Anthro 1-29 - Lecture notes 3 PDF

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“Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage” ● Author was an anthropologist that worked at Stanford and now works in NYU ○ Worked with his wife in the Philippines for field work; well over 20 years ○ Article written 1 decade after his first publication ● Anthropology is when you reflect on something not when you grab onto something and make a conclusion ○ Over a long period of time, your understanding can develop and may even shift ○ Presence of the observer and the personality of observer shapes the knowledge on the encounter. Illongot is a small society of people that lived in the Philippines. ■ Rage is slowly reduced by chopping / beheading someone in the Illongot. ■ Throw it away afterwards to have some sort of pleasure. ■ Noble Savage - idea that Europeans seeing inferior civilizations, they romanticize about having such natural relations with them. ● Moral relativism = difference between analysis and denunciation ○ One’s verbal expression of their action is denunciation? ■ Consequence of his actions are horror and is tragic ■ Outrage could be a barring; 9/11 = moral outrage. ● US’s actions only proliferated the problem; only denouncing without much knowledge of the problem ○ Cultural relativism = has a stance to understand the event but not denounce moral relativism. ■ Author raises issue; can we condemn these headhunters if we are the ones napalming others? ● Iraqi blockade of medical blimps to try to get the attention of govt, but lead to millions of deaths ○ Some cases of violence seems reprehensible but others like acts of war isn’t. ■ Is it okay if there’s a rational reasoning? Needing oil doesn’t seem worth it if we slaughter millions of civilians ● Why is it that headhunting or ISIS malevolent compared to other acts of terror like bombing Yemen or Japan? ○ Killing people for oil is non-arbitrary; reason is perverse “slaughtering”; dehumanization = headhunting , napalming ○ It is random and arbitrary choice to slaughter, the person had no say or reason in their choice. ■ A pain that he felt led to him understand these actions whereas other anthropologists reflect on the economics. ○ Page 170; “during all those years, i was not able to comprehend the depths of bereavement….” -> reflexivity

○ Page 175 “Position subjective, better than any other… notion of position can enable others to pivot” -> structural positioning ● Reflexivity ○ Detailed disclosure of the terms and conditions of the fieldwork ○ Discussion of interpersonal relationships with informants that led to acquisition of the knowledge reported ○ Self-analysis of author’s motives, agendas and self-doubts. ○ The knowledge presented situated in terms of how the ethnographer collected it. ● Structural positioning ○ We encounter others not just as individuals but from structural relation ○ Structural determinants: economic, age, gender, race, nation, language, etc ○ Structures of power ○ Life experiences ■ Gender structures your relation to another person ■ If you go to Egypt with an average wealth, you will appear wealthy there and are able to meet people of high status; high mobility ● Whereas a person from Egypt is unable to meet, say, the secretary of state in Washington D.C. ○ When you inhabit a relation, these people are already in a relationship, you are able to open up with the relations you already have. (???) ○ Anthropological knowledge is built on structure ● Edward Said argued that the discipline of orientalism, is so grounded on the inequality of power. ○ Its perspective of the middle east was less about the middle east but rather the superiority of the European countries over the middle east ○ Shaped by a certain number of European interests and little of the middle east ○ Structural relation is much more colonial. ■ Author is saying that his own emotional transformation brought by his wife set him to a different perspective; his experience transformed his possibilities of understanding the practice of headhunting. ● Call to pay more attention to emotional life of a field worker and how it contributes to someone’s understanding. ● Think about one has to take in consideration some power that shapes these practices; in this case, we need to understand how grief is taken in this society. ● Symbolic Anthropology ○ 167: “my effort...cultural analysis……..”

○ Leading Exponent: “Clifford Geertz” ■ Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun ○ Definition of culture: “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life. ○ Twitch vs Wink ■ Both involve certain movement in the eye when recorded by a camera ● No distinction ■ One is more physiology, automatic reflex---a twitch. ■ A wink is, in some places, a conspiratory gesture. ● Very different from an automatic gesture in a wink ■ The difference is, when there’s a practice in wink, there’s a cultural code that winks are standing as a conspiratory gesture. ○ Depends on the relation; insulting a friend in front of a stranger. ■ It can be taken different ways; insult, friendly gesture, or to insult a person in front of another ■ One has a description, can describe the cultural codes. Can lead to a kind of anthropology that emphasizes linguistic code, or language that can have different interpretations ( insult or just friendly banter ) ● Led to a flattening of language, codes divorce from the vitality of the moment or experience. ○ Culture is a set of linguistically identifiable codes. ● Emotion as an object of anthropological inquiry. ○ Meaning of Hamlet is not universal. It depends on the cultural practices in the culture its read in. ■ Different of universality of having hands; feature of biological existence. ● Can be used differently or put in different places ○ Emotions are universal. ■ Sometimes such as the urge to behead another person though very very very very uncommon!! ○ Resoto has two overlapping circles ■ Different perspectives on his experience depending on the person put in his shoes. ■ 175: “Human science must explore the...to delinate the passions that eminate to explore human conduct” (needa find full quote) ● Don’t think about the practice in the culture code. ○ It corresponds to aspect that a human live in the loss of a person.

○ Grief is a shard predicament with other people though there are different types of practices ● How is that Americans have little say in the acts of war? ● Emotions ○ Modern view; emotion is private and inner experience that separates thinking ○ RG Collingwood: all expressions have an emotional coloring, even the most dispassionate ■ More common among children and artists; and women too but he shared the sexist views of his time ■ All thoughts and expression; emotional is attitude (rational) ○ Ancient greeks: perception, emotion, action bound more closely; emotions visibly expressed ■ Perception is correlated to emotion. ■ Emotions are physiological and not internal to the Greeks ● Emotion is apart of public expression. Emotion is there for every act and is visibly expressed. ○ Emotion is something internally subjective ■ There is a conceptually difference between thinking and emotion. ● There is an idea that sterilized by emotions ○ Emotions can corrupt the rationality of thoughts. ○ Concept of emotion is birthed in the 1800s. ■ Rationality has an evenness in voice; immobility of the body. ● It all expresses an emotional quality. ● It might be tenuating ● Tone can be related to rational judgment....