lesson 1 notes and stuff culture

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Practice Quiz for Characteristics of Culture No. of Questions= 13 INSTRUCTIONS: To answer a question, click the button in front of your choice. A response will appear in the window below the question to let you know if you are correct. Be sure to read the feedback. It is designed to help you learn the material. You can also learn by reading the feedback for incorrect answers. 1. Which of the following statements is true concerning human evolution? a) The first humans evolved in the cold temperate regions of the world because of the need to develop culture for survival in those areas. b) Culture is necessary for survival in the complex industrialized nations, but it is not in small societies that live by hunting and gathering wild foods. c) Culture is an adaptive mechanism for humans. 2. Compared to what it was before the end of the last ice age (about 10,000 years ago), the rate of human culture change is now _______________ . a) faster b) slower c) about the same 3. Which of the following statements is true? a) The fact that cultural evolution can occur faster than biological evolution has altered the effect of natural selection on humans. b) People are pre-adapted by their genes to acquire particular cultures. c) none of the above 4. All human cultures evolve over time. Which of the following things is most responsible for this? a) culture is an adaptive mechanism b) culture is instinctive c) culture is cumulative 5. Approximately 8,000-10,000 years ago, our ancestors invented agriculture. Which of the following things was a consequence of this development? a) a more controllable and dependable food supply b) the creation of villages, towns, and ultimately cities

c) the emergence of new kinds of political systems. d) all of the above 6. Which of the following is a likely consequence of cultural evolution? a) culture loss b) better health c) greater intelligence d) all of the above 7. Culture change occurs as a result of ________________ . a) diffusion b) invention c) both of the above d) neither of the above 8. Ethnocentrism refers to the fact that _________________ . a) some cultures are actually better than others b) people usually believe that their way of life is superior, and they are somewhat condescending or even hostile toward other cultures c) the technologically simpler societies usually feel that their cultures are inferior 9. When anthropologists study other societies, they need to suspend their own culture-based judgments. What is this kind of approach called? a) cultural relativity b) ethnocentric c) diffusion 10. The Masai people live in ______________ . a) South America b) Australia c) Africa 11. Which of the following statements is true? a) People usually are unconscious of their culture in their daily lives. b) There are always a few people in small-scale societies who know all of their culture. c) In most societies, boys and girls are taught the same things about their culture. 12. Which of the following statements is true?

a) The range of permissible ways of dressing and acting as a man or woman are relatively unlimited in traditional Moslem societies. b) It is likely that there still are some societies existing in total cultural isolation from the outside world. c) Cultures usually allow a range of permissible behavior patterns. 13. The break-up of the former empire of the Soviet Union into largely ethnic based nations is an example of ___________ . a) globalism b) tribalism c) none of the above Characteristics of Culture In order to better understand culture, it is useful to closely examine its characteristics and their ramifications. In this section of the tutorial, you will learn about the specific advantages that culture gives our species. You will also learn about culture's limitations and shortcomings. Culture Is An Adaptive Mechanism The first humans evolved in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa about 2.5 million years ago. Since then, we have successfully occupied all of the major geographic regions of the world, but our bodies have remained essentially those of warm climate animals. We cannot survive outside of the warmer regions of our planet without our cultural knowledge and technology. What made it possible for our ancestors to begin living in temperate and ultimately subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere after half a million years ago was the invention of efficient hunting skills, fire use, and, ultimately, clothing, warm housing, agriculture, and commerce. Culture has been a highly successful adaptive mechanism for our species. It has given us a major selective advantage in the competition for survival with other life forms. Culture has allowed the global human population to grow from less than 10 million people shortly after the end of the last ice age to more than 6.5 billion people today, a mere 10,000 years later. Culture has made us the most dangerous and the most destructive large animal on our planet. It is ironic that despite the power that culture has given us, we are totally dependent on it for survival. We need our cultural skills to stay alive.

