Anthropology
OP - February 26, 2012, 06:03 AM
When it is my birthday, I generally ask for book tokens, and this year has been particularly munificent!
And lo I entered the LSE Economics Bookshop and therein purchased (but did I - I used a book token?( bad anthropological in joke about gift relationships)) a wondrous tome - Introduction to social anthropology, Joy Hendry.
One of the basic tools is something called participant observation, where a researcher lives with a community. This causes many issues, where does this stranger fit? Some people have introduced the anthropologist as a distant relative, in Japan, the author was placed in a village circle that was arranged hierarchically and by gender between the youngest male and the oldest female, one anthropologist says they were treated like a dog until the people accepted he was a human - the author writes this in a way that makes one think that might have been made up!
The other comment I found interesting is that linguistics is thought of as a branch of anthropology by the UN. The author comments that people who are bilingual are already beginning to be anthropologists because they will have an in depth knowledge of two cultures.
Which makes me wonder, are not the ex muslims here actually anthropologists?
Think about it. Clear experience of different cultures and often languages. Clear travel from one position to another in terms of relationships and beliefs.
Unclear where they now fit in various communities and with families.
And actually able to give an authentic voice of actually having been a participant, a full member of their communities.
Liminal anyone?
I don't want to write more now, just posit this as an opening suggestion.
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
A.A. Milne,
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Topic: Anthropology