By Brent Metz
Teaching and research are two sides of the same coin for me, as in class I constantly draw from my cross-cultural experiences, while teaching itself helps me to consolidate my theories about my research. I introduce students to the logic and interests behind other people's practices, and clarify how exploring other ways of life, past and present, is relative and relevant to the students themselves. My teaching philosophy, strategies, and subject matter is constantly evolving.I am concerned with enabling and inspiring students to reflect upon their assumptions about other ways of life and subsequently their own way. Luckily, inspiring students is not too difficult, as anthropology is the most interesting subject matter on the planet, but I'm always searching for new teaching strategies, but some old stand-bys include engaging students with questions about the readings and confronting rather than avoid uncomfortable issues. Learning is a collaborative enterprise in my courses so, for example, I defer to students who may know more about particular cultures, chemistry, business, computers, or other relevant topics than I do. We work together to put the course material in the most understandable and relevant language. In research papers and presentations, I encourage students to apply course themes to their own personal interests. For exams, I try to create essay questions that enable students to evaluate the entirety of the course themes, and that allow me to ascertain whether or not they have replaced ethnocentric assumptions with anthropological insights.
Over the past few years, I've taught a variety of courses, all of which I find valuable for my intellectual development. These include introduction to anthropology, cultures of Latin America, gender, religion, folklore, and theory. Due to my own interests and background, I attempt to approach any subject matter from different theoretical angles and have tended to emphasize issues of change, political economics, and social competition, negotiation, and consensus. This spring I am teaching a course on masculinity. It's shaping up to be an analysis of `what it takes to be a man' in cross-cultural perspective, with slightly more emphasis given to the U.S. and Great Britain, where research is the most extensive. Other teaching interests include theories of development (emphasis on Latin America), topical courses on Latin America (e.g., Andes, Mesoamerica, ethnohistory), and personality and emotions. Having taken a graduate course on Latino migration to the United States and worked five summers with legal aid for migrant (mainly Mexican) farmworkers, not to mention residing in a state with a burgeoning Mexican/Mexican-American population, a course on Latino migration interests me for the future. Ethnographic writing is a topic that has also attracted a lot of my attention. I believe that writing has been one of the most taken-for-granted but important activities in ethnography, and there is room for improving the factuality of ethnographic accounts.
This summer Kathy Kamp attended a three-week workshop on cross-cultural analysis. The NSF-sponsored workshop was led by Carol Ember, who discussed theories of cross-cultural analysis and showed participants how to work with both traditional Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) on micro-fiche and more recent electronic versions of the files.
Doug Caulkins attended a similar workshop several years ago, and this summer provided a short course on the use of portions of the HRAF for several Grinnell faculty, including Vicky Bentley-Condit and Katya Gibel-Azoulay.Supported, in part, by a college grant from the Mellon Foundation, the Anthropology Department has been incorporating computerized cross-cultural data in a number of classes. Jon Andelson, Vicky Bentley-Condit, Doug Caulkins, and Katya Gibel-Azoulay are all now including exercises the electronic materials in courses.
(or How I Spent My Summer Vacation)
by Vicki Bentley-Condit
If I told you I spent a month this past summer searching for nonhuman primates in south Texas, you might regard me with some degree of scepticism. You might respond with a somewhat snide remark such as "Yeti or Bigfoot?" or perhaps inquire as to just how much time I had spent in the south-Texas sun. However, I truly did spend a month in Texas looking for, finding, and observing primates
I was in Texas to locate a site where I could conduct long-term primate behavioral research. I spent most of my time at a private primate breeding facility in Alice. There, I focused on one group of corral-housed rhesus macaques (approximately 75 individuals). The first week or so, my time was devoted to learning to identify individuals and habituating them to my presence. Both of these processes were more challenging than I had expected. I had thought the identification would be easy as all individuals have unique letter/number combination tattoos. Unfortunately, it's quite difficult to read the tattoo on a rhesus' hairy chest. Therefore, I had to rely on unique physical characteristics (e.g., torn ears, tail shapes). The habituation process was also "interesting". The facility has regulations regarding proper "dress" (i.e., scrubs, lab coats, masks, etc) to avoid possible bio-hazard situations. The macaques recognize this "costume", associate it with unpleasant outcomes, and react negatively. I resolved this problem by not wearing the mask or the lab coat and by substituting a sunhat for the traditional scrub-hat. While this may seem a minor detail, it did not feel that way when I first walked up to the corral and they all screamed and ran away! I collected data from both inside and outside of the corral, varying my location by time of day (i.e., where I could find some shade) and from where I had the best view
After learning to identify individuals, I decided my remaining time would be best spent focusing on a subgroup. Based on my research interests, I decided to collect data strictly on mother-infant pairs and to focus on the topic of mother-infant proximity. It appeared from my initial observations that rhesus macaques were quite different from yellow baboons (the subjects of my previous research) in terms of proportion of time mothers and their infants spent in and out of physical contact. My impression was that rhesus macaques were more "rejecting" of their infants and punished them more often and/or earlier in the infant's life. The other side of this coin is that rhesus infants appeared to be much more independent and active than yellow baboon infants of the same age. Of course, another possibility is that these "differences" are due to the effects of captivity. Although I have yet to analyze my data, I do expect to be able to make some sort of preliminary comparison
The primary purpose of this trip was to assess the Alice facility and other locations as possible long-term research sites. While in Texas, I was also able to visit the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio (olive baboons), the Snow Monkey Sanctuary in Dilley (Japanese macaques), the Univ. of TX Medical Center in Houston (rhesus macaques), and the Univ. of TX M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center in Bastrop (chimpanzees). All of these facilities were open to the possibility of me conducting research with their primate colonies and each has both strong and weak points with regard to my research needs. Currently, I'm leaning towards the San Antonio location. I plan to return there next summer to conduct a one-month pilot study of olive baboons, similar to what I did this past summer in Alice. From that, I should be able to determine the "best" site, the feasibility of involving students in primate observation, and perhaps the answer to my "is it real or is it captivity" question posed in the above paragraph. So, watch future issues for Monkey Tale II!
