Cultural Anthropology: Understanding Human Diversity and Society

Posted on Jan 25, 2025 in Social sciences

Technological Posthumanism

Technological Promises: Nanotechnology, biotechnology, space colonization, advanced computer engineering (e.g. quantum computers), and artificial intelligence.

Individual Promises: Longevity, disease control and eradication, intelligence enhancement, and overcoming body limitations.

Global Premises: Technological singularity (self-sufficient machines), mankind’s transcendence (overcoming death), and the Omega point (the universe becomes a self-aware being).

Technological Posthumanism refers to how humanity tries to overcome its biological limitations by using, manipulating, or integrating environmental resources. It is also used for avoiding, preventing, or helping us with biological issues. Those resources are usually transformed into technology, but it could also refer to biotechnology or symbiotic relations between living beings.

Example: Biotechnology applied to DNA alteration: cloning as an instance of bioengineering. Crocodile and Egyptian Plover: an instance of a symbiotic partnership for sustainability. A stick might be used as a walking device, but what humans do is transform a piece of wood into a cane (an object with both an intention and a goal within). This is how a resource from nature is transformed into technology, which is integrated as an extension of our body. But it might be also biological. Let’s say we can transplant a liver from a swine to your body. That is a case of biotechnology. Technology is a two-way road: we create technology to help us, then technology changes human nature.

Therefore, technological posthumanism has two standpoints:

  1. One that provides technologies to help with, avoid, or prevent biological problems.
  2. One that tries to overcome our biological limitations.

From this approach, technological posthumanism poses the question of whether humans have always been posthumans. It’s because humans are constantly using the environment both to enhance their skills and to palliate their handicaps. Moreover, we might say tech is part of our own nature. A pair of glasses, a walking stick, our clothes, even cell phones… they become prostheses. Even if we can live without these devices, if this happened, we feel like we are losing something about our human nature (this is the so-called “cyborg hypothesis”). But what happens when you cannot live without them (e.g. a pacemaker)?

Biological Determinism VS. Cultural Constructionism

Biological determinism seeks to explain people’s behavior and thinking by considering biological factors such as people’s genes and hormones. Thus, biological determinists search for the gene or hormone that contributes to behavior such as homicide, alcoholism, adolescent stress, and so on.

Cultural constructionism, in contrast, maintains that human behavior and ideas are best explained as products of culturally shaped learning. Though recognizing the role of biological factors such as genes and hormones, anthropologists who favor cultural construction and learning as an explanation for behaviors such as homicide and alcoholism point to childhood experiences and family roles as being perhaps even more important than genes or hormones.

How do these positions act in a practical case? Biological determinists explain why human males apparently have “better” spatial skills than females. They say that these differences are the result of evolutionary selection because males with “better” spatial skills would have an advantage in securing both food and mates. Males with “better” spatial skills impregnate more females and have more offspring with “better” spatial skills.

Cultural constructionism, in contrast, would provide evidence that such skills are passed on culturally through learning, not genes. They would say that parents and teachers socialize boys and girls differently in spatial skills and are more likely to promote learning of certain kinds of spatial skills among boys. (In this case, we actually know that biological determinism is wrong. Spatial skills are linked to learning and not to “natural selection”).

Interpretive Anthropology VS. Cultural Materialism

Interpretive anthropology, or interpretivism, focuses on understanding culture by studying what people think about, their explanations of their lives, and the symbols that are important to them. (i.e): In understanding the dietary habits of Hindus, “Interpretivism” comes from the culture and the people who inhabit this culture; it is not what the anthropologist has “interpreted” from this culture.

