Unit 1: Anthropology and the “Culture

Concept”
Introduction
In a rapidly globalizing world, our daily lives are increasingly influenced by
international flows and interconnections between different peoples. As a result, we are
faced with the challenges of coming to understand and appreciate worldviews that
may frequently differ in important ways from our own, an effort that is frequently
crucial to avoid the intolerance and violence that so often stem from national,
religious, ethnic, racial, and other differences. In this course you will be introduced to
the basic concepts and findings of cultural anthropology, a discipline which takes as
its object the systematic and comparative study of human institutions, beliefs, and
behaviours, in order to achieve a better understanding of cultural diversity.

This introductory unit discusses some of the basic principles and approaches that
shape both anthropology more generally and cultural anthropology in particular. We
will address three main themes:

1. What is cultural anthropology?

2. The culture concept
3. Ethnocentrism and cultural relativism

Learning Objectives
At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

1. Identify and distinguish between the four subfields of anthropology.

2. Define culture as a concept within anthropology.

3. Explain the debate over culture within anthropology and why some anthropologists
have rejected this concept.

3. Explain the concepts of cultural relativism and ethnocentrism and apply them to
specific case studies.

Assigned Reading
Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods, Chapter 1.
Lila Abu-Lughod. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”

Renato Rosaldo. “Of Headhunters and Soldiers: Separating Cultural and Ethical
Relativism” (http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v11n1/relativism.html)

How to Proceed
1. Read Chapter 1 of Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods.

2. Read Parts 1 and 2 of the instructional notes.

3. Read Abu-Lughod and Rosaldo.

4. Read Part 3 of the instructional notes.

5. Answer the review questions.

Instructional Content
Contents
Part 1: What is Cultural Anthropology?

1.1 What is Anthropology

1.2 Holism

1.3 The Limits of Holism

1.4 Comparison

1.5 The Four Fields of Anthropology

1.5.1 Biological or Physical Anthropology

1.5.2 Archaeology

1.5.3 Linguistic Anthropology

1.5.4 Cultural Anthropology

1.6 What Cultural Anthropologists Do: Some Key Terms

 1.7 Applied Anthropology

Part 2: The Culture Concept

Exercise 1 Culture: An Introductory Definition

2.1 Culture: An Introductory Definition

2.2 The Debate Over Culture

2.2.1 Culture is Learned

2.2.2 Culture is Expressed Through Symbols and Material Practices

2.2.3 Cultures and Social Groups are Internally Diverse

2.2.4 Culture Influences and Is Shaped by Global Flows

2.2.5 Culture Involves Tradition and Change

2.2.6 Culture Limits and Allows for Individual and Group Agency

Exercise 2: Culture in Everyday Life

Part 3: Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Exercise 3: Readings on Cultural Relativism

3.1 Cultural Relativism: An Introductory Definition

3.2 Ethnocentrism

3.3. The Limits of Cultural Relativism

3.4 Cultural Relativism Should Not be Confused with Cultural Determinism

3.5 Cultural Relativism Does Not Entail Moral Relativism

3.6 Example 1: Headhunting Among the Ilongot

3.7 Example 2: “Saving Muslim Women?”

Part 1. What is Cultural Anthropology?

We begin this course with a crucial and deceptively simple question: what is cultural
anthropology? For many of you, the answer to this question may not be all that
obvious. Indeed, when I tell people both in Canada and elsewhere that I am a cultural
anthropologist, they frequently find it confusing that I work on art and media. Many
people take their ideas of what anthropologists do from popular Western media
representations such as the Indiana Jones movies or the television show, Bones. But
while these shows do represent two distinct subfields of anthropology – archaeology
and forensic anthropology, to be precise – the methods and research topics addressed
by scholars working in these subfields sometimes overlap and sometimes are quite
distinct from the sort of work in which cultural anthropologists may engage. (My
colleagues in archaeology and physical anthropology also assure me that their work is
rarely quite as romantic as what these shows make it out to be). To begin
understanding what cultural anthropology is about, we’ll start by defining
anthropology as a whole; discuss holism and comparison, two methods that have
historically been key to the discipline; and finally we’ll outline the four subfields of
anthropology, including biological or physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistic
anthropology, and cultural anthropology. These notes build on and explain the
arguments discussed in the first chapter of the course textbook by Robert Lavenda,
Emily Schultz, and Roberta Dods, so be sure to read that chapter first and then move
back and forth between these notes and the chapter to ensure that you have fully
understood the concepts discussed below.

1.1 What is Anthropology

Simply put, anthropology is the study of people. Or, as your textbook defines it,
anthropology is “a scholarly discipline that aims to describe in the broadest sense
what it means to be human” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 5). Anthropologists
use a variety of methods to explore, document, and analyze different human ways of
life around the world, both in the past and in the present. As your textbook notes, this
research means that anthropologists are often treated to the experience of making the
unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar. In the best of cases, this means that
both professional anthropologists and – in your case – students of anthropology gain
not only new respect and understanding of cultural variability but also a critical
perspective on their own cultures. One of the most important things that anthropology
can accomplish is to help you challenge your own taken for granted perspective on the
world, showing you that there are multiple and equally valid ways of organizing all
aspects of human life, from gender and family to politics and power.

Anthropology is, of course, not the only academic discipline with a vested interested
in human beings and their creations. Human biology, literature, art, history,
linguistics, sociology, political science, economics – all these disciplines and many
more – concentrate on some aspect of human life. A lot of the questions that interest
anthropologists are therefore also of interest to specialists in other fields. As a result,
anthropology today is a highly interdisciplinary venture and many anthropologists
work in collaboration with scholars from other disciplines.