GENERAL:
(The Grinnell College Anthropology Page) http://www.ac.grinnell.edu/anthropology
http://www.yahoo.com/social_science/anthropology_ and_archaeology/
http://www.oakland.edu/~dow/anthap.htm
(The Applied Anthropology Computer Center) http://www.acs.oakland.edu/~dow/anthap.html
(access to directories of anthropologists, electronic journals, newsgroups, etc.)
http://bib10.sub.su.se/sam/ssanth.htm
ARCHAEOLOGY:
(Knappers Anonymous) http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~t64tr/knap,html
(Archaeology) http://www.lib.uconn.edu/~lizee/WebRev/ archonw3.html
(Archaeology and anthropology for K-12 teachers) http://www.execpc.com/~dboals/arch.html
(Archaeology Magazine) http://www.he.net/~archaeol/index.html
(ArchNet) http://www.lib.uconn.edu/archnet/
(Chaco Culture National Historic Park) http://www.chaco.com/park/
(Crow Canyon Archaeological Center)
http://www.swcolo.org/tourism/archaeology/ crowcanyon.html
(Florida archaeology) http://www.dos.state.fl.us/dostate/dhr
(Jamestown Historic Site) http://widomaker.com/~apva/
(MayaQuest) http://mecc.com/mayaquest.html
(Newton's Apple - archaeology) http://ericir.syr.edu/
(Public education in archaeology) http://www.usd.edu/anth/pubed.html
(Social studies lesson plans and resources) http://www.csun.edu/~hcedu013/
(Society for American Archaeology) http://www.saa.org/
(Southwest Archaeology Group) http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/swa/
(Time Traveler) http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/timetraveler/main.html
CULTURAL:
(Intentional Communal Studies Association) http://www.well.com/user/cmty./icsa
(On International Communities) http://www.well.com/user/cmty
(Maya World Online Magazine) http://stevensonpress.com
(Latin American Studies) http://www.lanic.utexas.edu/
(Fourth World Documentation Project) http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/fwdp.html
BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY:
(Primate Info Net) http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/
MUSEUMS:
(American Museum of Natural History) http://www.amnh.org/
(Bishop Museum-Honolulu) http://www.bishop.hawaii.org/
(Field Museum of Natural History-Chicago) http://www.bvis.uic.edu/museum/
(University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology) http://www.umma.lsa.umich.edu/
(Smithsonian Institution-Washington DC) http://www.si.edu/
By John Whittaker
I am a flintknapper partly because I am an archaeologist, and making stone tools helps me to understand the prehistoric ones I find, and partly because knapping is an enjoyable craft. In 1991 I started going to a knap-in at Fort Osage, near Kansas City, Missouri, and discovered that there is a large and growing interest in stone tool making among the non-academic public. Why do people want to learn, and in some cases fanatically pursue, an obsolete and esoteric prehistoric art?
As I started asking questions, I realized that the knap-ins are a unique social event, and the knappers themselves form a kind of subculture that may not tell the archaeologist much about stone tools in the past, but is full of anthropologically interesting features in its own right. The Fort Osage knap-in occurs twice a year, and is one of the largest of twenty or so around the country. It typically attracts over 100 knappers and other primitive craftsmen, plus visitors, tourists, and assorted small entrepreneurs. The knap-ins are unique because they focus around the actual practice of a craft. Instead of just displays of art, the visitor sees dozens of knappers making stone tools and piles of waste flakes amid the din of cracking stone and the babble of knapping jargon, tall tales, and advice. Knappers come partly to learn from others, seeing how they work as well as what they make, and partly to show off their own skills. There is a strong ethic of exchanging knowledge, and teaching newcomers, and there is also an element of pride in performance. There are a few knappers who will gather a crowd every time they work, and to a certain extent, status within the knapping crowd depends on prowess with the stone.
In the last five years, I have watched not only the growth in number of knap-ins and new knappers, but also the development of rules for behavior, ethical arguments, esthetic ideals, networks and newsletters, bonding and rituals. On sabbatical this year, I hope to write an ethnography of the knap-in, but the knapping world I am interested in keeps changing. Last year, knappers demonstrated their membership in the group with license plates (FLNTKPR) t-shirts ("Only the Stones Live Forever"), and arrowhead jewelry, and exchanged news at knap-ins and in several newsletters. This year, knappers have flooded the computer networks (try http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~t64tr/knap.html for a good example), and the keyboard is becoming as much a part of the knapping world as the hammerstone.
