Download Lecture 2 The Anthropological Perspective

The Anthropological Perspective
Anthropology has had a tradition of sending observers out into far away
places to bring back accounts of the lives of the peoples living there. More
recently anthropology has begun to realise the importance of doing
fieldwork at home as well as abroad.
The tradition of sending observers abroad -that started in late nineteenth
century- grew into a specialised method of living and studying human
issues. This tradition (see Anthropological Ideas II) helped anthropology
to become used to asking questions about the customs, categories and
conventions normally taken for granted. Once this is achieved it is
possible to apply that thinking elsewhere, closer to home. This chapter is
going to try to introduce you to the ideas and experience of anthropology
and in doing so to enhance your observation and response to your own
surroundings.
We could argue that home is the place where other people come to find
you and which represents you. At home your physical surroundings have
been adapted to you and your needs, it is a place filled with your
possessions and probably conforming (more or less) to your expectation
of what is suitable. Your home is a cultural artefact, and it helps to
constitute you as a social and cultural being.
Categories and meanings
We should note the distinction between "house" and "home"; the physical
surroundings on the one hand and on the other the conceptual category
which distinguishes this house from others, however similar, because it is
yours. We often talk about what something means to us, meaning how
strongly we feel about it. We notice here that the "meaning" of the
elements of the Berber house is more like a pattern of symbolic
associations - a language.
It is of course noticeable that Bourdieu is not describing a particular
Berber house, but a generic one, about which he seems able to speak with
authority. We have to assume that he has acquired this authority either
by observing so many houses and seeing that they are all the same in
these respects, or that he has asked someone (a Berber? A number of
Berbers?) who can be expected to know what the standard pattern is. We
will have to return at a later date to this question of how anthropologists
are enabled to make authoritative descriptions.
Now your account of your own physical surroundings will begin to look
rather particular, even idiosyncratic, compared to Bourdieu's generic
Berber one. Can you turn your account into a more generic one? To do so
you will of course have to decide on what group you belong to, which
"tribe" you represent.
This takes us to an important conclusion. We are representatives of our
own culture. We can't help it. But how does this happen? What if we are
eccentrics? What aspects of 'our own' culture, do we represent? In order
to address this question, think about how some elements of a Berber
house might vary and be discounted as not mattering. Even if we were
not to know all elements of culture, even if some elements are perceived
as 'not mattering', it is still possible to say what "ought" to be the
arrangement. We have a knowledge of how things are 'arranged' within a
culture. Some of these arrangements can be learned by looking, as
Bourdieu does, at the structures of the existing arrangements, such as the
home and the house.
It is not possible to say, a 'culture' is 'like this or like that' by just looking
at house arrangements. For example, it is not fair to say, Berber culture is
hierarchical. Describing a culture cannot be reduced to general statements
like this. This is a simplistic view, of something that, as Bourdieu
illustrates, is very complex. It is possible to say, however, that within the
Berber culture, certain aspects of gender, status and personal position,
revolve around hierarchical considerations. We can argue that one of the
aspects of Berber culture is that the house is 'defined from the outside,
from the point of view of men, as the place from which men come out'. A
house, however, is in a subordinate position' to what the world outside
signifies.
The final topic of this module, considers an issue I mentioned earlier.
What gives 'authority' to the narratives (books and ethnographies) that
anthropologists produce?
One of the answers is 'fieldwork' (the kind of relations with people that
anthropologists manage to create during their research - Topic 1) and
'interpretation' (the kind of relations you can abstract from observation the Berber house in topic 2).
Another answer is: the writing 'style' or how we describe our
interpretations and our fieldwork experience. Do you remember how
Malinowski starts by describing his fieldwork..('Imagine yourself suddenly
set down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close to a
native village, while the launch or dinghy which has brought you sails
away out of sight' (Malinowski 1922:4)). He actually manages to create an
'ambience', to take the reader away from 'western shores' to what is
described as an exotic location.
In this last section, then, we will briefly consider the issue of narrative or
writing styles when describing another culture. We will use the very
famous, and very amusing: The Innocent Anthropologist by Nigel Barley.
In the book, Barley describes his first experience of fieldwork. It is a book
entertainingly written, but it is not on the list purely for your amusement.
Nigel Barley allows us to see into the relationship between the
ethnographer, and his subjects, between his hopes and aims and the
reality of fieldwork. He did it within the traditional expectations of
anthropology and in the "traditional" context of a particular people in West
Africa, but he reveals much of the sordid detail - what went wrong, what
was misunderstood - which was hidden from readers of traditional
ethnographies such as Malinowski's- until the controversial publication of
Malinowski's Diary (see Anthropological Ideas II). He also reveals that
different 'narrative styles' have different effects, and can contribute to
representing social reality in different ways. In very subtle ways, mostly
through humour, he manages to give a description and an interpretation
of the society he studied
Read the first two chapters of Barley's account in the field, and compare it
with the first reading you did (Malinowski's description). What differences
do you notice? Why is the narration, the style, so seemingly different but
also have a similar feeling? If you read the entire book (highly
recommended), do you think you could find new ways of interpreting how
people live and organise themselves?