Historically, however, anthropology has been distinguished from other disciplines by

three key features. First, it adopts a holistic perspective. Second, it approaches
questions through a comparative lens. And finally, it has historically been oriented
towards the study of culture.

 Holism
 Comparison
 The culture concept

Like all scholarly disciplines, anthropology is a living and often rapidly changing field
of study. Unsurprisingly then, each of these emphases has been and continues to be
hotly contested by scholars in the discipline. In Parts 2 and 3 of these instructional
notes, we will define the concept of culture and discuss how in recent years
anthropologists have challenged this concept and even suggested setting it aside
altogether. And as I’ll outline in the next section, in recent years some anthropologists
have also drawn attention to the limits of holism.

1.2 Holism

As your textbook argues, holism can be defined as a way of thinking about and
explaining the human condition that takes into account the ways in which mind and
body, person and society, humans and their environment interpenetrate and define one
another (see Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 3-4). To explain holism, your textbook
contrasts it to two other approaches to explaining human nature: idealism and
materialism.

Western philosophy and thought has long taken what we might call a “dualistic”
approach to the question of what humans are. From the Greek philosopher Plato on,
Westerners have frequently assumed that there is a strict division between mind and
matter, soul and body.

This idea that mind and body are split has often led to a deterministic form of
idealism. Some philosophers have concluded that what makes humans really human
are our minds. You can see reflections of this way of thinking in arguments that what
distinguishes humans from animals, for instance, is our ability to reason.
Conversely, other theorists have sometimes taken what is known as
a materialist approach to explaining the human condition. Materialism holds the
reverse from idealism. Where a deterministic form of idealism maintains that what
constitutes the essence of humans are our minds, those who adopt a materialist
perspective instead emphasize the role played by the activities of our physical bodies
in the material world in shaping what it means to be human. Materialists might
therefore emphasize factors ranging from environmental conditions to relations
involved in labour and production. This approach may also sometimes take a
deterministic form, ignoring the role played by ideas, beliefs, and values in shaping
human life.

Different schools of anthropology and of cultural anthropology have sometimes taken

more idealistic or more materialistic approaches to the study of humans and human
behaviour. On the whole, however, anthropology as a discipline has been profoundly
shaped by a holistic approach. Holism can be seen at work in anthropology in a couple
of ways. First, in North America the commitment to holism is at the root of the four
fields approach of the discipline, the fact that anthropology as a discipline can involve
studies that range from a biological emphasis in the analysis of human behaviour to
studies that focus on the religious or artistic practice. The grouping of such a wide
variety of studies of humans within one discipline reflects a historical commitment to
explaining humans by taking into account the influence and interactions of biology,
history, language, and culture or learned human behavior and beliefs.

Second, holism can also be understood as a commitment to contextualization. That is,

cultural anthropologists are generally committed to looking at particular behaviours
and beliefs within their broader social context. Where scholars working in other
disciplines may sometimes focus on literature, the arts, or politics as separate and
separable fields of study, cultural anthropologists are often interested in examining
how these different areas of social life are shaped by and influence one another. From
the perspective of holism, then, anthropologists might be interested in how the type of
environment in which a particular group of humans lives affects the strategies they
use to meet their basic needs for clothing, shelter, and food.

Lavenda, Robert H., Emily A. Schultz, and Roberta Robin Dods. 2012. Cultural
Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, 2nd Canadian Edition. Oxford:
Oxford UP.
In this image from your textbook, for instance, we see a nomadic herder looking for
his yaks in Mongolia. As Eric Thrift, a graduate of the University of Manitoba’s
Department of Anthropology, has demonstrated in his research, Mongolian herders
have long adopted a flexible approach to household composition to take advantage of
economic and social opportunities presented not only by the changing seasons and
their environment, but also by political transformations and global economic flows.
Research such as Thrift’s thus takes a holistic approach insofar as it examines a
particular social practice – household composition – within the broader context
provided by an array of factors including Mongolian understandings of family,
relationships to the environment and the land, and adaptation to the introduction of a
market economy following the collapse of state socialism as well as the influence of
international NGOs working in the region.

1.3 The Limits of Holism

In recent years, however, anthropologists have noted limits to holism. Most

anthropologists share a commitment to rich contextualization. But in practice different
research questions call for different emphases. Not all anthropological studies bring
together all four of the subfields or pay equal attention to questions of biology,
history, language, and culture. A commitment to contextualization also begs the
question of which context or contexts must be considered in order to best understand a
given practice or phenomenon. As discussed in Unit 2, some schools of
anthropological thought, including for instance structural functionalism, have tended
to view different cultures as self-contained wholes. Anthropologists working in these
traditions thus tended to believe that it was possible to fully account for a given
practice or belief by examining factors at play within a single society. Anthropologists
today, by contrast, challenge this view. They argue that we must also pay attention to
global flows if we are to understand local practices. As noted in the example just
discussed, for instance, to understand the behaviours and practices of Mongolian
herders Dr. Thrift must pay attention not only to traditional beliefs and customs but
also to how these interrelate with neighbouring societies, global capitalism, and
international NGOs.

