Group 2
Group 2
Belonging
The anthropology of belonging encompasses both the more traditional and also very contemporary fields of research, including studies of kinship, ethnicity, personhood and how individuals come together to form communities. Individuals, as social beings, are born into and belong to particular social groups defined in a multitude of ways. These may include belonging to a defined social class and religion, as well as official bureaucratic forms of belonging such as citizenship. Individuals may also produce forms of relatedness where they self-fashion and perform identities that are meaningful for them in their particular social context. They may express aspects of selfhood that are chosen, for example, membership of political groups. Belonging includes economic and political dimensions, and is relevant at the micro level of the individual as well as at the meso level of subcultural groups, and the macro level of national and global organizations and institutions.
From the beginning of the discipline, anthropologists have been interested in how societies organize to reproduce themselves, and the ideologies and institutions that make this possible. Older studies of non-state societies emphasized the formal organizational principles of kinship as an institution for the transmission of status, political and religious office, economic goods and access to land (for example, Evans-Pritchard 1969 [1940], Radcliffe-Brown, 1965). More recent work in the field has incorporated understandings of globalization and new technologies. Such work engages with how contemporary individuals experience and enact belonging to a social group, or to several overlapping and intersecting groups simultaneously. This work has also documented how migration and forms of discrimination based on ideas of personhood, ethnicity, race, sexuality or faith may result in social dislocation, marginalization and exclusion. In contrast, the ethnographic study of the impact of new reproductive technologies, friendship as influenced by social networking websites, virtual/online communities and imagined communities has also shown how individuals make and negotiate choices to become members of social groups and thus forge links to others with whom they share aspects of their identity.
Ethnographies now often focus on how individuals experience belonging and how their choices shape and even create the social world in which they live, thus forming the identities they embrace, recognizing the complex interplay between social institutions and individual agency as explained by Bourdieu's (1977) practice theory. This represented a significant shift in ethnographic perspective, and while social institutions are still understood as constraining agency to some extent, there is a greater appreciation of the resourcefulness and initiative shown by individuals in the pursuit of their social and personal goals. The desires and goals of individuals are, however, informed by the social values and shared ideologies of the society they belong to. More contemporary work in the field of belonging has discussed forces that distance and separate, or alternatively encourage, individuals to produce new and creative expressions of belonging, linking those who may be physically distant or socially and culturally very different, utilizing, for example, the concepts of disjuncture and dislocation in Appadurai (1996).
In this area of inquiry, the centrality of belonging in anthropology can be explored in a number of contexts and through a range of inquiry-specific concepts. Individual experiences of belonging, desire, or even violence as constitutive of group membership are historically contingent. Our ideas of what it means to belong, what we desire, and seek to achieve change as we go through life, and as the societies in which we live change. Belonging is socially produced and can be approached through the everyday practices, and reflections on these practices, of anthropological subjects. The consequences of processes associated with globalization on belonging may be studied through work on migration, the creation of transnational communities that have been made possible by technological developments, and the impacts such large-scale processes have had at the interpersonal level and in local contexts.
In teaching this area of inquiry, the following questions may be useful for framing discussions. How are new reproductive technologies changing the ways in which people understand belonging? How may choosing to belong to a social group be an expression of resistance? To what extent are desires and emotions culturally produced and historically contingent? Why do we need to belong to social groups and communities? Why do some groups remain marginal or excluded from society? How do nation states deal with internal diversity? How is identity shaped by the experiences of migration and mobility? What kind of belonging is possible in transnational or virtual spaces? Is the exclusion of some people necessary in order to create a bounded group? How does the social construction and delimitation of groups change over time? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to examine classic works on kinship systems and ideas of 'family'. This may then be rethought and re-conceptualized as more recent ethnographic work is introduced, which incorporates notions of complexity in identity formation and the work of social memory for understanding belonging.
Communication, expression and technology
Anthropologists understand communication as a cultural practice and explore how the different means of communication have significant roles in the social construction of reality. Anthropology has reflected on the role of communication in the processes of social and cultural differentiation, focusing on the study of writing, orality, ritual, performance and, more recently, mass media.
Interest in communication and expression began early in anthropological inquiry and focused on the importance of understanding meaning as being grounded in specific contexts. This contextual setting for the understanding of communication was necessary in order to fully understand 'the native's perspective' and to be able to translate this meaningfully (Malinowski 1922). According to this view, language is primarily associated with the performance of 'social tasks'.
As the notion of cultural relativism emerged, anthropologists sought to explain the strong interrelationship between language and culture - that is, how language mediates our perceptions (Sapir 1921). Some anthropologists have studied the impact of writing on culture (Goody 1977, 1986) and others have reflected on the method of ethnography as the study of a society as though it were a text to be read and interpreted by the anthropologist (Geertz 1973).
Anthropologists explore communication not only focusing on the semantic content of language, but also on the social hierarchies and power present in communicative processes. The access to and control of the tools of communication enable groups to legitimate their practices and establish consensus in society. For example, Bourdieu's (1991) Rites of Institution focuses on language as symbolic power. He also reflects on the importance of language as cultural capital to create social and cultural distinctions. Within interdisciplinary research, Raymond Williams (1985) focused on popular culture, reflecting on mass media and the relationship between communication, hegemony and culture to understand contemporary sociocultural dynamics. Also James Scott's (1990) concept of 'public and hidden transcripts' focused on language and resistance. Post-colonial studies are interested in transcultural communication, in decolonizing writing and knowledge, and in the dynamics of self-representation in the context of colonial subordination. Today, contemporary approaches focus on theoretical and empirical studies of global media, exploring varied local uses of media technologies and the ways in which media messages are localized and incorporated into diverse cultural contexts. The ethnography of audiences is also a subject of study in the field of culture and communication. Some current research focuses on means of communication within particular scapes (Appadurai 1996) in a globalized world. Tensions between the global and the local, local forms of appropriation, problems of representations and conflict in intercultural communication are significant issues to explore.