Cultural materialism attempts to learn about culture by first examining the material aspects of life: the environment and how people make a living within particular environments. A cultural materialist explanation for the taboo on killing cows and eating beef involves the fact that cattle in India play a more important role alive than dead or carved into steaks (Marvin Harris 1974). The many cattle wandering the streets of Indian cities and villages look useless to Westerners. A closer analysis, however, shows that the seemingly useless population of bovines serves many useful functions. Ambling along, they eat paper trash and other edible refuse. Their excrement is “brown gold,” useful as fertilizer or, when mixed with straw, could be used as cooking fuel. Most important, farmers use cattle to plow fields. Cultural materialists take into account Hindu beliefs about the sacred meaning of cattle, but they see its relationship to the material value of cattle as symbolic protection, keeping these extremely useful animals out of the meat factory. The forbiddance of eating cows comes from their economic cost/benefit (according to this point of view).

Individual Agency and Structuralism

This debate concerns the question of how much individual will, or agency, affects the way people behave and think, compared with the power of forces, or structures, that are beyond individual control.

Western philosophical thought gives much emphasis to the role of agency, the ability of individuals to make choices and exercise free will. In contrast,

Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

There is one more debate, but usually, it’s not included as a “discussion”. It is related to how we use the word “ethnocentrism” in opposition to “cultural relativism” and what both notions mean. This is not a discussion about the methodology for the study of behavior; it is about what we should (or shouldn’t) avoid when we try to describe a culture.

Ethnocentrism: “Judging other cultures by the standards of one’s own culture rather than by the standards of other cultures. Most people grow up thinking that their culture is the best way of life and that other ways of life are strange and inferior”.

“The idea that each culture must be understood in terms of its own values and beliefs and not by the standards of another culture. Cultural relativism assumes that no culture is better than any other”. This standpoint has great merit but also has some problems.

Cultural Relativism

Absolute Cultural Relativism

“Whatever goes on within a particular culture cannot be questioned or changed by outsiders as that would be ethnocentric”. The position of absolute cultural relativism, however, can lead in dangerous directions (i.e.) Cultural relativism could entail (in some sort) “cultural imperialism”. Reality is more complex than claiming “every single culture cannot be questioned by other cultures”.

Critical Cultural Relativism

“Anyone can pose questions about what goes on in various cultures, including their own culture, in terms of how particular practices or beliefs may harm certain members; follows Lévi-Strauss’s comment that no society is perfect and, therefore, all societies may be able to learn from others and improve”. Claude Lévi-Strauss said: “No society is perfect”. Cultures can learn from other cultures how to improve themselves. Not in any case intervening in a culture means being ethnocentrically. We, as human beings, wrote a Declaration of Rights that is trying to be “universal”, therefore cross-cultural. However, a possible universal declaration of rights has its own problems… it is difficult, if not impossible, to generate a universal list of what all cultures would agree to as good and right. We need to ask ourselves: Who is entitled to write universal rights for cultures? What are their purposes? Is it a hegemonic culture trying to impose the way it sees the world?

Conclusion: “Anthropologists value are committed to maintaining cultural diversity throughout the world, as part of humanity’s rich heritage”. The issue here is: How could an anthropologist balance cultural relativism with questioning a culture critically? What do you think about this discussion?

Definition of Anthropology

The study of humans either from the past or the present. “Anthropology is the study of humanity, including prehistoric origins and contemporary human diversity”. “Compared with other disciplines that study humanity (such as history, psychology, economics, political science, and sociology), anthropology is broader in scope. Anthropology covers a much greater span of time than these disciplines, and it encompasses a broader range of topics”. (Miller p.2) Among all the possible definitions of “anthropology” and its fields of study, we’ll focus on this:

Cultural Anthropology: Studies the norms and values of societies.

Cultural Anthropology: “the study of living peoples and their cultures, including variation and change”. “Culture refers to people’s learned and shared behaviors and beliefs”. (Miller p.3) Cultural Anthropology considers the variations and similarities between cultures and how cultures change over time. The cultural anthropologist usually learns about a specific culture by spending considerable time with that culture. Sometimes the studies last years.