1.4 Comparison

Anthropology has also historically been distinguished by a commitment to a

comparative approach. Some disciplines with which anthropology can share similar
interests focus on a single area or region, such as East Asian Studies or English
literature. Anthropology by contrast brings together scholars working in areas around
the world. This comparative research enables anthropologists to gain a critical
perspective on the commonalities, differences, and connections between a wide
variety of social groups. As your textbook notes, a comparative approach reveals that
while all humans need to eat, what is considered appropriate and preferred food varies
a great deal between different societies. While you’d be unlikely to find ants on the
menu at a restaurant in Winnipeg or other areas of Manitoba, for instance, in other
societies ants and other insects are not only considered good to eat they’re even
thought of as delicacies. The comparative approach thus reveals the great diversity of
practices and beliefs that shape human life around the globe and across time and
demonstrates that all social groups deserve equal treatment and respect.

1.5 The Four Fields of Anthropology

As mentioned earlier, the commitment to holism has meant that, at least in North
America, anthropology has traditionally included four subfields, each of which adopts
a different approach to the broad question of what it means to be human. Your
textbook describes these four subfields in detail in Chapter 1. Here I summarize and
expand on the central points in that section.

1.5.1 Biological or Physical anthropology

This subfield studies human beings as living organisms and examines what makes us
similar to or different from other living things. It can include primatology or the study
of non-human primates; paleoanthropology or the study of the fossilized remains of
human beings’ earliest ancestors; forensic anthropology where specialists use their
knowledge of human skeletal anatomy to aid law enforcement and human rights
investigators; and also molecular anthropology, which traces chemical similarities and
differences in cells, tissues, and organs.

1.5.2 Archaeology

If physical anthropology looks at humans and the human condition from the
perspective of biology, then archaeology has a particular focus on human history. This
subfield involves the study of the human past through the analysis of material
remains. It is often collaborative and archaeologists may work with other scientists
and anthropologists in other subfields. For instance, your textbook notes that the
Dakleh Oasis Project in Egypt brought together environmentalists, physical
anthropologists, linguists, historians, and archaeologists to study the interaction
between environmental changes and human activity in that area from the Middle
Pleistocene 400 000 years ago to 21st century oasis farmers. Other topics addressed by
archaeologists include the history and dynamics of the fur trade, patterns of migration
and emplacement of First Nations, and the political economy of French New Orleans.

1.5.3 Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistic anthropology frequently overlaps with cultural anthropology. This subfield
can be defined as the comparative study of how language both reflects and influences
social life. Linguistic anthropologists may study how language shapes social identity
and group membership, how it reproduces or transforms cultural beliefs and systems
of power, or the impact of growing up bilingual on the behaviour, identities, and
social dynamics of children. As your textbook notes, some linguistic anthropologists
also work to maintain and preserve endangered languages.

1.5.4 Cultural Anthropology

This brings us to the special focus of this course: cultural anthropology. Your
textbook defines cultural anthropology as the study of “learned behaviours and ideas
that human beings acquire as members of a society.” This is, in fact, another way of
saying that cultural anthropology is the study of culture, which I define in greater
detail below. Your textbook also observes that cultural anthropology can in some
sense be thought of as the study of “common sense” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods
2012: 10). To put this otherwise, cultural anthropologists often interpret and explain
beliefs and practices that individuals take for granted and reproduce without even
noticing that they’re doing so. One of the goals of cultural anthropology is to
defamiliarize these habitual behaviours and beliefs and show how they shape our
lives. As we’ll see over the course of the semester, the kinds of topics that cultural
anthropologists address can vary enormously and can include, for instance, art and
media, religion, economics, politics and power, gender, sexuality, race, and many
more.

As we’ll discuss in greater detail in Unit 3, cultural anthropology has experienced

enormous transformations over the years. As it developed at the end of the
19th century, this subfield traditionally focused on studying small-scale societies. With
very few exceptions, early cultural anthropologists were white men from Europe or
North America who worked with colonized social groups. This was one of the ways in
which cultural anthropology distinguished itself from “sociology.” While sociologists
focused on Western industrial nations – the “us” from the perspective of European
and white North Americans – anthropologists were assigned the task of studying the
non-European societies that were the target of colonization. As a result of this history,
anthropology has a complicated relationship to colonial histories.

Many cultural anthropologists today still work with indigenous groups, but they
attempt to do so in ways that reflect the immersion of these groups in global flows and
the ways in which they have both preserved and transformed their traditional
practices. For instance, in his ethnography, A Future for Amazonia: Randy Borman
and the Cofán Environmental Movement (2012), Michael Cepek describes the global
activist movement carried out by the Cofán nation in the Amazon in an attempt to stop
the destruction of their home territories by oil development, road building, and waves
of colonization. Today cultural anthropologists may also focus on cultural processes
in urban, industrialized settings. Many contemporary anthropologists are also
themselves members of colonized groups and nations. Where in earlier years
anthropology thus often focused on studying the “other,” the growing number of
anthropologists from around the world who study social issues at “home” complicate
this dynamic.

1.10 What Cultural Anthropologists Do: Some Key Terms

One hallmark of cultural anthropology, however, has remained relatively constant

throughout the history of the discipline: what is commonly known as fieldwork, or an
extended period of close involvement with the people in whose way of life
anthropologists are interested, a period during which anthropologists collect most of
their data. While the earliest anthropologists relied on reports sent home by
missionaries and colonial functionaries, by the earliest twentieth century fieldwork
had become a hallmark of the discipline. We’ll discuss fieldwork in greater detail in
Unit 2.

Another important term is informants, which has historically been used to refer to the
individuals who help anthropologists gather the information that they need. As your
textbook notes, many people are uncomfortable with this term and prefer to use words
that signal a more equal exchange between researchers and the people with whom
they work, such as “friends,” “teachers” or “respondents.”