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Expanding human geographic range into new environmental zones made possible by the evolution of culture (The ranges during later time periods include those of earlier periods) Over the last several hundred thousand years, we have developed new survival related cultural skills and technologies at a faster rate than natural selection could alter our bodies to adapt to the environmental challenges that confronted us. The fact that cultural evolution can occur faster than biological evolution has significantly modified the effect of natural selection on humans. One consequence of this has been that we have not developed thick fat layers and dense fur coats like polar bears in the cold regions because our culture provided the necessary warmth during winter times. Culture is learned Human infants come into the world with basic drives such as hunger and thirst, but they do not possess instinctive patterns of behavior to satisfy them. Likewise, they are without any cultural knowledge. However, they are genetically predisposed to rapidly learn language and other cultural traits. New born humans are amazing learning machines. Any normal baby can be placed into any family on earth and grow up to learn their culture and accept it as his or her own. Since culture is non-instinctive , we are not genetically programmed to learn a particular one. Successful cultural technology for adapting to very cold winter environments

Every human generation potentially can discover new things and invent better technologies. The new cultural skills and knowledge are added onto what was learned in previous generations. As a result, culture is cumulative . Due to this cumulative effect, most high school students today are now familiar with mathematical insights and solutions that ancient Greeks such as Archimedes and Pythagoras struggled their lives to discover. Cultural evolution is due to the cumulative effect of culture. We now understand that the time between major cultural inventions has become steadily shorter, especially since the invention of agriculture 8,000-10,000 years ago. The progressively larger human population after that time was very likely both a consequence and a cause of accelerating culture growth. The more people there are, the more likely new ideas and information will accumulate. If those ideas result in a larger, more secure food supplies, the population will inevitably grow. In a sense, culture has been the human solution to surviving changing environments, but it has continuously compounded the problem by making it possible for more humans to stay alive. In other words, human cultural evolution can be seen as solving a problem that causes the same problem again and again. The ultimate cost of success of cultural technology has been a need to produce more and more food for more and more people. Parallel Growth of the Human Population and Cultural Technology The invention of agriculture made it possible for our ancestors to have a more controllable and, subsequently, dependable food supply. It also resulted in settling down in permanent communities. This in turn set the stage for further developments in technology and political organization. The inevitable result was more intensive agriculture, new kinds of social and political systems dominated by emerging elite classes, the first cities, and ultimately the industrial and information revolutions of modern times. City life brought with it the unexpected consequence of increased rates of contagious diseases. Large, dense populations of people make it much easier for North American children informally learning the culture of their parents

viruses, bacteria, and other disease causing microorganisms to spread from host to host. As a result, most cities in the past were periodically devastated by epidemics. Agriculture based ancient city (Thebes, Egypt) Modern post-industrial city (New York) The rate of cultural evolution for many human societies during the last two centuries has been unprecedented. Today, major new technologies are invented every few years rather than once or twice a century or even less often, as was the case in the past. Likewise, there has been an astounding increase in the global human population. It is worth reflecting on the fact that there are people alive today who were born before cell phones, computers, televisions, radios, antibiotics, and even airplanes. These now elderly individuals have seen the human population double several times. The world that was familiar to them in their childhood is no longer here. It is as if they have moved to a new alien culture and society. Not surprisingly, they often have difficulty in accepting and adjusting to the change. The psychological distress and confusion that accompanies this has been referred to as future shock . Cultures Change All cultural knowledge does not perpetually accumulate. At the same time that new cultural traits are added, some old ones are lost because they are no longer useful. For example, most city dwellers today do not have or need the skills required for survival in a wilderness. Most would very likely starve to death because they do not know how to acquire wild foods and survive the extremes of weather outdoors. What is more important in modern urban life are such things as the ability to drive a car, use a computer, and understand how to obtain food in a supermarket or restaurant. The regular addition and subtraction of cultural traits results in culture change. All cultures change over time --none is static. However, the rate of change and the aspects of culture that change varies from society to society. For instance, people in Germany today generally seem eager to adopt new words from other languages, especially from American English, while many French people are resistant to it because Tool of modern technology

