Going Abroad

Traveling Like an Anthropologist

Rob Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317258742
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Increasingly students from the affluent countries are going abroad as part of their "educational experience." Although students see these experiences as invaluable and believe that they have learned a lot, the anthropological literature suggests the opposite; that travel abroad has a greater impact on the hosts than on the visitors and that indeed travel abroad, far from leading to students becoming more open-minded or learning about the other, can reinforce their stereotypes. The standards in anthropology teach humility and the ability to learn from those in the host country. This short book can be read pre-departure and while abroad to provide the reader the practical and philosophical tools needed to create an enriched and mind-broadening experience.

Part One

Disorientation

Chapter One

That Beast Called the Anthropological Perspective

We have met the enemy and [s]he is us.

—Pogo

Anthropology is becoming increasingly popular, despite predictions made in the early 1970s that anthropology was bound to become obsolete with the demise of colonialism. Some of the factors leading to the increasing popularity of anthropology are to be welcomed; others are more problematic. In a way, many of these reasons are mirrored in the rise of global travel abroad.

Cynics have suggested that anthropology’s increasing popularity is directly related to the perception that it is a “soft” option, which makes it attractive to lazy students. Historically this claim is problematic. Anthropology was (and still is) relatively jargon-free—the jest being that anthropologists could afford to be so since the people they wrote about were not literate and thus could not read what was written about them—and its accessible language may make it appear “easy.” More seriously, though, there is no empirical evidence to sustain the argument that anthropology is a “soft” option. On the contrary, that characterization is insulting to people who are concerned about important questions.

Globalization and the increasing proximity to and awareness of people with “strange or different customs” have certainly been a factor accounting for anthropology’s increased popularity as more thoughtful people are becoming aware of the possibility of cultural misunderstanding. These misunderstandings occur even when least expected. Coming from southern Africa to do postgraduate studies, I thought my adjustment to life in the Midwest would be easy; after all, I spoke English and knew American culture from the movies and magazines, and I even had one or two American friends. My first embarrassing moment occurred when I went to the bookstore and asked the salesperson where I could find a rubber—something that Americans call erasers. Similarly, in the cultural tradition I came from, “to get pissed” means not “to get angry” but “to get drunk”; “taking the piss out of someone” does not mean performing a urological examination but good-natured teasing; and referring to friends as “good buggers” does not refer to their capacity for bestiality but means that they are good mates.

The progressively integrated global village offers increasing opportunities for cultural misunderstanding. A student spent a summer volunteering on a Native American reservation and was assigned to the kindergarten. Trying to be friendly and make contact, she smiled and offered the kids candy, but each effort at trying to be friends drew looks of terror from the kids because they believed that only strangers who were witches smiled and offered kids candy. Such stories can be multiplied many times.

People are also aware of the horror of events and tragedies happening in other parts of the world. Droughts, famine, genocide, and the “failure” of development efforts are brought to us by constant twenty-four-hour news sources. More and more people and influential institutions like the World Bank and the U.S. military have realized that culture is a significant factor in understanding these sorry events. At the same time, as we look at the labels on our clothing while we sip our coffee, we are made aware of the interconnectedness of our lives with people living in other parts of the globe.

In this age of increasing specialization, anthropology provides a welcome contrast, with its broad, holistic, comparative, fieldwork-based perspective. Whereas other social sciences might examine the beauty of individual flowers, anthropology stands on top of the mountain and enjoys the broad vista. More importantly, if anthropology focuses on how other people and cultures solve common human problems, and studies alternative lifestyles and cultures, then one can argue that the increasing interest in the subject is precisely because people who are dissatisfied with the way things are going start to look for alternatives, and anthropology provides them with a way of exploring these options. Anthropology tends to attract the alienated and the dissatisfied. It is no accident that anthropology has attracted proportionately more women and minorities than any other social science. This is readily showcased if one looks at the presidents of professional organizations. Over the last fifty years, the American Anthropological Association has had more females and minorities as president than any other social science professional organization. As one wit put it, anthropologists reject their own society before their society rejects them!

The challenge for anthropology is to understand the logic of the illogical, to make “sense” of the seemingly weird. In this exercise, the concept of culture is crucially central. Much ink has been expended on trying to define what culture is. For our purposes, culture is simply what gives meaning to actions, which it does by providing a sense of coherence or patterning and predictability. It provides the lens through which one interprets events, scenes, and actions.

