21A.100 END-OF-TERM STUDY QUESTIONS December 2004 1.

It might be said that anthropologists study material things in order to understand social relations among people. Consider what the study of material things, their meanings and their circulation, tells us in the cases we examined. Consider especially bodies, bombs and other machines at Livermore; spears, guns, blood, food, money, and cattle among the Nuer; also possessions, clothes, and furnishings among the subjects of Number Our Days; gifts in pre-modern France and contemporary China. 2. Ritual, as highly patterned and meaningful communicative action, is a human universal. Consider the place of ritual in the Jewish community center (especially the graduation-siyum and the birthday celebration); the Livermore Labs (especially in secrecy and testing); among the Nuer (especially male initiation) and in other examples discussed in lecture and section. In all these cases, what does ritual do? How does it communicate and create meaning? How does it deal with conflicts and contradictions? How does it influence action and/or control people? 3. Be able to identify and write a short paragraph discussing the following terms -the money of shit
-the money of cattle vs. the money of work
-the cattle of money
-segmentary lineage
-matrilineal and patrilineal descent
-nueer
-ghost marriage
-maar
-rites of passage
-the culture of terror
-participant observation
-technocratic and humanistic wings of the educated middle class
-cyborg bodies
-searching for "voices"
-shtetl
-survivor's guilt
-Yiddishkeit
-Benjamin Whorf
-Marcel Mauss
-racial classification
-ethnocentrism
-E.E. Evans-Pritchard
-Franz Boas
-Kula ring

-potlatch
-Bronislaw Malinowski -linguistic determinism -guanxi
-non-market exchange -culture of science
-cattle of the gun
-bloodwealth
-bridewealth

4. Anthropologists have traditionally claimed that they are trying to grasp the native point of view, and that grasping the native point of view is the best defense against ethnocentric judgments. The three ethnographies we read approach the native point of view in different ways. Consider how and to what extent each work accepts the native point of view. Do any of them suggest that the "natives" may be deceived or see only part of the picture? What happens if the natives disagree with the ethnographer? What happens if they disagree with each other or contradict themselves or do things differently in different times or places? What implications does this variation and disagreement have for the culture concept? Does it matter if the anthropologist is inside or outside the group whose culture is under study? Did any of our authors try to get dissident viewpoints? What right do anthropologists have to represent other people and their alleged points of view anyway? 5. What does anthropological study tell us about morality? What does it tell us about what shapes and influences morality? About how morality is kept alive and enforced? About the difficulties of making moral judgments across cultural boundaries? 6. What do our four books tell us about ethnographic study? What do they show us concerning: the essential nature and methods of ethnography; the difficulties of doing fieldwork; the strengths and limitations of ethnography as a source of knowledge; how it differs according to whether the ethnographer studies her own or another society; the moral dilemmas and complexities of studying the people with whom one lives; the difficulties of writing about other people's lives and cultures. 7. Using examples from lectures and readings, explain how "culture" seems to change over time (as in the cases of the Nuer or Livermore labs or the Jewish culture of the Center for example) yet still maintains features that one can still identify as "Nuer," or "Jewish" or Livermorish? In other words, what are some ways anthropologists writing about these groups describe change within cultures? How do change and lack of uniformity bear on the concept of culture? 8. Anthropologists often use the lessons they learn in the field to critique or shed new light on practices or norms within their own societies. Some are more explicit about this than others. Discuss how some of the anthropologists we've read or discussed have done this or made you think differently about aspects of your own society.

9. One of the themes in the ethnographies we have read is identity---how people understand themselves as Nuer, nuclear scientists (or anti-Nike activists), Jewish survivors, men and women. Using examples from the readings, describe some of the different ways that people make sense of their identity or identities and how as individuals or groups they find their identity or attach it to things and places. 10. We began the course with the notion of cultural difference and later returned to this idea by discussing cultural relativism and moral judgments. Using examples from your own experience, lectures, and/or any of the readings, explain why "cultural relativism" and "cultural difference" are keys feature of anthropological understanding. 11. How do ethnographers deal with variation, discrepancies, differences and general mess within cultures or social systems as they try to describe them in terms of patterns, uniformities, and central tendencies? All three of the ethnographers we read bear on this question, especially Meyerhoff (who tried to be sensitive to individual idiosyncrasies as well as gender and class differences) and Hutchinson, (who tried to encompass the Nuer as a whole while paying close attention to regional, age, and gender differences). 12. On the Nuer, you read a lot of Hutchinson and a little Evans-Pritchard; lectures also discussed Evans-Pritchard. Why do you think the two ethnographers differed in their accounts of Nuer culture and society? What differences in their approaches and in the situations they encountered seem to have made the most difference?