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of the threat of "corrupting" their own language. However, the French are just as eager as the Germans to adopt new technology. Change can occur as a result of both invention within a society as well as the diffusion of cultural traits from one society to another. Predicting whether a society will adopt new cultural traits or abandon others is complicated by the fact that the various aspects of a culture are closely interwoven into a complex pattern . Changing one trait will have an impact on other traits because they are functionally interconnected. As a result, there commonly is a resistance to major changes. For example, many men in North America and Europe resisted the increase in economic and political opportunities for women over the last century because of the far ranging consequences. It inevitably changed the nature of marriage, the family, and the lives of all men. It also significantly altered the workplace as well as the legal system and the decisions made by governments. People Usually are not Aware of Their Culture The way that we interact and do things in our everyday lives seems "natural" to us. We are unaware of our culture because we are so close to it and know it so well. For most people, it is as if their learned behavior was biologically inherited. It is usually only when they come into contact with people from another culture that they become aware that their patterns of behavior are not universal. The common response in all societies to other cultures is to judge them in terms of the values and customs of their own familiar culture. This is ethnocentrism . Being fond of your own way of life and condescending or even hostile toward other cultures is normal for all people. Alien culture traits are often viewed as being not just different but inferior, less sensible, and even "unnatural." For example, European cultures strongly condemn other societies that practice polygamy and the eating of dogs--behavior that Europeans generally consider to be immoral and offensive. Likewise, many people in conservative Muslim societies, such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, consider European women highly immodest and immoral for going out in public without being chaperoned by a male relative and without their bodies covered from head to toe so as to prevent men from looking at them. Ethnocentrism is not characteristic only of complex modern societies. People in small, relatively isolated societies are also ethnocentric in their views about outsiders. North American woman in a job that formerly would not have been open to women

Our ethnocentrism causes us to be shocked and even disgusted at attitudes about other animals in different cultures. This North American woman considers her dog to be a close friend and essentially a member of her own family. In the Muslim world, dogs are generally considered to be dirty animals that are likely to be kicked if they get in the way. In some areas of Southeast Asia, dogs have multiple functions, including being a source of food for people. Our ethnocentrism can prevent us from understanding and appreciating another culture. When anthropologists study other societies, they need to suspend their own ethnocentric judgments and adopt a cultural relativity approach . That is, they try to learn about and interpret the various aspects of the culture they are studying in reference to that culture rather than to the anthropologist's own culture. This provides an understanding of how such practices as polygamy can function and even support other cultural traditions. Without taking a cultural relativity approach, it would otherwise be difficult, for example, to comprehend why women among the Masai cattle herding people of Kenya might prefer to be one of several co-wives rather than have a monogamous marriage. Masai women Taking a cultural relativity approach is not only useful for anthropologists. It is a very useful tool for diplomats, businessmen, doctors, and any one else who needs to interact with people from other societies and even other subcultures within their own society. However, it can be emotionally difficult and uncomfortable at first to suspend one's own cultural values in these situations. From an objective perspective, it can be seen that ethnocentrism has both positive and negative values for a society. The negative potential is obvious. Ethnocentrism results in prejudices about people from other cultures and the rejection of their "alien ways." When there is contact with people from other cultures, ethnocentrism can prevent open

communication and result in misunderstanding and mistrust. This would be highly counterproductive for businessmen trying to negotiate a trade deal or even just neighbors trying to get along with each other. The positive aspect of ethnocentrism has to do with the protection that it can provide for a culture. By causing a rejection of the foods, customs, and perceptions of people in other cultures, it acts as a conservative force in preserving traditions of one's own culture. It can help maintain the separation and uniqueness of cultures. We Do Not Know All of Our Own Culture No one knows everything about his or her own culture. In all societies, there are bodies of specialized cultural knowledge that are gender specific--they are known to men but not women or vice versa. In many societies there are also bodies of knowledge that are limited largely to particular social classes, occupations, religious groups, or other special purpose associations. Gender based skills, knowledge, and perceptions largely stem from the fact that boys and girls to some extent are treated differently from each other in all societies. While there may be considerable overlap in what they are taught, there are some things that are gender specific. In the Western World, for instance, it is more common to teach boys about the skills of combat and how machines work. Girls are more often exposed to the subtleties of social interaction and the use of clothing and makeup to communicate intentions. Not surprisingly, men are more likely to know how to fix their car or computer, while women generally are better at predicting the outcome of social interaction and make finer distinctions in fabric and color terms. You can test your own gender related cultural knowledge with the following pictures of relatively common items from North America: What are the intended functions of these objects? Click the button to see if you are correct.

