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Notes for CULT ANT Final
Cultural Anthropology (ANT 002)
University of California Davis
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A World Brightly Different:
● 1950-1986, chose this time period because it was after the Vietnam War and decolonization ● People of the third and fourths world are portrayed as exotic, they are idealized ○ They are sexualized too ○ These themes are ALWAYS present in the photography taken within this time period ● An Exotic World ○ National Geographic is drawn to people in brightly colored, and different dresses who are engaging in strange rituals or inexplicable behavior
○ National Geographic only shows the BEAUTIFUL side of things, mentioned above, not the UGLY which are poverty, starvation ● A World of Ritual ○ People engaged in ritual or preparing for ritual is splattered across two pages in N → they LOOK for these type of pictures ■ These pictures are the most dramatic in the magazine ○ Photographers are drawn to taking ritual pictures because they have color and action and make for intrinsically more interesting material ● Indexical Dress ○ N searches for native clothing in its most elaborate form ■ The Indian woman is often dressed, not simply in an everyday sari, but in a gold embroidered one and covered in jewelry ○ Exotic dress can stand for premodern attitude, not keeping up with the Western world ● The Role of Color in Photography ○ Advertising photos since the 1950s have always been printed in color ○ News photography has been in black and white ○ Color photography has been perfectly suited to the National Geographic project of presenting an exotically people's world ■ Color of an orange shirt on an American is just orange, but the color orange on a monk would be “saffron” ○ Black and white photos are “old” to us contemporary readers ● Idealizations: From Noble Savage to a Middle class World ○ N could prevent the reader from finding the exotic other too different ○ N cleaned up the looks of exotic people, just like how other magazines would clean up the looks of gays and lesbians in America ● The Smile ○ The non Westerners that the N captures are always looking into the camera
○ Smiling person = pursuit of happiness ● Portraiture ○ Portrait often aims to capture the subject at that person’s best, because it is posed it allows for maximum control by the photographer and subject ○ Portrait may also communicate a message of universal brotherhood ● Group Size ○ N prefers to photograph non Westerners in small groups ○ Individuals and small groups are nonetheless often depicted in what might be read as rugged individualist stances ● Gentle Natives and Wars Without Brutalized Bodies ○ Very few N photographs show their subjects engaged in, being victimized by, or in obvious aftermath of violent encounters ○ Military is presented as a regular, not unpleasant part of everyday life in the third world but is rarely seen in internal or cross national conflict ○ N rarely shows wounded civilians or soldiers ● A Middle Class World ○ N presented a world that is predominantly middle class, in which there is neither much poverty nor great wealth ■ It's a world that is comfortable to contemplate ○ There seems to be a ban on picturing hungry or blemished individuals until the recent past → only in the 1970s ● A World of Work ○ N would show the world at work ○ The photos of people at work show provide information on the economy of the country and allow for more candid shots, as people are absorbed in their tasks ■ Action provides more intrinsically interesting photographic material ● The Ideal of Virility (manly stuff) ○ The media of the world is mostly male ■ Men are seemed as greater interest to readers than females ○ Most commonly infants are shown in their mothers arms or older children are doing chores ● Natural humans without History ○ Western culture often represent non Europeans as having timeless societies and personalities ○ The view of the non Westerner world as unchanging and as more primitive than civilized lends itself to the portrayal of the people without history as also the people of nature ○ Americans see themselves as no longer in possession of a culture but as a holding on to history through their scientific advancements and their
and irreducible in itself, revealing another layer like an ONION ○ The underlying psychological factors, basic needs, ○ Peel off psychological factors and one is left with the biological foundations, anatomical, physiological, neurological ● Anthropology can determine cultural dimensions of concept of man commensurate with the dimensions provided, in a similar way, by biology, psychology or sociology
● CONSENSUS GENTIUM → a consensus of all mankind ○ The notion that there are some things that all men will be found to agree upon as right, real, just or attractive and that these things are, in fact real, just ○ Geertz says that this approach fails. Instead of moving towards the essentials of the human situation it moves away from them ● There is a logical conflict between asserting that “religion, marriage, or property” are empirical universals and giving them very much in the way of specific content ○ Geertz says that they DO NOT have the same meanings universally ○ There are no generalizations that can be made about man as man, save that he is at most various animal ● It is not difficult to relate some human institutions to what science (or common sense) tells us are requirements for human existence, but it is very much more difficult to state this relationship in an unequivocal form ● Geertz proposes 2 ideas ○ 1. Culture is at best seen, not as complexes of concrete behavior patterns, customs, usages, traditions, habit clusters as has, by large, been the case up to now, but as a set of control mechanisms - plans, recipes, rules, instructions for the governing of behavior ○ 2. Man is precisely the animal most desperately dependent upon such extragenetic, outside the skin control mechanisms ● We all being with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of lives but end in the end having lived only one ● Control mechanism view of culture begins with the assumption that human thought is basically both social and public ○ Its natural habitat is the house yard, the marketplace, and the town square ● Man is in physical terms, an incomplete, an unfinished animal ● The concept of culture has its impact on the concept of man ○ When seen a set of symbolic devices for controlling behavior, extrasomatic sources of information, culture provides the link between what men are intrinsically capable of becoming and what they actually one by one in fact become ■ Becoming human is becoming an individual
● We become individuals after the guidance of cultural patterns, historically created systems of meaning in terms of which we give form, order, point and direction to our lives ● We have notions about what man and woman are like, how spouses should treat one another ● GEERTZ BELIEVES IN ENLIGHTENMENT OF MAN!!!
