Which of the following typifies decision making in bands?

Conformity and Conflict

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FOURTEENTH EDITION

Conformity and Conflict Readings in Cultural Anthropology

JAMES SPRADLEY

DAVID W. MCCURDY Macalester College

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Conformity and conflict : readings in cultural anthropology / [edited by]

James Spradley, David W. McCurdy.—14th ed.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-205-23410-3

ISBN-10: 0-205-23410-0

1. Ethnology. 2. Anthropology. I. Spradley, James P. II. McCurdy, David W.

GN325.C69 2011

306—dc22 2011015812

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Student Edition: ISBN 10: 0-205-23410-0 ISBN 13: 978-0-205-23410-3

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Contents

World Map and Geographical Placement of Readings inside cover

Preface xiii

ONE Culture and Ethnography 1

1 Ethnography and Culture 6 JAMES P. SPRADLEY

To discover culture, the ethnographer must learn from the informant as a student.

2 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari 13 RICHARD BORSHAY LEE

The “generous” gift of a Christmas ox involves the anthropologist in a classic case of cross-cultural misunderstanding.

3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 20 CLAIRE E. STERK

Fieldwork among urban prostitutes means doing ethnography under difficult but, in the end, manageable circumstances.

4 Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas 31 GEORGE GMELCH

Interaction between a U.S. student and a Rastafarian illustrates the destructive power of naïve realism in the fieldwork setting.

TWO Language and Communication 37

5 Shakespeare in the Bush 41 LAURA BOHANNAN

Cross-cultural communication breaks down when an anthropologist attempts to translate the meaning of Hamlet to the Tiv.

v

vi Contents

6 Whorf Revisited: You Are What You Speak 49 GUY DEUTSCHER

New evidence supports Benjamin Lee Whorf’s contention that peoples’ mother tongue can shape their experience of the world.

7 Manipulating Meaning: The Military Name Game 57 SARAH BOXER

To frame the meaning of its military operations, U.S. armed forces try to name them positively without offending anyone.

8 Conversation Style: Talking on the Job 61 DEBORAH TANNEN

On the job, men and women use distinctive conversation styles to ask for help, leading them to evaluate performance and character differently.

THREE Ecology and Subsistence 69

9 The Hunters: Scarce Resources in the Kalahari 73 RICHARD BORSHAY LEE

!Kung and other foragers traditionally worked less and ate better than many other people with more “advanced” food producing techniques. Today, however, their survival depends more on drilling wells and keeping cattle than on collecting wild foods.

10 Eskimo Science 87 RICHARD NELSON

The knowledge developed by Eskimos to hunt successfully contains the same basic principles that underlie a more formally structured scientific method.

11 Domestication and the Evolution of Disease 93 JARED DIAMOND

Herd animal diseases that evolved to infect humans have ended up killing millions of people in the old and new world.

12 Forest Development the Indian Way 105 RICHARD K. REED

South American governments could learn much about tropical forest development from the Amazonian Indians who live there.

Contents vii

FOUR Economic Systems 115

13 Reciprocity and the Power of Giving 119 LEE CRONK

Gifts not only function to tie people together, they may also be used to “flatten” an opponent and control the behavior of others.

14 Poverty at Work: Office Employment and the Crack Alternative 125 PHILIPPE BOURGOIS

Poor, uneducated Puerto Rican men living in Spanish Harlem feel that the risks they run selling drugs are preferable to the disrespect they encounter as low-wage employees in New York’s financial and service companies.

15 Cocaine and the Economic Deterioration of Bolivia 136 JACK WEATHERFORD

The world market for cocaine robs Bolivian villages of their men and causes problems for health, nutrition, transportation, and family.

16 Malawi versus the World Bank 145 SONIA PATTEN

Malawi government’s successful state subsidized fertilizer program challenges the World Bank and IMF’s insistence on market-driven agricultural programs.

FIVE Kinship and Family 151

17 Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping 155 NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHES

Close mother-child bonds suffered in the presence of high infant mortality in a Brazilian shantytown although recent changes have reduced the problem to some degree.

18 Family and Kinship in Village India 165 DAVID W. MCCURDY

Kinship still organizes the lives of Bhil villagers despite economic opportunities that draw people away from the community and dependence on relatives.

viii Contents

19 Polyandry: When Brothers Take a Wife 172 MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN

By jointly marrying one woman, Tibetan brothers preserve family resources and the “good life.”

20 Uterine Families and the Women’s Community 179 MARGERY WOLF

To succeed in a traditional patrilineal family, a Chinese woman had to create her own informal uterine family inside her husband’s household.

SIX Identity, Roles, and Groups 185

21 You@Work: Jobs, Identity, and the Internet 189 BRENDA MANN

Topday’s U.S. job mobility requires “branding” one’s identity through careful use of the Internet.

22 The Opt-Out Phenomenon: Women, Work, and Identity in America 197 DIANNA SHANDY AND KARINE MOE

Why were young, educated professional women leaving high-paying jobs for a life at home and what difference has today’s tough economy made?

23 Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? 208 LILA ABU-LUGHOD

Americans should work for justice in the world, not save Muslim women from wearing burqas or following their Islamic religion.

24 Mixed Blood 217 JEFFERSON M. FISH

A woman can change her race from black to “brunette” by taking a plane from New York to Brazil.

SEVEN Law and Politics 227

25 Cross-Cultural Law: The Case of the Gypsy Offender 230 ANNE SUTHERLAND

Legal cultures clash when a young Gypsy is convicted of using someone else’s social security number to apply for a car loan.

Contents ix

26 Life without Chiefs 238 MARVIN HARRIS

Small societies based on reciprocal and redistributive economic exchange can do without officials.

27 The Founding Indian Fathers 246 JACK WEATHERFORD

Although their contribution goes unrecognized, Indian, especially Iroquoian, political structure may have served as a model that helped to produce a United States federal government.

EIGHT Religion, Magic, and World View 255

28 Taraka’s Ghost 260 STANLEY A. FREED AND RUTH S. FREED

A woman relieves her anxiety and gains family support when a friend’s ghost possesses her.

29 Baseball Magic 266 GEORGE GMELCH

American baseball players from the game’s introduction to today employ magical practices as they try to deal with the uncertainty of their game.

30 Run for the Wall: An American Pilgrimage 275 JILL DUBISCH

An annual ritual motorcycle pilgrimage from Los Angles to Washington, DC personally transforms the Vietnam veterans and others who ride in it.

31 Body Ritual among the Nacirema 287 HORACE MINER

The Nacirema display a complex array of body rituals aimed at achieving health and beauty.

NINE Globalization 293

32 How Sushi Went Global 296 THEODORE C. BESTOR

International interdependence between tuna fishermen and sushi as a Japanese culinary style becomes popular in a globalized world.

x Contents

33 Village Walks: Tourism and Globalization among the Tharu of Nepal 306 ARJUN GUNERATNE AND KATE BJORK

Advertised as a primitive tribe, Tharu villagers endure tours that falsely treat them as part of the Chitwan National Forest’s natural history and have responded by building a museum to separate their past from the present.

34 The Road to Refugee Resettlement 316 DIANNA SHANDY

Nuer refugees must develop the skill and determination to pass through a series of bureaucratic hurdles to reach and adjust to life in the United States.

35 Global Women in the New Economy 325 BARBARA EHRENREICH AND ARLIE RUSSELL HOCHSCHILD

Millions of women migrate from poor to wealthy nations serving as nannies, maids, and sex workers. They send money home but find it hard to separate from their countries and families.

TEN Culture Change and Applied Anthropology 335

36 Advice for Developers: Peace Corps Problems in Botswana 340 HOYT S. ALVERSON

An anthropologist discovers why some Peace Corps volunteers fail to complete their assignments in rural Botswana, citing perceptions of their role and naïve realism as the basic problems.

37 Medical Anthropology: Leprosy on the Ganges 351 RON BARRETT

Indians who contract leprosy find themselves stigmatized for life, causing them to delay treatment or amplify symptoms to enhance begging.

38 Public Interest Ethnography: Women’s Prisons and Health Care in California 359 RACHAEL STRYKER

Student ethnographers uncover institutional health care problems at two women’s prisons in California and suggest changes that result in a revision of state policy.

Contents xi

39 Using Anthropology 371 DAVID W. MCCURDY

Professional anthropologists do everything from ethnographies of automobile production lines to famine relief, but even the neophyte may be able to use the ideas of culture and ethnography to succeed in the workplace.

40 Career Advice for Anthropology Undergraduates 382 JOHN T. OMOHUNDRO

The ability to translate useful anthropological skills into “resume speak” is one way for anthropology graduates to find employment.

Glossary 391

Photo Credits 397

Text Credits 399

Index 403

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Preface

Forty-one years ago as we prepared the first edition of this book, Jim Spradley and I sought to make the communication of cultural anthropology more effective for both students and instructors. We looked for useful, engaging articles written by anthropolo- gists for non-anthropologists. We encouraged anthropologists to send us articles that fit our design for Conformity and Conflict . We sought out material that demonstrated the nature of culture and its influence on people’s lives. We included more material on Western, especially North American, cultures so students could make their own cul- tural comparisons and see the relation between anthropology and their own lives. We chose articles that reflected interesting topics and current issues, but we also looked for selections that illustrated important anthropological concepts and theories because we believed that anthropology provides a unique and powerful way to look at human experience. Finally, we organized the book around traditional topics found in many textbooks and courses.

The original features of Conformity and Conflict remain part of its design today, but the book’s content has also altered over the years to reflect changing instructional and disciplinary interests and the needs and suggestions provided by students and instructors. Part introductions now include discussion of many basic anthropological definitions for use by instructors who do not want to assign a standard text but find it helpful to provide students with a terminological foundation. Article introductions seek to tie selections to anthropological concepts and explanations in a coherent and systematic way. Articles and section parts have grown to include environmental, global, medical, and practical anthropological sub fields as well as traditional interests such as language, gender, kinship, economics, politics, law, and religion.

Several student aids are retained in the fourteenth edition. Lists of key terms accompany each part introduction. Each article is followed by several review questions. Maps locating societies discussed in articles accompany each selection. There is also a glossary and subject index at the end of the book.

What’s New to This Edition

The revision of the fourteenth edition includes a number of changes and updates:

• There are eight new articles, and two selections have been brought back from previous editions.

• Five articles found in the thirteenth edition have also been revised and updated. • Four of the eight new articles have been written especially for the fourteenth edi-

tion making fourteen original articles altogether. • Part 2, Language and Communication , has been revised to include definitions

and discussion of two new concepts, metaphor and symbolic framing. It also

xiii

xiv Preface

includes a new article on the resurrection of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by linguist, Guy Deutscher.

• Part 3, Subsistence and Ecology , contains a new article comparing Eskimo hunting knowledge to the structure of scientific inquiry. It also includes an article by Jared Diamond on the origin and spread of crowd diseases brought back from a previous edition. Richard Reed’s article on Forest Development is updated.

• Part 6, Identity, Roles, and Groups , contains two new articles. The first, an original selection by Brenda Mann, looks at how the Internet is used by employers and job seekers to shape and present work identities. The second, by Lila Abu-Lughod urges American women to work for justice in the world, not saving Muslim women from wearing the burqa. Dianna Shandy and Karine Moe’s article is updated to reflect recent trends in women’s decisions about work and family.

• Part 9 , Globalization , now includes an original selection by Arjun Guneratne and Kate Bjork on tourism from the native viewpoint in Nepal, and another brought back from a previous edition by Theodore Bestor about the world impact of sushi. Dianna Shandy’s article on refugees has also been updated to reflect the recent vote for independence in South Sudan.

• Part 10, Culture Change and Applied Anthropology, begins with an article on Peace Corps problems in Botswanna by Hoyt Alverson. This is followed by a new original article by medical anthropologist, Ron Barrett, about the nature of leprosy and its stigmatization in Banaras (Varanasi) North India, and another original article by Rachael Stryker on public interest anthropology at work in a study of the health services afforded women inmates in two California Prisons.

Support for Instructors and Students

• is an interactive and instructive multimedia site designed to help students and instructors save time and improve results. It offers access to a wealth of resources geared to meet the individual teaching and learning needs of every instructor and student. Combining an ebook, video, audio, multimedia simulations, research support and assessment, MyAnthroLab engages students and gives them the tools they need to enhance their performance in the course. Please see your Pearson sales representative or visit www.myanthrolab.com for more information.

• Instructor’s Manual with Tests (0205064566): For each chapter in the text, this valuable resource provides a detailed outline, list of objectives, discussion ques- tions, and suggested readings. In addition, test questions in multiple-choice, true/ false, fill-in-the-blank, and short answer formats are available for each chapter; the answers are page-referenced to the text. For easy access, this manual is avail- able within the instructor section of MyAnthroLab for Conformity and Conflict, or at www.pearsonhighered.com/irc.

• MyTest (020506454X): This computerized software allows instructors to create their own personalized exams, edit any or all of the existing test questions, and add new questions. Other special features of the program include random generation

www.myanthrolab.com
www.pearsonhighered.com/irc
Preface xv

of test questions, creation of alternate versions of the same test, scrambling ques- tion sequence, and test preview before printing. For easy access, this software is available at www.pearsonhighered.com/irc.

