Investigating Culture (eBook)

Carol Delaney is Associate Professor Emerita of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. She is author of The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society (1991), Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth (1998), and Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem (2011). Deborah Kaspin is an Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College and has also taught at Yale University, the University of Virginia, and Wheaton College. She is editor of Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (2002) with Paul Landau.

Investigating Culture: An Experiential Introduction to Anthropology 3
Contents 9
Acknowledgments 13
CHAPTER 1 Disorientation and Orientation 17
Disorientation and Orientation 19
Introduction 19
Disorientation 21
Orientation 22
What Is Anthropology? 24
Nature and Culture 25
Culture 27
Social and Cultural Anthropology 29
Culture and Power 31
Subculture and Boundless Culture 33
The Personal Is Political 34
Investigating 35
Fieldwork and Ethnography 37
Orientation to the Book 38
Notes 39
References 41
Further Reading 42
CHAPTER 2 Spatial Locations 49
Spatial Locations 51
Maps 52
Cosmology 55
Nations and Regions 56
Contested Territories 58
City Spaces 61
Urban designs 61
City parks 63
State and national parks 64
Commercial places 65
Restricted Spaces 66
Work spaces 66
Houses 67
Turkish homes 67
American homes 72
Good fences make good neighbors 75
Invisible Spaces 77
Invisible people 77
Cyberspace: the space that is no place 78
Notes 80
References 82
Further Reading 83
CHAPTER 3 All We Have Is Time 95
All We Have Is Time 97
Cosmological Time 98
Relativity of time 99
Time before clocks 101
Time’s beginning and end 102
Calendars 103
Calendar changes 105
The week 106
Lived Time 111
Lifetimes 112
Work versus leisure 116
Notes 125
References 125
Further Reading 127
CHAPTER 4 Language: We Are What We Speak 129
Language: We Are What We Speak 131
Theories of Language 134
Language is a symbolic system 134
Communication versus language 136
Orality versus literacy 138
Writing 139
Language, culture, and reality 142
Metaphor 144
Language in Use 148
Language and gender 148
Language and race 152
Language and class 156
Turkish 158
Notes 160
References 161
Further Reading 163
CHAPTER 5 Relatives and Relations 171
Relatives and Relations 173
Courtship 173
What is a date? 174
Couples 178
Greeting and leave taking 179
Marriage 180
Divorce 183
Family 186
Kinship: Relatives and Relations 187
Lewis Henry Morgan 188
Nature, Culture, and Folk Biology 193
New forms of kinship and kinship studies 194
Friends 195
In Praise of Manners 197
Parents’ responsibilities 197
Ms. Manners, Ann Landers, and so on 199
Turkish social relations 199
Notes 200
References 202
Further Reading 203
CHAPTER 6 Our Bodies, Our Selves 209
Our Bodies, Our Selves 211
Body Experience 212
Body Image 213
Male Bodies 218
Body Modifications 222
Tattooing and scarification 222
Body piercing 225
Circumcision 225
Female genital cutting 226
Castration 228
Sex change 228
Techniques of the Body 229
Body Orientation 231
The Social Body 232
Body and Nation 234
Rights in our bodies and rights to our bodies 235
Traffic in Body Parts 237
Dead and Dying Bodies 239
Immortality and Cryonics 241
Notes 242
References 243
Further Reading 245
CHAPTER 7 Food for Thought 255
Food for Thought 257
Introduction 257
We Are What We Eat 258
What Is Food? 262
Classification systems 264
British animals 267
American logic 268
What Makes a Meal? 269
Setting the table 270
Menu 273
Main meal 277
Of Meat and Men 278
Food and Worldview 280
Fast food 282
Anomalous Foods: Betwixt and Between 286
Frankenfood 286
Farmers’ markets 288
Cookbooks and cooking 290
Notes 292
References 293
Further Reading 294
CHAPTER 8 Clothing Matters 305
Clothing Matters 307
Modesty or Protection? 308
Distinctions 310
Gender and Clothes 314
Cross-dressing 315
Fashion 320
Subcultural Style 323
Politics of Clothes 326
Gandhi 326
Turkish headgear 327
State rules 331
Uniforms 333
Cultural constraint 336
Political Economy of Clothing 342
Globalization of the Clothing Industry 344
Notes 345
References 347
Further Reading 348
CHAPTER 9 VIPs: Very Important People, Places, and Performances 357
VIPs: Very Important People, Places, and Performances 359
A Place 363
A Ritual Performance 365
British tea 365
Turkish tea 367
Sports 369
The Olympics 372
The Beatles 377
Princess Diana: She Did Not Live Happily Ever After 380
Blood and Nation 383
The Statue of Liberty 384
Concluding Section: Pilgrimage, Myth, and Religion 387
Pilgrimage 387
Myth 390
Religion 392
Notes 396
References 398
Further Reading 400
Index 413
EULA 427