De-exoticizing the Design of Anthropology
May 3, 2016 11:45 AM Subscribe
A friend of mine pointed out how all anthropology textbooks have these "exotic" images of others on the covers and never an image of "white women eating salad". Me, being Dr. Smarty Pants, said, "Wouldn't it be great to replace those exotica images with those of middle class American/Australian Caucasians doing stuff, maybe even using stock photos?" Anthropologist Dori Tunstall and her students de-exoticize Anthropology.
There's only so much you can do as long as Anthropology is separated from Sociology.
posted by LogicalDash at 11:51 AM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by LogicalDash at 11:51 AM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
There's only so much you can do as long as Anthropology is separated from Sociology.
An anthropology grad student I worked with in my college library was once asked how to tell if a book was anthropology or sociology, "Look at the cover" he said "if it looks like what's inside is boring numbers, that's sociology. If it looks like what's inside is gossip and cool stories, that's anthropology."
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:57 AM on May 3, 2016 [21 favorites]
An anthropology grad student I worked with in my college library was once asked how to tell if a book was anthropology or sociology, "Look at the cover" he said "if it looks like what's inside is boring numbers, that's sociology. If it looks like what's inside is gossip and cool stories, that's anthropology."
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:57 AM on May 3, 2016 [21 favorites]
Side Note: I would also like to see the article De-exoticizing the Design of Anthropologie. Although they already use a lot of pictures of white people...
posted by maryr at 11:58 AM on May 3, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by maryr at 11:58 AM on May 3, 2016 [7 favorites]
Love this. Although as one of the comments on the blog post notes, it would be better if they used more images of white men instead of mostly-naked white women on the covers... Let's exoticize the default Westerner!
posted by suelac at 12:01 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by suelac at 12:01 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Anthropology and sociology are two different fields with two different perspectives on the human species. I'm not sure that sociologists would frame what they do as studying the human species; I think they're just studying humans.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:03 PM on May 3, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by ChuraChura at 12:03 PM on May 3, 2016 [6 favorites]
I like Ian Duncan's way of teaching it, myself.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:09 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Navelgazer at 12:09 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
There is a classic question that professors ask their students in sociology lectures: look around and tell me what you see. Most students see other students, they see seats, and a hall, the teacher, and the lecture slides. Few see the relationships of teacher-taught, men-women, rich-poor, or the structure of a university, a city, a state, a technological civilisation, or a whole range of things so vast and complex and so normal.
Sociology often uses images of 'other' cultures, as well as bucket loads of examples (anthropology must be even more into this), because it is the easiest way to get undergrads to question and to think. It would be great if they could socio-analyse their own culture straight out the box, but that's not going to happen. Usually it takes a while--if they get it at all--for students to get rid of assumptions and baggage they never knew they had.
A picture of a bare breasted woman walking about like it is no big deal is an easy way to get teens to realise that their conceptions of body and clothing aren't universal. Hopefully they will come to respect that woman and her culture, even though her image is first presented in a very othered way.
posted by Emma May Smith at 12:33 PM on May 3, 2016 [19 favorites]
Sociology often uses images of 'other' cultures, as well as bucket loads of examples (anthropology must be even more into this), because it is the easiest way to get undergrads to question and to think. It would be great if they could socio-analyse their own culture straight out the box, but that's not going to happen. Usually it takes a while--if they get it at all--for students to get rid of assumptions and baggage they never knew they had.
A picture of a bare breasted woman walking about like it is no big deal is an easy way to get teens to realise that their conceptions of body and clothing aren't universal. Hopefully they will come to respect that woman and her culture, even though her image is first presented in a very othered way.
posted by Emma May Smith at 12:33 PM on May 3, 2016 [19 favorites]
First, so much social science that we engage with is conducted on western, industrialized populations - especially fields like economics, psychology, sociology - that the focus of cultural anthropology on "others" really is pretty unique. Of course, most people in the world are NOT living in Western, industrialized societies, but we still make generalizations about how people in general behave, based on research on just a small subset of human diversity. So, in that respect, though a lot of cultural anthropology does focus on people that most undergraduates would see as exotic, it provides a balance to other social science that does most of its research on those same undergraduate populations.
