Power and Knowledge: The Role of Anthropology
Editor's note -- This is my final paper for my Foundations of Anthropology class. This paper was originally published January 8, 2008.
I have a confession. This author has been stuck for over three weeks in how to describe how anthropology plays a role as an “intellectual discipline.” How does one convey the role that anthropology plays through the power and knowledge of institutions, such as Marxism, Modernism, Colonialism, Capitalism[1], and every other neo or post “ism” of the last 150 years or so. Of course, one can bind the ties of such abstraction of thought through the eyes of its advocates, such as Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Taussig, Renalto Rosado, Roy D’Andrade, and Sandra Bartky. One can regurgitate their essence of meaning and thought into some form of coherency, and only to have it dismantled by the critics of agency and habitus (Bourdieu). In other words, the signs and symbols are re-evaluated and redefined into something other than what is stated or written.
Nevertheless, one can stand or sit here pondering what is the role of anthropology plays in co-opting, dispensing, as well articulating the use of power and knowledge, one can also be lost in a cliché that has been rattling in the brain for weeks, such as knowledge is power. Or, secondary cliché that rattles the brain—ignorance is bliss.
More images come to one’s mind and wonder what disconnection of thought to which they are related. The image of innocence rolls into another disconnected moment, as the thoughts of Adam and Eve and the apple from the Tree of Knowledge fill one’s brain.
An image fills the brain, an old science fiction television show known as Star Trek, where the captain of a starship has challenged the “status quo” by usurping authority of an artificially intelligent computer, its citizenry lives in fear and ignorance. The images come by the dozen, one after the other. One may think of Benedict Anderson and what he calls “imagined communities.” Lost in a menagerie of images, cultural roots, and interconnected “disjunctive” moments (Appaduri, 1990), which ramble aimlessly in dark corners of the mind, only to have the light of revelation reveal their inconsistency. Even now, one can taken notice of the natural dualism of words: light, dark, and the continuity of what they mean and don’t mean. Ideas are new and fresh as an accounting.
Clifford Geertz in the opening paragraph of the “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” with regards to new ideas, says “Everyone snaps them up as the open sesame of some new positive science, the conceptual center point around which a comprehensive system of analysis can be built,” in other words, at this moment, power and knowledge can be found in the “imagined communities” of disconnection.
We are a product of our culture. We have multiple “imagined communities” that have ties that bind, which have been subverted, truncated, emboldened, and embraced all at once. One may ask, how does a diatribe of words put on display power and knowledge, and, the role of anthropology? The answer will in the form of a narrative.
The other day, this author was listening to the radio, a late-night talk show, where the discussion of politics of the day has been reified to a rare art form. The issue of the moment was the words of Andrew Young, a onetime UN ambassador, political activist, and “leader” of the black community whom proclaimed that “Barack Obama was too young to be president,” and he needed to “wait his turn.”
Two points of order: Barack Obama is black, and he is the same age as John F. Kennedy was when he was elected as president at 43. In the form of multiple “imagined communities,” Andrew Young’s comment had power and relevance, in that, the terms of equity and equality the United States has failed miserably when it comes to the election of women and minorities in the positions of “power.” One of the reasons for this is for the popular stereotypical images of how women and minorities are viewed within the American cultural construct.
For instance, one of those precepts is that certain dues have to be paid in order to be qualified—such as experience. How that experience is viewed is in the eye of the beholder, but there is another overlay for women and minorities. Some of it has to do with education, some of it has to do with political capital, and some of it has to do with perception of being “rational.” Meaning, women and minorities are viewed as “emotional” or, at the least, seen “unqualified logically,” because of lack of training due, in part, to social economic factors.
Another aspect of the “imagined community” construct has to do with hegemonic culture perception of power in the American ethos sense (that those in power): they are to be white, male, heterosexual, and educated at a high-power university—such as Harvard or Yale. Now tie in a Clifford Geertz’s view from “Thick Description,” the “winks, twitches” in which culture is on display, in so being that those who broker power and cultivate it, retain it through co-option and inversion, in which, the subversion of masses perceives that they are valued and heard by those in power.
