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ARENS_VIEW_FROM_OUT

                                           December 30, 2018


My Anthropology 101 professor, W.S. Arens, did a lecture
where he was essentially defending the right of the
Anthropologist to apply an outside view to another 
culture. 

One of his examples was about a pariticular people--
whose name completely escapes me I'm afraid-- about
whom anthropologists often wrote "they think of the
soul as a bird."

There were a few things that suggested this: e.g. when
someone died they would say that the soul "flies away".

The people themselves thought that it was ridiculous
to say they thought the soul was like a bird, and they
would deny it empahtically... and then go back to
talking about it "flying away".


Another point Arens made was that in studying American
culture an anthropologist might say "An American wedding
custom is that the male has a haircut before the wedding."

That's often met with disbelief by actual Americans who
object that there's no particular requirement to do this,
but Arens point was that in fact *everyone* does this, he
himself got a haircut when he got married, and every guy
in the class, if they got married, would find they got
a haircut first.

The fact that it's not some sort of memorized, recognized
rule doesn't mean it's not actually a custom, which is to 
say a widely practiced, observable behavior.


   You can probably think of examples like this,
   where a group's perceptions of itself don't
   seem to match their evident nature.

       Birthers proudly declare they're not racist; 
       Anti-vaxxers deny that they're anti-science;



   You might go in a number of directions with this--

   Do Anthropologists show a touch of arrogance here?
   There's a readiness to claim you understand people
   better than they do themselves...

   Arens point though was not that the Anthropologist
   should ignore a people's opinion of themselves,
   but to defend the right to add their own interpretations
   from the outside, after studying what they say and do.


       Who gets to speak?

       What weight do you assign to different voices?


                                    (Sep 29, 2024)

An anthropologist might say that 
western business men wear ties to 
seperate the body into sacred and
profane areas.  
                                      
    If you ask an office worker about it,     
    I think they're more likely to to         
    think of a tie as a symbolic collar       
    and leash: they're demonstrating that     
    they're domesticated animals.             
                                              
                                             



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