Also crucial to understanding what cultural anthropologists do are the

terms ethnography and ethnology. All professional cultural anthropologists produce
what we term ethnographies. These are written (typically a book) or filmed
descriptions of a particular culture. Ethnology, by contrast, is the comparison of two
or more cultures.

1.11 Applied Anthropology

Finally, practitioners from all four fields of anthropology can sometimes be involved
in what is termed applied anthropology. Applied anthropology involves the
application of anthropological theories and methods to everyday problems. Applied
anthropologists may work on projects ranging from supporting indigenous land claims
to working with refugees.

Part 2: The Culture Concept

In Part 1 of this unit, I noted that cultural anthropology is the study of culture. In Part
2, we examine what culture itself means and how it has been used within the
discipline of cultural anthropology. Culture can be a tricky concept to define. On the
one hand, most of us have probably used the term culture at some point. But
anthropologists frequently mean something slightly different by this concept than how
it is used everyday in North America. Over the decades, some anthropologists have
also contested the usefulness of the concept to the discipline, arguing that it can
contribute to cultural determinism, that is, to a reified treatment of social groups that
does not acknowledge the diversity that exists within them, the effects of global flows
and cross-cultural interactions on local practices, and the importance of both tradition
and change in shaping the practices and beliefs of specific social groups. In what
follows I begin by outlining the basic definition of culture provided by your textbook,
describe the debate over the concept of culture, and then outline six characteristics
that are important to how many anthropologists approach the concept of culture and
the behaviours and practices of social groups in more recent anthropological work.

Exercise 1 Culture: An Introductory Definition

To begin addressing the concept of culture, start by asking yourself what

you associate with this term. Jot down your answers, then compare your
answers to the notes below and the textbook’s discussion of this concept.

2.1 Culture: An Introductory Definition

Just as saying that you’re a cultural anthropologist can often confuse people who
associate anthropology with Indiana Jones and Bones, saying that you study culture
can evoke some misleading assumptions. At least among English speakers in North
America, the word culture is often used more narrowly to refer to literature and other
arts. Another common misconception is that culture can be equated with a reductive
notion of ethnic traditions. But while literature and the arts are often included in what
anthropologists mean by the term culture, the anthropological use of the concept
includes many other aspects of social life. Similarly, while culture may have to do
with ethnicity and tradition, anthropologists today combat the sorts of stereotypes that
the equation of ethnic tradition with culture can sometimes lend themselves to. As we
shall see in great detail below, anthropologists increasingly insist that cultures are
not homogeneous, self-contained, and timeless wholes.

There is no one definition of culture within anthropology. However, as your textbook

argues, one foundational definition of the concept that is often adopted in some form
within the discipline is that devised by pioneering anthropologist Edward B. Tylor.
According to Tylor, culture is: [t]hat complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired . . . as
a member of society” (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 13). Lavenda,
Schultz, and Dods rephrase Tylor’s definition into the following working version,
which we will adopt for the purposes of this course. According to them, culture is: "a
set of learned behaviours and ideas that humans acquire as members of a society"
(Lavenda, Schultz and Dods 2012: 10). To put this otherwise, culture can be
understood as the broad array of learned beliefs, practices, customs, and morals
involved in social life. Culture affects both how we interpret the experiences that we
have and the ways in which we behave.

2.2 The Debate Over Culture

Many anthropologists have found great use in the concept of culture. For instance, in
the early twentieth century, American anthropologist Franz Boas argued that
differences in human behaviour were not primarily determined by innate biological
dispositions but rather were largely the results of cultural behaviour acquired through
social learning. In this way, Boas introduced the concept of culture to describe
differences between human groups, overturning both racist ideas popular at the time
and contributing to establishing culture as one of anthropology’s core analytical
concepts.

But as your textbook notes, in the 1980s some anthropologists argued that the concept
of culture too often led to a reductive view of the social life and beliefs of different
social groups. In particular, anthropologists protested against what we might refer to
as the “petri dish version of culture.” That is, they argued against analyses that treated
different cultures as though they were internally homogeneous and completely cut off
from one another. They noted that anthropologists ought to be suspicious of a concept
that has become popular in advertising, marketing, media, and other fields as a way of
representing non-Western peoples in often stereotyped and homogenizing ways. Some
anthropologists therefore concluded that the discipline should do away with the
concept of culture altogether, an argument that still has a great deal of sway. Others,
by contrast, argued that we could preserve the general concept of culture, but ought to
bracket the idea of the existence of distinct and easily distinguishable cultural groups.
Everyone involved in this debate concurred that anthropologists needed to find new
ways to conceptualize the culture concept and to analyze the beliefs and practices of
different social groups that would avoid the pitfalls of reductive versions of culture.

Most anthropological definitions have always insisted on the following two

characteristics of culture:

 Culture is learned
 Culture is expressed through both symbols and material practices
In light of the debates over and criticisms of the cultural concept, contemporary
approaches to the study of culture and social beliefs and practices often add to these
two characteristics some variant of the following four points:

 Cultures or social groups are internally diverse

 Culture both influences and is shaped by global flows
 Culture involves both tradition and the potential for change
 Culture both limits and allows for individual and group agency

In what follows I’ll go through each of these points in turn.

2.2.1 Culture is learned

As your textbook observes, “[a]nthropologists have shown that that members of a

social group behave in a particular way not because the behaviour is an inevitable
result of human biology but because it is learned – individuals observe and then copy
certain actions performed by others” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 13).
Everything from language, technology, institutions, beliefs, and values are transmitted
across generations and maintain continuity or are contested and transformed through
this form of cultural learning, technically termed enculturation (see Unit 4 for a
definition of enculturation).

