between children in the family and between children and adults. I think it encouraged a wholistic approach to interpreting communications from children. The authors write of a divide between “child-centered communication” and “situation-centered communication,” and how adults with a child-centered orientation make a greater effort to decipher the verbal utterances of the child in an effort to understand what the child is trying to communicate,  and how those who were situation-centered paid less attention to or even ignored the verbal utterances of a child. I wonder whether it’s not so much that situation-centered adults were ignoring the verbal utterance, as much as it was that the verbal utterances were one of many clues used to decipher the desires of the child, along with facial expressions and body language and environmental cues.

Seems I’m pressing closer and closer to my Monday before midnight deadline for writing to you. Next week, I’ll post earlier.

Many warm thoughts,
S.

P. S.  It’s my grandmother’s birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Granny!)

Theories and Politics in African American English
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 23: 325-345 (Volume publication date October 1994)
Marcyliena Morgan
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to My Tutor…

My dearest Simone,

I read “Theories and Politics in African American English” shortly after reading “A Survey of Afro-American English.” I didn’t write down many of my thoughts at the time and at the moment I find myself not in the best mood to write anything, but I will. Marcyliena Morgan’s review was published over a decade after the one by John Baugh, but the discussion doesn’t seem much changed. Shall I bore you with my passing thoughts over the week? Morgan uses the term African-American English (AAE), so I’ll go with that.

Some of the discussions of AAE seem to describe speech elements that I tend to associate with Southern rural speech generally. I wonder whether some researchers and non-black residents outside the South associated certain speech elements more exclusively with AAE because they only encountered that speech from black people. I’m thinking of the large migrations of blacks from the South and how others may have taken certain elements of Southern speech to be AAE exclusively. It’s been a while since I’ve spent any significant amount of time in rural Mississippi, so my memory of distinctions between white speech and black speech in the area are a bit fuzzy. Morgan discusses the lack of third person singular verb agreement in AAE – this I remember to have been common in the region. I could imagine just about anyone saying, “Oh, he don’t mind…”

Growing up, the black people in the area referred to the local speech as talking “country,” while more standard English speech was deemed talking “proper.” There were country-talking white people and proper-talking black people. There were distinctions between black and white speech, but I’m hazy on what those were. I am left with the impression that the dividing line between black and white speech was not as clearly drawn in my rural Mississippi area (in the 70s and 80s) as I get the impression it may be in some of the academic literature, at least in regard to some of the basic grammar.

Morgan writes that African-American parents did not believe the differences between AAE and standard English were significant enough to create misunderstandings in the classroom and that instruction should be in standard English. This was the thinking where I grew up and I tend to agree. The most significant thing for me was having teachers who understood my experience as a black child. Several of the older teachers and the principal at my elementary school were more mindful of the fact that they were educating black children. Younger black teachers weren’t as much that way. I went to a different all-black elementary school for one year and the teachers there didn’t speech as much to the experience of a black child either.

The older teachers were more likely to speak directly and specifically about things being said about black children and black people in academia and in the general media. We got the rundown – This is what you will hear; This is how you might feel about it; Here is an alternative way to view things. As far as speaking standard English, they spoke about the possibility of being teased by peers and the wider black community; they spoke to black males as far as dealing with the perception that speaking standard English might be seen as being more effeminate; they spoke about dealing with negative responses from whites in the community; they spoke against the more negative and belittling characterizations of AAE.

The negativity from whites in the local community could be frightening at times. When my more “proper” speaking cousins from the North came to visit, they often got cold and mean stares from whites because of the way they spoke. Given that there was a certain amount of stigma attached to speaking with a Southern accent, black children speaking more standard English with a non-Southern accent were responded to as if they were being hostile, as if they were attacking whites by speaking in a certain manner.

My favorite elementary school teacher spoke in a manner very similar to that of Maya Angelou. I think of her whenever I hear Maya Angelou speak. This teacher greatly influenced how a I speak and how I think. I was so lucky to have that group of elementary school teachers. I may have some more follow-up on this later.

Ever true,
S.

A Survey of Afro-American English
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 12: 335-354 (Volume publication date October 1983)
J Baugh
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to my Tutor….

My dear Madame,

As is often the case, I have waited too late to write to you given the deadline I set for myself.  I’ve been ill, but the situation would mostly likely be the same if I weren’t.  Still, I will say a few things…

My rural Mississippi hometown was in a predominantly black county and it typified Baugh’s statement  that “urban and rural varieties of BVE [nonstandard black vernacular English] are maintained most by those individuals who have limited contact with nonblacks.”  While a great many of the adults in the area had the “ability to shift their speech styles depending on the social situation and their relative linguistic dexterity,” (Baugh), many of the older members of the community did not perform such shifts.  Because of the stigma associated with BVE, one sometimes had to be careful not to appear disrespectful when addressing these older members of the community in the sense of not subtly implying by use of “standard English” that one thought them stupid or less worthy of respect.  In these cases a fluidity in speech style came in handy.

Several of my elementary school teachers, including my favorite one, strongly encouraged the use of standard English.  What I took from these teachers was that speaking standard English gave “them” one less derogatory thing to say about “us.”  The thinking mentioned by Baugh was definitely floating around–that BVE indicated some genetic inferiority or that black children weren’t learning a real language or that black children were incapable of learning standard English.  My teachers emphasized that style of speech did not speak to intelligence or capability, no matter what “they” said.  We read black authors who used BVE deliberately in their writing because it communicated experience that couldn’t be related otherwise.  We read speeches by black orators, such as Sojourner Truth, that showed that use of BVE was not at odds with wit and intelligence.  I liked this approach by my teachers.

