Week 3: Anthropology 11--Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Lecture Notes for Chapter 16:

Anthropology and the Future  (452-485)

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Professor John Wolford
Department of Anthropology
University of Missouri-St. Louis

Email: wolfordj@msx.umsl.edu


 
Definitions for Chapter 16 Outline for Chapter 16 Anthro 11 homepage GO TO BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

Links to outside web pages: [Wolford's A11 Web Page] [My Gateway Page] [Reserves Page]


The important questions Haviland cites for you to consider while reading this chapter:
 

What can anthropologists tell us of the future?

What are some present-day trends in cultural evolution?

What problems will have to be solved if humanity is to have a future?
 

Notes for William A. Haviland, 

Cultural Anthropology, 10th edition: 

Chapter 16:  Anthropology and the Future  (452-485)

 
page 6 anthropology the study of humankind, in all times and places


 

The Cultural Future of Humanity (454-474)
Anthropologists can assist in future projections for the globe because:   1) they are able to see short-term trends in long-term perspective, through their evolutionary perspective
  • they are trained to have an evolutionary perspective


2) through holism, they are experts at seeing how parts fit together into a larger whole

3) they are sensitive to implications of culture-bound assertions or conclusions

4) they are familiar with alternative human solutions to variety of situations
 

Global Culture (455-457)
 
• Futurists have assumed that nations will merge until there is a one-nation globe
  • they assume this because:  
1) communications and transportation make the world seem smaller

2) nations have a tendency to want to conquer others


• Futurists tend to ignore a nation's other tendency: to disintegrate
 

• like in the former Soviet Union, or Yugoslavia, or efforts in Canada Return to Top  

The Rise of the Multinational Corporations (457-463)

  A model different than the political one is arising for international integration: multinational corporations
  • have been around for centuries: Dutch East Indies Company of 17th century, e.g.

• multinationals have been dominant since the 1950s


Traits
 

• worldwide, multi-national corporate culture

• corporate center in one country, whose cultural patterns dominate

 
• a cluster of corporations organize and integrate production across national boundaries
  • answerable to no government, ultimately

• typically unresponsive to locale-oriented cultural or social needs of people

  
• i.e., they often will transplant populations in the way of development


• benefits the world materially

• also entails a whole new set of problems, that must be solved

• nonetheless, because multinational corporations cut across national boundaries, they have a great potential to become a force for global unity

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ORIGINAL STUDY:  (on pp. 460-462)
STANDARDIZING THE BODY: THE QUESTION OF CHOICE
LEARN THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS STUDY IN ANTHROPOLOGY

UNDERSTAND WHY THIS STUDY IS PLACED UNDER THIS SECTION

• focuses on the cultural and social manipulation of styles of accepted beauty, especially where it concerns women

• standards of beauty are socially constructed

• this has always been the case, and always will be

 
• even when we challenge the accepted norms, our decisions are a reaction to those norms and thus are connected to them


• focus of the article is on the negative health effects of the beauty industry, especially with a focus on plastic surgeons and breast implants

• Western norms of beauty, through the power of financed advertisement, is proving to have an overpowering effect on different cultures

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Global Culture: A Good Idea or Not? (464)
 
• some say it is a good idea:  
• give people a common culture so that they will have a common base for understanding one another
  • that is, it will reduce misunderstanding and lead to the elimination of war


• some cultures today are too specialized to survive in a changing world
 

• it will be better in the long run for traditional cultures, which are nor adapted to modern ways


• some say it is a bad idea:

 
• subordinate people are going to maintain their culturally specific worldview, no matter what the "common culture" might be  
• e.g., Yugoslavia; Native Americans in US, Irish in UK • enforced changes from subsistence farming to cash crops for the world market leads to economic deterioration for the agricultural workers, especially in the countries which make this change
  • it enriches the 1st World countries while giving back virtually nothing of value to the 3rd World countries An example of the distribution of world resources


• cultures will adapt to changed environments if given a chance

 
• e.g., immigrant societies in urban contexts


• the injustice is obvious: one group is defining other groups as obsolete

 
• if one people can dominate the world and impose its culture on others now (e.g., the US), other groups would have that precedent to do so to any other group in the future