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How would you describe the cloth pattern of the material used in this woman's skirt? Click the button to see if you are correct. Do you think that this woman is wearing makeup? If so, what kinds of makeup is she using? Look closely and take your time. Click the button to see if you are correct. There are many professions in large-scale societies. Each one usually has its own terminology and specialized tools. Lawyers, medical doctors, soldiers, and other specialists use numerous technical terms in their professions. To make it even more obscure for outsiders, these professionals often use abbreviations to refer to their technical terms. For instance, orthopedic surgeons commonly refer to a particular kind of knee operation as ACL surgery. ACL stands for anterior cruciate ligament. Most people outside of the medical fields who have not had this surgery are unlikely to know where this ligament is and what it does, let alone know what the abbreviation means. You can test your knowledge of another common profession in North America with the following picture:

Who is most likely to use this tool? What is its function? Click the button to see if you are correct. Culture Gives Us a Range of Permissible Behavior Patterns Cultures commonly allow a range of ways in which men can be men and women can be women. Culture also tells us how different activities should be conducted, such as how one should act as a husband, wife, parent, child, etc. These rules of permissible behavior are usually flexible to a degree--there are some alternatives rather than hard rules. In North America, for instance, culture tells us how we should dress based on our gender, but it allows us to dress in different ways in different situations in order to communicate varied messages and statuses. The clothing patterns of women in this society can be particularly rich and complex. Their clothing can be intentionally business-like, recreational, as well as sexually attractive, ambiguous, neutral, or even repulsive. North American women are generally more knowledgeable than men about the subtleties of using clothing and other adornment to communicate their intentions. The wide range of permissible ways of being a woman in North America today makes women somewhat unpredictable as individuals when others are trying to understand their intentions but do not fully comprehend the cultural patterns. It is particularly hard for men from other cultures to comprehend the subtle nuances. This at times can result in awkward or even dangerous situations. For instance, the easy friendliness and casual, somewhat revealing dress of young North American women in the summertime is sometimes interpreted by traditional Latin American and Middle Eastern men as a sexual invitation. What messages do the clothes and body language of the women in the pictures below communicate to you? How do you think they might be interpreted by members of the opposite gender and by people in other cultures? Do you think that the age of the observer might play a part in their interpretation?

The range of permissible ways of dressing and acting as a man or woman are often very limited in strictly fundamental Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu societies. In Afghanistan under the Taliban rule during the late 1990's, men were expected to wear traditional male clothing and were beaten or jailed by morality police for not having a full beard, playing or listening to music, or allowing female family members to go out in public unchaperoned. Women were similarly punished for being in public without wearing a plain loose outer gown that covered their face and entire body including their feet. They also were not allowed to go to school or to work outside of the home. To the surprise of Europeans and North Americans, many of these conservative cultural patterns did not disappear with the end of Taliban control. They are deeply ingrained in the Islamic tradition of Afghanistan and in the more conservative nations of the Middle East. Conservative Muslim women in the Middle East. They are fully covered for modesty in public and are being escorted by a male relative (Note: women in some predominantly Muslim countries lead lives that are much less constrained by tradition.) Cultures No Longer Exist in Isolation It is highly unlikely that there are any societies still existing in total isolation from the outside world. Even small, out of the way tribal societies are now being Australian Aborigine wearing European style clothes

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integrated to some extent into the global economy. That was not the case a few short generations ago. Some of the societies in the Highlands of New Guinea were unaware of anyone beyond their homeland until the arrival of European Australian miners in the 1930's. A few of the Indian tribes in the Upper Amazon Basin of South America remained unaware of the outside world until explorers entered their territories in the 1950's and 1960's. Members of these same New Guinean and Amazonian societies today buy clothes and household items produced by multinational corporations. They are developing a growing knowledge of other cultures through schools, radios, and even televisions and the Internet. As a result of this inevitable process, their languages and indigenous cultural patterns are being rapidly replaced. Virtually all societies are now acquiring cultural traits from the economically dominant societies of the world. The most influential of these dominant societies today are predominantly in North America and Western Europe. However, even these societies are rapidly adopting words, foods, and other cultural traits from all over the world. Wade Davis: Dreams from endangered cultures --National Geographic anthropologist describes some of the indigenous cultures being lost in our time . This link takes you to an external website. To return here, you must click the "back" button on your browser program. (length = 22 mins, 5 secs) The emergence of what is essentially a shared global culture is not likely to result in the current major cultures disappearing in the immediate future the same way many of the small indigenous ones have. Language differences and ethnocentrism will very likely prevent that from happening. There are powerful conflicting trends in the world today. At the same time that many people are actively embracing globalism , others are reviving tribalism . The break-up of the former empire of the Soviet Union into largely ethnic based nations is an example of the latter. Likewise, some of the nations in Africa whose boundaries were arbitrarily created by Europeans during the colonial era are now experiencing periodic tribal wars that may result in the creation of more ethnically based countries.