• PowerPoint Presentation Slides for Conformity and Conflict (0205064558): These PowerPoint slides help instructors convey anthropology principles in a clear and engaging way. For easy access, they are available within the instructor section of MyAnthroLab for Conformity and Conflict, or at www.pearsonhighered .com/irc.

It has always been my aim to provide a book that meets the needs of students and instructors. To help with this goal, I encourage you to send your comments and ideas for improving Conformity and Conflict to me at dcmccurdy@comcast.net. Ideas for future original selections are also welcome.

Many people have made suggestions that guided this revision of Conformity and Conflict. I am especially grateful to colleagues Dianna Shandy, Arjun Guneratne, Ron Barrett, and Sonia Patten for their advice and help as well as George Gmelch for his many suggestions. Thanks also to reviewers of this edition: Jane Park, Seton Hall Uni- versity; Neill Hadder, The University of Texas—Austin; Autumn Cahoon, California State University—Sacramento; Kurt Reymers, Morrisville State College; K. Jill Fleu- riet, University of Texas—San Antonio; Susan Schalge, Minnesota State University; Kristen Kuehnle, Salem State College; Joy Livergood, Columbus State Community College; Willem Clements, Arkansas State University. I would also like to thank my ed- itors Nancy Roberts and Nicole Conforti for their guidance and work on this volume.

DWM

www.pearsonhighered.com/irc
www.pearsonhighered.com/irc
www.pearsonhighered.com/irc
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READINGS IN THIS SECTION

Ethnography and Culture 6 James P. Spradley

Eating Christmas in the Kalahari 13 Richard Borshay Lee

Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 20 Claire E. Sterk

Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas 31 George Gmelch

P A R T O N E

CULTURE

AND ETHNOGRAPHY

2 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

Culture, as its name suggests, lies at the heart of cultural anthropology. And the concept of culture, along with ethnography, sets anthropology apart from other so- cial and behavioral sciences. Let us look more closely at these concepts.

To understand what anthropologists mean by culture, imagine yourself in a for- eign setting, such as a market town in India, forgetting what you might already know about that country. You step off a bus onto a dusty street where you are immediately confronted by strange sights, sounds, and smells. Men dress in Western clothes, but of a different style. Some women drape themselves in long shawls that entirely cover their bodies. They peer at you through a small gap in this garment as they walk by. Buildings are one- or two-story affairs, open at the front so you can see inside. Near you some people sit on wicker chairs eating strange foods. Most unusual is how peo- ple talk. They utter vocalizations unlike any you have ever heard, and you wonder how they can possibly understand each other. But obviously they do, since their be- havior seems organized and purposeful.

Scenes such as this confronted early explorers, missionaries, and anthropolo- gists, and from their observations an obvious point emerged. People living in various parts of the world looked and behaved in dramatically different ways. And these dif- ferences correlated with groups. The people of India had customs different from those of the Papuans; the British did not act and dress like the Iroquois.

Two possible explanations for group differences came to mind. Some argued that group behavior was inherited. Dahomeans of the African Gold Coast, for exam- ple, were characterized as particularly “clever and adaptive” by one British colonial official, while, according to the same authority, another African group was “happy-go- lucky and improvident.” Usually implied in such statements was the idea that group members were born that way. Such thinking persists to the present and in its most malignant extreme takes the form of racism.

But a second explanation also emerged. Perhaps, rather than a product of inher- itance, the behavior characteristic of a group was learned. The way people dressed, what they ate, how they talked—all these could more easily be explained as acquisi- tions. Thus a baby born on the African Gold Coast would, if immediately transported to China and raised like other children there, grow up to dress, eat, and talk like a Chinese. Cultural anthropologists focus on the explanation of learned behavior.

The idea of learning, and a need to label the lifestyles associated with particular groups, led to the definition of culture. In 1871, British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor argued that “Culture . . . is that complex whole which includes knowl- edge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” 1 The definition we present here places more em- phasis on the importance of knowledge than does Tylor’s. We will say that culture is the learned and shared knowledge that people use to generate behavior and interpret experience.

Important to this definition is the idea that culture is a kind of knowledge, not behavior. It is in people’s heads. It reflects the mental categories they learn from oth- ers as they grow up. It helps them generate behavior and interpret what they experi- ence. At the moment of birth, we lack a culture. We don’t yet have a system of beliefs, knowledge, and patterns of customary behavior. But from that moment until we die,

1 Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture (New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper & Row, 1958; originally published by John Murray, London, 1871), p. 1.

P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography 3

each of us participates in a kind of universal schooling that teaches us our native cul- ture. Laughing and smiling are genetic responses, but as infants we soon learn when to smile, when to laugh, and even how to laugh. We also inherit the potential to cry, but we must learn our cultural rules for when crying is appropriate.

As we learn our culture, we acquire a way to interpret experience. For example, Americans learn that dogs are like little people in furry suits. Dogs live in our houses, eat our food, share our beds. They hold a place in our hearts; their loss causes us to grieve. Villagers in India, on the other hand, often view dogs as pests that are useful only for hunting (in those few parts of the country where one still can hunt) and as watchdogs. Quiet days in Indian villages are often punctuated by the yelp of a dog that has been threatened or actually hurt by its master or a bystander.

Clearly, it is not the dogs that are different in these two societies. Rather, it is the meaning that dogs have for people that varies. And such meaning is cultural; it is learned as part of growing up in each group.

There are two basic kinds of culture, explicit and tacit. Explicit culture is cul- tural knowledge that people can talk about. As you grow up, for example, you learn that there are words for many things you encounter. There are items such as clothes, actions such as playing, emotional states such as sadness, ways to talk such as yelling, and people such as mother. Recognizing that culture may be explicit is important to the ethnographic process discussed below. If people have words for cultural catego- ries, anthropologists can use interviews or observations of people talking to uncover them. Because so much culture is explicit, words—both spoken and written—become essential to the discovery and understanding of a culture.

Tacit culture is cultural knowledge that people lack words for. For example, as we grow up we learn to recognize and use a limited number of sound categories such as /d/, /e/, and /f/. Although anthropological linguists have given sound categories a name (phonemes), nonlinguists lack such a term. Instead, we learn our sound catego- ries by hearing and replicating them and we use them unconsciously. No parent said, “Now let’s work on our phonemes tonight, dear,” to us when we were little.

Anthropologist Edward Hall pioneered the study of tacit culture. He noted, for example, that middle-class North Americans observe four speaking distances—inti- mate, personal, social, and public—without naming them. (Hall, not his informants, invented the terms above.) Hall also noticed that people from other societies observed different tacit speaking distances, so that a Latin American’s closer (than North Amer- ican) personal speaking distance made North Americans uncomfortable because it seemed intimate. Because it is unspoken, tacit culture can be discovered only through behavioral observation.

Ethnography is the process of discovering and describing a particular culture. It involves anthropologists in an intimate and personal activity as they attempt to learn how the members of a particular group see their worlds.

But which groups qualify as culture-bearing units? How does the anthropolo- gist identify the existence of a culture to study? This was not a difficult question when anthropology was a new science. As Tylor’s definition notes, culture was the whole way of life of a people. To find it, one sought out distinctive ethnic units, such as Bhil tribals in India or Apaches in the American Southwest. Anything one learned from such people would be part of their culture.

But discrete cultures of this sort are becoming more difficult to find. The world is increasingly divided into large national societies, each subdivided into a myriad of subgroups. Anthropologists are finding it increasingly attractive to study such

4 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

subgroups, because they form the arena for most of life in complex society. And this is where the concept of the microculture enters the scene.

Microcultures are systems of cultural knowledge characteristic of subgroups within larger societies. Members of a microculture will usually share much of what they know with everyone in the greater society but will possess a special cultural knowledge that is unique to the subgroup. For example, a college fraternity has a mi- croculture within the context of a university and a nation. Its members have special daily routines, jokes, and meanings for events. It is this shared knowledge that makes up their microculture and that can serve as the basis for ethnographic study. More and more, anthropologists are turning to the study of microcultures, using the same ethnographic techniques they employ when they investigate the broader culture of an ethnic or national group.

More than anything else, it is ethnography that is anthropology’s unique contri- bution to social science. Most scientists, including many who view people in social context, approach their research as detached observers. As social scientists, they ob- serve the human subjects of their study, categorize what they see, and generate theory to account for their findings. They work from the outside, creating a system of knowl- edge to account for other people’s behavior. Although this is a legitimate and often useful way to conduct research, it is not the main task of ethnography.

Ethnographers seek out the insider’s viewpoint. Because culture is the knowl- edge people use to generate behavior and interpret experience, the ethnographer seeks to understand group members’ behavior from the inside, or cultural, perspec- tive. Instead of looking for a subject to observe, ethnographers look for an informant to teach them the culture. Just as children learn their native culture from parents and other people in their social environment, ethnographers learn another culture by inferring folk categories from the observation of behavior and by asking informants what things mean.

Anthropologists employ many strategies during field research to understand another culture better. But all strategies and all research ultimately rest on the co- operation of informants. An informant is neither a subject in a scientific experi- ment nor a respondent who answers the investigator’s questions. An informant is a teacher who has a special kind of pupil: a professional anthropologist. In this unique relationship a transformation occurs in the anthropologist’s understanding of an alien culture. It is the informant who transforms the anthropologist from a tourist into an ethnographer. The informant may be a child who explains how to play hopscotch, a cocktail waitress who teaches the anthropologist to serve drinks and to encourage customers to leave tips, an elderly man who teaches the anthro- pologist to build an igloo, or a grandmother who explains the intricacies of Zapotec kinship. Almost any individual who has acquired a repertoire of cultural behavior can become an informant.

Ethnography is not as easy to do as we might think. For one thing, North Ameri- cans are not taught to be good listeners. We prefer to observe and draw our own conclusions. We like a sense of control in social contexts; passive listening is a sign of weakness in our culture. But listening and learning from others is at the heart of eth- nography, and we must put aside our discomfort with the student role.

It is also not easy for informants to teach us about their cultures. Culture often lies below a conscious level. A major ethnographic task is to help informants remem- ber their culture.

Naive realism may also impede ethnography. Naive realism is the belief that people everywhere see the world in the same way. It may, for example, lead the

unwary ethnographer to assume that beauty is the same for all people everywhere or, to use our previous example, that dogs should mean the same thing in India as they do in the United States. If an ethnographer fails to control his or her own naive real- ism, inside cultural meanings will surely be overlooked.

Culture shock and ethnocentrism may also stand in the way of ethnographers. Culture shock is a state of anxiety that results from cross-cultural misunderstanding. Immersed alone in another society, the ethnographer understands few of the cultur- ally defined rules for behavior and interpretation used by his or her hosts. The result is anxiety about proper action and an inability to interact appropriately in the new context.

Ethnocentrism can be just as much of a liability. Ethnocentrism is the belief and feeling that one’s own culture is best. It reflects our tendency to judge other peo- ple’s beliefs and behavior using values of our own native culture. Thus if we come from a society that abhors painful treatment of animals, we are likely to react with anger when an Indian villager hits a dog with a rock. Our feeling is ethnocentric.

It is impossible to rid ourselves entirely of the cultural values that make us eth- nocentric when we do ethnography. But it is important to control our ethnocentric feeling in the field if we are to learn from informants. Informants resent negative judgment.

Finally, the role assigned to ethnographers by informants affects the quality of what can be learned. Ethnography is a personal enterprise, as all the articles in this section illustrate. Unlike survey research using questionnaires or short interviews, ethnography requires prolonged social contact. Informants will assign the ethnogra- pher some kind of role and what that turns out to be will affect research.

The selections in Part One illustrate several points about culture and ethnogra- phy. The first piece, by the late James Spradley, takes a close look at the concept of culture and its role in ethnographic research. The second, by Richard Lee, illustrates how a simple act of giving can have a dramatically different cultural meaning in two societies, leading to cross-cultural misunderstanding. In the third selection, Claire Sterk describes how she conducted ethnographic field research under difficult cir- cumstances. She sought to learn the culture of prostitutes working in New York City and Atlanta as part of a broader research interest in the spread and control of AIDS. The fourth article, by George Gmelch, explores how naive realism nearly ended a student’s field research in Barbados.

Key Terms

P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography 5

culture p. 2 culture shock p. 5 detached observers p. 4 ethnocentrism p. 5 ethnography p. 3 explicit culture p. 3

informant p. 4 microcultures p. 4 naive realism p. 4 respondent p. 4 subject p. 4 tacit culture p. 3

6

1 Ethnography and Culture James P. Spradley

Most Americans associate science with detached observation; we learn to observe what- ever we wish to understand, introduce our own classification of what is going on, and ex- plain what we see in our own terms. In this selection, James Spradley argues that cultural anthropologists work differently. Ethnography is the work of discovering and describing a particular culture; culture is the learned, shared knowledge that people use to generate be- havior and interpret experience. To get at culture, ethnographers must learn the meanings of action and experience from the insider’s or informant’s point of view. Many of the exam- ples used by Spradley also show the relevance of anthropology to the study of culture in the United States.*

Listen to the Chapter Audio on myanthrolab.com

Ethnographic fieldwork is the hallmark of cultural anthropology. Whether in a jun- gle village in Peru or on the streets of New York, the anthropologist goes to where peo- ple live and “does fieldwork.” This means participating in activities, asking questions,

* “Ethnography and Culture” from Participant Observation by James P. Spradley. Copyright © 1980 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Barbara Spradley.