But how does one discover what is culture, what is meaningful? Here stories are important. A custom is only recognized as a custom when someone observes that it is. Traditions, myths, and customs persist because of a “compulsive flexibility,” which means that they can be shared even by a large group whose members have different points of view and can be transmitted from generation to generation. Writing about myths but with observations equally applicable to tradition and custom, Wendy Doniger puts it thus:

A myth is like a mercenary; it can be made to fight anyone. Every telling (and observation) puts a different spin on it, implicitly inviting the teller, the listener (the observer) or the commentator to moralize. Although the word is often used nowadays to designate an idea (particularly a wrong idea), a myth (or custom) most certainly is not an idea. It is a narrative that makes possible any number of ideas, but that does not commit itself to any single one. Its ability to contain in latent form several different attitudes to the events it depicts allows each different telling to draw out the attitude it finds sympathetic.¹

A tradition is a tradition because someone recognizes it as such and says so. Of course, to appreciate nuances in stories and narratives one needs to be not only observant but linguistically proficient and to have a fine sensitivity for paralanguages as well: skills that only the best fieldworkers attain.

The challenge of fieldwork is to make sense of a swirling mass of experience, noise, and color. Of course, in trying to interpret behavior one must have a sense and appreciation of context. The appropriateness of behavior obviously depends on context. For a few years I used to demonstrate this in my introductory class by having students haggle—typical market behavior in most parts of the world—at the university’s store. This demonstration ceased after an irate store manager and other students complained. In the same series of introductory lectures, I place a picture of the globe on an overhead projector with North America at the side. Inevitably a student will ask me to correct the projection and the point is made. The sense that North America should be up near the north on the globe is simply an accepted cultural construction in American society. It is this comfortable taken-for-grantedness that fieldwork and anthropology seek to undermine.

It is incredibly difficult to step away from one’s own culturally based assumptions about how one should see the world. To get a heightened sense of context, anthropologists generally travel to do fieldwork in a place or context where their taken-for-granted assumptions about behavior are problematized. Fieldwork is the firsthand experience of studying a culture and includes a range of activities to describe the cultural knowledge people have. The emphasis is on exploring the nature of cultural and social phenomena rather than on testing hypotheses (this is a valid form of ethnography but not the type I practice).

The Joys of Fieldwork

Fieldwork is the sine qua non of anthropology. To be sure, some have criticized the insistence on extended fieldwork, but interestingly enough, these critics are typically anthropologists or scholars who have not done extended fieldwork. Fieldwork is often seen as a rite of passage for anthropologists. Status is measured for some by the extent and difficulty of fieldwork, and while its importance might sometimes be exaggerated, it does provide a key to the anthropological enterprise. In a famous series of experiments, the Pennsylvania anthropologist Ray Birdwhistle studied communication between happily married spouses by fitting everyone with a tape recorder to capture all their oral utterances. He found that the amount of verbal communication amounted to less than fifteen minutes over a twenty-four-hour period. This does not mean that they did not communicate; it simply means that they communicated using other cues, such as body language and tone. Communication can occur using not only body language but grunts, gestures, tone, and context. Even if one is not fluent in the local language, some cultural nuances are picked up by osmosis. It is long-term immersion that allows fieldworkers to distinguish between rumor and information. Kim Philby, perhaps one of the most successful and notorious spies during the Cold War era, claimed that the most important part of his job was not photographing secret documents but cruising the cocktail circuit, since it was information gleaned there that he could use to interpret the written documents. This lesson was apparently not learned by the United States. The intelligence fiasco in the Iraq misadventure is attributed to an overreliance on high-tech data gathering and a lack of adequate on-the-ground information to contextualize the observations.

Fieldwork brings to the fore an appreciation of a sense of context, which is especially important as people are increasingly bombarded by and overwhelmed with a myriad of often unrelated snippets of information. It has been claimed that a single copy of the Sunday edition of the New York Times contains more information than a cultivated person in the eighteenth century would consume during a lifetime. Fieldwork provides a context and an anchor to stabilize the journey in this swirl of information.

People use comparisons all the time to make judgments or evaluations. One of the strengths of cultural anthropology is the “comparative method,” which typically involves comparing how different groups deal with the same set of problems. In short, the concern is with difference. Going abroad, beyond the safe cocoon of home, allows anthropologists to appreciate differences. Why and how do they occur? What are their implications for behavior? How does culture shape the way one sees differences in the world? Difference raises the issue of tolerance versus intolerance: should one ignore difference and treat everyone the same? Two quick examples from Papua New Guinea tease out the magnitude of this issue. In one village, the local government officer instructed the villagers to tidy up the plaza because some senior officials were going to visit. Villagers dutifully complied and cleaned up the dog and pig shit but left all the candy wrappings and soda cans. To the villagers’ way of thinking, this litter was not unhygienic waste but rather a status symbol, as it showed that they could afford luxuries and were thus affluent. A more telling example, and one much more pertinent to this book: A self-described liberal from San Francisco who was volunteering in Papua New Guinea would go down to the local beach wearing the scantiest of bikinis, much to the disgust of local Papua New Guineans. When it was diplomatically suggested that he wear something more demure, he rejected the idea out of hand since, he said, if Papua New Guineans were ever to come to San Francisco, he would not object if they wore asgras (plant material shoved in a belt to cover the buttocks) or walked around topless!

