Comments on: Pop Anthropology: The Reverse

By: Popular/izing anthropology « Culture Matters

Popular/izing anthropology « Culture Matters — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:42:49 +0000

[…] Strong over at Savage Minds recently noted that anthropology and anthropologists are appearing quite a bit in popular culture […]

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:35:52 +0000

The Fierce People video clip is worth watching, if you haven’t already. I wonder if anyone knows of anthropologists being involved it its making?

There’s so much buried in this clip that it’s hard to know where to begin: the anthropologist doing fieldwork among the painted natives (and the son getting covered with body paint in what looks like a sexual initiation); the first world white anthropologist living with the natives, vs. the middle-class son being sent to live with the society rich; the image of the kinship “tree,” fieldnotes, and fieldwork; the adolescent anthropologist “going native” with a tribe that he’ll never truly be part of…

Though it strikes me as anthropology-as-context for a pubescent coming-of-age story. Is this old wine in new skins?

I think I’ll rent it when it comes out.

By: Ariel W.

Ariel W. — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:06:03 +0000

I is my opinion that popular anthropology has just as much importance in the study of other cultures as any other anthropological research. Just as we would study the oral and written histories of another culture to learn more about them, it is equally important to take an outsider’s perspective on current media to understand where our own culture presently resides. Don’t media representations merely reflect what is present in our culture today? And influence that culture respectively?
More importantly, how can an anthropologist argue that they study human cultures if they only study those cultures that they are not a normal part of? American, British, French, and many other Western cultures have their own variations on the “Western culture” we so often treat as one enveloping framework, that are equally worthy of study and debate. Popular anthropology has the distinct disadvantage of overlapping many other disciplines such as Economics, Sociology, and Psychology, leaving it subordinate in nature to the better accepted human sciences. At the same time however, combining an anthropological perspective with information gathered from a variety of these other disciplines will only support any research in popular culture that is done. It also holds the appeal of the masses, offering a challenging point of view on our own culture, which essentially will lead to a greater interest in anthropology as a whole.
I apologize for my wordiness, but I feel very strongly that popular anthropology is a keystone in developing a better understanding of the world.

By: Michaela Benson

Michaela Benson — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:19:42 +0000

I’ve been just scanning the site for the past few months as I have been incredibly busy with work and finishing my thesis, but the post today really caught my attention. From the other side of the pond this is not a new debate (no doubt it is not really over there either), but over the last 2-3 years Anthropology Today (produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute) has variously covered the emergence of ‘popularized anthropology’. For example, Kate Fox’s ‘Watching the English’, was an enormously successful book which gave an insight into the peculiarities of English behaviour, but the debate among the anthropologists as to whether or not this was ‘real’ anthropology seemed to detract from the true value of the book. Similarly, there was extensive slating of Bruce Parry’s TV series ‘Tribe’, even from those who had not seen it! I have to say that I heard later that several anthropologists had been approached to help in the production of the series and had refused the offer. I also know that following the series, the RAI had approached the producers to ask that some of the film evidence, which was invaluable, could be included in their archive.
It seems that we all have an opinion on what is important to promote in anthropology and what it not. However, and I think that this is an important point, many anthropologists that I know seem reluctant to engage with the media or with the idea of ‘popular anthropology’. It is almost as though it makes the discipline dirty. Maybe the question should be why do we feel the need to distinguish ourselves from this form of communicating with the general public? This, in my opinion, undoubtedly, alienates our discipline in the eyes of the wider audience.