Instead, through the use of knowledge, history, and exploitation, those in power take advantage of those who are ignorant of the system and in the “archaeology of knowledge,” (Michel Foucault). Thereby understanding the roots of the past and the origins of why things are and where they come from, one can control not only the access of knowledge, but the distribution of it. Knowing the source of one’s past (having an “archaeology of knowledge” of where a movement or idea began) with overlaying habitus of its culture, its agency, and beliefs (Bourdieu), the “hegemonic culture” has a method to usurp the power from the minorities and women, in essence, by dividing and conquering.
An example of this, when obtaining small business loans, minorities and women are first divided into categories of sexes, race, and financial need. This sets one against the other for what is to believe to be “limited” resources. By setting up classifications, categories, and “tracking” areas of those who are considered disenfranchised by the “establishment” the perception of scarcity is ingrained within the “imagined communities” as being insufficient and therefore must be separated from one another in order to obtain resources. The scarcity of resources is thus used as a component to “institutionalize” certain beliefs, ideals, and stereotypes of oppression through the artifice of “imagined communities.”
One instance of this institutionalized “imagined communities” can be seen with Andrew Young, to return to point, when he proclaims, Barack Obama’s youth as a “problem” he was signaling to the black community, which has been stereotyped and disenfranchised, to believe that “there is one way” to obtain power, that dues have to be paid (by Obama) to the old guard (those who laid the path before Obama, whether they be black or white benefactors), and that certain “tributes” have to be paid to the “hegemonic” culture.
Andrew Young was “coding” to those within the “imagined community” that he is not “our man,” and he is not ready. Therefore, for Barack Obama, if the old guard of cronyism feels that one has not paid sufficient dues, then the passing of the torch is denied. This aspect of black culture, like a “wink or twitch” is in full display, but unwritten and unspoken. This is in turn leads to self-esteem being lowered, as an individual and as a group, because one’s worth is tied to the acceptance to one’s community-at-large.
As an influential black leader, like Andrew Young, has denied acceptance of Barack Obama. Instead of empowering Senator Obama for achieving a worthy aspiration (but also inspirational) for the presidency, the former UN ambassador, undercuts his achievement. The “imagined community” of unspoken rules and rituals has, in effect, chastised Barack Obama for being “too” ambitious and not “knowing his place” is a layer that seems to run as a “core element” within the black community; and, once again disenfranchising an able, capable, and qualified individual by shaming him openly and publicly.
However, as one reviews the narrative and interpretation of the community writ-large, the performance of an ethnographic moment, an emic view, are explained with the “winks or twitch” and put on display within the community. Ethnographic interpretation is objectified by the willingness to examine what the “winks and twitches” mean, but to some, it is skewed, because of the “closeness” to the group and the community writ-large that is observed. Therefore, one “cannot be objective,” because as part of the group that is being reported on.
In essence, one can be blinded by the machination of the community, its habitus, its rituals, and its performances that encapsulates their worldview; and, must be “told” from an outsider, who has “authoritative” etic view of omniscience of how one cultural insight is to be interpreted. Geertz says, however,
“The ethnographer ‘inscribes’ social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, which exists in its inscription and can be reconsulted” (Geertz, 19).
Thus, this is what one has done in trying to do is to conveying an account, by writing it down, sprinkling it with the language of the arbiter, the observer, and the authority of anthropology and to share a narrative of inferred “social consciousness” of the implicit that cannot necessarily be understood solely through interviews with informants and observations.
Essentially, this author has tried to use the role of anthropology to be the empiric observer; looking objectively at the small morsels of culture that are obtained in my momentary representations of individual acts. However, one observes the role that anthropology sometimes play it has not always been that of the sideline viewer. It has at times, been used to manipulate, or assuage a population in order to facilitate a viewpoint for the hegemony. Often written in the language of obscurity, only to be understood in pomp bombastic erudite triteness and in the language of the academic, anthropology role has been used to obfuscate the message of a culture or ethnicity or gender.