This argument sheds light on why the concept of culture is so useful in combating
racist, sexist, homophobic and other deterministic notions of human behaviour. Most
anthropologists acknowledge the influence of biology on human behaviour, viewing
humans as what your textbook terms “biocultural organisms.” But there are heated
arguments among anthropologists as among scholars from other disciplines as to
where the influence of biology ends and that of learned behaviours or culture begins.
And regardless of where individual anthropologists fall with regards to this debate,
most hold that even our most intimate behaviours are profoundly shaped by society
and social influences. From this perspective, ideas about how women or men ought to
behave, what kinds of clothes they should wear, or even what constitutes a woman or
a man are not simply determined by biological characteristics such as chromosomes or
gonads, but rather by learned behaviours transmitted within particular social groups.

2.2.2 Culture is expressed through symbols and material practices

Traditional definitions of culture within anthropology also frequently argue that it is

symbolic. That is, we make sense of our world through the use of symbols, which
your textbook defines as something that stands for something else. Although
anthropologists have used the term symbol in a variety of ways, languag is perhaps
the purest example. It is composed of signs whose relationship to what they refer is
entirely arbitary. Material objects such as art, ceremonial objects, tools, and
technologies may also have a symbolic character in that they may represent the
commonly shared or widely known beliefs, values, or ideas of a particular or
particular social groups.

In more recent years, many anthropologists have also become increasingly interested
in how shared cultural beliefs and practices are transmitted through material and
embodied practices. For instance, different social groups have different conventions
for what sorts of clothing are appropriate for specific roles and in specific
circumstances. In my on-campus courses I am always confronted with the question of
what to wear while teaching. While in earlier years more formal attire was expected
from professors, now a certain degree of casualness is allowed. At the same time,
students would likely be shocked if I were to arrive in class wearing a t-shirt, shorts,
and sandals – it would communicate a certain casualness that most students and
teachers in North America wouldn’t consider befitting the professional status or
behaviour of a professor. Through dress and other material and embodied practices,
individuals thus communicate all sorts of cultural expectations and assumptions about
gender, profession, age, social role or profession, and so on.

2.2.3 Cultures and social groups are internally diverse

As noted earlier, anthropologists objected to uses of the concept of culture that tended
to treat different social groups as though they were internally homogeneous. Contrary
to such a view, every society is in fact constituted by a variety of different social
groups, which may share beliefs and practices in common but may also differ from
one another in important ways. Frequently social groups that we might think of as
coming from different “cultures” may share important values and practices with one
another. In my own research on Cuban filmmakers, for instance, I have frequently
observed both the national particularities of their work and practice and the ways in
which they share values and orientations in common with filmmakers from around the
world, with whom they often collaborate.

2.2.4 Culture influences and is shaped by global flows

Traditional anthropological definitions often hold that culture is patterned. This

argument maintains that cultural elements assume their meanings in relationship to
each other within a broader context of a meaning system. According to this view, to
understand one element of this system, anthropologists must therefore study it in
relation to this broader context. The idea of culture as patterned reflects
anthropology’s orientation towards holism or contextualization and still exercises an
important role in much anthropological work today. Yet as your textbook points out
and as my earlier caveats about holism suggests, such an approach begs the question
of which context or contexts are relevant in order to understand the meaning and
effects of any given practice or belief, a question which is of particular relevance
when considering how the practices of colonized peoples can be impacted by colonial
or neo-colonial governments, or when examining the ways in which local traditions
interact with, influence, and are influenced by broader global flows and processes.
The difficulty of identifying a relevant context is thus highlighted when we
acknowledge that the boundaries between different cultural traditions have always
been fuzzy and porous. As I pointed out earlier, some early anthropological
approaches to the study of culture had a tendency to treat social groups as though they
were homogeneous, self-contained wholes. Now most anthropologists acknowledge
that social groups do not and never have existed in complete isolation from one
another. Rather, different peoples have always borrowed cultural elements from one
another. And since at least the 16th century, cultures around the world have been
radically transformed as different groups of people were brought into contact with one
another through the forces of colonialism and global capitalism. Anthropological
analyses of cultural systems of belief and behaviour must therefore explore how local
practices both influence and are transformed by interactions with other social groups
and global flows, including colonialism, capitalism, immigration, media, and so on.

2.2.5 Culture involves tradition and change

There is frequently a tendency to equate culture with unchanging tradition. But while
tradition can be an important part of culture, it’s important to keep in mind that
cultures also change over the course of time. As your textbook notes, remembering
that culture is both enduring and changeable can be of immense political importance
to many social groups around the world. Preserving and maintaining traditions can be
an important aspect of First Nations’ efforts to maintain group identity and counter the
destructive impact of colonialism and racism. But First Nations also insist that
anthropologists and museums have to understand that their communities too will
change over time and that this is not necessarily negative.