The Spirit Catches you and you fall down
● Ch: daughter is Lia Lee, parents are Nao Kao and Foua ○ Hu plig ceremony is meant to summon the child’s soul to its body, protecting it from evil spirits know as dab (person that steals babies) ● Ch. 2: in Hmong stories, you have to talk about EVERYTHING, going back to the beginning of time, in order to truly understand a situation ○ You cannot push the Hmong around. There’s nothing they hate more than being told what to do. EX: Won’t assimilate into the Chinese culture ● Ch 3: the start of Lia’s seizure, the parents think it was because her older sister slammed the door which scared the soul out of Lia’s body ○ Epilepsy is known as “quag dab peg” which translates to “the spirit catches you and you fall down” (aka the title) ○ Doctors at MCMC diagnoses her right FINALLY the third time ■ Dan Murphy is a doctor who learned a lot about the Hmong culture ● Ch 4: Hmong does not trust western medicine because of the misinformation that spreaded through Hmong refugee camps(doctors eat brains) ○ Most Hmong rather be treated by txiv neeb (shamans) and call it a day ● Ch 5: Since Lia’s parents can’t speak english, they don’t give her the right medications. MCMC doctors found out about this so they start sending nurse to their house to check up on the medications. ○ Even with the nurses, the parents still choose and decide when they want to give the medication, the wrong amount, and choosing one pill or the other ○ Since Neil has found out that the mom is pregnant once again, decides to call Child Protection Services ● Ch 6: most of the doctors at MCMC are only there for “altruistic reasons” ○ They could make a lot more money if they had decided to work at a private practice for wealthy consumers or somewhere doing actual experiments ○ The only thing that every Hmong American visits the doctor for is childbirth
■ They believe that kids born at home aren’t citizens, so they go to
special ed school on Sundays ○ Jeanine Hilt dies after suffering from an asthma attack while visiting Disneyland ● Ch 18: there’s also a lot deal more culturally conscious training available for doctors these days. ○ In 1996 a group called “Bridging the Gap” helps MCMC staff learn more about Hmong culture and get tips for dealing with Hmong patients ○ Anne often wants to take the Hmong’s side but she must even admit that Western medicine can be truly life changing. In her case, only Western medicine could’ve saved her father from colon cancer ○ MAIN difference between Hmong and Western view of medicine is simple, Hmong treat the soul, Americans treat the body ● Ch 19: Hmong rituals, txiv neeb arrives to perform a healing ceremony for Lia. Sacrificing pigs, and chicken
Bazin: What is Cinema ● Ontology: relates to what can you know. The nature of things, what forces are mobilizing in terms of material, and bringing things together. What are photographic images made of? What are they saying? ● Argument: relationship with painting is a shadow of doubt, photography is more real ○ In a painting someone is painting it, so therefore it still has the painter’s opinions and what he/she wants to draw ○ Photography is better at realism, truth ■ The artist is making a representation of what they want their audience to see, whereas photographs blatantly state what is there ● Photography takes away the painter out of the middle. The interface is the camera. Camera captures moments --> moments are representations of time, we use moments to create memories or movements in space. ● Photo captures moments in a way that paintings don’t. Pictures is the ACTUAL you, paintings are a perfect representation of you. ● What is a camera doing? ○ Cameras are doing what painters are doing on a MUCH MORE specific level than artists, this is why we think “oh this has to be real” ● Visual realism: idea of looking at the image as opposed to electronically produced images and take it for reality. ● Bazin argues that cinema tries to produce objective reality although the director is supposed to be invisible ○ He opposes the view that cinema can manipulate reality ○ Interpretation of film or scene should be left to the spectator ● “Today the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric, utilitarian
purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny” ● Painting is torn between 2 roles: for aesthetic pleasing (modern art) and just to duplicate the world outside ○ Great artists have been able to combine the two roles, duplicating the world outside in their own artistic forms ● “Painting was forced, as it turned out, to offer us illusion and this illusion was reckoned sufficient unto art” ● “Photography and the cinema on the other hand are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism” ● No matter how skillful the painter was, his paintings always summonted to subjectivity ● Photography allows for the first time an image of the world to be formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man ○ Although the final result may reflect something of his personality, this does not play the same role as is played by that of the painter ○ Photography forces us to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced ● Law of perspective: desires for paintings to look realistic, drive for visual realism becomes stronger now ● In modern reality, people are becoming more disconnected with the world around us, ○ Photography came in to save humanity (we have social media platforms to inform us about the outside world) like Instagram ○ Photography establishes the reality of objects to our real world
Feldman ● Cultural anesthesia: ● Objectification: taking something that is not an object, and turning it into an object ○ Inflicting pain upon the other (those not similar to us) or basically non European white, in America. ○ Infliction of pain and objectification further allows it to happen more and more, making it ok ● Everything happens through a process of selective senses experiments ○ Choosing which senses gets to be stimulated in experiments ● Rodney King ○ He was acting like an animal → humans vs non humans. Animals are worth less than humans, that’s why cops had to do something about it ○ He was most probably on drugs. → minds vs body. Because he had a
the final stage at court ○ The defense was able to convert the video into a time motion study in police efficiency ■ Using the camera’s eye to rationalize police violence and enhancing their visual capacities in the midst of collectively delivering over a hundred blows to King ○ Prosecution asked if Powell considered King to be an animal and he said, “King was acting like one ... because of his uncontrollable behavior” ■ In other words King was bestial to the extent that he could not feel and therefore could resist the baton blows ● Rodney King (March 3, 1991) ○ Video footage speaks for itself leading to natural conclusion ■ Rodney King doesn’t need to be physically there ■ Video represents the event, becomes the object analyzed ○ Taking the video footage and breaking it frame by frame for the police officers to describe what happened and why they chose to act the way they did ○ Belief that if you put body cams on police everything will be alright, but in the courtroom it does nothing since the police twist everything ■ Photographic realism by itself cannot solve problems ○ In the courtroom people are educating others to relate to images ■ Defendants (police) say that they have souls too, they are not robot police, it takes a lot for them to protect the “mean streets” out there and we should pity them ■ Rodney King is just an object compared to the police ● Cultural anesthesia: particular way of educating an audience about an object in the media (Rodney was the object) ● One will be the subject to the power of others who have to wake up ○ In this trial, both sides want to wake up the juror by making them side with them ■ The “woke up” side won the trial ○
Coleman and Mental Health Challenges and Spirit Possession
● Back then, mental health challenges were a form of demon possession ○ So, individuals with mental health were subject to cruel exorcising procedures and public ostracism ○ People back then which we would call now to have multiple personality disorder, would call them demoniac, a man possessed with demons
○ Bipolar disorder = demon possession = mental health challenges ● In our society now, we can mental health challenges as diseases that can be treated with the proper equipment and treatment ○ Medication was key to mending mental health challenges ■ Medications often restores peace, coherence and joy to countless individuals and their loved ones ○ With us doing these types of treatment (rehab, surgery, etc) we are defining what is “normal” and what isn’t ○ This model requires that an individual has access to the Western medical system, with its associated costs ○ But this model does eliminate many of the symptoms, that unaddressed, can lead to suicide or homicide ● Many of us can relate to depressive conditions ● In traditional African or African derived religious settings, the possession is understood as part of what may happen in a faith community ○ The community knows what to do when such an experience occurs and surrounds her with acceptance and care ■ Has an interpretative lens that understands possession as normative and gathers to support it ● African Americans have fewer diagnoses and a lower rate of hospitalizations around mental health challenges ○ Black church offers various outlets that mediate those experiences ○ “Shouting” creates a therapeutic community for black churchgoers ○ Church members become therapists for their fellow church members in that they attend to their shouting, encourage them in their feelings and guard and protect them from possible harm