One example of this is Sandra Lee Bartky’s criticism of Michel Foucault for not speaking up for the oppression of women; she feels that he has undervalued one half of the population. She says,
“Foucault’s account in Discipline and Punish of the disciplinary practices that produce the ‘docile bodies’ of modernity is a genuine tour de force, incorporating a rich theoretical account of the ways in which instrumental reason takes hold of the body with a mass of historical detail. But Foucault treats the body as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences of men and women bore the same relationship to the characteristic institution of modern life. Where is the account of the disciplinary practices that engender the ‘docile bodies’ of women, bodies more docile than the bodies of men? Women, like men, are subject to many of the same disciplinary practices Foucault describes” (Bartky, p. 65)
In other words, why didn’t Foucault show the unjust treatment of women? Simple, he didn’t have to. It was understood implicitly that body has dualism of its own. Both male and female are entwined in its rationality and irrationality of emotion, of expression, and of affection for its genders. This is what I mean. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault is writing about a period of transition, when the power of religion was being transformed by the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
Individual feudal states, which partitioned territories, are becoming nation-states and centralizing. It is a time for defining national borders and individual boundaries; a time for not only redefining the hegemony, but the value of personhood and personhood itself. It is the establishment of the individual and the certitude of a new form of social contract. It is the establishment of “order” versus “chaos,” structure versus ambiguity, justice versus vengeance.
This period of which Foucault writes is a response to “absolutism” and the demarcation of compassion. In a sense, it was a rebirthing of civility, a new age of rationality, a reawakening of the possible, and a period, if you will, of individual enlightenment. Foucault says,
“This need for punishment without torture was first formulated as a cry from the heart or from an outraged nature. In the worst of murderers, there is one thing, at least, to be respected when one punishes: his ‘humanity.’ The day was to come, in the nineteenth century, when this ‘man’, discovered in the criminal, would become the target of penal intervention, the object that it claimed to correct and transform the domain of a whole series of ‘criminological’ sciences and strange ‘penitentiary’ practices. But, at the time of Enlightenment, it was not as a theme of positive knowledge that man was opposed to the barbarity of the public execution, but as a legal limit; the legitimate frontier of the power to punish.” (trans. Sheridan, 77-103)
In essence, when the only form of punishment is death even for the most trivial form of indiscretion, what is the point of civility? Foucault continues,
Not that which must be reached in order to alter him, but that which must be left intact in order to respect him. Noli me tangere. It marks the end of the sovereign’s vengeance [my emphasis]. The ‘man’ the reformers set up against the despotism of the scaffold has become a ‘man-measure’: not of things, but of power. (ibid)
Thus, the authority of punishment has been taken away from the individual despot, but given to the state, which is made of its people, and the redefining of the “social contract” is determinate upon the supplication of its citizenry and how they define themselves as a people by the “rule of law.” Foucault does not have to pay tribute to the women he already has in the voice vernacular of the day, when he says ‘man’ he means the body whole—male and female. Nonetheless, Bartky misses the point Foucault does not have to vilify the system of punishment for the case of women. He is reporting on the transformation of “discipline” and “punishment” of the social body. It as if there was only one cure for a simple scratch or any injury to one’s arm—and the solution was to cut it off, only to find out that a simple scrape need not be so treated radically, but simply to put a bandage on the cut with a bit of cleaning will cure it, this changes one’s perspective. This is how the reformation of punishment and discipline changed the social body of European thought and the nature of power.[2]
This nature of power can be seen later in the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Benedict Anderson, and in Sandra Bartky, but it is Roy D’Andrade who brings the discussion to the forefront. What is the role of anthropology? What is its power? How does one use it to influence the social body? D’Andrade defines the differences of objectivity and subjectivity along with trend of a new model that was “morality” based. He says, in the beginning of his essay, Moral Models in Anthropology,
“Originally, I thought these attacks came from people who had the same agenda I did, just different assumptions about how to accomplish that agenda. Now realize than an entirely different agenda is being proposed—that anthropology be transformed from a discipline based upon objective model of the world to a discipline based upon moral model of the world” (D’Andrade, p 562).
D’Andrade realizes the transformation that anthropology is about to go under is questioning its very foundation to its core, what does “the other” see and is it the same as what I see? This question asks do you share the same values as I do? Do we have something in common? If so, aren’t you as “upset” as I am about in how “power” oppresses those without it? What action will you take? Will you join me in my outrage? So, on and so forth.