Lesson 2 Notes Here's something to consider: In 1992 72% of the world's population consisted of Non-Western people, that is people whose culture and society are not primarily derived or influenced by European traditions. Non-Western is not an ideal term, but it is useful enough for now. Non-Western does not refer to genetic ancestry or even degree of economic development, but to cultural history. Traditionally anthropologists have primarily focused on Non- Western groups in small-scale economic systems, but that has changed somewhat in recent decades. The projection is that the world will be 85% Non-Westerners by 2025. Future solutions to global problems depend on understanding Non- Westerners. That's where Applied Anthropology becomes necessary. Applied Anthropology is the use (application) of anthropological data, perspectives, theory and methods to identify, assess and (hopefully) solve human problems. Applied anthropologists are also known as a "cultural brokers" because they are mediators. Major Areas of Applied Anthro: 1. Business Anthropology 2. (International) Development Anthropology

3. Urban Anthropology 4. Medical Anthropology For this course we’re primarily concerned with development anthropology and medical anthropology. But it’s worth knowing something about the whole field of applied anthropology. Before the 1970's all Anthropologists worked in universities and museums. Now professional anthropologists work for a variety of employers including: tribal and ethnic organizations, governments , NGOs --non- governmental organizations (Greenpeace, Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, United Way, Planned Parenthood). Recently, many corporations are hiring ethnographers for work in one growing area of applied anthropology: 1. Business/Industrial Anthropology Marketing Research Cultural Anthropologists are professional observers of human behavior. Today anthropologists are helping firms gain deeper insights about their customers through observations. 1. Anthropologists invented Go-gurt as part of a breakfast study What They Learned About Families & Breakfast 1. Breakfast in today’s American homes has changed as Moms enter the work force. 2. There is no time for breakfast. People are eating on the go. 3. Dads go grocery shopping nowadays. 4. Kids aren't always hungry at 6:30 a.m. Biology is not cooperating with this new mobile culture. 5. A banana is a nutritious, portable breakfast everyone is eating in the morning! But bananas squish and get bruised before people eat them. 6. Moms, dads, and relatives all share the belief that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but they differ about what a "good" breakfast is: A successful new food in this market, had to meet the needs of all of these family members: Mom: whole grain and preservative-free food Dad: less nutritional “comfort foods” that they enjoy treating the kids to. Kids: Fun or sweet foods such as cereal

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Anthropologists realized that there was opportunity for a company to create a breakfast food that was 1. mobile - not just about what to eat, but about timing. 2. appealed to Moms, Dads and Kids - a breakfast food that is healthy, easily portable and fun. 3. There was a need for something banana-like (healthy, portable, disposable, and fun to eat) that doesn't squish as easily. Solution !GO-GURT! a. Microsoft employs a large team of ethnographers to observe people at home, at work, on business trips, etc. to see how/when/for what they use computers, what problems with existing software are, to find new useful areas for programming. Company Relations And Efficiency Here, anthropologists work as ethnographers within companies. They study corporate or company culture. Each company or workplace has a culture or set of attitudes of its own. Sometimes companies set standards that are followed by the whole company.

Some are sticklers about stuff like time clocks, dress, language, etc. Some companies promote a team approach between their workers, some set up competition between the workers. Some companies have different standards for labor and management. Industrial Anthropologits look at how a company's culture works for or against them. How is a business functioning from the ground up? Anthropologists help businesses because (1) they are educated people so they can mix with business management, but (2) they are professional observers and chameleons so they can mix well with labor and lower management. The traditional approach to business relations is to ask bosses (foremen, managers) how their employees are doing. The problem with this approach is that everybody tries to hide problem from their boss, so bosses aren't too clued-in. Anthropologists (1) guarantee anonymity to the people they are working with so they don't have to fear for their job, and (2) spend time hanging out with the workers they study. Much of the anthropological approach is concerned with finding out about the regular folks , whether they are tribesmen, rural people, urban people, or employees of a company. While company executives tend to go to their managers, anthropologists are concerned with what do the little guys think? The same principal applies with anthropological work in development. 1. Development Anthropology Often works with National, State, Local governments and NGOs, such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Development Anthropologists are more likely to focus on local, grass-roots perspectives than to work with high-level officials. Again, the focus is often at the level of a community. Such research asks what are the local patterns of behavior and thinking that may be relevant to development. Vicos Project was one of the most famous development anthropology projects. It dealt with Peru's Hacienda system . A hacienda is kind of like an estate with two kinds of people: patrón & peon