Second, there are a lot of cultural anthropologists working on very familiar populations. In my department, there is a professor working on the way pastoralists in Cameroon deal with hydrology - and he has a student looking at the way cattle ranchers in Montana deal with the same kinds of water issues. A professor is looking at the way Amazonian small-scale farmers conceive of global climate change, but just got a grant to look at the way farmers in Ohio think about climate change. There is a professor who looks at drug use in border spaces on the Kenyan-Ugandan border, and also the Mexican-US border. A grad student just defended his dissertation on migration and basketball in Latino boys. There's another grad student looking at barriers to prenatal health for pregnant women and their fetuses living in inner-city Columbus. I think it's really easy to see anthropology as a discipline frozen in the 1930s, but that's not actually a very accurate picture of what the discipline looks like today (And, of course, there are the archaeologists and the biological anthropologists, but we'll just ignore them for the moment).
I taught Introduction to Cultural Anthropology last fall, and one of the main points I tried to illustrate for my students is the fact that all behavior is cultural, and that behavior and choices and life is as culturally situated for them as it is for Masai and Yanomamo teenagers. I had my students observe social norms in a few different contexts around campus ("the library," "the dining hall," "the gym," "the quad," etc.), and then conduct interviews with other students about those social norms. Their culminating project was that they had to use their observations and interviews to put together a "How To" guide for an invading army of Alien Bodysnatchers who were trying to fit in as normal OSU students. And, they got it. There are things that they do unconsciously which, to people (or aliens) who haven't been enculturated in the same way, are weird and different.
I think this is a totally valuable project, and gets across that same point very well, but I think that it's something that anthropologists are already very much aware of.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:51 PM on May 3, 2016 [30 favorites]
Second, there are a lot of cultural anthropologists working on very familiar populations. In my department, there is a professor working on the way pastoralists in Cameroon deal with hydrology - and he has a student looking at the way cattle ranchers in Montana deal with the same kinds of water issues. A professor is looking at the way Amazonian small-scale farmers conceive of global climate change, but just got a grant to look at the way farmers in Ohio think about climate change. There is a professor who looks at drug use in border spaces on the Kenyan-Ugandan border, and also the Mexican-US border. A grad student just defended his dissertation on migration and basketball in Latino boys. There's another grad student looking at barriers to prenatal health for pregnant women and their fetuses living in inner-city Columbus. I think it's really easy to see anthropology as a discipline frozen in the 1930s, but that's not actually a very accurate picture of what the discipline looks like today (And, of course, there are the archaeologists and the biological anthropologists, but we'll just ignore them for the moment).
I taught Introduction to Cultural Anthropology last fall, and one of the main points I tried to illustrate for my students is the fact that all behavior is cultural, and that behavior and choices and life is as culturally situated for them as it is for Masai and Yanomamo teenagers. I had my students observe social norms in a few different contexts around campus ("the library," "the dining hall," "the gym," "the quad," etc.), and then conduct interviews with other students about those social norms. Their culminating project was that they had to use their observations and interviews to put together a "How To" guide for an invading army of Alien Bodysnatchers who were trying to fit in as normal OSU students. And, they got it. There are things that they do unconsciously which, to people (or aliens) who haven't been enculturated in the same way, are weird and different.
I think this is a totally valuable project, and gets across that same point very well, but I think that it's something that anthropologists are already very much aware of.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:51 PM on May 3, 2016 [30 favorites]
most people in the world are NOT living in Western, industrialized societies
Yeah, that's my problem with this approach. If you just chose someone at random from all living people to put on the cover, you'd get covers that look much more like the "before" than the "after" photos.
Calling those photos "exotic" that are much more representative of humanity than the "de-exotic" ones seems like part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
posted by straight at 12:59 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, that's my problem with this approach. If you just chose someone at random from all living people to put on the cover, you'd get covers that look much more like the "before" than the "after" photos.