Methodology: The Ethnographic Field

Franz Boas and the ethnographic fieldwork. Franz Boas (1858-1942). Considered the “Father of American Anthropology”. Against biological determinism (the assumption that biology determines our capacities as a society). Culture is a product of environmental factors, not biology. Human diversity is beyond biology. There is no scientific basis for ranking people or culture from primitive to civilized. Cultural relativism was his main claim as an anthropologist. According to Boas, no culture is “better” than any other, a view that contrasted markedly with that of the nineteenth-century cultural evolutionists. There isn’t a rank for cultures in which “better” means “civilized”. (i.e.) People who live in igloos are not less civilized than a Spanish urbanite; they’re just different. Every culture tries to be adapted to its environment and, consequently, cultures are being shaped by environmental pressures. Although Bronislaw Malinowski started ethnographic fieldwork as a method of researching, F. Boas was whom proposed fieldwork as a legitimate research methodology, as well as for correct understanding of other people and cultures.

Bronislaw Malinowski and the Ethnographic Fieldwork

(1884-1942) Made his research in Papua and the Trobriand Islands and their cultures. There, he discovered the “Kula Ring” (a.k.a “Kula exchange”): people from these islands travel at times hundreds of kilometers by canoe just for exchanging valuables. These valuables are non-use items traded purely for purposes of enhancing one’s social status and prestige. In terms of social prestige, the exchange makes the giver greater from their culture’s view. The person who has received the valuable acquires some kind of debt. Hence, the only way to repair that debt is to give a new valuable to a different person. That person acquires a new debt, and so on and so forth… Major works: Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922); Malinowski is considered the first anthropologist using the ethnographic fieldwork. He was the first person who theorized upon the methodology of the Anthropology: Participant observation; well-informed informant. Analysis vs. description

Ethnographic

Ethnography: The systematic study of people and cultures. Ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. (Ethnos = “people”, but also “culture”). An ethnographer studies both people and their culture. In other words, they study both “ethnic groups” (inaccurately called “races”) and cultures. Ethnography gathers empirical data on human societies. Aims to describe the nature of those who are studied through depictions (such as writings, drawings, photographs, video, audio… “Ethnography designs (or projects) are qualitative research procedures for describing, analyzing, and interpreting a culture-sharing group’s shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop over time”. In other words, ethnography studies a culture that exists in a specific space and time, and often it investigates how this culture has been evolved from past to present.

Cultural Relativism

Absolute Cultural Relativism

Absolute Cultural relativism: “Whatever goes on within a particular culture cannot be questioned or changed by outsiders as that would be ethnocentric”. The position of absolute cultural relativism, however, can lead in dangerous directions. (i.e.) Cultural relativism could entail (in some sort) “cultural imperialism”. Reality is more complex than claiming “every single culture cannot be questioned by other cultures”.

Critical Cultural Relativism

“Anyone can pose questions about what goes on in various cultures, including their own culture, in terms of how particular practices or beliefs may harm certain members; follows Lévi-Strauss’s comment that no society is perfect and, therefore, all societies may be able to learn from others and improve”. Claude Lévi-Strauss said: “No society is perfect”. Cultures can learn from other cultures how to improve themselves. Not in any case intervening in a culture means being ethnocentrically. We, as human beings, wrote a Declaration of Rights that is trying to be “universal”, therefore cross-cultural. However, a possible universal declaration of rights has its own problems… it is difficult, if not impossible, to generate a universal list of what all cultures would agree to as good and right. We need to ask ourselves: Who is entitled to write universal rights for cultures? What are their purposes? Is it a hegemonic culture trying to impose the way it sees the world?

Conclusion: “Anthropologists value are committed to maintaining cultural diversity throughout the world, as part of humanity’s rich heritage”. The issue here is: How could an anthropologist balance cultural relativism with questioning a culture critically? What do you think about this discussion?

Culture: Anthropology as the Study of Culture

Anthropology: The study of humans either from the past or the present. Cultural Anthropology: “the study of living peoples and their cultures, including variation and change”.