Recently, I’ve noticed on a social media site that black people from my hometown will often spell words in such a way as to make it clear that they are using BVE intentionally and without shame.  I wonder whether this is evidence that the same attitudes present when I was in elementary school are still around.

Ok, if I stop now, I will just make the deadline.  Still reading “America Day by Day.”  Hope to comment more on that soon.

Ever true,
S.

Marxist Approaches in Anthropology
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 4: 341-370 (Volume publication date October 1975)
B O’Laughlin
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to my Tutor…

Dearest Simone,

I may have just become a bit of a Bridget O’Laughlin groupie.  Her writing is so well-structured.  She gives clear definitions of terms, both directly and in context.  She writes such beautiful paragraphs that I couldn’t stop myself from taking notes.  I’m still working my way through the article.  I imagine that I will rework my notes in the background as I continue to read other articles.

As I read I am trying to decipher when, where, how certain Marxist-type thinking worked its way into my mind.  I feel my thinking is most Marx-like when I’m focused on day-to-day living, the things that I encounter as a person going through the world.  When I’m on that level where I read the newspaper or political commentary as though they were talking about real things about world, that’s the part of my thought that seems to be the most Marx-influenced.  When I’m thinking more about how the mind works and the nature of thought and the nature of existence, it seems my influences aren’t very Marx-like.

When O’Laughlin writes about Marxist views on individualism, I recognize a type of thinking that came to me by way of having read Eastern philosophies (particularly Advaita Vedanta) and American Transcendentalists at a very young age:

…people can individuate themselves only in society, and each individual is determined by a particular set of social relations. Society
cannot be understood as a population or aggregate of individuals, but only as a totality of social relations.

There’s not necessarily an exact correlation with the philosophies that I’ve read, but there is certainly a similar type of thinking about individualism.  The emphasis is on the whole, on the unity, on the Oversoul–individualism is an illusory construct best used to explore how our interactions with others can be a path to illuminating that we are actually one with the other.  I remember thinking as a teenager that rampant individualism in Western culture was having a destructive influence on the general understanding about the nature of the world and the nature of the relationship between people.

I believe that O’Lauglin’s article is one to be read slowly and savored.  And that’s not to say that the same isn’t true for other articles that I’ve read.  I just really love her writing.  Did I say that already?  Also, I feel that my ability to take good notes is coming back to me.

Many thanks for your kindness and attention,
S.

Functional Analysis in Anthropology and Sociology: An Interpretative Essay
Annual Review of Anthropology
Vol. 19: 243-260 (Volume publication date October 1990)
S N Eisenstadt
In lieu of an abstract, the publisher reproduces the first page of the article. (Link)

Letters to my Tutor….

My dearest Simone,

I’ve read enough in anthropology to be frustrated by my lack of basic knowledge of the discipline. I don’t know why exactly I haven’t been able to focus more on enjoying what I am learning no matter how little it feels or how confused I may be at times. I study anthropology because I enjoy it, because I think it will make me a better fiction writer, because I think it will make me a better a thinker, a better person. Maybe my American self demands that I tie study to some concrete and not-too-distant money-making goal? I think a bit of your commentary on American culture is on point. In “An Existentialist Looks at Americans” you write on the American obsession with concrete results, the lack of joy in doing a thing. You write also of how concrete results are often measured in dollar signs for Americans:

“…to cut the result from the human movement which engendered it, to deny it the dimension of time, is also to empty it of every sort of quality: only dry bones remain. With quality lacking, the only measure that remains with which to estimate the work and achievement of man is a quantitative one–money.”

Chris Rock spoke of this American obsession with money in a comedy routine. I believe it speaks directly to your writing on Americans:

As copied from Wikiquote (with edits) (Link):
The number one reason people hate America… the number one reason is because of our religion. Americans worship money; we worship money. Separate God from school; separate God from work; separate God from government; but on your money it says, “In God we trust.” All my life I’ve been looking for God, and he’s right in my pocket. Americans worship money, and we all go to the same church, the church of ATM. Everywhere you look there’s a new branch popping up … remind you about how much money you got and how much money you don’t got. And if you got less than twenty dollars, the machine won’t even talk to you.

OK, so that’s that. What do I have to say about “Functional Analysis in Anthropology and Sociology: An Interpretative Essay?” Eisenstadt writes about his analysis of bureaucratic empires. One thing in particular coincides with some of my recent thoughts on politics. He writes:

The rulers…attempted to limit the influence of the very aristocratic system of stratification and legitimation that made them rulers; meanwhile the lower strata of the population, to whom the rulers attempted to appeal, began to “aristocratize” themselves. Such contradictions generated struggle, change, and the eventual demise of these systems.

I’ve been thinking more of the second part of that statement, of how attempts to appeal to the “lower strata” can lead to demise. There’s this whole fiction of the “middle class” that’s grown up in the politics. As near as I can figure, the term “middle class” can only properly be applied to the children of nobles who aren’t in line to inherit a title. But these new middle class are repackaged peasantry desperate to identify as something else, desperate to “aristocratize” themselves; they seem to believe that they can somehow use existing social structures to limit or in some small way control the behavior of the ruling class, you know, democracy and all that. I do not believe it a sustainable thing for governments, for rulers, to appeal to this sentiment, at least not in the current fashion. I would be curious to read Eisenstadt’s work with a mind to how it speaks to more recent “democracy” movements. I believe this current cult of the middle class to be one of the more insidious movements against freedom and intellectual advancement. I believe you write about this very thing as well… the complacency and such of the petit bourgeois.

Perhaps we will pick this up later? I am constantly saying this, I know.

With all my heart,
S.