Maya : Divine Horsemen
● “Myth: the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter”
Spirit and Selves in Northern Sudan
● In Northern Sudan, there are spirits that possess mostly women ○ Hofritarti (village)assert, rarely trouble themselves with the unwed - with women whose fertility has yet to be activated ○ Most affected are those between the ages of 35- ○ Once possessed, a woman is always possessed thereafter ● “The interiors of house yards enclosed by high mud walls in the case of females; the outside world of farmlands, markets, other villages and cities in the case of males” ○ Females are associated with enclosure, with the maintenance of life within
considerable leverage over human reproduction ● Men who might have spirits within them stop after the western medicine stage, but women go forth to consult a sheikha (female zar practitioner) ● The demands of possessive spirits that their hosts eat “clean” foods; abstain from traditional mourning behavior such as sleeping on the ground; bath with imported soap; use henna and cologne; wear gold and clean clothing; and avoid overwork, anger, and frustration with kin, all have to do with the maintenance of feminine ideals. ○ Bound up with feminine self image and standards of conduct ○ Demand preservation of a woman’s ideal self, but may create or seize upon a situation in which these ideals are jeopardized in order to take control of her body
Divine Horsemen (Voodoo Rituals)
● Priest holds onto the sacred rattle to perform the ritual ○ Gives advice concerning spiritual, economic problems too ○ Rattle covered with a bell attached with snakeskin ■ Used to summon the spirit ● Possession is the phenomenon that occurs when the definity becomes manifest ● Person is mounted by the spirit ○ Actions and events that results from the spirit ○ Point in which one travels from physical means, but to the traveler it is invisible ● Throughout the movie always waving chickens, flocking them around ○ Lots of screaming and people singing/chanting with drumming in the background ● This ceremony conducted by female person, most elaborate ○ Wedding between some (seen or husband??) to the female (ocean or something??) ● Voodoo give women capacity to conceive beyond reality ○ Women are goddess of love and beauty ○ Identified as virgin mary ○ Man himself she is as mistress ○ Moves in an atmosphere of infinite luxury ○ All anxieties and urgencies vanish, Voices soften, heat becomes less intense ● God of life and death ○ Future stems from the past, so life and death become one of the same ○ Chicken is used here to wipe away any impurity or evil
○ When everyone is cleansed, it lies on the cordial drawing and becomes identified with the loua (the dead person??) ○ Wings and led are broken so that any impurities collected will NOT fly free ○ Before goat is killed, its beard is cut off ○ Gods like people have a need for food ○ Priest is the trickster, pretends to hand out money, but when asked a serious question he will answer with genuine and trustworthy but bizarre in other aspects ● God of fertility, protector of children ○ Women bump against him to ensure healthy children ● God of agriculture appears in the form of a work peasant ○ Very hard worker and frequently feasted by the other hard workers ○ God gives instruction and exercises his authority ○ Poses most frequently as a poor wandering worker ○ Dancing around proposed by the gayday for a gay dance ○ Many of its participants feel the spirit of gayday ○ Then the old spirit will be transferred to someone new and he has to take his shoes off before dancing. Since gods don’t dance with shoes on ■ God departs with body and man returns to the physical world ● Sacrifice of the bull is the ultimate feast for the god
Ghost in the Shell
● The girl is built to kill people like a weapon, but she has a soul ● Doesn’t remember what happened in the past only bits and pieces ● If she is having glitches, she has to take medications ○ She’s not connected to anything ● If she gets inside of geisha’s mind (memories) her mind is exposed to the hacker, therefore she can get hacked or exposed to viruses ○ Since she dives deeper, her glitches get worse ● Random guy gets hacked, hacker wiped away all his memories (garbage truck guy) ○ Hacker told him that he has a kid but when he goes back to his apartment there was no one there for 10 years, he’s been living alone ● Kuze (supposed bad guy) is trying to trap human minds to create a network of his own ○ Does this so that when he dies his ghost can survive ○ States that he’s the same kind as major ○ He kills innocent people ○ She’s born from less failure ● He was conscious when he was dismembered, his mind did not mesh to the shell
Notes for CULT ANT Final
Course: Cultural Anthropology (ANT 002)
University: University of California Davis
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