This shift in anthropology has D’Andrade concerned and believes it is a step in the “wrong” direction. Moving away from the “objective” view of the world, to some, at least, as a subjective view, and moral oversimplification of the modern world, has set, in his opinion, on an unnecessary track of collision and collusion with the hegemony at large. [3]
Years of anthropology have dealt with the necessity of creating the “grand theory” and the dominating effect of its own discourse on the public forum (see Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Marvin Harris as examples). Anthropology has also tried to explain the nature of the human condition, which has brought more understanding more about that condition, but even more questions to why humans behave the way they do. It is this agency, as Bourdieu defines it, “witting or unwittingly, willy nilly, [as] a producer or reproducer of objective meaning.” In other words, anthropology’s role is malleable just as the people who study it. Ideas, models, theories, as well as perception of the worldview, are ever changing.
Earlier, in the paper, this author said I had a “confession.” This was a true statement, but it was also a “disjunctive” one as well (Appaduri, 1990). In a way, it was shorthand for you, the reader, to understand one’s confusion, and it also connected us to each other within an “imagined community.” This author understood, more likely than not, you, the reader, would form some sort of connection, on the basis, in the likelihood that, “you,” the reader, might be a Christian, that, “you” come from a community that shares the same values, and that, more than likely, was from the same western-American culture set.[4] It bounded us together, after fashion, and we had an understated emotional tie to one another—and “we” might have had the same shared vision at one time. Images of the Virgin Mary, crosses, and priests come to my mind. Churches, bells, rosaries, and confessionals rattle the brain as the certitude of these images implies a sacred trust. By inference, for those in the know, the First Church, or at least, that is imparted, the Catholic Church symbols prevails throughout the “imagined communities.”
The words, “I have a confession” is multi-vocal, multilayered, and in multiple reality. It is secular. It is religious. It is Baudrillard, in that, the simulacra of religion can be a metaphor for life, death, future, past, present, redemption, betrayal, power, knowledge, ignorance, and by extension anthropology. By understanding the yet to be, and the unknown, the confession is a nexus of power, in which, all can be understood and denied all at once. But there is another component, to my “I have a confession” statement—contrition. You, the reader, know that, this author is about take “responsibility,” for an unknown act, and with this confession, will impart a piece of knowledge, in which you believe will give you “power” over me. This power is in the form of perception. The confession statement, at the least, places those, in observance of it, the ability to “judge” the knowledge that is being imparted.
However, there are other aspects of the “confession,” the sincerity and how much of the knowledge is revealed. The “confession” makes the author accountable only to the extent to make the act of contrition credible. It is the apology. An act of defense, in which, the role as the offender can be “absolved.” The confession provides an opportunity for knowledge. This is a role an anthropologist should covet. It is not the role of anthropologist to be the moralist, but the informer, who shares his observations—and acknowledges their cultural biases—in the form of cultural capital. For the role of the anthropologist then, is not to curry power, but to provide knowledge.
The anthropologist role is to “un-spin” the web of entanglement, to “confess,” if you will, and to sift through the makings of “plans within plans.”[5] The anthropologist true power lies in their observations, writing them down, and reporting their findings to the public—not just for academia. The anthropologist is to be the servant of the people and to provide a bridge to the others “imagined communities.” Which leads to one final admission, the earlier inference of religion, by stating, “I have a confession” implied to “you,” the reader, that we may share the same “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) and was used as a tool to create a common ground. However, when that it is not possible, and the “other” is different, finding a common ground can be most difficult.
For instance, Renalto Rosaldo uses his anthropology to illustrate from a personal view of how it took the death of his wife to understand the “rage” he felt. He was the etic observer of a tribe of headhunters, who must adapt to outside forces of Christianity and the Philippine government. To the tribe he was an outsider, who observe, tried to understand them, but simply could not be one of them. In Rosaldo opening remarks, he conveys the illusory connection to the “other,” he says:
If you ask and older Ilongot man of northern Luzon, Phillipines, why he cuts off human heads, his answer is brief, and one on which no anthropologist can readily elaborate: He says, that rage born of grief, impel him to kill his fellow human beings. He claims that he needs a place “to carry his anger.”