Calling those photos "exotic" that are much more representative of humanity than the "de-exotic" ones seems like part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
posted by straight at 12:59 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Not to sound too dense, but doesn't this reflect more the way that textbook publishers market their products than the way that the field of anthropology actually functions?
posted by Peter J. Prufrock at 1:03 PM on May 3, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by Peter J. Prufrock at 1:03 PM on May 3, 2016 [10 favorites]
Dori's work deserves more visibility and mention. She's a design anthropologist, from Chicago.
posted by infini at 1:52 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by infini at 1:52 PM on May 3, 2016 [1 favorite]
Their culminating project was that they had to use their observations and interviews to put together a "How To" guide for an invading army of Alien Bodysnatchers who were trying to fit in as normal OSU students. And, they got it.
They successfully paved the way for an alien invasion of your school? You monster.
posted by Sangermaine at 3:54 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
They successfully paved the way for an alien invasion of your school? You monster.
posted by Sangermaine at 3:54 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]
I especially like the Geertz and body modification covers.
Tangentially, this project reminds me of a pet peeve: "ethnic restaurant." India Palace is an ethnic restaurant. Jerusalem Falafel House is an ethnic restaurant. Denny's is an ethnic restaurant. Everything's bloody ethnic.
posted by scratch at 5:41 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
Tangentially, this project reminds me of a pet peeve: "ethnic restaurant." India Palace is an ethnic restaurant. Jerusalem Falafel House is an ethnic restaurant. Denny's is an ethnic restaurant. Everything's bloody ethnic.
posted by scratch at 5:41 PM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]
"if it looks like what's inside is boring numbers, that's sociology. If it looks like what's inside is gossip and cool stories, that's anthropology."
That certainly explains why I was so excited to take sociology classes and then was bored stiff. Shoulda taken anthro. I swear sociology is taking interesting things and making them bo-ring.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:12 PM on May 3, 2016
That certainly explains why I was so excited to take sociology classes and then was bored stiff. Shoulda taken anthro. I swear sociology is taking interesting things and making them bo-ring.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:12 PM on May 3, 2016
Uh, for the past half-century, anthropology has been working to destroy the same idea this question presupposes.
The West vs. the Rest is a lie.
If we're choosing between EITHER an allegedly 'exotic' photo OR an allegedly 'normal' photo, we're buying into this dichotomy.
And the trouble with this dichotomy is that it doesn't let us see the very real power relationships through which various cultural milieux are constituted interdependently with each other. Where are the salad ingredients grown? Possibly by Yucatec Maya speakers. How did the women become constituted as 'white' -- through what forms of colonialism did this category even develop in the first place?
There are book cover illustrations that show such interconnections. For example, Colonial Situations. It shows Kayapo cameramen, alongside a white cameraman, videotaping a protest against a dam, in order to put pressure on Brazil and the World Bank. Using video cameras is a logical, authentic extension of Kayapo symbolic practice; it also helps control the event's framing, and attract media attention, especially as the Kayapo also deliberately and strategically (but not inauthenticly) cultivate an image that can be received as 'savage' and 'exotic'.
posted by feral_goldfish at 8:18 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
The West vs. the Rest is a lie.
If we're choosing between EITHER an allegedly 'exotic' photo OR an allegedly 'normal' photo, we're buying into this dichotomy.
And the trouble with this dichotomy is that it doesn't let us see the very real power relationships through which various cultural milieux are constituted interdependently with each other. Where are the salad ingredients grown? Possibly by Yucatec Maya speakers. How did the women become constituted as 'white' -- through what forms of colonialism did this category even develop in the first place?