C H A P T E R 1 Ethnography and Culture 7

eating strange foods, learning a new language, watching ceremonies, taking field notes, washing clothes, writing letters home, tracing out genealogies, observing play, interviewing informants, and hundreds of other things. This vast range of ac- tivities often obscures the nature of the most fundamental task of all fieldwork: doing ethnography.

Ethnography is the work of describing a culture. The central aim of ethnography is to understand another way of life from the native point of view. The goal of ethnography, as Malinowski put it, is “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.” 1 Fieldwork, then, involves the disciplined study of what the world is like to people who have learned to see, hear, speak, think, and act in ways that are dif- ferent. Rather than studying people, ethnography means learning from people. Consider the following illustration.

George Hicks set out, in 1965, to learn about another way of life, that of the moun- tain people in an Appalachian valley. 2 His goal was to discover their culture, to learn to see the world from their perspective. With his family he moved into Little Laurel Valley, his daughter attended the local school, and his wife became one of the local Girl Scout leaders. Hicks soon discovered that stores and storekeepers were at the center of the val- ley’s communication system, providing the most important social arena for the entire valley. He learned this by watching what other people did, by following their example, and slowly becoming part of the groups that congregated daily in the stores. He writes:

At least once each day I would visit several stores in the valley, and sit in on the groups of gossiping men or, if the storekeeper happened to be alone, perhaps attempt to clear up puzzling points about kinship obligations. I found these hours, particularly those spent in the presence of the two or three excellent storytellers in the Little Laurel, thoroughly enjoyable. . . . At other times, I helped a number of local men gather corn or hay, build sheds, cut trees, pull and pack galax, and search for rich stands of huckleberries. When I needed aid in, for example, repairing frozen water pipes, it was readily and cheerfully provided. 3

In order to discover the hidden principles of another way of life, the researcher must become a student. Storekeepers and storytellers and local farmers become teach- ers. Instead of studying the “climate,” the “flora,” and the “fauna” that made up the environment of this Appalachian valley, Hicks tried to discover how these mountain people defined and evaluated trees and galax and huckleberries. He did not attempt to describe social life in terms of what most Americans know about “marriage,” “family,” and “friendship”; instead he sought to discover how these mountain people identified relatives and friends. He tried to learn the obligations they felt toward kinsmen and discover how they felt about friends. Discovering the insider’s view is a different spe- cies of knowledge from one that rests mainly on the outsider’s view, even when the outsider is a trained social scientist.

Consider another example, this time from the perspective of a non- Western eth- nographer. Imagine an Inuit woman setting out to learn the culture of Macalester Col- lege. What would she, so well schooled in the rich heritage of Inuit culture, have to do

1 Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge, 1922), p. 22.

2 George Hicks, Appalachian Valley (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976).

3 Hicks, p. 3.

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in order to understand the culture of Macalester College students, faculty, and staff? How would she discover the patterns that made up their lives? How would she avoid imposing Inuit ideas, categories, and values on everything she saw?

First, and perhaps most difficult, she would have to set aside her belief in naive realism, the almost universal belief that all people define the real world of objects, events, and living creatures in pretty much the same way. Human languages may differ from one society to the next, but behind the strange words and sentences, all people are talking about the same things. The naive realist assumes that love, snow, marriage, worship, animals, death, food, and hundreds of other things have essen- tially the same meaning to all human beings. Although few of us would admit to such ethnocentrism, the assumption may unconsciously influence our research. Ethnog- raphy starts with a conscious attitude of almost complete ignorance: “I don’t know how the people at Macalester College understand their world. That remains to be discovered.”

This Inuit woman would have to begin by learning the language spoken by stu- dents, faculty, and staff. She could stroll the campus paths, sit in classes, and attend special events, but only if she consciously tried to see things from the native point of view would she grasp their perspective. She would need to observe and listen to first- year students during their week-long orientation program. She would have to stand in line during registration, listen to students discuss the classes they hoped to get, and visit departments to watch faculty advising students on course selection. She would want to observe secretaries typing, janitors sweeping, and maintenance personnel plowing snow from walks. She would watch the more than 1,600 students crowd into the post office area to open their tiny mailboxes, and she would listen to their com- ments about junk mail and letters from home or no mail at all. She would attend fac- ulty meetings to watch what went on, recording what professors and administrators said and how they behaved. She would sample various courses, attend “keggers” on weekends, read the Mac Weekly, and listen by the hour to students discussing things like their “relationships,” the “football team,” and “work study.” She would want to learn the meanings of all these things. She would have to listen to the members of this college community, watch what they did, and participate in their activities to learn such meanings.

The essential core of ethnography is this concern with the meaning of actions and events to the people we seek to understand. Some of these meanings are directly expressed in language; many are taken for granted and communicated only indirectly through word and action. But in every society people make constant use of these com- plex meaning systems to organize their behavior, to understand themselves and oth- ers, and to make sense out of the world in which they live. These systems of meaning constitute their culture; ethnography always implies a theory of culture.

Culture

When ethnographers study other cultures, they must deal with three fundamental aspects of human experience: what people do, what people know, and the things peo- ple make and use. When each of these is learned and shared by members of some group, we speak of them as cultural behavior, cultural knowledge, and cultural arti- facts. Whenever you do ethnographic fieldwork, you will want to distinguish among these three, although in most situations they are usually mixed together. Let’s try to unravel them.

C H A P T E R 1 Ethnography and Culture 9

Recently I took a commuter train from a western suburb to downtown Chicago. It was late in the day, and when I boarded the train, only a handful of people were scattered about the car. Each was engaged in a common form of cultural behavior: reading. Across the aisle a man held the Chicago Tribune out in front of him, looking intently at the small print and every now and then turning the pages noisily. In front of him a young woman held a paperback book about twelve inches from her face. I could see her head shift slightly as her eyes moved from the bottom of one page to the top of the next. Near the front of the car a student was reading a large textbook and using a pen to underline words and sentences. Directly in front of me I noticed a man looking at the ticket he had purchased and reading it. It took me an instant to survey this scene, and then I settled back, looked out the window, and read a billboard advertisement for a plumbing service proclaiming it would open any plugged drains. All of us were engaged in the same kind of cultural behavior: reading.

This common activity depended on a great many cultural artifacts, the things people shape or make from natural resources. I could see artifacts like books and tickets and newspapers and billboards, all of which contained tiny black marks arranged into intricate patterns called “letters.” And these tiny artifacts were ar- ranged into larger patterns of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Those of us on that commuter train could read, in part, because of still other artifacts: the bark of trees made into paper; steel made into printing presses; dyes of various colors made into ink; glue used to hold book pages together; large wooden frames to hold billboards. If an ethnographer wanted to understand the full cultural meaning in our society, it would involve a careful study of these and many other cultural artifacts.

Although we can easily see behavior and artifacts, they represent only the thin surface of a deep lake. Beneath the surface, hidden from view, lies a vast reservoir of cultural knowledge. Think for a moment what the people on that train needed to know in order to read. First, they had to know the grammatical rules for at least one language. Then they had to learn what the little marks on paper represented. They also had to know the meaning of space and lines and pages. They had learned cultural rules like “move your eyes from left to right, from the top of the page to the bottom.” They had to know that a sentence at the bottom of a page continues on the top of the next page. The man reading a newspaper had to know a great deal about columns and the spaces between columns and what headlines mean. All of us needed to know what kinds of messages were intended by whoever wrote what we read. If a person cannot distinguish the importance of a message on a billboard from one that comes in a letter from a spouse or child, problems would develop. I knew how to recognize when other people were reading. We all knew it was impo- lite to read aloud on a train. We all knew how to feel when reading things like jokes or calamitous news in the paper. Our culture has a large body of shared knowledge that people learn and use to engage in this behavior called reading and make proper use of the artifacts connected with it.

Although cultural knowledge is hidden from view, it is of fundamental impor- tance because we all use it constantly to generate behavior and interpret our expe- rience. Cultural knowledge is so important that I will frequently use the broader term culture when speaking about it. Indeed, I will define culture as the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experience and generate behavior. Let’s consider another example to see how people use their culture to interpret experience and do things.

10 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

One afternoon in 1973 I came across the following news item in the Minneapolis Tribune:

Crowd Mistakes Rescue Attempt, Attacks Police Nov. 23, 1973. Hartford, Connecticut. Three policemen giving a heart massage and oxygen to a heart attack victim Friday were attacked by a crowd of 75 to 100 persons who appar- ently did not realize what the policemen were doing.

Other policemen fended off the crowd of mostly Spanish-speaking residents until an ambulance arrived. Police said they tried to explain to the crowd what they were do- ing, but the crowd apparently thought they were beating the woman.

Despite the policemen’s efforts the victim, Evangelica Echevacria, 59, died.

Here we see people using their culture. Members of two different groups ob- served the same event, but their interpretations were drastically different. The crowd used their cultural knowledge (a) to interpret the behavior of the policemen as cruel and (b) to act on the woman’s behalf to put a stop to what they perceived as brutality. They had acquired the cultural principles for acting and interpreting things in this way through a particular shared experience.

The policemen, on the other hand, used their cultural knowledge (a) to interpret the woman’s condition as heart failure and their own behavior as a life-saving effort and (b) to give her cardiac massage and oxygen. They used artifacts like an oxygen mask and an ambulance. Furthermore, they interpreted the actions of the crowd in an entirely different manner from how the crowd saw their own behavior. The two groups of people each had elaborate cultural rules for interpreting their experience and for acting in emergency situations, and the conflict arose, at least in part, because these cultural rules were so different.

We can now diagram this definition of culture and see more clearly the rela- tionships among knowledge, behavior, and artifacts ( Figure 1 ). By identifying cultural knowledge as fundamental, we have merely shifted the emphasis from behavior and artifacts to their meaning. The ethnographer observes behavior but goes beyond it to inquire about the meaning of that behavior. The ethnographer sees artifacts and natu- ral objects but goes beyond them to discover what meanings people assign to these objects. The ethnographer observes and records emotional states but goes beyond them to discover the meaning of fear, anxiety, anger, and other feelings.

As represented in Figure 1, cultural knowledge exists at two levels of conscious- ness. Explicit culture makes up part of what we know, a level of knowledge people can communicate about with relative ease. When George Hicks asked storekeepers and others in Little Laurel Valley about their relatives, he discovered that any adult over fifty could tell him the genealogical connections among large numbers of peo- ple. They knew how to trace kin relationships and the cultural rules for appropriate behavior among kins. All of us have acquired large areas of cultural knowledge such as this, which we can talk about and make explicit.

At the same time, a large portion of our cultural knowledge remains tacit, out- side our awareness. Edward Hall has done much to elucidate the nature of tacit cultural knowledge in his books The Silent Language and The Hidden Dimension. 4 The way each culture defines space often occurs at the level of tacit knowledge. Hall points out that all of us have acquired thousands of spatial cues about how close to

4 Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959); The Hidden Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

C H A P T E R 1 Ethnography and Culture 11

stand to others, how to arrange furniture, when to touch others, and when to feel cramped inside a room. Without realizing that our tacit culture is operating, we be- gin to feel uneasy when someone from another culture stands too close, breathes on us when talking, touches us, or when we find furniture arranged in the center of the room rather than around the edges. Ethnography is the study of both explicit and tacit cultural knowledge. . . .

The concept of culture as acquired knowledge has much in common with sym- bolic interactionism, a theory that seeks to explain human behavior in terms of mean- ings. Symbolic interactionism has its roots in the work of sociologists like Cooley, Mead, and Thomas. Blumer has identified three premises on which this theory rests.

The first premise is that “human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them.” 5 The policemen and the crowd in our ear- lier example interacted on the basis of the meanings things had for them. The geo- graphic location, the types of people, the police car, the policemen’s movements, the sick woman’s behavior, and the activities of the onlookers—all were symbols with spe- cial meanings. People did not act toward the things themselves, but to their meanings.

The second premise underlying symbolic interactionism is that the “meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows.” 6 Culture, as a shared system of meanings, is learned, revised, maintained, and defined in the context of people interacting. The crowd came to

Universal Uses

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Physical environment

Behavior and events

Cultural behavior

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FIGURE 1

5 Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 2.

6 Blumer, p. 2.

12 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

share their definitions of police behavior through interacting with one another and through past associations with the police. The police officers acquired the cultural meanings they used through interacting with other officers and members of the community. The culture of each group was inextricably bound up with the social life of their particular communities.

The third premise of symbolic interactionism is that “meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretive process used by the person dealing with the things he encounters.” 7 Neither the crowd nor the policemen were automatons, driven by their culture to act in the way they did. Rather, they used their cultural knowledge to interpret and evaluate the situation. At any moment, a member of the crowd might have interpreted the behavior of the policemen in a slightly different way, leading to a different reaction.