The following quote from Ron Ignace, a member of a First Nations band in British
Columbia, expresses this commitment both to preserving tradition and the right to
cultural change:

They [some anthropologists and museums] don’t seem to understand that we still exist
as a people, that we adapt and change and we have that right to adapt and change,
while still maintaining some of our principles that were tried and true over the years.
Particularly principles that are necessary for survival as a people. . . . [In a museum]
you never get the social dynamism of the culture and how that culture has grown and
changed and adapted over the years (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 16)
2.2.6 Culture limits and allows for individual and group agency

Finally, most contemporary approaches to culture acknowledge that it can both limit
and allow for individual and group agency. Your textbook closes Chapter 1 with a
discussion of the treatment of history and agency within the field of anthropology.
While some earlier anthropological approaches tended to ignore history and treat
societies like machines where individuals necessarily fulfilled the roles prescribed to
them, more recent approaches to the study of culture acknowledge the potential for
change, as pointed out above. This acknowledgement frequently goes hand in hand
with an exploration of the agency or control that individuals and social groups can
exercise over their lives. At the same time, most anthropologists would insist that such
agency has its limits. As your textbook argues, Karl Marx provided perhaps the most
succinct formulation of this position when he stated that “[m]en make their own
history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under under
circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances directly encountered,
given, and transmitted by the past” (qtd. in Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 22). In
other words, humans regularly struggle, often against great odds, to exercise some
control over our lives. The agency we are able to exercise is always constrained to a
greater or lesser degree by historical and cultural circumstances.

Exercise 2: Culture in Everyday Life

To consolidate your understanding of the above points, consider your

answers to exercise 1. How did your initial answers compare to the
textbook’s definition of culture and to the notes above about this concept?
Next, take a few minutes to think about the role that culture and the
characteristics of culture noted above play in your own life. First, jot
down everything you have done today. Second, discuss which cultural
beliefs and practices might be involved in each one of those activities.
Finally, consider how these activities reflect the characteristics described
above (culture as learned; as symbolic and as material; as internally
diverse; as shaping and being shaped by global flows; as involving both
tradition and change; and as limiting and allowing for individual and
group agency).

Part 3: Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism

Exercise 3: Readings on Cultural Relativism

The final part of this unit addresses the concepts of cultural relativism and
ethnocentrism. By this point, you should already have read what Lavenda,
Schultz, and Dods have to say on this topic in Chapter 1 of your textbook.
Before continuing with the notes below, make sure to read the two
additional readings I assigned on this topic, Renato Rosaldo’s “Of
Headhunters and Soldiers: Separating Cultural and Ethical Relativism”
and Lila Abu-Lughod’s “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?
Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others.” After
you read these two pieces, consider the following questions. What
potentials and what limitations do Rosaldo and Abu-Lughod identify in
the concept of cultural relativism? How do their arguments reflect the
debate over the culture concept discussed in Part 2 of this unit? In other
words, in what ways do their arguments speak to contemporary
anthropologists’ arguments against a view of cultures as self-contained
and homogeneous wholes, insisting instead on the internal diversity of
social groups, global flows and interconnections, tradition and change,
and individual and group agency? What aspects of the concept of cultural
relativism do Rosaldo and Abu-Lughod retain and what alternatives do
they suggest in order to address the limits of this concept? Jot down your
answers to these questions and then proceed with the notes below.

3.1 Cultural Relativism: An Introductory Definition

If anthropologists have been reluctant to jettison the concept of culture wholesale, as I

noted earlier, this is in part because it has historically proved useful in combatting
views of the world that took Western ways of being as the “natural” and “right” way
of doing things. Such uses of the concept of culture are the basic building block of
cultural relativism. Cultural relativism has both ethical and methodological
implications. Renato Rosaldo argues that “it was meant to be an answer to the Nazis
and their racism, anti-Semitism, and eugenics” (2008). Where the Nazis attributed
differences to race, Boas and his students argued that we should instead understand
such differences as arising from culture. This argument went hand in hand with their
assertion of the equality of all cultures. Thus, the core idea behind cultural relativism
is that behaviours that might seem abhorrent or strange to us make sense if we look at
them within their own context and deserve equal respect and consideration.
Methodologically, this means that to understand specific behaviours, beliefs, and
practices we need to examine them in the context of the culture in which they are
found. Ethically, this means that we must not treat our own beliefs, behaviours, and
practices as though they were a universal standard, projecting them onto other
cultures. We are ourselves shaped and formed by our own culture and our beliefs and
practices are not the only relevant moral standards.

Building on these ideas, your textbook defines cultural relativism as follows. Cultural
relativism, they argue, is “the perspective that all cultures are equally valid and can
only be truly understood in their own terms” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 19).
In order to highlight the way in which cultural relativism works as both ethical
principle and method, I would rephrase this statement as follows. Cultural relativism
can be understood as the principle that “cultural beliefs and practices must be
understood according to the purpose, function, or meaning that they have for the
people in the societies in which we find them.”

3.2 Ethnocentrism

Cultural relativism is thus a crucial means of combatting ethnocentrism, or “the

opinion that one’s own way of life is the most natural, correct, or fully human way of
life” (Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods 2012: 19).

As your textbook observes, ethnocentric views of the world reduce other ways of life
to a distorted version of one’s own and often involve imposing one’s own norms on
peoples who don’t want to inhabit those norms. This in turn can perpetuate reductive
stereotypes of others and a dualistic vision of the world that maintains divides
between “we versus they, civilization versus savagery, good versus evil” (Lavenda,
Schultz, and Dods 2012: 19). Such views can in turn lead to war and even genocide or
ethnic cleansing, which involves the deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire group
based on race, religion, national origin, or other cultural features. As we will discuss
in greater detail in Unit 3, in Canada the denigration of the beliefs, values, and way of
life of First Nations and Inuit people contributed to the removal of First Nations and
Inuit children from their homes to residential schools, where they were frequently
subjected to physical and emotional abuse as well as prevented from speaking their
own language or otherwise engaging in their own cultural practices. The residential
school system thus provides a clear example of abusive practices arising from
ethnocentric views of the world and as a form of cultural genocide.

3.3 The Limits of Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism would thus seem to be an obvious and preferable response to the
challenge of confronting cultural difference. Yet just as in recent years anthropologists
have objected to a reified notion of culture, many have also raised concerns about
cultural relativism.