• similar to Nazis' mandate of a Third Reich and its chosen people

• other examples:

 
• Britain in 19th century  
• Roman Empire

• Spain's (& Britain's & France's & Portugal's & the Dutch's & US's) subjugation of Native Americans in North and South America

• it is ethnocentrism writ large

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Ethnic Resurgence (465)
 
Despite global modernization and industrialization  
• there remains a tendency among societies to retain their own identity

• people do not necessarily want to adopt the American way of life

 
• e.g., Iranians who rejected the Shah’s modernizations in 1979

• instead, they chose a radical fundamentalist Islamism


• in fact, worldwide return to conservatism is seen increasingly, even in USA (e.g., Gingrich and the "Contract with America" movement in the 1990s; or the election of George W. Bush in the 2001 US presidential election)

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Cultural Pluralism (466-470)
page 466 cultural pluralism social and political interaction of people with different ways of living and thinking within the same society
  Ideally cultural pluralism would entail harmony between the different groups  
• in fact, bigotry, racism, and bias are typically part and parcel of cultural pluralism


Melting pot vs. mosaic imagery/metaphor

 
• each metaphor exists to different degrees in different places

• each metaphor may apply to different parts of the same ethnic groups within a society

 
• i.e., some members of an ethnic group may assimilate more easily while another portion may resist assimilation

• reflects the conservative and dynamic twin law of tradition idea
Guatemalan Cultural Pluralism (466-470)
 
• Indians in Guatemala area have been subjected by Spaniards and Spanish descendants for centuries

• the plural groups there now are the Indians and the Ladinos (Spanish descendants)

• Indians are marginalized: rural, peasants, forced to work at cheap labor

 
• an example of intolerances among differential groups in a pluralistic society

• La Violencia: The Guatemalan reign of terror

• incorporates two types of violence

 
• Visible  
• public executions

• explicit attacks against stereotyped ethnic enemies (such as Indians)

• massacres


• Invisible

 
• unwitnessed abductions, torture, and killings

• repressing people's ability to speak out (through threats of death)

• dumping of anonymous bodies—maintaining the specter of reprisal


• the purpose and the ultimate effect of terrorization on the population is political control through political repression

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ANTHROPOLOGY APPLIED:  (on p. 472)
ADVOCACY FOR THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS WOMEN
LEARN THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS STUDY IN ANTHROPOLOGY

UNDERSTAND WHY THIS STUDY IS PLACED UNDER THIS SECTION

• Applied anthropologists want to ensure the cultural integrity and continuity of a people for their own sake

• Cultural Survival is an agency that tries to help indigenous people to adapt to a multicultural, industrial world 

• Ikwe Indians of Minnesota marketing wild rice and crafts

• Afghan refugees making a living off of weaving traditional rugs

• developed and expanded markets for products, such as Rainforest Crunch (nuts)

• convinced the World Bank (1982) to guarantee the rights ad autonomy of tribal and minority peoples in any World Bank funded project


• Such work does not assume that indigenous people will stay the same

• rather, it assumes change, but works for survival of the people


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Ethnocentrism (470-471)
• ethnocentrism: the precept that people will perceive the culture that they have grown up in as the superior standard for assessing all other cultures; the view that their culture establishes what is proper

• the good thing about ethnocentrism: it teaches people to feel good about themselves and their society

• the bad thing about it: people try to impose their good society onto other people's bad societies

  • and they are able to do so if they are strong enough, dominant enough
 

Global Apartheid (471-474)

 
page 471 apartheid South African term meaning, apart-ness, keeping subordinate societies separate from dominant ones

• Americans felt a sigh of relief when the world's eyes focused on South African segregation atrocities, because it took the focus away from our problems

• but apartheid as a concept can be seen in action affecting the world economy and population dynamics and ecology: the world social system

• Haviland (p. 474) defines global apartheid as:

 
• a condition of world society which "combines socioeconomic and racial antagonisms and that has these characteristics:  
1. A minority of largely White people occupies the pole of affluence, while a majority of composed mostly of other races occupies the pole of poverty.