We may see this interpretive aspect more clearly if we think of culture as a cogni- tive map. In the recurrent activities that make up everyday life, we refer to this map. It serves as a guide for acting and for interpreting our experience; it does not compel us to follow a particular course. Like this brief drama between the policemen, a dy- ing woman, and the crowd, much of life is a series of unanticipated social occasions. Although our culture may not include a detailed map for such occasions, it does pro- vide principles for interpreting and responding to them. Rather than a rigid map that people must follow, culture is best thought of as

a set of principles for creating dramas, for writing script, and of course, for recruiting players and audiences. . . . Culture is not simply a cognitive map that people acquire, in whole or in part, more or less accurately, and then learn to read. People are not just map-readers; they are map-makers. People are cast out into imperfectly charted, continu- ally revised sketch maps. Culture does not provide a cognitive map, but rather a set of principles for map making and navigation. Different cultures are like different schools of navigation to cope with different terrains and seas. 8

If we take meaning seriously, as symbolic interactionists argue we must, it be- comes necessary to study meaning carefully. We need a theory of meaning and a spe- cific methodology designed for the investigation of it.

Study and Review on myanthrolab.com

Review Questions

1. What is the definition of culture? How is this definition related to the way an- thropologists do ethnographic fieldwork?

2. What is the relationship among cultural behavior, cultural artifacts, and cultural knowledge?

3. What is the difference between tacit and explicit culture? How can anthropolo- gists discover these two kinds of culture?

4. What are some examples of naive realism in the way Americans think about peo- ple in other societies?

7 Blumer, p. 2.

8 Charles O. Frake, “Plying Frames Can Be Dangerous: Some Reflections on Methodology in Cognitive Anthropology,” Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute for Comparative Human Development 3 (1977): 6–7.

13

2 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari Richard Borshay Lee

What happens when an anthropologist living among the !Kung of Africa decides to be gen- erous and to share a large animal with everyone at Christmastime? This compelling ac- count of the misunderstanding and confusion that resulted takes the reader deeper into the nature of culture. Richard Lee carefully traces how the !Kung perceived his generosity and taught the anthropologist something about his own culture. *

Listen to the Chapter Audio on myanthrolab.com

The !Kung Bushmen’s knowledge of Christmas is thirdhand. The London Missionary Society brought the holiday to the southern Tswana tribes in the early nineteenth cen- tury. Later, native catechists spread the idea far and wide among the Bantu-speaking pas- toralists, even in the remotest corners of the Kalahari Desert. The Bushmen’s idea of the Christmas story, stripped to its essentials, is “praise the birth of white man’s god- chief”; what keeps their interest in the holiday high is the Tswana-Herero custom of slaughtering an ox for his Bushmen neighbors as an annual goodwill gesture. Since the 1930s, part of the Bushmen’s annual round of activities has included a December

* From Richard Borshay Lee, “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari,” Natural History , December 1969, pp. 14–22, 60–64. Reprinted from Natural History December 1969; copyright © Natural History Magazine, Inc., 1969.

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congregation at the cattle posts for trading, marriage brokering, and several days of trance dance feasting at which the local Tswana headman is host.

As a social anthropologist working with !Kung Bushmen, I found that the Christmas ox custom suited my purposes. I had come to the Kalahari to study the hunting and gathering subsistence economy of the !Kung, and to accomplish this it was essential not to provide them with food, share my own food, or interfere in any way with their food-gathering activities. While liberal handouts of tobacco and medical supplies were appreciated, they were scarcely adequate to erase the glar- ing disparity in wealth between the anthropologist, who maintained a two-month inventory of canned goods, and the Bushmen, who rarely had a day’s supply of food on hand. My approach, while paying off in terms of data, left me open to frequent accusations of stinginess and hardheartedness. By their lights, I was a miser.

The Christmas ox was to be my way of saying thank you for the cooperation of the past year; and since it was to be our last Christmas in the field, I was determined to slaughter the largest, meatiest ox that money could buy, insuring that the feast and trance dance would be a success.

Through December I kept my eyes open at the wells as the cattle were brought down for watering. Several animals were offered, but none had quite the grossness that I had in mind. Then, ten days before the holiday, a Herero friend led an ox of astonishing size and mass up to our camp. It was solid black, stood five feet high at the shoulder, had a five-foot span of horns, and must have weighed 1,200 pounds on the hoof. Food consumption calculations are my specialty, and I quickly figured that bones and viscera aside, there was enough meat—at least four pounds—for every man, woman, and child of the 150 Bushmen in the vicinity of /ai/ai who were ex- pected at the feast.

Having found the right animal at last, I paid the Herero £20 ($56) and asked him to keep the beast with his herd until Christmas day. The next morning word spread among the people that the big solid black one was the ox chosen by /ontah (my Bush- man name; it means, roughly, “whitey”) for the Christmas feast. That afternoon I re- ceived the first delegation. Ben!a, an outspoken sixty-year-old mother of five, came to the point slowly.

“Where were you planning to eat Christmas?” “Right here at /ai/ai,” I replied. “Alone or with others?” “I expect to invite all the people to eat Christmas with me.” “Eat what?” “I have purchased Yehave’s black ox, and I am going to slaughter and cook it.” “That’s what we were told at the well but refused to believe it until we heard it

from yourself.” “Well, it’s the black one,” I replied expansively, although wondering what she was

driving at. “Oh, no!” Ben!a groaned, turning to her group. “They were right.” Turning back

to me she asked, “Do you expect us to eat that bag of bones?” “Bag of bones! It’s the biggest ox at /ai/ai.” “Big, yes, but old. And thin. Everybody knows there’s no meat on that old ox.

What did you expect us to eat off it, the horns?” Everybody chuckled at Ben!a’s one-liner as they walked away, but all I could

manage was a weak grin. That evening it was the turn of the young men. They came to sit at our evening

fire. /gaugo, about my age, spoke to me man-to-man.

C H A P T E R 2 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari 15

“/ontah, you have always been square with us,” he lied. “What has happened to change your heart? That sack of guts and bones of Yehave’s will hardly feed one camp, let alone all the Bushmen around /ai/ai.” And he proceeded to enumerate the seven camps in the /ai/ai vicinity, family by family. “Perhaps you have forgotten that we are not few, but many. Or are you too blind to tell the difference between a proper cow and an old wreck? That ox is thin to the point of death.”

“Look, you guys,” I retorted, “that is a beautiful animal, and I’m sure you will eat it with pleasure at Christmas.”

“Of course we will eat it; it’s food. But it won’t fill us up to the point where we will have enough strength to dance. We will eat and go home to bed with stomachs rumbling.”

That night as we turned in, I asked my wife, Nancy, “What did you think of the black ox?”

“It looked enormous to me. Why?” “Well, about eight different people have told me I got gypped; that the ox is noth-

ing but bones.” “What’s the angle?” Nancy asked. “Did they have a better one to sell?” “No, they just said that it was going to be a grim Christmas because there won’t

be enough meat to go around. Maybe I’ll get an independent judge to look at the beast in the morning.”

Bright and early, Halingisi, a Tswana cattle owner, appeared at our camp. But before I could ask him to give me his opinion on Yehave’s black ox, he gave me the eye signal that indicated a confidential chat. We left the camp and sat down.

“/ontah, I’m surprised at you; you’ve lived here for three years and still haven’t learned anything about cattle.”

“But what else can a person do but choose the biggest, strongest animal one can find?” I retorted.

“Look, just because an animal is big doesn’t mean that it has plenty of meat on it. The black one was a beauty when it was younger, but now it is thin to the point of death.”

“Well, I’ve already bought it. What can I do at this stage?” “Bought it already? I thought you were just considering it. Well, you’ll have to

kill it and serve it, I suppose. But don’t expect much of a dance to follow.” My spirits dropped rapidly. I could believe that Ben!a and /gaugo just might

be putting me on about the black ox, but Halingisi seemed to be an impartial critic. I went around that day feeling as though I had bought a lemon of a used car.

In the afternoon it was Tomazo’s turn. Tomazo is a fine hunter, a top trance per- former . . . and one of my most reliable informants. He approached the subject of the Christmas cow as part of my continuing Bushman education.

“My friend, the way it is with us Bushmen,” he began, “is that we love meat. And even more than that, we love fat. When we hunt we always search for the fat ones, the ones dripping with layers of white fat: fat that turns into a clear, thick oil in the cook- ing pot, fat that slides down your gullet, fills your stomach and gives you a roaring diarrhea,” he rhapsodized.

“So, feeling as we do,” he continued, “it gives us pain to be served such a scrawny thing as Yehave’s black ox. It is big, yes, and no doubt its giant bones are good for soup, but fat is what we really crave, and so we will eat Christmas this year with a heavy heart.”

The prospect of a gloomy Christmas now had me worried, so I asked Tomazo what I could do about it.

16 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

“Look for a fat one, a young one . . . smaller, but fat. Fat enough to make us //gom (evacuate the bowels), then we will be happy.”

My suspicions were aroused when Tomazo said that he happened to know a young, fat, barren cow that the owner was willing to part with. Was Tomazo work- ing on commission, I wondered? But I dispelled this unworthy thought when we ap- proached the Herero owner of the cow in question and found that he had decided not to sell.

The scrawny wreck of a Christmas ox now became the talk of the /ai/ai water hole and was the first news told to the outlying groups as they began to come in from the bush for the feast. What finally convinced me that real trouble might be brew- ing was the visit from u!au, an old conservative with a reputation for fierceness. His nickname meant spear and referred to an incident thirty years ago in which he had speared a man to death. He had an intense manner; fixing me with his eyes, he said in clipped tones:

“I have only just heard about the black ox today, or else I would have come here earlier. /ontah, do you honestly think you can serve meat like that to people and avoid a fight?” He paused, letting the implications sink in. “I don’t mean fight you, /ontah; you are a white man. I mean a fight between Bushmen. There are many fierce ones here, and with such a small quantity of meat to distribute, how can you give everybody a fair share? Someone is sure to accuse another of taking too much or hogging all the choice pieces. Then you will see what happens when some go hungry while others eat.”

The possibility of at least a serious argument struck me as all too real. I had wit- nessed the tension that surrounds the distribution of meat from a kudu or gemsbok kill, and had documented many arguments that sprang up from a real or imagined slight in meat distribution. The owners of a kill may spend up to two hours arranging and rearranging the piles of meat under the gaze of a circle of recipients before hand- ing them out. And I knew that the Christmas feast at /ai/ai would be bringing together groups that had feuded in the past.

Convinced now of the gravity of the situation, I went in earnest to search for a second cow; but all my inquiries failed to turn one up.

The Christmas feast was evidently going to be a disaster, and the incessant com- plaints about the meagerness of the ox had already taken the fun out of it for me. Moreover, I was getting bored with the wisecracks, and after losing my temper a few times, I resolved to serve the beast anyway. If the meat fell short, the hell with it. In the Bushmen idiom, I announced to all who would listen:

“I am a poor man and blind. If I have chosen one that is too old and too thin, we will eat it anyway and see if there is enough meat there to quiet the rumbling of our stomachs.”

On hearing this speech, Ben!a offered me a rare word of comfort. “It’s thin,” she said philosophically, “but the bones will make a good soup.”

At dawn Christmas morning, instinct told me to turn over the butchering and cooking to a friend and take off with Nancy to spend Christmas alone in the bush. But curiosity kept me from retreating. I wanted to see what such a scrawny ox looked like on butchering, and if there was going to be a fight, I wanted to catch every word of it. Anthropologists are incurable that way.

The great beast was driven up to our dancing ground, and a shot in the forehead dropped it in its tracks. Then, freshly cut branches were heaped around the fallen car- cass to receive the meat. Ten men volunteered to help with the cutting. I asked /gaugo to make the breast bone cut. This cut, which begins the butchering process for most

C H A P T E R 2 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari 17

large game, offers easy access for removal of the viscera. But it also allows the hunter to spot-check the amount of fat on an animal. A fat game animal carries a white layer up to an inch thick on the chest, while in a thin one, the knife will quickly cut to bone. All eyes fixed on his hand as /gaugo, dwarfed by the great carcass, knelt to the breast. The first cut opened a pool of solid white in the black skin. The second and third cut widened and deepened the creamy white. Still no bone. It was pure fat; it must have been two inches thick.

“Hey /gau,” I burst out, “that ox is loaded with fat. What’s this about the ox being too thin to bother eating? Are you out of your mind?”

“Fat?” /gau shot back. “You call that fat? This wreck is thin, sick, dead!” And he broke out laughing. So did everyone else. They rolled on the ground, paralyzed with laughter. Everybody laughed except me; I was thinking.

I ran back to the tent and burst in just as Nancy was getting up. “Hey, the black ox. It’s fat as hell! They were kidding about it being too thin to eat. It was a joke or something. A put-on. Everyone is really delighted with it.”

“Some joke,” my wife replied. “It was so funny that you were ready to pack up and leave /ai/ai.”

If it had indeed been a joke, it had been an extraordinarily convincing one, and tinged, I thought, with more than a touch of malice, as many jokes are. Nevertheless, that it was a joke lifted my spirits considerably, and I returned to the butchering site where the shape of the ox was rapidly disappearing under the axes and knives of the butchers. The atmosphere had become festive. Grinning broadly, their arms covered with blood well past the elbow, men packed chunks of meat into the big cast-iron cooking pots, fifty pounds to the load, and muttered and chuckled all the while about the thinness and worthlessness of the animal and /ontah’s poor judgment.

We danced and ate that ox two days and two nights; we cooked and distributed fourteen potfuls of meat and no one went home hungry and no fights broke out.