Performance studies also constitute an interesting methodological and theoretical lens to analyse practices in their communicative dimension, ranging from Victor Turner's (1969) interest in performance to Butler's (1999) emphasis on the artificiality and constructed character of gender identity as performance. Ritual, political or artistic practices are studied in a new light as a result of this theoretical approach.
Another area of recent interest is ethnography that focuses on areas of social media and virtual worlds. Miller's ethnography Tales from Facebook (2011) explores both the negative and positive effects of Facebook in Trinidad, particularly in terms of the cultivation and destruction of relationships. Tom Boellstorff's ethnography, Coming of Age in Second Life (2008) provides an engaging insight into how virtual worlds share the rich complexity of the real world when it comes to culture, but also offers a new perspective on ethnographic fieldwork.
In teaching this area of inquiry, the following questions may be helpful frames for exploring ethnographic data and anthropological thinking.
How have changes in communication and expression impacted globalization? How are social hierarchies expressed and communicated? Does the global spread of media technologies entail cultural homogenization? Is it only older generations that make a clear differentiation between virtual and real? How have youth cultures appropriated media technologies for their own uses? To what extent can language relate to power differentials in gender, class or ethnicity? What role do modern technologies of communication play in political mobilization? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic-based exploration. One approach to the teaching of this might be to examine classic works on expression and communication that focus on orality, writing and other types of cultural expression and older technologies of communication. These older technologies may then be rethought and re-conceptualized as more recent ethnographic work is introduced, which incorporates research on new technologies and their effects on the complexities of global communication.
Movement, time and space
The anthropology of movement, time and space is both a classic anthropological area of research and a broad and lively contemporary field of study incorporating recent developments in the study of social memory, virtual communities and the politics of identity. What is clear within this area of research is the centrality of these concepts to understanding how people experience and make sense of their worlds.
Durkheim and Mauss (1963 [1903]) pioneered the study of time and space in the early 20th century, demonstrating that time and space were collective representations reflecting the social structure of particular societies. Hence, time and space were always mediated by society and the individual's experience of time and space had its origins in collective social life. Movement in space or through time was experienced in the encounters with boundaries (space) or intervals (time), marking a change of time or space. Time and space themselves are not neutral, rather they are associated with different values, meaning and emotions often linked to rituals marking socially relevant transitions as in rites of passage.
Evans-Pritchard (1969 [1940]) went on to show how both time and space are relative concepts with the quality of time and space varying depending on the context and social connection. For example, if there are two equidistant villages, the village one can reach without having to cross a river is experienced as closer, and by the same token, a village in which more closely related people live is felt as closer in time than a village in which only distant relatives live. In the latter example, the closer two people are to sharing the same ascendant kinsperson, the closer in time they experience their relatedness, meaning two men who share a grandfather are closer in time to each other than two men who share a great-great-grandfather.
Anthropologists such as Bourdieu (1991) were interested in the intersections of time and space while other anthropologists have been interested in social memory and forgetting. These studies then inform understandings of identity, the construction of virtual communities, and the politics of difference. Not only does it matter what is remembered and how this is remembered, but so, too, does what is forgotten. Studies of social memory may include ethnographies on recently re-formulated social memories of colonialism, ethnic identity in the diaspora, nostalgia for what is thought to have been lost, and concomitant heritage projects to reinvent and preserve particular pasts for consumption in the present. The remembering, as well as the forgetting, of the past is always inextricably linked to the perceived needs of the present and hence, the interplay between the past and the present is complex and nuanced (Cole 2001).
The anthropological study of movement, time and space has also led to innovative work in urban anthropology, incorporating both social class and gendered understandings of space and, in particular, public space (Low and Lawrence-Zuniga 2003; Patel 2010). Contemporary anthropologists are producing exciting and relevant work on the global flows of migrants, with the poor at one extreme and professional expatriates at the other, and the forced movements of refugees fleeing environmental and political crises and the non-places traversed by tourists as they journey in time and space for recreation (Malkki 1995; Appadurai 1990, 2006; Gmelch 2010; Augé 1992; Fechter 2007). The study of the experience of ruptures as well as continuities in time, space and movement, and the impacts of these on family, community and society, are essential for an anthropology of the 21st century (Kuchler 1993; Stoller 1995).
In this area of inquiry, the centrality of movement, time and space in anthropology can be explored in a number of contexts and through a range of inquiry-specific concepts. Movement, time and space may be explored as culturally contingent categories, which are imbued with value and give meaning to everyday activities and practices (Basso 1996; Basso and Feld 1996). These categories also have value and give meaning to activities and practices that are, in some way, conceptualized and experienced as extraordinary, and these too can be studied.
In teaching this area of inquiry, the following questions may be useful in framing discussions. How do time and space shape social practice in a particular society? How are time and space produced through social activity, for example, in ritual? How is space constructed to include some persons and exclude others? How do some individuals and groups find ways to resist exclusion from particular times and spaces? How is social movement understood and incorporated into social memory? In what ways can movement or time be understood as forms of resistance? What happens to time and space in a virtual community? This area of inquiry requires a balance between conceptual understandings, which serve as analytical frameworks, and topic based exploration. In approaching the teaching of this area of inquiry, it would be useful to begin with examining how time and space and the movement of people through time and across space (which could also be in spaces of dreaming or other altered states of consciousness) are understood in specific cultures at particular historical moments. Movement, time and space should be explored critically, drawing on both classical and contemporary theoretical work in anthropology.
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