The Problem of Culture

Kroeber and Kluckhohn found 164 definitions for the notion of culture. One of those comes from the Latin word colere. Colere means cultivate. (Agriculture, as you can notice, also comes from colere). It is because colere also means both ”take care of” and ”educate”. That is, “to cultivate” something means “take care of it”. If you take care of something, eventually it would grow. It’s a nice metaphor because it’s like if you want to be a person who has culture, you must cultivate yourself as you were cultivating something in a field.

Culture

“Culture refers to people’s learned and shared behaviors and beliefs”. (Miller p.3) Culture is the norms, habits, customs, social organization, rituals, behaviors, etc. that differentiate ethnic groups. Culture is “everything that has to do with human behavior and beliefs” (LeCompte, Preissle, and Tesch, 1993). It includes language, rituals, economic and political structures, stages of life, interactions, communication styles, etc.

Anthropology Studies Social Organization

Anthropology’s standpoint for studying culture is considering “culture” as something that both organizes and gives meaning to something that has no organization and meaning. Nature has no meaning and organization; thanks to culture, mankind is sorting and giving meaning to nature. We’d changed the so-called “state of nature” for “culture”. (The meaningless for a life with meaning). Humans create conventions, rules, rituals, and narratives in order to make culture something stable for the people who live in. Culture is the heritage we had received from our ancestors and will be the heritage that remains after us. Culture’s “stability” does not mean that it is carved in stone. Cultures are flexible; they can change. People change cultures over time. Although, the idea of giving organization and meaning through norms, rituals, or social conventions, remains.

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology takes into account the variations and similarities between cultures and how cultures change over time. The cultural anthropologist usually learns about a specific culture by spending considerable time with that culture. Sometimes the studies last years.

Culture

Culture is our “second nature”. That is what differentiates us from animals. Humans are within the “animal kingdom”, but thanks to our rational capacity, we had changed our nature. We adapt nature to our needs. Culture provides the tools and organization which is needed to differentiate ourselves from a “state of nature”. Culture is the scaffolding that holds the building of civilization.

Kinship

Kinship as the Origin of Society

Kinship is linked to culture’s reproduction and subsistence; “modes of livelihood and reproduction”. Kinship is the principle behind social organizations prior to the industrial revolution and non-estate cultures. Kinship shapes social organization within a group in order to ensure the group’s continuity through the arranging of marriages, ensures order by setting moral norms, and the punishment of lawbreakers. It also tries to supply the people’s needs, controlling the production, consumption, and production of goods. Kinship is not family, but family is always kinship. “Starting in infancy, people learn about their particular culture’s kinship system, the predominant form of kin relationships in a culture and the kinds of behavior involved. Like language, one’s kinship system is so ingrained that it is taken for granted as something natural rather than cultural. (Miller p.177) Kinship structure is a cultural manifestation. This structure changes depending on either the place or time the culture being studied is situated. What (or who) is considered “kin” differs widely from culture to culture. It also differs within a specific culture if we examine that culture over time. Western cultures emphasize primary “blood” relations or relations through birth from a biological mother and biological father (Sault 1994). “Blood” is not a universal basis for kinship, however. Even in some cultures with a “blood”-based understanding of kinship, variations exist in defining who is a “blood” relative and who is not.

Kinship Structures

Kinship structures as a set of conventional norms that establish:

  • With whom you can have sex and create family ties.
  • With whom and where you inhabit.
  • How property is transmitted intergenerationally (inheritance).
  • What are the membership structures based on shared ancestry (clan, group, etc.)
  • Social relationships.

According to Claude Levi-Strauss, kinship rules are related to the universal taboo of incest. Levi-Strauss claimed that incest in pre-modern societies is established because women become an exchange value between the members of these societies: establishing alliances or creating new kinship networks. Thus, taboo would have both a sociological and an economic function. From a genetic research standpoint, the taboo of incest would have collaborated, preventing the proliferation of conditions that are transmitted genetically. The most basic and universal form of incest taboo is against marriage or sexual relations between parents and their children. Although most cultures prohibit marriage between brother and sister, there are exceptions. The best-known example dates back to Egypt in the time of the Roman Empire (Barnard and Good 1984: 92). Brother-sister marriage was the norm in royalty, but also common in the general population, with 15-20% of marriages between brothers and sisters.