But the “joke” stayed in my mind. I had a growing feeling that something im- portant had happened in my relationship with the Bushmen and that the clue lay in the meaning of the joke. Several days later, when most of the people had dispersed back to the bush camps, I raised the question with Hakekgose, a Tswana man who had grown up among the !Kung, married a !Kung girl, and who probably knew their culture better than any other non-Bushman.

“With us whites,” I began, “Christmas is supposed to be the day of friendship and brotherly love. What I can’t figure out is why the Bushmen went to such lengths to criticize and belittle the ox I had bought for the feast. The animal was perfectly good and their jokes and wisecracks practically ruined the holiday for me.”

“So it really did bother you,” said Hakekgose. “Well, that’s the way they always talk. When I take my rifle and go hunting with them, if I miss, they laugh at me for the rest of the day. But even if I hit and bring one down, it’s no better. To them, the kill is always too small or too old or too thin; and as we sit down on the kill site to cook and eat the liver, they keep grumbling, even with their mouths full of meat. They say things like, ‘Oh, this is awful! What a worthless animal! Whatever made me think that this Tswana rascal could hunt!’ ”

“Is this the way outsiders are treated?” I asked. “No, it is their custom; they talk that way to each other, too. Go and ask them.” /gaugo had been one of the most enthusiastic in making me feel bad about the

merit of the Christmas ox. I sought him out first. “Why did you tell me the black ox was worthless, when you could see that it was

loaded with fat and meat?”

18 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

“It is our way,” he said, smiling. “We always like to fool people about that. Say there is a Bushman who has been hunting. He must not come home and announce like a braggart, ‘I have killed a big one in the bush!’ He must first sit down in silence until I or someone else comes up to his fire and asks, ‘What did you see today?’ He replies quietly, ‘Ah, I’m no good for hunting. I saw nothing at all [pause] just a little tiny one.’ Then I smile to myself,” /gaugo continued, “because I know he has killed something big.

“In the morning we make up a party of four or five people to cut up and carry the meat back to the camp. When we arrive at the kill we examine it and cry out, ‘You mean to say you have dragged us all the way out here in order to make us cart home your pile of bones? Oh, if I had known it was this thin I wouldn’t have come.’ Another one pipes up, ‘People, to think I gave up a nice day in the shade for this. At home we may be hun- gry, but at least we have nice cool water to drink.’ If the horns are big, someone says, ‘Did you think that somehow you were going to boil down the horns for soup?’

“To all this you must respond in kind. ‘I agree,’ you say, ‘this one is not worth the effort; let’s just cook the liver for strength and leave the rest for the hyenas. It is not too late to hunt today and even a duiker or a steenbok would be better than this mess.’

“Then you set to work nevertheless; butcher the animal, carry the meat back to the camp and everyone eats,” /gaugo concluded.

Things were beginning to make sense. Next, I went to Tomazo. He corroborated /gaugo’s story of the obligatory insults over a kill and added a few details of his own.

“But,” I asked, “why insult a man after he has gone to all that trouble to track and kill an animal and when he is going to share the meat with you so that your chil- dren will have something to eat?”

“Arrogance,” was his cryptic answer. “Arrogance?” “Yes, when a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief

or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t ac- cept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill some- body. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.”

“But why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked Tomazo with some heat. “Because you never asked me,” said Tomazo, echoing the refrain that has come

to haunt every field ethnographer. The pieces now fell into place. I had known for a long time that in situations of

social conflict with Bushmen I held all the cards. I was the only source of tobacco in a thousand square miles, and I was not incapable of cutting an individual off for noncooperation. Though my boycott never lasted longer than a few days, it was an in- dication of my strength. People resented my presence at the water hole, yet simultane- ously dreaded my leaving. In short I was a perfect target for the charge of arrogance and for the Bushman tactic of enforcing humility.

I had been taught an object lesson by the Bushmen; it had come from an unex- pected corner and had hurt me in a vulnerable area. For the big black ox was to be the one totally generous, unstinting act of my year at /ai/ai and I was quite unprepared for the reaction I received.

As I read it, their message was this: There are no totally generous acts. All “acts” have an element of calculation. One black ox slaughtered at Christmas does not wipe out a year of careful manipulation of gifts given to serve your own ends. After all, to kill an animal and share the meat with people is really no more than the Bushmen do for each other every day and with far less fanfare.

C H A P T E R 2 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari 19

In the end, I had to admire how the Bushmen had played out the farce— collectively straight-faced to the end. Curiously, the episode reminded me of the Good Soldier Schweik and his marvelous encounters with authority. Like Schweik, the Bushmen had retained a thoroughgoing skepticism of good intentions. Was it this independence of spirit, I wondered, that had kept them culturally viable in the face of generations of contact with more powerful societies, both black and white? The thought that the Bushmen were alive and well in the Kalahari was strangely comfort- ing. Perhaps, armed with that independence and with their superb knowledge of their environment, they might yet survive the future.

Study and Review on myanthrolab.com

Review Questions

1. What was the basis of the misunderstanding experienced by Lee when he gave an ox for the Christmas feast held by the !Kung?

2. Construct a model of cross-cultural misunderstanding, using the information presented by Lee in this article.

3. Why do you think the !Kung ridicule and denigrate people who have been success- ful hunters or who have provided them with a Christmas ox? Why do Americans expect people to be grateful to receive gifts?

20

3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS Claire E. Sterk

Many Americans associate social research with questionnaires, structured interviews, word association tests, and psychological experiments. They expect investigators to control the research setting and ask for specific information, such as age, income, place of residence, and opinions about work or national events. But ethnographic fieldwork is different. Cul- tural anthropologists may administer formal research instruments such as questionnaires, but largely their goal is to discover culture, to view the actions and knowledge of a group through the eyes of its members. In this sense, ethnographers are more like students; cul- tural informants are more like teachers. To implement ethnographic research, anthropolo- gists must often become part of the worlds they seek to understand. They arrive as strangers, seek entrance into a group, meet and develop relationships of trust with informants, and wrestle with the ethical dilemmas that naturally occur when someone wants to delve into the lives of others.

These are the challenges discussed in this selection by Claire Sterk. Working inside the United States, as many anthropologists do these days, she engaged in a long-term study of prostitutes in New York City and Atlanta. Her research required her to discover the places where her informants worked and hung out, introduce herself, develop rapport, and con- duct open-ended interviews that permitted informants to teach her about their lives. During this process, she learned not to depend too much on contacts (gatekeepers) she met initially, that it was helpful to know something about respondents but to avoid an “expert” role, to

C H A P T E R 3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 21

1 The names of the women who were interviewed for this study, as well as those of their pimps and customers, have been replaced by pseudonyms to protect their privacy.

refrain from expressing her own opinions about the culture and lives of her sub- jects, and to manage a variety of ethical questions. She ends by listing six themes that emerged from her ethnographic study. *

Prostitution is a way of life. IT IS THE LIFE.

We make money for pimps who promise us love and more,

but if we don’t produce, they shove us out the door.

We turn tricks who have sex-for-pay.

They don’t care how many times we serve every day.

The Life is rough. The Life is tough.

We are put down, beaten up, and left for dead.

It hurts body and soul and messes with a person’s head.

Many of us get high. Don’t you understand it is a way of getting by?

The Life is rough. The Life is tough.

We are easy to blame because we are lame.

—Piper, 1987 1

Listen to the Chapter Audio on myanthrolab.com

One night in March of 1987 business was slow. I was hanging out on a stroll with a group of street prostitutes. After a few hours in a nearby diner/coffee shop, we were kicked out. The waitress felt bad, but she needed our table for some new customers. Four of us decided to sit in my car until the rain stopped. While three of us chatted about life, Piper wrote this poem. As soon as she read it to us, the conversation shifted to more serious topics—pimps, customers, cops, the many hassles of being a prosti- tute, to name a few. We decided that if I ever finished a book about prostitution, the book would start with her poem.

This book is about the women who work in the lower echelons of the prosti- tution world. They worked in the streets and other public settings as well as crack houses. Some of these women viewed themselves primarily as prostitutes, and a number of them used drugs to cope with the pressures of the life. Others identified themselves more as drug users, and their main reason for having sex for money or other goods was to support their own drug use and often the habit of their male partner. A small group of women interviewed for this book had left prostitution, and

* From Tricking and Tripping by Claire E. Sterk (Putnam Valley, NY: Social Change Press, 2000), pp. 14–20. Reprinted by permission.

22 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

most of them were still struggling to integrate their past experiences as prostitutes in their current lives.

The stories told by the women who participated in this project revealed how pimps, customers, and others such as police officers and social and health service providers treated them as “fallen” women. However, their accounts also showed their strengths and the many strategies they developed to challenge these others. Circumstances, including their drug use, often forced them to sell sex, but they all resisted the notion that they might be selling themselves. Because they engaged in an illegal profession, these women had little status: their working conditions were poor, and their work was physically and mentally exhausting. Nevertheless, many women described the ways in which they gained a sense of control over their lives. For instance, they learned how to manipulate pimps, how to control the types of services and length of time bought by their customers, and how to select custom- ers. While none of these schemes explicitly enhanced their working conditions, they did make the women feel stronger and better about themselves.

In this [article], I present prostitution from the point of view of the women themselves. To understand their current lives, it was necessary to learn how they got started in the life, the various processes involved in their continued prostitution ca- reers, the link between prostitution and drug use, the women’s interactions with their pimps and customers, and the impact of the AIDS epidemic and increasing violence on their experiences. I also examined the implications for women. Although my goal was to present the women’s thoughts, feelings, and actions in their own words, the final text is a sociological monograph compiled by me as the researcher. . . .

The Sample

. . . The research was conducted during the last ten years in the New York City and Atlanta metropolitan areas. One main data source was participant observation on streets, in hotels and other settings known for prostitution activity, and in drug-use settings, especially those that allowed sex-for-drug exchanges. Another data source was in-depth, life-history interviews with 180 women ranging in age from 18 to 59 years, with an average age of 34. One in two women was African-American and one in three white; the remaining women were Latina. Three in four had completed high school, and among them almost two-thirds had one or more years of additional edu- cational training. Thirty women had graduated from college.

Forty women worked as street prostitutes and did not use drugs. On average, they had been prostitutes for 11 years. Forty women began using drugs an average of three years after they began working as prostitutes, and the average time they had worked as prostitutes was nine years. Forty women used drugs an average of five years before they became prostitutes, and on the average they had worked as pros- titutes for eight years. Another forty women began smoking crack and exchanging sex for crack almost simultaneously, with an average of four years in the life. Twenty women who were interviewed were ex-prostitutes.

Comments on Methodology

When I tell people about my research, the most frequent question I am asked is how I gained access to the women rather than what I learned from the research. For

C H A P T E R 3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 23

many, prostitution is an unusual topic of conversation, and many people have expressed surprise that I, as a woman, conducted the research. During my research some customers indeed thought I was a working woman, a fact that almost always amuses those who hear about my work. However, few people want to hear stories about the women’s struggles and sadness. Sometimes they ask questions about the reasons why women become prostitutes. Most of the time, they are surprised when I tell them that the prostitutes as well as their customers represent all layers of society. Before presenting the findings, it seems important to discuss the research process, including gaining access to the women, developing relationships, interviewing, and then leaving the field.

Locating Prostitutes and Gaining Entree

One of the first challenges I faced was to identify locations where street prostitution took place. Many of these women worked on strolls, streets where prostitution activ- ity is concentrated, or in hotels known for prostitution activity. Others, such as the crack prostitutes, worked in less public settings such as a crack house that might be someone’s apartment.

I often learned of well-known public places from professional experts, such as law enforcement officials and health care providers at emergency rooms and sexu- ally transmitted disease clinics. I gained other insights from lay experts, including taxi drivers, bartenders, and community representatives such as members of neigh- borhood associations. The contacts universally mentioned some strolls as the places where many women worked, where the local police focused attention, or where resi- dents had organized protests against prostitution in their neighborhoods.

As I began visiting various locales, I continued to learn about new settings. In one sense, I was developing ethnographic maps of street prostitution. After several visits to a specific area, I also was able to expand these maps by adding infor- mation about the general atmosphere on the stroll, general characteristics of the various people present, the ways in which the women and customers connected, and the overall flow of action. In addition, my visits allowed the regular actors to notice me.

I soon learned that being an unknown woman in an area known for prostitu- tion may cause many people to notice you, even stare at you, but it fails to yield many verbal interactions. Most of the time when I tried to make eye contact with one of the women, she quickly averted her eyes. Pimps, on the other hand, would stare at me straight on and I ended up being the one to look away. Customers would stop, blow their horn, or wave me over, frequently yelling obscenities when I ig- nored them. I realized that gaining entree into the prostitution world was not going to be as easy as I imagined it. Although I lacked such training in any of my qualita- tive methods classes, I decided to move slowly and not force any interaction. The most I said during the initial weeks in a new area was limited to “How are you” or “Hi.” This strategy paid off during my first visits to one of the strolls in Brooklyn, New York. After several appearances, one of the women walked up to me and sar- castically asked if I was looking for something. She caught me off guard, and all the answers I had practiced did not seem to make sense. I mumbled something about just wanting to walk around. She did not like my answer, but she did like my accent. We ended up talking about the latter and she was especially excited when I told her I came from Amsterdam. One of her friends had gone to Europe with her boyfriend,

24 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

who was in the military. She understood from her that prostitution and drugs were legal in the Netherlands. While explaining to her that some of her friend’s impres- sions were incorrect, I was able to show off some of my knowledge about prostitu- tion. I mentioned that I was interested in prostitution and wanted to write a book about it.