There are book cover illustrations that show such interconnections. For example, Colonial Situations. It shows Kayapo cameramen, alongside a white cameraman, videotaping a protest against a dam, in order to put pressure on Brazil and the World Bank. Using video cameras is a logical, authentic extension of Kayapo symbolic practice; it also helps control the event's framing, and attract media attention, especially as the Kayapo also deliberately and strategically (but not inauthenticly) cultivate an image that can be received as 'savage' and 'exotic'.
posted by feral_goldfish at 8:18 PM on May 3, 2016 [5 favorites]
Anthropology and sociology are two different fields with two different perspectives on the human species. I'm not sure that sociologists would frame what they do as studying the human species; I think they're just studying humans.
When I did my Masters in comparative literature – in France – sociology and anthropology were taught together, with the caveat that our profs were pretty open about anthropology needing to be handled carefully. As others have said in the thread. They were genuine in-depth courses as well, the same ones as taken by sociology majors doing their Masters.
However. It didn't stop students coming to our courses with white privilege and patriarchal assumptions. Keeping in mind these were Masters-level courses. And the worst was a white dude doing his Masters in sociology. He and I were the oldest students in our course, so one day when he came out with his "all I have to do to get responses from women is ask them," I gave him an anthropological study right then and there.
"Fine. Ask me something," I told him.
Dude: "What?" rather predictable first reply.
Me: "If you think that a white man from an Occidental country can get responses from women he's never met before in a country he's never lived in, then you should be able to ask me anything you want. After all, I'm a white woman, you already know me, and we speak the same language. So, ask me something."
The professor was smiling and nodded in assent when Dude looked at her quizzically.
Dude: "Uh. This is stupid. I know everything I need to know about white women."
Me: "Then it should be even easier for you to think of a question you already know the answer to."
Dude: "You're being rough."
Me: "Do you think other women won't? And seriously, you think this is rough? Also, hell man, you don't even know where I'm from. Which languages my family spoke with me growing up. Which traditions I was raised with. Basic anthropology right there."
He never did ask any of us anything. He got his Masters degree. And I do believe that we here on MeFi don't need to be anthropologists or sociologists to recognize that there are an awful lot of white men who think they "know everything they need to know about white women". So there is still work to do.
posted by fraula at 8:19 AM on May 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
When I did my Masters in comparative literature – in France – sociology and anthropology were taught together, with the caveat that our profs were pretty open about anthropology needing to be handled carefully. As others have said in the thread. They were genuine in-depth courses as well, the same ones as taken by sociology majors doing their Masters.
However. It didn't stop students coming to our courses with white privilege and patriarchal assumptions. Keeping in mind these were Masters-level courses. And the worst was a white dude doing his Masters in sociology. He and I were the oldest students in our course, so one day when he came out with his "all I have to do to get responses from women is ask them," I gave him an anthropological study right then and there.
"Fine. Ask me something," I told him.
Dude: "What?" rather predictable first reply.
Me: "If you think that a white man from an Occidental country can get responses from women he's never met before in a country he's never lived in, then you should be able to ask me anything you want. After all, I'm a white woman, you already know me, and we speak the same language. So, ask me something."
The professor was smiling and nodded in assent when Dude looked at her quizzically.
Dude: "Uh. This is stupid. I know everything I need to know about white women."
Me: "Then it should be even easier for you to think of a question you already know the answer to."
Dude: "You're being rough."
Me: "Do you think other women won't? And seriously, you think this is rough? Also, hell man, you don't even know where I'm from. Which languages my family spoke with me growing up. Which traditions I was raised with. Basic anthropology right there."
He never did ask any of us anything. He got his Masters degree. And I do believe that we here on MeFi don't need to be anthropologists or sociologists to recognize that there are an awful lot of white men who think they "know everything they need to know about white women". So there is still work to do.
posted by fraula at 8:19 AM on May 4, 2016 [3 favorites]
I really like the idea, yet here I am raging over the fact that none of the images taken from Wikimedia Commons have been properly attributed (unlike the one taken from Flickr).
posted by daniel_charms at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2016
posted by daniel_charms at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2016
« Older Contact! Let's make contact! | Class warfare in the skies Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:50 AM on May 3, 2016 [19 favorites]