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Anthropology; Part 2

Anthropology is the study of Culture. Everyone grows up in a culture.  One doesn’t appreciate the various cultural biases as ‘everyone’ in your district/country does pretty much what you do, how you do it.

As ‘everybody’ eats this or wears that, or practices this, you think this is ‘Universal’. It isn’t. Everything from what you do with a dead body, to the preparation of food, to how way one speaks to another is culturally determined.

There is no one exact right and no exact wrong. It depends on the culture and what their historical knowledge consists of.

The most ‘primitive’ people did not die in the 2004 tsunami; they knew when the sea pulls back it’s going to come in very far very fast, so they raced to higher ground. Modern people, watched. And died.

When you are in the field, studying another culture,  make no value judgement on what the people you are about to study do or don’t do. They know their environment. They’ve survived in it for quite sometime. It may seem dumb or wrong to you, but they may very well have a reason for it which, if you live with them long enough will find out why.

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Written by jaylar

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