Despite the fascination with my background and intentions, the prostitute im- mediately put me through a Streetwalker 101 test, and apparently I passed. She told me to make sure to come back. By the time I left, I not only had my first conversation but also my first connection to the scene. Variations of this entry process occurred on the other strolls. The main lesson I learned in these early efforts was the importance of having some knowledge of the lives of the people I wanted to study, while at the same time refraining from presenting myself as an expert.

Qualitative researchers often refer to their initial connections as gatekeepers and key respondents. Throughout my fieldwork I learned that some key respondents are important in providing initial access, but they become less central as the research evolves. For example, one of the women who introduced me to her lover, who was also her pimp, was arrested and disappeared for months. Another entered drug treat- ment soon after she facilitated my access. Other key respondents provided access to only a segment of the players on a scene. For example, if a woman worked for a pimp, [she] was unlikely . . . to introduce me to women working for another pimp. On one stroll my initial contact was with a pimp whom nobody liked. By associating with him, I almost lost the opportunity to meet other pimps. Some key respondents were less connected than promised—for example, some of the women who worked the street to support their drug habit. Often their connections were more frequently with drug users and less so with prostitutes.

Key respondents tend to be individuals central to the local scene, such as, in this case, pimps and the more senior prostitutes. Their function as gatekeepers often is to protect the scene and to screen outsiders. Many times I had to prove that I was not an undercover police officer or a woman with ambitions to become a streetwalker. While I thought I had gained entree, I quickly learned that many insiders subsequently won- dered about my motives and approached me with suspicion and distrust.

Another lesson involved the need to proceed cautiously with self- nominated key respondents. For example, one of the women presented herself as knowing eve- ryone on the stroll. While she did know everyone, she was not a central figure. On the contrary, the other prostitutes viewed her as a failed streetwalker whose drug use caused her to act unprofessionally. By associating with me, she hoped to regain some of her status. For me, however, it meant limited access to the other women because I affiliated myself with a woman who was marginal to the scene. On an- other occasion, my main key respondent was a man who claimed to own three crack houses in the neighborhood. However, he had a negative reputation, and peo- ple accused him of cheating on others. My initial alliance with him delayed, and almost blocked, my access to others in the neighborhood. He intentionally tried to keep me from others on the scene, not because he would gain something from that transaction but because it made him feel powerful. When I told him I was going to hang out with some of the other people, he threatened me until one of the other dealers stepped in and told him to stay away. The two of them argued back and forth, and finally I was free to go. Fortunately, the dealer who had spoken up for me was much more central and positively associated with the local scene. Finally, I am unsure if I would have had success in gaining entrance to the scene had I not been a woman.

C H A P T E R 3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 25

Developing Relationships and Trust

The processes involved in developing relationships in research situations amplify those involved in developing relationships in general. Both parties need to get to know each other, become aware and accepting of each other’s roles, and engage in a recipro- cal relationship. Being supportive and providing practical assistance were the most visible and direct ways for me as the researcher to develop a relationship. Throughout the years, I have given countless rides, provided child care on numerous occasions, bought groceries, and listened for hours to stories that were unrelated to my initial research questions. Gradually, my role allowed me to become part of these women’s lives and to build rapport with many of them.

Over time, many women also realized that I was uninterested in being a prosti- tute and that I genuinely was interested in learning as much as possible about their lives. Many felt flattered that someone wanted to learn from them and that they had knowledge to offer. Allowing women to tell their stories and engaging in a dialogue with them probably were the single most important techniques that allowed me to develop relationships with them. Had I only wanted to focus on the questions I had in mind, developing such relationships might have been more difficult.

At times, I was able to get to know a woman only after her pimp endorsed our contact. One of my scariest experiences occurred before I knew to work through the pimps, and one such man had some of his friends follow me on my way home one night. I will never know what plans they had in mind for me because I fortunately was able to escape with only a few bruises. Over a year later, the woman acknowledged that her pimp had gotten upset and told her he was going to teach me a lesson.

On other occasions, I first needed to be screened by owners and managers of crack houses before the research could continue. Interestingly, screenings always were done by a man even if the person who vouched for me was a man himself. While the women also were cautious, the ways in which they checked me out tended to be much more subtle. For example, one of them would tell me a story, indicating that it was a secret about another person on the stroll. Although I failed to realize this at the time, my field notes revealed that frequently after such a conversation, others would ask me questions about related topics. One woman later acknowledged that putting out such stories was a test to see if I would keep information confidential.

Learning more about the women and gaining a better understanding of their lives also raised many ethical questions. No textbook told me how to handle situations in which a pimp abused a woman, a customer forced a woman to engage in unwanted sex acts, a customer requested unprotected sex from a woman who knew she was HIV infected, or a boyfriend had unrealistic expectations regarding a woman’s earnings to support his drug habit. I failed to know the proper response when asked to engage in illegal activities such as holding drugs or money a woman had stolen from a cus- tomer. In general, my response was to explain that I was there as a researcher. During those occasions when pressures became too severe, I decided to leave a scene. For ex- ample, I never returned to certain crack houses because pimps there continued to ask me to consider working for them.

Over time, I was fortunate to develop relationships with people who “watched my back.” One pimp in particular intervened if he perceived other pimps, customers, or passersby harassing me. He also was the one who gave me my street name: Whitie (indicating my racial background) or Ms. Whitie for those who disrespected me. While this was my first street name, I subsequently had others. Being given a street name was a symbolic gesture of acceptance. Gradually, I developed an identity that

26 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

allowed me to be both an insider and an outsider. While hanging out on the strolls and other gathering places, including crack houses, I had to deal with some of the same uncomfortable conditions as the prostitutes, such as cold or warm weather, lack of access to a rest room, refusals from owners for me to patronize a restaurant, and of course, harassment by customers and the police.

I participated in many informal conversations. Unless pushed to do so, I seldom divulged my opinions. I was more open with my feelings about situations and showed empathy. I learned quickly that providing an opinion can backfire. I agreed that one of the women was struggling a lot and stated that I felt sorry for her. While I meant to indicate my genuine concern for her, she heard that I felt sorry for her because she was a failure. When she finally, after several weeks, talked with me again, I was able to explain to her that I was not judging her, but rather felt concerned for her. She remained cynical and many times asked me for favors to make up for my mistake. It took me months before I felt comfortable telling her that I felt I had done enough and that it was time to let go. However, if she was not ready, she needed to know that I would no longer go along. This was one of many occasions when I learned that al- though I wanted to facilitate my work as a researcher, that I wanted people to like and trust me, I also needed to set boundaries.

Rainy and slow nights often provided good opportunities for me to participate in conversations with groups of women. Popular topics included how to work safely, what to do about condom use, how to make more money. I often served as a health educator and a supplier of condoms, gels, vaginal douches, and other feminine prod- ucts. Many women were very worried about the AIDS epidemic. However, they also were worried about how to use a condom when a customer refused to do so. They worried particularly about condom use when they needed money badly and, conse- quently, did not want to propose that the customer use one for fear of rejection. While some women became experts at “making” their customers use a condom—for exam- ple, by hiding it in their mouth prior to beginning oral sex—others would carry con- doms to please me but never pull one out. If a woman was HIV positive and I knew she failed to use a condom, I faced the ethical dilemma of challenging her or staying out of it.

Developing trusting relationships with crack prostitutes was more difficult. Crack houses were not the right environment for informal conversations. Typically, the atmosphere was tense and everyone was suspicious of each other. The best times to talk with these women were when we bought groceries together, when I helped them clean their homes, or when we shared a meal. Often the women were very dif- ferent when they were not high than they were when they were high or craving crack. In my conversations with them, I learned that while I might have observed their ac- tions the night before, they themselves might not remember them. Once I realized this, I would be very careful to omit any detail unless I knew that the woman herself did remember the event.

In-Depth Interviews

All interviews were conducted in a private setting, including women’s residences, my car or my office, a restaurant of the women’s choice, or any other setting the women selected. I did not begin conducting official interviews until I developed relationships with the women. Acquiring written informed consent prior to the interview was prob- lematic. It made me feel awkward. Here I was asking the women to sign a form after

C H A P T E R 3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 27

they had begun to trust me. However, often I felt more upset about this technicality than the women themselves. As soon as they realized that the form was something the university required, they seemed to understand. Often they laughed about the official statements, and some asked if I was sure the form was to protect them and not the school. None of the women refused to sign the consent form, although some refused to sign it right away and asked to be interviewed later.

In some instances the consent procedures caused the women to expect a for- mal interview. Some of them were disappointed when they saw I only had a few structured questions about demographic characteristics, followed by a long list of open-ended questions. When this disappointment occurred, I reminded the women that I wanted to learn from them and that the best way to do so was by engaging in a dialogue rather than interrogating them. Only by letting the women identify their salient issues and the topics they wanted to address was I able to gain an insider’s perspective. By being a careful listener and probing for additional information and explanation, I as the interviewer, together with the women, was able to uncover the complexities of their lives. In addition, the nature of the interview allowed me to ask questions about contradictions in a woman’s story. For example, sometimes a woman would say that she always used a condom. However, later on in the conversation she would indicate that if she needed drugs she would never use one. By asking her to elaborate on this, I was able to begin developing insights into condom use by type of partner, type of sex acts, and social context.

The interviewer becomes much more a part of the interview when the conver- sations are in-depth than when a structured questionnaire is used. Because I was so integral to the process, the way the women viewed me may have biased their answers. On the one hand, this bias might be reduced because of the extent to which both parties already knew each other; on the other, a woman might fail to give her true opinion and reveal her actions if she knew that these went against the inter- viewer’s opinion. I suspected that some women played down the ways in which their pimps manipulated them once they knew that I was not too fond of these men. How- ever, some might have taken more time to explain the relationship with their pimp in order to “correct” my image.

My background, so different from that of these women, most likely affected the nature of the interviews. I occupied a higher socioeconomic status. I had a place to live and a job. In contrast to the nonwhite women, I came from a different racial background. While I don’t know to what extent these differences played a role, I ac- knowledge that they must have had some effect on this research.

Leaving the Field

Leaving the field was not something that occurred after completion of the fieldwork, but an event that took place daily. Although I sometimes stayed on the strolls all night or hung out for several days, I always had a home to return to. I had a house with electricity, a warm shower, a comfortable bed, and a kitchen. My house sat on a street where I had no fear of being shot on my way there and where I did not find condoms or syringes on my doorstep.

During several stages of the study, I had access to a car, which I used to give the women rides or to run errands together. However, I will never forget the cold night when everyone on the street was freezing, and I left to go home. I turned up the heat in my car, and tears streamed down my cheeks. I appreciated the heat, but I felt more

28 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

guilty about that luxury than ever before. I truly felt like an outsider, or maybe even more appropriate, a betrayer.

Throughout the years of fieldwork, there were a number of times when I left the scene temporarily. For example, when so many people were dying from AIDS, I was unable to ignore the devastating impact of this disease. I needed an emotional break.

Physically removing myself from the scene was common when I experienced dif- ficulty remaining objective. Once I became too involved in a woman’s life and almost adopted her and her family. Another time I felt a true hatred for a crack house owner and was unable to adhere to the rules of courteous interactions. Still another time, I got angry with a woman whose steady partner was HIV positive when she failed to ask him to use a condom when they had sex.

I also took temporary breaks from a particular scene by shifting settings and neighborhoods. For example, I would invest most of my time in women from a par- ticular crack house for several weeks. Then I would shift to spending more time on one of the strolls, while making shorter and less frequent visits to the crack house. By shifting scenes, I was able to tell people why I was leaving and to remind all of us of my researcher role.

While I focused on leaving the field, I became interested in women who had left the life. It seemed important to have an understanding of their past and cur- rent circumstances. I knew some of them from the days when they were working, but identifying others was a challenge. There was no gathering place for ex-prosti- tutes. Informal networking, advertisements in local newspapers, and local clinics and community settings allowed me to reach twenty of these women. Conducting interviews with them later in the data collection process prepared me to ask spe- cific questions. I realized that I had learned enough about the life to know what to ask. Interviewing ex-prostitutes also prepared me for moving from the fieldwork to writing.

It is hard to determine exactly when I left the field. It seems like a process that never ends. Although I was more physically removed from the scene, I continued to be involved while analyzing the data and writing this book. I also created opportuni- ties to go back, for example, by asking women to give me feedback on parts of the manuscript or at times when I experienced writer’s block and my car seemed to auto- matically steer itself to one of the strolls. I also have developed other research projects in some of the same communities. For example, both a project on intergenerational drug use and a gender-specific intervention project to help women remain HIV nega- tive have brought me back to the same population. Some of the women have become key respondents in these new projects, while others now are members of a research team. For example, Beth, one of the women who has left prostitution, works as an outreach worker on another project.