And, then he states simply, “Either you understand it, or you don’t. And, in fact, for the longest time, I simply did not.” It is this personal touch, or attention, that is imparted from the article, Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage. In Rosaldo’s anthropology, he tries cultivating a connection of personal familiarity with his audience, which he says goes against the tradition. He does this to simplify the experience for the reader and is contrary to what “traditional anthropology” expects. He says of this, “My effort to show the force of a simple statement,” referring to the headhunter, “taken literally goes against anthropology’s classic norms,” implying that there is a set of rules that must be followed, “which prefer to explicate culture through the gradual thickening of symbolic webs of meaning.” The last reference by Rosaldo, “webs of meaning” is to punctuate his point that he is against type, but a simple man and anthropologist; in addition, to this simplicity that he is accessible to one and all.
This type of anthropology is more personable and less on the objectification of those being studied. It is more reflective and actualized, in the sense that, the studying of a different culture provides a mirror to our own culture; and, in this role anthropology is most useful and most powerful. It is the personal narrative of observation that transcends differences, criticism, and expectations. Anthropology breathes truth in that there is a connection and a history to us, as individuals and also among us as group, in which, one can, universally belong. Anthropologists, such as Nigel Barley, Clifford Geertz, and Renalto Rosaldo, are storytellers. Their ability to synthesize the histories, ideas, notions, and complexities of the human condition of the other is the most powerful asset to anthropology, in my opinion—and it can also be most exploitive.
The exploitation of resources, people, and technology takes the “knowledge” to utilize the “power” of the tools that embrace the differences through subversion and inversion. It is the co-option and machination, in which, anthropologist has sometimes been accused of. Failing to take into context mitigating factors (see E.E Evans-Pritchard on the Nuer), or by including mitigating factors for one group, but not for another (see McGee and Warms—Margaret Mead). But, they both have one thing in common, the context of which they display history.
Franz Boas discusses the role of anthropology in terms of how history is viewed by the participants, and as anthropologists, we are not only participants, but active performers as well.[6] Boas says, “First of all, the whole problem of cultural history appears to us an historical problem. In order to understand history, it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they come to be.” Consequently, this leads me to a point of multivocality and Michael Taussig. In his treatise of historical events, Taussig takes note of how Sidney Mintz and Eric Wolf treat the use of power and knowledge through their view of history. In terms of multivocality, this author’s refer to the numerous views of history that can be accessed not only on television, books, newspapers, and magazines, but through the explosion of the Internet—the world wide web.
Like a spider, the Net, if you will, entangles the participants with current information of today, but of the past, and of the future as well. This web of context, out of time, out of space, out of fluidity, creates its own “webs of meaning,” that are not only “disjunctive,” and dysfunctional, but at times, disconnected from reality. Worlds of simulation, stimulation, and titillation provide excitement to the rich, the heartbroken, and the poor soul lost without hope and searching for meaning. This is the sense that is conveyed by Taussig as he tries to wrap trivial meaning around Mintz’s idealism of the historical, in regard to history, he bellows,
“I keep coming back to the question What is history? What is historical explanation? What is historical understanding? The answer seems to be taken for granted in the text. I must be the only one who doesn’t understand. Surely, ‘history,’ like religion, is here endowed with the moral authority of the past? “ (p 503)
Of course, as anthropologists, meaning is assigned, and although often portrayed as an objective, it, meaning, is filtered through the filter of not only the observer, but through the observers culture set values—as hard one tries not to do so—one is a product of one’s environment. In other words, Taussig is attacking Mintz as well as Wolf, for their commoditizing of history. They have fetishized it. We have given it reification. By linking history as an entity, they have given it a life—its own “imagined community.” But, this is true of any product, in which, people are the source of the creation. After all, it is Taussig who is giving the words of Mintz and Wolf validation by simply acknowledging their existence. How else does one reify an entity’s reality?
