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Humans have a prodigious ability to create and destroy. The very concept of culture ( big C or little c) is something that we are continuously developing and eliminating. So traditions exist as a process; we continually reshape them even as we celebrate them.
Working as a practicing anthropologist led me down many dark alleyways looking for or trying to develop work. The late eighties found me working as a freelance consultant, and I'd talk to anyone if I thought there was a contract in the offing. As a result, I had some surreal experiences.
If I recall correctly, one anthropological author categorized some 254 definitions of the term culture. I think I read the first dozen or so and stopped.
I was always told that an anthropologist needs to be a good listener. So we note what is said, gather it together with other bits, observe, participate and then analyze. Eventually, you write a dissertation and then go into teaching or applied anthropology.
Of course, having produced so much verbiage over time, the result was an ability to blather about any topic extemporaneously
from where I lived. I taught introductory classes in the subject, and lectures could become dry exercises in textbook repeats except for an open-ended discussion group I ran every week.
Working as a practicing anthropologist meant following threads in people's lives and their community. I worked for about a decade in one community that a historian friend of mine friend described as a "three-generation community." At least three generations of many of the families lived there.
This time of year always takes me back to my first professional job after grad school. I worked in a city near Boston known for its intellectual, cultural, and ethnic diversity. The city library system was enlightened enough to have an anthropologist on staff, me.
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?"
In the field, an anthropologists notebook is a friend. Yes, you may have a recorder and a camera. But there is still something about notes written in a quiet corner that cements your observations.
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