2. Social integration of the two groups is made extremely difficult by barriers of complexion, economic position, political boundaries, and other factors.

3. Economic development of the two groups is interdependent

4. The largely affluent White minority possesses a disproportionately large share of the world society's political, economic, and military power."

 • "'Global apartheid' is thus a structure of extreme inequality in cultural, racial, social, political, economic, military, and legal terms, as was South African apartheid." (p. 474)  
• It is in effect a colonial attitude toward the world's people and the world's resources
  An example of the distribution of world resources Return to Top

Problems of "Structural Violence" (474-483)
 
page 474 structural violence  violence that situations, institutions, and social, political, and economic structures exert

• Source of the violence is always anonymous, unintended: caused simply by the structuring of society

 
• does not even imply that the social system is inherently evil

• does imply that there are imperfections in the social structure that needs some attending to

• Examples:  
• Bhopal, India: gas release in December 1984 killed 2000 people and seriously injured over 200,000 more  
• Chernobyl, Russia, April 1986: the meltdown that caused radiation to leak and irradiated the Ukraine and much of Europe


• Any American examples?????

 
• Three Mile Island

• The Exxon Valdez incident

• Inner city violence

• The cruelty of high school cliques

• Others, even locally?


• Major EXS:

 
• World hunger

• Pollution

• Population control

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World Hunger (475-477)
A global problem caused primarily by four factors:  
1) exponential increase in rate of population growth

2) increased urbanization and loss of indigenous agricultural practices/knowledge/culture

3) unequal distribution practices

 
• 3rd World peoples producing the luxury needs of 1st World peoples • while losing their own land and economic base for subsistence


4) adoption of inefficient Western (American) style of agriculture

 
• expensive machinery that require precious and unavailable fuel

• for every calorie produced, 8 - 20 calories are used in producing it

 
• Asian wet rice production: 300 calories produced for every 1 calorie expended!

Pollution (477-479)
 
• agricultural additives in soils: poisoning soil & water

• industrial development typically happens in most disadvantaged areas

 
• e.g., East St. Louis and the chemical companies (Monsanto, etc.)


• further, 3rd World countries often have lax pollution control

 
• using it to gain economic equity in the world society Return to Top  

Population Control (480-482)
 
page 481 replacement reproduction  when birthrates and death rates are in equilibrium; people produce only enough offspring to replace themselves when they die

• Why do poor people and poor countries tend to have more children per capita?

 
• because children are a resource, the main resource, for the poor

• also: a source of security for the elderly


• Children of the wealthier actually cost more to maintain: they are a drain

• Gives a perspective on why the 1st World countries have a lower to nil birth rate while the 3rd World countries have a high birth rate

• In China and many other countries: having male children is necessary for survival

 
• it is culturally and structurally functional

• to demand its removal is dysfunctional for the society specifically but functional for the global society


• Makes one wonder: Is the emphasis for population control a Western ethnocentrism?

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The Culture of Discontent (483)
 
• A twofold problem:  
• 1) poor countries embrace the aspiration for a 1st World standard of living

• 2) resources necessary for that standard of living are not sustainable

 
• even the 1st World countries will be scrambling in the near future


• that is: our aspirations far exceed our opportunities

 
• creates a culture of discontent • Solution:  
• change in our 1st World values and attitudes and norms and expectations

• change in our global social structure

 Haviland does not believe that
• we must promote American values

• we must interpret the political actions of other nations in terms of the cultural and political norms of our own culture

• Americans must give up their powerful economic and political role in the world

• we must allow other people's cultural norms assume dominance over our own
 

However, we must adapt [beneficially!] to a new world order that incorporates all of the people and all of the different ways of understanding the world
 
Present status Needed status
individual self-interest Humane self-image: Need for social & cultural ties
materialism: conspicuous consumption, production, and acquisition Social responsibility and social ethic
humanity as superior to nature humanity as part of and integrative with nature

Return to A11 Page Go to Readings and Class Schedule Go to mygateway.umsl.edu Return to Professor Wolford's Homepage Return to Top
created: January 26, 2001
previously revised: January 10, 2002
last revised: February 05, 2002