Many regard the notion of cultural relativism—that one should not judge the behavior in another culture by the values of one’s own culture—as one of anthropology’s greatest achievements. It is a counter to ethnocentrism, the judging of another’s cultural behavior in terms of one’s own. In its extreme forms, ethnocentrism can lead to discrimination and bigotry and the denial of human rights. Indeed, problematizing the notion that our culture is not absolute but rather an arbitrary construct makes it easier to accept the notion of cultural relativism, although cultural relativism certainly does not necessarily promote understanding. The doctrine of cultural relativism suggests that one should try to judge and interpret the behavior of others in terms of their traditions and experience. This does not mean that one should not make judgments; it simply means that one should suspend judgment while engaged with aspects of that particular culture.

Of course, there is a problem with determining where exactly the boundaries of a culture are, and indeed, some intellectuals from poor countries are dismissing the concept of cultural relativism as a bourgeois liberal idea that serves to justify the status quo of gross global inequality. They point to its origins among the privileged and to its clear implication that the poor should not pass judgment on the consumerist lifestyles of the privileged, even though that lifestyle is based on an exploitative predatory mode of production that affects the whole globe. Despite this valid critique, cultural relativism remains an important sensitizing concept for those who go abroad.

Some Notes and Observations on “Participant Observation”

Ethnographic fieldwork typically entails extended participation in a community. This activity is often referred to as “participant observation,” but that term can cover a gamut of poses, ranging from full participant to complete observer, and can refer to either overt or covert behavior. What is important about participant observation is that an on-the-spot observer can compare what people say and what people do, and often the two differ significantly. Much of what field-work does is reveal tacit knowledge, whose details are not generally articulated. Anthropology is rather haphazard in its data collection since it occurs in the field rather than in a well-controlled laboratory setting. Important information is often fortuitous, a wink or a nudge at the right moment. Learning is highly personal. To be sure, anthropologists use surveys and structured observations, but they do not make a fetish of it. The bulk of what they do is unsystematic observation. Incidents observed need to be generalized by relating them to other features. Fieldwork might appear to be romantic, but it is generally hard work. It is labor-intensive with frequent eighteen-hour days.

Rather than studying a large sample of people, the key to fieldwork is immersion in the everyday life of a community, and this requires special skills, not only the ability to speak the local language but also the ability to laugh at oneself. Being concerned with meaning rather than with measurement and formal abstraction, ethnographic fieldworkers are engaged in a deeply humanistic enterprise because they are concerned not so much with statistical significance as with substantive significance. Despite being a representative of an affluent society wielding much power, the anthropologist, in striving to see and present what Bronislaw Malinowski famously termed “the Native point of view,” has to depend on the cooperation and kindness of strangers who, over the course of time, hopefully will become friends or even fictive kin. Such an exercise requires considerable empathy.

This empathy leads naturally to a concern for grassroots communities and issues. Anthropologists naturally tend to look at the situation from the bottom up—not for anthropology a Whiggish history in which the focus is on a few prominent people.

Another important point to consider in ethnographic fieldwork is the effect of the outsider perspective. As outsiders, anthropologists strive to see the larger picture, looking at both the forest and the trees. To be sure, insiders will frequently criticize publications by outsiders, claiming that they have missed certain vital points, and this provides the opportunity to have a healthy dialogue. At the same time, there is much merit in such an outsider perspective. Eric Hobsbawm, perhaps the greatest contemporary historian, put it well, in a slightly different context, when he observed that, just as no railway enthusiast had ever written a good history of railways, no nationalist had ever written a solid history of nationalism. The outsider perspective is so important that it will be discussed in greater depth in chapter 4.

One important consequence of the anthropological perspective is that, of all the social sciences, anthropology has been by far the most crucially self-reflective. In looking at “them,” it has had to look at “us” as well. Not only has there been a vigorous debate on the role of anthropology in promoting and sustaining global inequality and neocolonialisms, but this critique has impacted how anthropologists go about their craft. Good anthropology should always leave the producer and the audience slightly disconcerted. It should upset or at least challenge the way we look at the world. This is why some view the contemporary role of anthropology in late capitalism as that of Trickster, speaking truth to power by challenging the comfortable assumptions of those in power—and of many people going abroad! Anthropology and traveling abroad did not appear suddenly as divine miracles but instead have a long, often intertwined, history. Nor can they be seen in isolation. Indeed, in a sense, Going Abroad is a continuation of the guidebook tradition.

An Abbreviated History of Going Abroad with a Guide (Book)

Historically, travel has been the realm of the brave and the courageous: the adventurous. In the Western canon, it can be traced back to Ulysses, but rather than go back to the classics, I want to start with a more recent traveler, Sir Francis Galton, whose activities profoundly s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Disorientation
• Part Two: The Nitty-Gritty of Travel
• Conclusion
• Appendix: RRATS! Relaxed Rapid Appraisal Techniques and Strategies
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author