The limits of cultural relativism can be clearly seen when we think about the question
of human rights. Thus, for instance, in 1947 anthropologist Melville Herskovitz
argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted largely by
people from Western societies and thus did not take cultural differences sufficiently
into account. But where he called for cultural relativism to govern attempts to
establish universal human rights, other anthropologist argued that respect for and
understanding of cultural difference must not preclude attempts to combat inequalities
wherever these may exist. This debate thus shows the difficulties of managing at once
the need to understand practices, beliefs, and values within their own context and
acknowledge that different peoples may define freedom, justice, and other important
values in radically different ways while also refusing a passive form of relativism that
would bar us from taking a stance on questions of inequality and oppression.

For cultural relativism or some variant therefore to continue working as a viable

methodological and ethical stance, most anthropologists now insist on the following
two points:

 Cultural relativism should not be confused with cultural determinism

 Cultural relativism does not entail moral relativism

3.4 Cultural relativism should not be confused with cultural determinism

Arguments for cultural relativism can sometimes be taken to an extreme, as in the

attitude described by Lila Abu-Lughod that justifies all cultural practices as “just their
culture” or leads to what Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods describe as a cultural
determinism that explains away even the most disturbing of behaviours by saying that
“their culture made them do it” (Abu-Lughod 2002: 787; Lavenda, Schultz, and Dods
2012: 20). As your textbook points out, this sort of extreme cultural relativism or
cultural determinism is problematic in part because it accepts the reified view of
cultures as self-contained, homogenous, wholes that, as we have seen, contemporary
anthropologists have come to reject. In other words, explaining away behaviours as
“just their culture” or arguing that “their culture made them do it” ignores three
important points: first, that social groups around the world are deeply interconnected
and affected by global flows; second, that cultures are internally diverse and different
individuals within the same culture may disagree about the value of specific practices;
and third, that individuals and groups can exercise agency to change aspects of their
culture.[1]

3.5 Cultural relativism does not entail moral relativism

Relatedly, many anthropologists now argue that we must distinguish between

“cultural relativism” and “moral relativism.” Cultural relativism or the impetus to
understand the meaning and significance of cultural practices and beliefs within their
own context demands that we challenge our own assumptions and accept that others
might have different visions of what is moral or good from our own. Even those
anthropologists such as Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) who argue against adopting cultural
relativism as a central precept in anthropology because of tendencies towards extreme
relativism insist on the importance of this aspect of the concept, arguing that
anthropology can teach us to take difference seriously and to not impose our own
values on others. At the same time, cultural relativism should not be confused with
moral relativism. Indeed, given that cultures are not homogenous or frozen in time, as
pointed out above there may in many cases be disagreements within a specific culture
as to the moral value or importance of a specific practice. As your textbook points out,
cultural relativism encourages us to consider alternative viewpoints on specific issues
and may make moral reasoning more challenging, but it does not free us from the
responsibility of making judgments about practices we believe lead to inequality and
injustice.

3.6 Example 1: Headhunting among the Ilongot

One classic ethnographic example that demonstrates both the importance and the
limits of cultural relativism is the practice of headhunting among the Ilongot as
recounted by Renato Rosaldo in the short piece you read as well as in his other
ethnographic work. The Ilongot are a tribe in the Philippines with whom Renato
Rosaldo and his wife Michelle worked for 30 months from 1967-69 and in 1970. At
the time of their research, the Ilongot numbered approximately 3500 and subsisted by
hunting deer and wild pig and by cultivating rain-fed gardens. Within the discipline of
anthropology, they are most famous because of a traditional practice in which men
engage in organized raids to kill others and take their heads, which they would then
toss away rather than keeping.

An ethnocentric view of Ilongot headhunting might, for instance, dismiss them as

“savages” for engaging in the practice. Such a view might justify enforcing the death
penalty on Ilongot men who practiced ritual headhunting. Something like this view
was in fact put into practice in 1972, when in the context of martial law then President
of the Phillippines Ferdinand Marcos made headhunting punishable by death by firing
squad. The enforcement of the death penalty on Ilongot men who engaged in the
traditional practice of headhunting exemplifies how an ethnocentric view that does not
examine cultural beliefs and practices within their own context can lead to violent
results.

A cultural relativist view of headhunting, by contrast, would argue that we need to

understand the practice in terms of the purpose, function, or meaning they have for the
people in the societies in which these practices are found. This is the attempt that
Renato Rosaldo made in an article he wrote entitled “Grief and a Headhunters Rage”
(2004). This article also demonstrates just how difficult it can be to come to a
relativist understanding of practices. Here Rosaldo recounts how older Ilongot men
explained to him that rage in bereavement was what impelled men to headhunt. But it
was only when his wife Michelle fell to her death over the side of a cliff that he finally
took such explanations seriously. In his own rage and grief over her death, he came to
the conclusion that headhunting was a ritual practice in which older Ilongot men
engaged in order to cope with grief.

In the piece that you read, Rosaldo uses the reaction of the Ilongot to his being drafted
to serve in the Vietnam War as further evidence of the relativism of moral beliefs.
When he received his draft notice, he recounts, he immediately told the Ilongot, who
responded with shock and horror. He was surprised since he had thought that given
their traditional practice of headhunting they would instead be impressed that he was
being called on to serve in war. When he pressed the issue, he learned that they
responded with as much moral horror to the idea of modern warfare as we might
respond to their practice of headhunting. It was inconceivable to the Ilongot, he
explains, that an officer had the right to command his subordinates to move into the
line of fire. As he puts it, “that was their moral threshold” (2008).