Six Themes in the Ethnography of Prostitution

The main intention of my work is to provide the reader with a perspective on street prostitution from the point of view of the women themselves. There are six fundamen- tal aspects of the women’s lives as prostitutes that must be considered. The first con- cerns the women’s own explanations for their involvement in prostitution and their descriptions of the various circumstances that led them to become prostitutes. Their stories include justifications such as traumatic past experiences, especially sexual abuse, the lack of love they experienced as children, pressures by friends and pimps,

C H A P T E R 3 Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS 29

the need for drugs, and most prominently, the economic forces that pushed them into the life. A number of women describe these justifications as excuses, as reflective ex- planations they have developed after becoming a prostitute.

The women describe the nature of their initial experiences, which often involved alienation from those outside the life. They also show the differences in the processes between women who work as prostitutes and use drugs and women who do not use drugs.

Although all these women work either on the street or in drug-use settings, their lives do differ. My second theme is a typology that captures these differences, looking at the women’s prostitution versus drug-use identities. The typology distinguishes among (a) streetwalkers, women who work strolls and who do not use drugs; (b) hooked prosti- tutes, women who identify themselves mainly as prostitutes but who upon their entrance into the life also began using drugs; (c) prostituting addicts, women who view them- selves mainly as drug users and who became prostitutes to support their drug habit; and (d) crack prostitutes, women who trade sex for crack.

This typology explains the differences in the women’s strategies for solicit- ing customers, their screening of customers, pricing of sex acts, and bargaining for services. For example, the streetwalkers have the most bargaining power, while such power appears to be lacking among the crack prostitutes.

Few prostitutes work in a vacuum. The third theme is the role of pimps, a label that most women dislike and for which they prefer to substitute “old man” or “boy- friend.” Among the pimps, one finds entrepreneur lovers, men who mainly employ streetwalkers and hooked prostitutes and sometimes prostituting addicts. Entrepre- neur lovers engage in the life for business reasons. They treat the women as their employees or their property and view them primarily as an economic commodity. The more successful a woman is in earning them money, the more difficult it is for that woman to leave her entrepreneur pimp.

Most prostituting addicts and some hooked prostitutes work for a lover pimp, a man who is their steady partner but who also lives off their earnings. Typically, such pimps employ only one woman. The dynamics in the relationship between a prosti- tute and her lover pimp become more complex when both partners use drugs. Drugs often become the glue of the relationship.

For many crack prostitutes, their crack addiction serves as a pimp. Few plan to exchange sex for crack when they first begin using; often several weeks or months pass before a woman who barters sex for crack realizes that she is a prostitute.

Historically, society has blamed prostitutes for introducing sexually transmit- ted diseases into the general population. Similarly, it makes them scapegoats for the spread of HIV/AIDS. Yet their pimps and customers are not held accountable. The fourth theme in the anthropological study of prostitution is the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the women’s lives. Although most are knowledgeable about HIV risk be- haviors and the ways to reduce their risk, many misconceptions exist. The women describe the complexities of condom use, especially with steady partners but also with paying customers. Many women have mixed feelings about HIV testing, wondering how to cope with a positive test result while no cure is available. A few of the women already knew their HIV-infected status, and the discussion touches on their dilemmas as well.

The fifth theme is the violence and abuse that make common appearances in the women’s lives. An ethnography of prostitution must allow the women to describe violence in their neighborhoods as well as violence in prostitution and drug-use settings. The most common violence they encounter is from customers.

30 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

These men often assume that because they pay for sex they buy a woman. Appar- ently, casual customers pose more of a danger than those who are regulars. The types of abuse the women encounter are emotional, physical, and sexual. In ad- dition to customers, pimps and boyfriends abuse the women. Finally, the women discuss harassment by law enforcement officers.

When I talked with the women, it often seemed that there were no opportunities to escape from the life. Yet the sixth and final theme must be the escape from prosti- tution. Women who have left prostitution can describe the process of their exit from prostitution. As ex-prostitutes they struggle with the stigma of their past, the chal- lenges of developing a new identity, and the impact of their past on current intimate relationships. Those who were also drug users often view themselves as ex-prostitutes and recovering addicts, a perspective that seems to create a role conflict. Overall, most ex-prostitutes find that their past follows them like a bad hangover.

Study and Review on myanthrolab.com

Review Questions

1. Based on reading this selection, how is ethnographic research different from other social science approaches to research?

2. What can ethnographic research reveal that other forms of research cannot? What can the use of questionnaires and observational experiments reveal about people that ethnographic research might miss?

3. What were some of the techniques used by Sterk to enter the field, conduct her research, and leave the field? What problems did she face?

4. What advice does Sterk have for aspiring ethnographers?

5. What are some of the ethical issues faced by anthropologists when they conduct ethnographic research?

31

4 Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas George Gmelch

We all are subject to naive realism. It’s only natural that the cultural knowledge we learn as we grow up and live in our society shapes the way we see the world and behave in it. It is normal for us to accept our cultural perspective as an accurate portrayal of the way the world really is. Although our naive realism usually goes unnoticed as we function inside our own society, it becomes more obvious when we attempt to communicate with outsiders who possess a different cultural view of reality. Anthropologists attempt to consciously con- trol their own naive realism, but even they sometimes must learn about their own naiveté by making mistakes when they do fieldwork in foreign settings.

This article by George Gmelch, updated for the fourteenth edition of Conformity and Conflict, describes a case of cross-cultural misunderstanding involving an American stu- dent living in a Barbadian village as part of a study abroad program. She unwittingly as- sumes that villagers are a homogeneous group of which Rastafarians (a religious sect) are members. By interacting with them, she finds herself shunned by everyone. Her American vision of equality causes her to assume that villagers accepted everyone as equal. She over- looks the existence of class distinctions in this small community characterized by face-to- face relationships. *

* From George Gmelch, “Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas.” Used by permission of George Gmelch.

32 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

2 The name of the student, Johanna, and the Rasta, Joseph, are real; the names of all other persons and places are pseudonyms.

Listen to the Chapter Audio on myanthrolab.com

For the past thirty years I have been taking American undergraduates to the field on anthropology training programs in Ireland, Tasmania, and Barbados. It’s been no sur- prise that when my students—young and inexperienced—venture into cultures differ- ent from their own they sometimes violate local norms. Professional anthropologists are not immune from making such mistakes; in fact there is a small but lively litera- ture about fieldwork in which anthropologists recount their cultural blunders and the revealing consequences that followed. 1

In this essay I describe the predicament of a female American student, Johanna, living in a rural village on the Caribbean island of Barbados. The trouble, which stems from her associating with people—Rastafarians—her community regards as undesir- ables, speaks to common shortcomings of American students living abroad for the first time. Namely their failure to understand social class and their assumption that others see the world the same way they do—what anthropologists call naive realism. I will return to these points later, but first Johanna’s story.

“George, telephoooone,” called out my Barbadian neighbor from the house next door early one morning. “It’s Johanna, your student, she say it important.” Johanna’s voice was full of emotion. “I’m in trouble and I really need to talk to you.” I told her to start walking toward Josey Hill and that I would set out toward her village, and that we would meet at the pasture where many families grazed cattle and sheep and boys played cricket and soccer.

When I arrived Johanna—tall, green eyed, and pretty—was already there. “They’ve turned against me. When I walk by, they turn their heads the other way. Someone in the rum shop called me the ‘devil’s child.’ ”

Johanna, from a college town in upstate New York where her father taught theater and her mother taught English, had made many friends in her village. In fact, she was enjoying her time in Freeman Hill so much that she fantasized about settling there and teaching school at St. Margaret’s, the small elementary school where she had been doing research. 2

Slowly, the story emerged. Johanna revealed that she had been seeing a Rasta- farian named Joseph, and that some villagers had seen her walking with him into the hills beyond the village. In a rugged area an hour’s walk down the coast from Freeman Hill a small group of Rastas—orthodox Rastas who wore no clothes and subsisted off the land—lived in caves. That morning Johanna’s homestay mother, Thelma, had entered the bedroom, shut the door tightly, and breathing very hard told Johanna that people in the village were saying that she was smoking marijuana and bathing naked with the Rastas. Some thought she must be a drug addict.

Rastafari is a movement and way of life more than an organized religion. It was inspired by the teachings of Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born founder of the Uni- versal Negro Improvement Association, in the 1920s and 1930s. Garvey denounced the colonial mentality that had taught blacks to be contemptuous of their African heritage; he advocated self-reliance for blacks and a “back to Africa” consciousness. From Jamaica, the Rastafari movement spread throughout the Caribbean, into parts of Africa, the US, England, and beyond. Rastafari arrived in Barbados in the 1970s and in urban areas gained many followers among local black youths, who saw it as

1 See, for example, Barbara Anderson, First Fieldwork: The Misadventures of an Anthropologist , and Philip DeVita, The Naked Anthropologist: Tales from Around the World .

C H A P T E R 4 Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas 33

an extension of their adolescent rebellion from school and parental authority, as well as among some mainstream artists, academics, musicians, and even sports figures. The Rastas long dreadlocks; red, green, and black colors; distinctive caps; and reggae music became common on the streets of Barbados’s capital city of Bridge town. By the 1990s, a colony of thirty orthodox Rastas who rejected all the trappings of Western society (called “Babylon“), even clothes, had begun living in caves just down the coast from Johanna’s village. Although the subject of considerable local comment, most of the nearby villagers knew very little about them or their beliefs.

“I had no idea people would react this way,” said Johanna defensively, wiping tears from her cheeks. “Joseph said he was a ‘bush doctor.’ I mean what is the harm? He’s a nice guy, he wouldn’t harm anyone. Aren’t anthropologists supposed to be inter- ested in everyone? Anthropologists don’t ignore people just because some people don’t like them. Right?”

Johanna assured me that she hadn’t gone naked with the Rastas or become sexu- ally involved. At first, I thought this an unnecessary declaration, but then I recalled the talk my anthropologist wife, Sharon, had with the female students about prob- lems created by romantic involvements with local men. In the past, such liaisons had upset the students’ homestay families and damaged the students’ reputations and rap- port, as often the men involved had been considered disreputable characters—beach bums—who were beneath the social status of the host families.

With much anguish, Johanna recounted that Thelma wanted her to move out, to leave the village. Johanna had only few weeks left in Barbados. There wasn’t time for her to start over somewhere else, nor did I know of another family who had space to take her in. I told her to go back to the village and that I would call on her that evening. When I got home I looked through my copy of Johanna’s field notes (the stu- dents turned in a copy of their notes every week). A reference to Rastas took on new meaning:

[February 21] I went to Janice’s primary school today and on the way out I started talk- ing to a Rastaish looking dude with a leather Crocodile Dundee hat on just standing on the roadside. I was aware that I could be seen by the children on the playground. When Janice got home, she reprimanded me for talking to him. Janice: “We don’t live the way Rastas do. It’s not right just to go and talk to anyone you feel like. That man is a killer. Once you left all the children said, ‘Look, he is going to carry her away into the hills and kill her.’ I am serious. Even teacher told me to tell you not to talk to him. And teachers know about these things.”

Later, Johanna described her encounters with the Rastas in more detail. Af- ter walking home from the school yard with Joseph, she had agreed to meet him the following week at the small village shop. It wasn’t a good choice, as the shop is located where the village’s three roads meet, and its veranda is a social gather- ing place. There wasn’t a more conspicuous place in all of Freeman Hill. A little discretion might have prevented her liaisons with Joseph from ever being known. Johanna described what happened in her journal:

When I saw Joseph coming down the road, I hopped off the porch to go meet him, and every person within the viewing distance did a double take. On the days that I’ve spent with Joseph, we meet at ten, arrive at his place in the later morning, and usually begin cooking right away. His single meal a day usually takes three hours to prepare, so he likes to get it started as soon as possible so he can relax once it gets dark. His place is so simple

34 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

and relaxing. It’s set up on a ridge, and well hidden. You ascend a steep rock incline and step onto a ledge with a panoramic view of the Atlantic. On one side is a looming two story rock with an opening in the center; this is Joseph’s bedroom. You step down in a dark, cool, homey cave, about 10 by 20 feet with smooth rocks on the floor, a slender little bed on one side, and a natural stone bench coming out of the wall. Joseph’s “dresser” is a jutting piece of rock where he rests his Bible, a broken fragment of a mirror, and his shell necklace. He said it took three months process of burning and chipping away at the floor and walls of his cave to make the place livable. “Yeah, it was rough,” he said, “but I want my place to be just right when I have a wife come live with me. Because no woman is go- ing to want to come live in a cave she can’t stand up in, right?” He grinned.

My usual response to the problems that students unwittingly create is to visit the parties involved first, to better understand the problem and then to try to re- solve the misunderstanding by explaining each side’s custom to the other. I hoped Johanna’s situation would be no different, although it involved a large number of people and I didn’t know much about the villagers’ relationship with the local Rastas. I was friendly with two respected elders in Freeman Hill, so I decided to go to them for advice. I went first to Ezra Cumberbatch, a Pentecostal preacher whose daughters had befriended Johanna; and then to Randall Trotman, a return migrant who had recently resettled in Barbados after a dozen years in England—he had the perspective that comes with having lived in another society.

Reverend Cumberbatch told me that the Rastas Johanna had been visiting were well known to the village, and that most people, especially the old ones, viewed them as lazy layabouts, who smoked marijuana and stole fruit and vegetables from their gardens. I remembered that one of my neighbors in Josey Hill had cut down his ba- nana tree after Rastas had repeatedly taken the fruit, or so he claimed. He said he’d rather not have the tree than have Rastas around his house.

