Although I was an anthropologist, few of the people I met knew what I did once I left the university. If I mentioned that I studied culture, I’d get a knowing wink and this reply, “Yes. But with a big C or a little c?” Others made veiled jokes about the sort of work I did. And asked me where my pith helmet was. I guess one woman who had taken a survey course in anthropology asked, “Who are your people? Where in Africa did you go?”
When I replied that she and others like her “were my People.” That I studied American culture. She looked distraught, put her arms akimbo, and stated that she did not require study. Then, off she walked, highly insulted.
I’ve run into this sort of “Colonial” attitude towards anthropology, not from my peers in the field but the well-educated, well-to-do layperson. It’s OK if I am studying Native- Americans, Hispanics, or other groups within our nation, but not them. The intimate details of other people’s culture are open to voyeuristic examination, but not how they behave at work or play. I find this amusing because neither the coastal community nor the urban ethnic communities I worked in seemed to mind. One Saints society I studied possessively claims me as “their anthropologist,” a sort of role reversal of the “my People” trope.
I see it as an elite sort of thing. Everything is fair game for examination. But not the Country Club, the concept of “legacy” university admissions, or the kind of privilege that opens doors to political and economic positions. As Deep Throat might have said, “Follow the influence.”
The patterns of privilege and power in our society may be one of the best areas for future doctoral dissertations. But these days, I’d barely have to go too much farther than the pages of the Washington Post, New York Times, or the cable networks to see the bones of privileged patterns laid bare for examination. It’d hardly be research, would it?
Discover more from Louis N. Carreras, Woodcarver
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I can see that. “Culture” applies to minorities, “not us!” I never took a good look at my own culture until I left it when we joined a largely Dutch/Russian Mennonite church congregation. Then I realized a person can be born and raised in the same country, live and look the same, yet have a different set of values infused from your culture. Reading Hillbilly Elegy now, I see the same contrast of cultural values.
One size definitely does not fit all.
Too true.
I love this. I have been studying the culture here since I moved here 9 years ago, it’s biases, expectations, all of that. Since I came here from California, a lot of them had their minds made up that I wouldn’t stay and I would look down on them. Humans…
its not it’s. My pinky just goes automatically for that little punctuation mark.
I’ve known places in Maine where you are not taken seriously was a resident until you have successfully spent an entire winter on the island.
I think there are a lot of places like that. The little town where I lived in the mountains east of San Diego was even like that. And THIS place? It’s full of people whose great achievement in life is being the third or fourth generation of white people (indigenous and Hispanic are a lot more open, in general) to live in this valley and never leave. I guess everyone needs to have a little something to hold onto.
Your last sentence was phrased very tactfully. It might not be what you or I value, but it is what they value.