Cultural relativism thus allows Rosaldo to understand the meaning of headhunting for
the Ilongot, its function within their cultural context as a means of expressing and
coping with grief. Their response to his being drafted, meanwhile, reinforced his sense
of the relativity of morality. At the same time, in the short piece that you read a
cultural relative approach to Ilongot headhunting does not lead Rosaldo to conclude
that it is a good or moral practice. Instead, he insists that while cultural relativism asks
us to see things from the perspectives of social groups that may have sometimes quite
different norms and values from our own it does not excuse us altogether from the
need of making moral judgments.

3.7 Example 2: “Saving Muslim Women?”

Lila Abu Lughod’s article that you read, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?
Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others” provides us with a
second example of the complicated moral considerations that cultural relativism or
variants thereof. It also demonstrates the limits of a reductive version of both culture
and cultural relativism, linking back to the debates over the culture concept described
in Part 2 of this unit.

Abu-Lughod begins the article by recounting how in the immediate aftermath of 9/11,
journalists began contacting experts in the region. Many of these questions, she
argues, were “hopelessly general,” taking on some variant of “do Muslim women
believe x? Are Muslim women y? Does Islam allow z for women?” (2002: 784). Her
objection to such questions is in part that they lead to gross stereotypes about what it
means to be Muslim or a Muslim woman, a category after all that includes thousands
of people living in regions around the globe. More importantly, she observes that such
questions reframed the conflict in terms of a reductive notion of culture rather than
taking into account historical and political factors that would emphasize the
interconnectedness of Islam and Afghanistan with the West. Instead of noting how the
military activities of the United States in the region itself contributed to the rise of the
Taliban, the journalists treated the destruction of the Twin Towers, the attack on the
Pentagon, and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan as though these were the result of
some cultural feature that could be attributed solely to Islam and Afghanistan. As
Abu-Lughod puts it:

Instead of questions that might lead to the exploration of global interconnections, we

were offered ones that worked to artificially divide the world into separate spheres –
recreating an imaginative geography of West versus East, us versus Muslims, cultures
in which First Ladies gave speeches versus others where women shuffle around
silently in burqas (2002: 784).

Here, then, we see how a reified notion of culture as a homogenous and self-contained
whole can itself lead to an ethnocentric view of the world.

Such reductive notions of Islamic culture, she goes on to argue, in turn tended to
reinforce stereotypes of Muslim women as passive victims of the Taliban and their
society. She observes how calls to invade Afghanistan within the United States were
often justified in the name of “saving Afghan women” from oppression. For
Americans this oppression was frequently equated with the wearing of the burqa, a
full body and face covering that women were required to don under the Taliban. As a
result, many Americans expressed surprise when women didn’t immediately stop
wearing the burqa after the Taliban were defeated. For Abu-Lughod this reaction too
reflects ethnocentrism. As she notes, although the Taliban instituted a state-imposed
requirement that women wear the burqa, they did not invent this garment. Rather, it
was a local form of covering that Pashtun women in the region wore when they went
out and that in this context symbolized women’s modesty. In fact, she observes that
many women saw it as liberating because it allowed them to maintain moral
requirements of maintaining separation between the genders while allowing them to
go outside. She also notes that in her own fieldwork many women actively chose to
wear if not the burqa some other form of modest headcovering such as the hijab,
which in many contexts signals both piety and educated urban sophistication. In other
words, examining these practices within their local contexts demonstrates why women
might persist in wearing them. It also shows that we must not equate the wearing of
modest headcoverings such as the hijab with an absence of agency on the part of
women.

This important conclusion, finally, leads Abu-Lughod to insist on the importance of

respecting difference. She resists a reductive version of cultural relativism that would
deny the active involvement and role of Westerners and the United States in the
region and overlook the efforts of local feminist groups to change the situation of
women in Afghanistan. But she insists that any efforts to enact cultural change must
do while taking into serious consideration the fact that Afghans and Afghani women
may themselves have very different values and desires than those of Westerners. As
this account shows, examining cultural practices within their own contexts can
demonstrate how what counts as justice may itself be understood differently within
different cultural contexts.

Review Questions
1) Anthropology as a discipline has historically been defined by holism, the
comparative approach, and the concept of culture. What are the major features of
these concepts? What limits and difficulties have anthropologists located with the
concepts of holism and culture?

2) What are the four major subfields of anthropology? Define them briefly.

3) How have contemporary anthropologists attempted to respond to criticisms of the

concept of culture? What six characteristics often define current approaches to the
study of culture?

4) Define ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. What problems have some

anthropologists identified with the concept of cultural relativism. How have
anthropologists attempted to address these limits?

5) How do Renato Rosaldo and Lila Abu-Lughod address the debate over culture and
concepts of cultural relativism in their case studies of Ilongot headhunting and
Western perceptions of the veil during the war in Afghanistan?

References
Lavenda, Robert H., Emily A. Schultz, and Roberta Robin Dods. 2012. Cultural
Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, 2nd Canadian Edition.
Oxford: Oxford UP.

Lila Abu-Lughod, 2002 “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological
Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others” American Anthropologist 104(3):
783-790

Rosaldo, Renato. 2008. “Of Headhunters and Soldiers: Separating Culture and Ethical

Relativism” Markkula Center for Applied

Ethics, www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v11n1/relativism.html
[1] These three points are a rephrasing and explanation of the objections to a
culturally deterministic form of cultural relativism raised by Lavenda, Schultz, and
Dods (2012: 20).

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