Randall Trotman had a more balanced view. “Some are good and some are bad. Some of them steal your coconuts and aloe, but others are school teachers and crafts- man and good citizens.” He explained how some Barbadians, especially in town, re- spected them for their knowledge of plants and herbs, for their vegetarianism and healthy lifestyle, and their rejection of materialism and the false values of “Babylon” (the outside world). But he also noted that in rural places like Freeman Hill all Rastas were tarred with the same brush—not unlike the attitudes toward all Muslims among some Americans after 9/11. Before I left the Trotman home, I asked about a rumored crime I had heard earlier, but had found villagers unwilling to say much about it. Ap- parently a villager, furious about the theft of his crops (which could have been taken by monkeys as easily as Rastas), had put poison in some cucumbers. Randall said two Rastas had died and that the police investigation was inconclusive. In the end, both preacher and returnee were sympathetic to Johanna’s plight, but neither had any practical advice on what she or I could do to repair her reputation and save her fieldwork.

Thinking I should meet the Rastas themselves, I set out to visit them. With the vaguest of directions, I hiked down the steep and rugged coastline looking for the area the Rastas called “Creation.” I lost the trail and worked my way through the dense brush on a steep hillside that rose directly from the sea. Remembering Johanna’s ac- count, I climbed up several steep inclines to the openings in the rock wall looking for the Rastas’ caves. The erosion caused by water trickling down through the coral capstone which overlays nearly all of Barbados had created dozens of large caves. The view was magnificent, down the green cliffs and out across the blue Atlantic.

C H A P T E R 4 Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas 35

I called out several times but nothing came back. The place was eerily quiet, and I began to question what I was doing there. What was I going to say if I did find them? That I was there to check them out for the safety of my student? That they shouldn’t let my student go naked or smoke marijuana with them? Feeling that I was intruding in their living space, I turned and trekked for home, and then to Johanna’s homestay.

Thelma, Johanna’s homestay mother, listened patiently to my explanations of what anthropologists do and of Johanna’s naiveté. I told Thelma that students some- times innocently violate local norms, but that these misunderstandings were usually easily cleared up and that in the end no one was the worse for it. She responded that my students would all be returning to the United States, leaving behind whatever ill will they created, and that she was the one that would be living in Freeman Hill for the rest of her life. “I don’t want my children exposed to these Rastas,” she said, add- ing that she would be implicated in the minds of many villagers if Johanna’s “friends” brought harm to anyone.

After sincere assurances from Johanna that she would stay away from the Ras- tas, Thelma finally agreed to let her stay. Although Johanna remained, the villagers had little to do with her during her last weeks there. “It’s like I have something conta- gious and they don’t want to get too close to me,” she wrote. “The road workers who verbally harassed me at the beginning of my stay but finally stopped after I made friends in the village, have now begun to treat me, once again, as a sexual object.” To do successful field research, anthropologists must have good rapport with local peo- ple; if that is damaged data collection can be impossible. In an assessment of her field experience, Johanna concluded, “I learned the power of a societal norm. Nice girls don’t talk to Rastas. Exceptions: none.”

As I began to reflect on Johanna’s experience, it became clear that she had not fully appreciated social class distinctions in Barbadian society or the communal na- ture of village life. Compared to their English counterparts, American students gener- ally have little understanding of social class, and they perceive the great majority of their fellow Americans as belonging to the middle class. Similarly, even after weeks in the field, my students typically view the inhabitants of their villages as being fairly homogeneous—all of the same social class. They are not. The students only gradually become aware of class differences from comments by their homestay families about other villagers. It takes time for students to understand the workings of life in a small- scale, face-to-face society where people pay close attention to the actions of neigh- bors, where gossip is recreation, and where, with the slightest provocation, rumor can affect a family’s reputation. And like Johanna, sometimes they also learn about class and status by making mistakes—by violating norms concerning relationships between different categories of people. I doubted that the English university students I once taught, steeped in the meaning of class, would have made the same mistake as Johanna.

But it was not just a lack of awareness; rather, American students often operate on an assumption of personal autonomy. That is, if they can see “the truth” in a situ- ation (or view their actions as harmless) then they feel entitled to act without regard for what others might think. Such an attitude sometimes stems more from what anthropologists call naive realism, the mistaken view that deep down everyone per- ceives the world in basically the same way. And why shouldn’t they think this way? Most were raised in fairly homogeneous suburbs and on college campuses where they typically have little contact with the international students, or even minorities, who might challenge their assumptions. For students like Johanna, Barbados is the first time they have ever lived in another culture, and they arrive with their naive

36 P A R T O N E Culture and Ethnography

realism fairly intact. The words Johanna used in defense of her actions were reveal- ing, “Joseph wouldn’t harm anyone. Rastas are just spiritual people, they don’t want anything to do with modern society, they just want to be left alone to do their own thing. Why can’t they [the villagers] see that?” Typically it takes my students some weeks before they begin to appreciate that they, like the Rastas, simply cannot al- ways “do their own thing” without repercussions.

I now use Johanna’s story as a lesson for other field school students: communities are never as homogeneous as they seem; be sensitive to class and status differences; think about how your actions and relationships could be viewed by others because not everybody perceives the world the way you do. 3

Study and Review on myanthrolab.com

Review Questions

1. What dose the term naive realism means? Give some examples from your own experience.

2. What behavior by an American study abroad student offended the Barbadian vil- lagers she lived with? Why was she surprised by their reaction?

3. What did George Gmelch do to mediate the cross-cultural misunderstanding? How successful was it?

4. What part does social class play in this event?

5. Why is this story a good example of naïve realism?

3 Thelma, Johanna’s homestay mother, has since housed several other students. Johanna went on to graduate school and is now teaching theater at a small college in New England.

READINGS IN THIS SECTION

Shakespeare in the Bush 41 Laura Bohannan

Whorf Revisited: You Are What You Speak 49 Guy Deutscher

Manipulating Meaning: The Military Name Game 57 Sarah Boxer

Conservation Style: Talking on the Job 61 Deborah Tannen

P A R T T W O

LANGUAGE

AND COMMUNICATION

38 P A R T T W O Language and Communication

Culture is a system of symbols that allows us to represent and communi- cate our experience. We are surrounded by symbols: the flag, a new automobile, a diamond ring, billboard pictures, and, of course, spoken words.

A symbol is anything that we can perceive with our senses that stands for some- thing else. Almost anything we experience can come to have symbolic meaning. Every symbol has a referent that it calls to our attention. The term lawn, for example, refers to a field of grass plants. When we communicate with symbols, we call attention not only to the referent but also to numerous connotations of the symbol. In U.S. culture we associate lawns with places such as homes and golf courses; actions such as mow- ing, fertilizing, and raking; and activities such as backyard games and barbeques. Hu- man beings have the capacity to assign meaning to anything they experience in an arbitrary fashion, which allows limitless possibilities for communication.

Symbols greatly simplify the task of communication. Once we learn that a word such as barn, for example, stands for a certain type of building, we can communicate about a whole range of specific buildings that fit into the category. And we can com- municate about barns in their absence; we can even invent flying barns and dream about barns. Symbols make it possible to communicate the immense variety of hu- man experience, whether past or present, tangible or intangible, good or bad.

Many channels are available to human beings for symbolic communication: sound, sight, touch, and smell. Language, our most highly developed communica- tion system, uses the channel of sound (or, for some deaf people, sight). Language is a system of cultural knowledge used to generate and interpret speech. It is a feature of every culture and a distinctive characteristic of the human animal. Speech refers to the behavior that produces vocal sounds. Our distinction between language and speech is like the one made between culture and behavior. Language is part of culture, the system of knowledge that generates behavior. Speech is the behavior generated and interpreted by language.

Every language is composed of three subsystems for dealing with vocal symbols: phonology, grammar, and semantics. Let’s look briefly at each of these.

Phonology consists of the categories and rules for forming vocal symbols. It is concerned not directly with meaning but with the formation and recognition of the vocal sounds to which we assign meaning. For example, if you utter the word bat, you have followed a special set of rules for producing and ordering sound categories char- acteristic of the English language.

A basic element defined by phonological rules for every language is the phoneme. Phonemes are the minimal categories of speech sounds that serve to keep utterances apart. For example, speakers of English know that the words bat, cat, mat, hat, rat, and fat are different utterances because they hear the sounds /b/, /c/ (represented as /k/ by linguists), /m/, /h/, /r/, and /f/ as different categories of sounds. In English, each of these is a phoneme. Our language contains a limited number of phonemes from which we construct all our vocal symbols.

Phonemes are arbitrarily constructed, however. Each phoneme actually clas- sifies slightly different sounds as though they were the same. Different languages may divide up the same range of speech sounds into different sound categories. For example, speakers of English treat the sound /t/ as a single phoneme. Hindi speak- ers take the same general range and divide it into four phonemes: /t/, /t h /, /T/, and /T h /. (The lowercase t ’s are made with the tongue against the front teeth, while the uppercase T ’s are made by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth further back than would be normal for an English speaker. The h indicates a puff of air, called

P A R T T W O Language and Communication 39

aspiration, associated with the t sound.) Americans are likely to miss important dis- tinctions among Hindi words because they hear these four different phonemes as a single one. Hindi speakers, on the other hand, tend to hear more than one sound category as they listen to English speakers pronounce t ’s. The situation is reversed for /w/ and /v/. We treat these as two phonemes, whereas Hindi speakers hear them as one. For them, the English words wine and vine sound the same.

Phonology also includes rules for ordering different sounds. Even when we try to talk nonsense, we usually create words that follow English phonological rules. It would be unlikely, for example, for us ever to begin a word with the phoneme /ng/—usually written in English as “ing.” It must come at the end or in the middle of words.

Grammar is the second subsystem of language. Grammar refers to the catego- ries and rules for combining vocal symbols. No grammar contains rules for combin- ing every word or element of meaning in the language. If this were the case, grammar would be so unwieldy that no one could learn all the rules in a lifetime. Every gram- mar deals with categories of symbols, such as the ones we call nouns and verbs. Once you know the rules covering a particular category, you can use it in appropriate combinations.

Morphemes are the categories in any language that carry meaning. They are minimal units of meaning that cannot be subdivided. Morphemes occur in more complex patterns than you may think. The term bats, for example, is actually two morphemes, /bat/ meaning a flying mammal and /s/ meaning plural. Even more con- fusing, two different morphemes may have the same sound shape. /Bat/ can refer to a wooden club used in baseball as well as a flying mammal.

The third subsystem of every language is semantics. Semantics refers to the cat- egories and rules for relating vocal symbols to their referents. Like the rules of gram- mar, semantic rules are simple instructions for combining things; they instruct us to combine words with what they refer to. A symbol can be said to refer because it fo- cuses our attention and makes us take account of something. For example, /bat/ refers to a family of flying mammals, as we have already noted.

Language regularly occurs in a social context, and to understand its use fully it is important to recognize its relation to sociolinguistic rules. Sociolinguistic rules combine meaningful utterances with social situations into appropriate messages.

Although language is the most important human vehicle for communication, almost anything we can sense may represent a nonlinguistic symbol that conveys meaning. The way we sit, how we use our eyes, how we dress, the car we own, the number of bathrooms in our house—all these things carry symbolic meaning. We learn what they mean as we acquire culture. Indeed, a major reason we feel so un- comfortable when we enter a group from a strange culture is our inability to decode our host’s symbolic world.

Anthropological linguists also focus on the ways people use metaphors and frame discourses when they speak. Metaphors represent a comparison, usually linguistic, that suggests how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in another. For example, we often link passion (affection and hatred) with temperature, as in affec- tion is warm and hatred is cold. Frames are social constructions of social phenomena. Social frames are often created by media sources, political movements or other social groups to present a particular point of view about something . People can construct frames to advance a particular message they want listeners to hear. Advertisers are expert at creating frames consisting of metaphors that project a message they hope will sell products. For example, a TV ad for a sleep aid is set with a dark background

40 P A R T T W O Language and Communication

Key Terms

(night), with a luminescent green Luna moth gently flitting through it, and a quiet soothing voiceover. They create a sleep frame by linking darkness, a delicate and soft animal, and quietness, all suggesting restfulness, with the drug they are trying to sell. In short, they put the sleep aid in the frame we normally associate with sleep.

The articles in Part Two illustrate several important aspects of language and com- munication. The first article, by Laura Bohannan, illustrates a classic case of cross- cultural miscommunication. When she tells the classic story of Hamlet to African Tiv elders, the story takes on an entirely different meaning as the Tiv use their own cul- tural knowledge in its interpretation. Guy Deutscher discusses the validity of a classic theory first proposed by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the second article. Whorf asserted that one’s language controls how one thinks and perceives the world. Whorf’s critics argued that people everywhere can think about and perceive the same things despite their language’s grammar and vocabulary. Deutscher concludes that the truth actually lies somewhere in between these extremes. The third article, by Sarah Boxer, describes how the U.S. military tries to frame military operations by naming them with positive metaphors. However, she notes how difficult the task is as metaphors can have both positive and negative images. In the final article, Deborah Tannen, illustrates another aspect of language—conversation styles. Focusing on the different speaking styles of men and women in the workplace, she describes and analyzes how conversational styles themselves carry meaning and unwittingly lead to misunderstanding.