Land was owned by the state (originally Spain, lately Peruvian government). Patron's , who are relatively rich, rent the land from the state and thus control all land, people, animals, and products on that land. Cornell University rented a Hacienda called Vicos , and made an anthropologist the official patrón . The anthropologists goals were to bring the decision-making bodies of the Vicos community up to a level of competence at which patrones could be dispensed with and the community could self-govern. This anthropologist started teaching 3 things: (1) reading; (2) basic math; and (3) crop techniques. The Vicos project operated democratically and cooperatively with people who shared in the work and the profits from crop production. They organized a system of delegates elected from various zones of the hacienda. With their own money, they started the most modern school in the region. They began a clinic, where there had been none. In 5 years they had increased the production of each hectare by 5 times (from $100/hectare to $400-600/hectare). Eventually the peasants bought their own land. (Note that "peasant" is a technical term in anthropology and not an insult.) A Virtual Tour of Vicos (Links to an external site.) 1. Urban Anthropology Urban vs. Rural Worldwide, people are moving to urban centers. In developing countries rural and tribal people are becoming acculturated. They are also sometimes forced to out of their homelands and into areas where they can't earn a

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living the traditional way. People go to cities to look for work because they can't earn a living where they are. When they get to the cities, there is a glut of unskilled labor. So they live in shanties around the city in hopes that something will turn up. 4. Medical Anthropology , the largest, fastest growing of the applied anthropologies. Broadly speaking medical anthropologist ask two kinds of questions: 1. What happens to make people sick? 2. What do people do after they get sick? Answering the first question mostly consists of Anthropological Epidemiology—the study of how diseases spread and the risk factors for becoming sick. Both biological and cultural anthropologists do anthropological epidemiology. Answering the second question requires studies of ethnomedicine and “medical pluralism” – these two areas examine how people think about illness and who do they go to for treatment. Medical anthropology can be really important in international development, and we have a whole lesson specifically devoted to it later. Lesson 3 Notes Anthropologists by the nature of their research often find themselves in ethically unfamiliar situations. Over years the discipline has developed set of ethical principles to guide the behavior of anthropologists in the field. This lesson reviews those principles.

Anthropologists often find themselves in complex unfamiliar situations. Evaluating the ethics of such situations can sometimes be really difficult. There are strange power relationships between an anthropologist and the people they observe. For example, though of average or even below average income for U.S. society, an anthropologist usually is one of the wealthiest residents in the communities he/she studies in a developing nation. That means an anthropologist sometimes has remarkable power that he/she might not understand. Similarly anthropologists work in developing nations must have the support of the local government and affiliation with some local institution. That can give the anthropologist the appearance of “official” status that can be intimidating for relatively powerless locals. For example, one anthropologist recounts their experience working on a small Caribbean Island: "[In this Caribbean community] I have raised funds for small-scale community development projects, and I have official affiliation with several government ministries. The money that my colleagues and I bring into the community for development is small by U.S. standards, but is a greater sum than the local government provides the community for development projects in most years. Over the last few years I’ve had a series of relatively minor