Myths

Myths have a cultural function. Myths are a type of narrative that points to the origins of a community (a society or a culture). Myth establishes patterns of meaning that organize the knowledge and behavior of the community. Myths are usually anonymous word-of-mouth narratives that explain existential questions using the community’s shared knowledge. Myths aren’t fiction narratives: they try to bring light to something that has no explanation. How was the world created? Why are we here? What is the reason behind the diversity of animals? Where do colors come from? The interesting thing here is we can find the elements that compose myths (the so-called “mythologem”) in almost every culture around the world. A Mythologem is a basic core element, motif, or theme of a myth.

  • The journey (as discovery and self-improvement)
  • The hero
  • The trickster
  • The fallen angel
  • The virgin, etc.

Every culture reimagines these mythologems, although structurally, the meaning remains unaltered.

Types

  • Cosmogonic Myth: explains the creation of the world.
  • Theogonic Myth: the origin of gods.
  • Anthropogenic Myth: how humans came to existence.
  • Etiologic Myth: explains the origin of animals, things, techniques, institutions, cities, etc.
  • Moral Myths: explains the existence of good.
  • Eschatology: concerning the final events of history (for humans, for a civilization…)

What are Myths For?

Myth has the function of organizing the community around certain common knowledge. Explains the transition from nature (as something without organization and meaning) to culture (organization and meaning). The community identifies itself with the myth. Rises the filiation and membership feelings from the people who live in. You can recognize the people from your culture because they share the same beliefs about something.

Rituals

Patterns of actions that have a causal effect on the ordering of social relations. They appear at the meaningful moments of social relationships:

  • Sacrificial rituals.
  • “Coming of an age” rituals.
  • Rituals of giving.
  • Celebration rituals.
  • Rituals for grief and affliction.

They are creators of meaning: rituals are solving social dramas, instituting meaning.

Ethnographic Fieldwork

Before fieldwork has started, anthropology’s (and ethnography’s) methodology was called “armchair anthropology”.

This term refers to how early cultural anthropologists conducted research by sitting at home in their library and reading reports about other cultures written by travelers, missionaries, and explorers. Ethnography as a method implies fieldwork. That is the reason it is common to say “ethnographic fieldwork” when we are doing ethnography. The anthropologist acts first as an observer and then as a participant. This is the so-called: “participant observation”. Participant observation is a research method for learning about culture that involves living in a culture for an extended period while gathering data” (Miller p.55). Bronislaw Malinowski or Evans Pritchard developed that methodology of being someone who observes and participates in a different culture without “spoiling” the outcome of the research.

Steps for Ethnographic Fieldwork

  • What is it going to be studied?
  • Moving to the field’s study location.
  • Informant selection.
  • Observation and participation.
  • Gathering data (interviews, observation…)
  • Analysis of the gathered data.
  • Study elaboration.

Ethnographic Fieldwork’s Tools

  • Observation (in an uncontrolled environment).
  • Learn as much as you can about the culture you are studying. (language, rituals, practices, politics, etc.).
  • Look for a “well-informed informant”. Someone who teaches you about that culture, but he/she is not deceiving you.
  • Do interviews.
  • Be aware of your own biases and prejudgments! (Nobody escapes from biases, so don’t believe you’re special).
  • Anthropologists should gain their confidence and intimacy in order to recollect reliable data.

Ethnographic Fieldwork, a Caveat

Anthropologists are not in the field to judge or evaluate the people you’re studying. They are there to understand the culture they are studying. (Understanding the so-called “otherness”). Scientific research relies on objectivity.