Taussig is concerned with what is real; and, what is viscerally real. He too plays on the images of the culture through the subtitling of his essay, such as Marlboro Man, Lifesaver, Slipperiness and Power—to name a few. These titles carry weight, they have meaning to the reader, and they curry images and make a point for the reader. They bring their own sense of agency, meaning, and color. When Taussig, in his brief subtitled section speaks on History and Difference, he is setting the stage for not only what it means to him, but for those, who are being taken into reality by his words. He says of Mintz:
What most anthropologists think about meaning can be summed up, Mintz says, by paraphrasing Clifford Geertz: human beings are caught in webs of significance they themselves have spun. Mintz strongly objects. Not only is meaning historical, it is also determined by differences between groups is society (in an older earthier discourse, by class struggle). ‘The assumption of a homogenous web,’ he writes, ‘may mask, instead of reveal, how meanings are generated and transmitted. This is perhaps the point where meaning and power touch most clearly’ (p 499)
Thus, for the anthropologists, meaning is the core, it shapes us, and frames us, in which structure can evolve or envelope the identity of “self.”
As a result, meaning is one of the creative elements of reality. It “touches” us. It invades our dreams. Meaning provides the balance that sets the course of history, the future, and the present. As anthropologists, we understand this, and in fact, we ourselves infect[7] it, with our knowledge. Thus, this gives us the power to affect our surroundings both inside academia and out of it. The question remains then, has anthropology compass for the culture-at-large? And, I will answer this way, “With great power comes great responsibility…,”[8] but we have heard this narrative beginning before! They begin with words, “I have a confession….”
Citations
Anderson, Benedict1983 Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Pp 9-36: Verso: New York and London Appaduri, Arjun1990 Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Pp. 582-601. New York: McGraw-Hill Bartky, Sandra Lee1990 Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. Pp. 63-82: Routledge: New York and London Bourdieu, Pierre1977 Structure, Habitus, and Practices. In Outline of a Theory of Practice. Pierre Bourdieu. Richard Nice, trans. Pp. 78-87. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. D’Andrade, Roy1995a Moral Models in Anthropology. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Pp. 562-579.
New York: McGraw-Hill
Evans-Pritchard, E.E.2003 The Nuer of Southern Sudan. In Anthropological Theory: An Introduction History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. 3rd ed. Pp 184-202.
Boston: McGraw-Hill Foucault, Michel 1995 Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans. Pp. 73-103. New York: Vintage Books, A Random House Division
Geertz, Clifford1973 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In The Interpretations of Cultures. Clifford Geertz. Pp. 3-30. New York: Basic Books
McGee, R. J. and Richard L. Warms2008 Culture and Personality. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Pp. 204-209. New York: McGraw-Hill Marcus, George E., and Michael M.J. Fischer1986 A Crisis of Representation in the Human Sciences. In Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer, eds. Pp. 7-16. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. Mead, Margaret1935 Introduction to Sex and Temperament. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Pp. 219-225. New York: McGraw-Hill Rosaldo, Renalto1989 Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage. Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, eds. Pp. 537-551. New York: McGraw-Hill Taussig, Michael2001 History as Commodity in Some Recent American (Anthological) Literature. In Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory. Paul A. Erickson and Liam D. Murphy, eds. Pp. 490-506.
Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.
[1] This footnote is in response to Professor Jean Scandlyn, Ph. D. comment –are these institutions? Referring to the Marxism, Modernism, etc., as institutions. I refer to these as institutions because they are now part of the everyday western lexicon in not only tone, but also in the view of how power is perceived. In addition, the naming of the “perceived” power systems gives it structure and tangibility.
[2] Professor Scandlyn feels that I have missed the point in Bartkey’s criticism. She says, “Full archaeology… needs to include a discussion of gender—of its invisibility as well as its visibility. The invisibility is evidence of power and control.”
[3] Professor Scandlyn disagrees not with my assertion. She does not see D’Andrade seeing post modernism as colluding with hegemony at large but with, especially in the case of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the liberal voice, which maybe hegemonic.
[4] Professor Scandlyn does not see this as much as sharing the same knowledge through reading text for the course of anthropological theory and history. And, would further argue that the link is common our “reading” versus personal experience (religion).
[5] This quote is from a movie, which was made from a science fiction theme book, called “Dune.”
[6] Professor Scandlyn points out that “Boas assumed that anthropologists could be, if well trained, be objective. So, he didn’t see us as much as active performers as later anthropologists do.”
[7] Anthropologists are like a virus. Once the culture has been exposed to the influence of an outsider, it cannot be taken back. The community will either inoculate itself from “the other” exposure or it will try “take in” or modify it as if it were its own.
[8] This quote is from and is part of the Spiderman comic book lore.
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