On the blank page weve

distributed, please write

Your name
Your Teaching Assistants name
AND
A comment or a question in
response to the Helen Myers
chapter Fieldwork.

 Anthropology:
Anthrop = Greek for man
Logia = Greek for study
If everyone is human, why are there such
vast differences in cultural practices,
kinship systems, religious beliefs, social
organization, values, etc. across groups?

Four fields of anthropology

Physical or biological anthropology
Archaeology
Linguistic anthropology
Cultural anthropology

 Initially, anthropology & ethnomusicology,

a sister discipline of anthropology,
focused on the study of the non-western
Otherthe exotic
These fields grow out of colonialism
They rest on the assumption that nonwestern cultures are different from, but
not inferior to western cultures

anAnth

Some goals of anthropology &

ethnomusicology:
Understanding cultural difference
Translating between cultures
Undermining ethnocentrism
Making the strange familiar

 Anthropologists & ethnomusicologists

are cultural mediators and translators
Currently, any location, western or nonwestern is a potential site of research

Franz Boas (1858-1942) Papa Franz

Franz Boas
Father of American Anthropology
Scholar and administrator, Columbia
University, 1896-1939
Key figure in the professionalization and
institutionalization of anthropology as a
discipline in US universities.
Fought scientific racism through
scholarship

Late 19th c./early 20th c. U.S.

Nativism: Anti-immigrant sentiment,
against Southern & Eastern European
immigrants. Chinese Exclusion Act,
1882
Eugenics Movementimprove the
genetic composition of the human race
through selective breeding; prevent
unfit from breeding

 Racial segregation
Scientific racismused scientific
concepts and methods to substantiate
claims about racial and biological
inheritance.
(anthropometry, biological race)

Boas launches a critique of race in

science
savage vs. civilized
Critiques application of unilineal biological
evolutionary model to culturefrom
primitive/savage to barbaric to civilized

Boas creates a paradigm shift in which

cultural replaces natural/biology as the
key concept for understanding human
difference
The culture concept

An anthropological definition
Culture is a shared and negotiated
system of meaning informed by
knowledge that people learn and put
into practice by interpreting experience
and generating behavior.
---Luke Eric Lassiter, An Invitation to
Anthropology, 2002, p. 40

Characteristics of Culture
(from Lassiter)
Culture is a system of meaning
Culture is an adaptation
Culture is learned
Culture is a process
Culture is dynamic
Culture is shared

Culture is informed by knowledge

Culture is knowledge put into practice
Culture includes beliefs, norms, values,
assumptions, expectations, and plans for
action
No person or group is without or
outside of culture
Culture is messy

To truly understand a culture, you need to

approach it on its own terms, i.e.,
relativistically. This notion of cultural
relativism is key to anthropology and
ethnomusicology

 Now more than ever is the need to sing

about [social change] and to write
songs about it.
---DAngelo, N.Y. Times, June 21, 2015

Music is a form of creative

expression that is also a mode of
expressing, critiquing, confirming,
creating, and contesting categories
of individual and group identity
(e.g., nationality, race/ethnicity,
generation, gender, class).

Ethnomusicologists study the processes

of music-making and the meanings of
these processes through fieldwork

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Malinowski and fieldwork collaborators

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)

Cultural anthropologist & novelist
Harlem Renaissance figure
Mules and Men (1935)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

I was glad when somebody told me, You

may go and collect Negro folklore. In a way
it would not be a new experience for me
From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I had
known about the capers of Brer Rabbit is
apt to cut and what the Squinch Owl says
from the house top. But it was fitting me like
a tight chemise. I couldnt see it for wearing
it.

It was only when I was off in college, away

from my native surroundings, that I could
see myself like somebody else and stand
off and look at my garment. Then I had to
have the spy-glass of Anthropology to
look through at that.
--Zora Neale Hurston,
Mules and Men (1935)

Hurston believed African Americans-especially rural, southern, poor African

Americans, i.e., the folkhad elaborated
a rich, vibrant, and valuable culture that
was distinct from European-American
culture (not a flawed imitation of it) and
equally valid. Her lifes work was to
research & represent this culture.