but annoying problems with the clerk of the village council. The clerk is the daughter the village council chairman. That clerk also has been spreading nasty rumors about one of my good friends in the village. On several occasions I’ve been really tempted to call the Ministry of Community Development (which oversees the village council) and request that the clerk be replaced. And she probably would be if I did so. That’s not the kind of power I have here in the U.S. and it is very tempting. But it’s not my place to use my external power to influence the village council. I think that would be an abuse of power and a breach of anthropological ethics " As you read through the AAA guidelines and case studies, try to imagine putting yourself in these kinds of situations. The point here is to consider your first "gut" reaction, then challenge the assumptions that you used (perhaps unconsciously) in drawing your initial conclusion. You can challenge your own assumptions by simply "trying" on some different assumptions. For example, your first reaction to some of the cases regarding interactions with law enforcement might be "always cooperate with the police" but in many places one cannot trust the police. So what would your conclusion be if you assumed that the police were not trustworthy? What evidence would you need to question whether the local police are trustworthy or not? If you couldn't be sure either way, then what would you do? There are no universal absolutes in approaching these cases, and I'm certainly not telling you whether you should trust the police or not, for example. For most of the cases there are no right or wrong answers, but there are responses that are much more thoughtful than others. This exercise is not about your personal opinion or personal ethical standards. It is about thinking through various decisions that may have very important consequences for yourself and others. Example for Discussion of Case 1: To Medicate or Not to Medicate (There is no discussion board for this case as I have discussed it in some detail below.) "Terry Kelly received a National Institute of Mental Health grant for research in the Western Tropics. As part of her personal gear, she took along a considerable amount of medication, which her physician had prescribed for use, should Kelly find herself in an active malaria region. Later, after settling into a village, Kelly became aware that many of the local people were quite ill with malaria. Kelly's Dilemma: Since she had such a large supply of medication, much more than she needed for her personal use, should she distribute the surplus to her hosts?" Kelly decided to not share the medication, and that was the wrong decision. Unlike the other ethical vignettes in this lesson that are not clear cut, the malaria meds case resolves with a simple risk-benefit analysis. The risk of death from malaria is significantly higher than the of risk death from

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malaria meds. The anthropologist has extra malaria meds, therefore the anthropologist should share. However, thinking this though involves a kind of logical booby trap imposed by American cultural norms. What makes it an ethical booby trap is that students lack familiarity with malaria meds and they approach the dilemma from the perspective of an American cultural model or norm for prescription drugs. In America, the rule is this: If you don’t know about a drug, don’t take it without a doctor’s orders, and definitely do not give it to other people. If we adjust the scenario to include a medicine familiar to Americans, then the conclusions change like this: An anthropologist visits a remote community that suffers from a potentially deadly illness that is easily treated with one Tylenol tablet per day for three days. The locals know that one Tylenol tablet per day for three days cures the disease. The anthropologist has lots of Tylenol. Should the anthropologist share her Tylenol with the locals? Of course she should. In many places where malaria is endemic, an adolescent could tell you it’s clinical signs, and how to obtain and use the appropriate medication for it. The problem is that the supply is limited by logistics, infrastructure, and lack of cash. Malaria control officials often distribute malaria meds in large quantities to people intending to visit remote communities. (In fact, a malaria control official in Venezuela gave me a huge supply of malaria meds -- thousands of doses -- before I set up camp in a remote community of Carib Indians who had no health care available for many miles.) In fact, I suspect Kelly’s source for extra malaria meds was either a public health official or a trained pharmacist aware of Kelly’s intention to set up research in a remote community. But we can mess with the scenario like this: An anthropologist visits a remote community and brings a large supply of anti-depressants, more than one person might use for the time intended for fieldwork. The local people have never heard of anti-depressants. However, the anthropologist recognizes the signs of depression in some people in the community. Should the anthropologist share the extra anti-depressants? Probably not, but why not? Here’s another tweak to the scenario: An anthropologist goes to a remote community and brings a large supply of oxytetracyline (OTC), an antibiotic for use in livestock. OCT improves livestock survival and, hence, stabilizes food supplies for poor people. The local people know how to use OTC for livestock, they want to use it, and they can and do legally purchase OTC for livestock when they have enough cash. However, they sometimes struggle with estimating dosage (either overdosing or under-dosing livestock), and many people sometimes eat meat or milk from animals that have been recently treating with OTC, even though local certified veterinarians caution them not to. Should the anthropologist share OTC with the locals? Some students make an argument like this for the malaria meds case: The anthropologist will only be there a relatively short time (maybe one year), and malaria will certainly persist after the anthropologist leaves. Therefore,

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the anthropologist should not share the meds because it is only a temporary solution. There is something wrong with this argument. What’s wrong with this argument? Other students sometimes argue that it is wrong to intervene at all. What are the assumptions that lead to that conclusion? Anthropologists do a lot of work in public health, conservation, agriculture, local government, business etc. That work mostly has to do with thinking about changes that improve outcomes depending on how outcomes might be defined. Helping to define desirable outcomes locally is a big part of the job, and it requires clear understanding of what the local people think a desirable outcome would be.

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lesson 1 notes and stuff culture

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