By Douglas Caulkins:
1996 "Voluntary Associations", entry for David Levinson, editor, The Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, A Henry Holt Reference Book.
1995 "High Technology Entrepreneurs in the Peripheral Regions of the United Kingdom." Reginald Byron, (ed) Economic Futures on the North Atlantic Margin: Selected Contributions to the Twelfth International Seminar on Marginal Regions. Aldershot (Hants.): Avery Press (287-299)
1995 "Stumbling into Applied Anthropology: Collaborative Roles of Academic Researchers." Practicing Anthropology Vol 17, No. 1-2, (21-24) February/March.
1995 "Are Norwegian Voluntary Associations Homogeneous Moralnets? Reflections on Naroll's Selection of Norway as a Model Society." Cross- Cultural Research Special Issue in Honor of Raoul Naroll (1920-1985), Part II, Vol 29, No. 1, February. (43-57).
By John Whittaker
1996 Reproducing a Bronze Age Dagger from the Thames: statements and questions. London Archaeologist 8(2): 51-53.
By Jon Andelson
1996 Intentional Communities, in David Levinson & Melvin Ember (editors), The Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. HRAF and American Reference Publishing Company (A Henry Holt Company Reference Book.)
1996 Building A Dream: Intentional Communities in Anthropological & Historical Perspective, in Carol & Melvin Ember (eds.), Cross-Cultural Research for Social Science, Old Tappan, N.J.: Simon & Schuster.
1995 Review: Beyond the Counterculture: The Community of Mateel, by Jentry Anders (1990). Communal Socieites 14:1-6
By Douglas Caulkins:
"Using Scenarios to Assess Cultural Consensus and Cultural Criticism," invited presentation for Seventh International Kurt Lewin Conference, Society for the Advancement of Field Theory, September 7, University of California, Los Angeles.
By Jon Andelson:
1996 "What's In A Name?" Keynote Address, 23rd annual Communal Studies Association conference, October 10-12, Amana, Iowa.
By Vicki Bentley-Condit
1996 Female-Infant-Female Social Relationships: "Manipulation" among Yellow Baboons. International Primatological Society/American Society of Primatologists joint conference, August 1996.
By Douglas Wood, `97
In the Spring of 1996 I had the opportunity to study abroad through the program CIEE Indonesia. I lived and studied in the city of Malang, East Java's 2nd largest city. Despite its size, the city still maintains some rural elements. Rice paddies, ancient temples, and goats were often interspersed in urban neighborhoods. During my 3-week long ethnographic field study at the end of the semester, I traveled throughout the neighborhoods of Malang, mapping the extensive mini-van system of public transportation and interviewing drivers. The program had a strong focus on the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Due to the myriad of ethnic languages in Indonesia, hardly anyone speaks Bahasa Indonesia on a regular basis. People use Bahasa Indonesia when they go to school, the bank, or a government office. In Malang, almost everyone speaks low Javanese and/or Madurese. This made immersion difficult, because I had to ask people to speak their second (or sometimes third) language, Bahasa Indonesia. Regardless, my Bahasa Indonesia improved tremendously.
I also was able to further study the Javanese gamelan, with an East Javanese focus. Three times a week, I studied in the small village Tumpang, about 25 kilometers outside Malang. There is a famous, 1000 year-old temple there, Candi Tumpang.
Tumpang means a large rice mountain offering to the God(s). Although largely Islamic, the Javanese (especially in rural areas) still practice rituals and observances relating to Buddhism, Hinduism, and the indigenous mystical tradition. My drumming teacher, for example, was a pious Muslim, yet observed and helped facilitate (as a musician) the horse trance dance, in which dancers go into trance, eating glass and hot coals.
As part of our contemporary society course which included the study of Islam, the Army and politics in Indonesia, and business practices in Indonesia; we had the opportunity to travel to Sulawesi, another island in the archipelago. We spent our time in the highlands of Tanah Toraja, where I observed Torajan people playing sepak takraw, an indigenous foot game similar to footbagging. This week long visit provided me with much inspiration and information pertaining to my current Watson Fellowship proposal, as well as giving me a glimpse of the diversity of Indonesia. I strongly recommend the CIEE Indonesia program.
By Carol Trosset
Director of Institutional Research and Lecturer in Anthropology
Like many Ph.D. anthropologists these days, my path to a steady job was long and convoluted, and the eventual outcome was quite unexpected. I majored in anthropology at Carleton, and obtained my Ph.D. from the University of Texas-Austin. As a Watson fellow and as a graduate student, I did fieldwork in Wales, studying ideological and emotional processes related to Welsh-speaking identity. During the next six years I taught at four institutions over a period of four and a half years, and in between jobs I was unemployed for a year and a half, during which time I published my dissertation, Welshness Performed. By the time I was 35, I had had enough. I no longer wanted a full-time teaching position, yet I enjoyed the academic environment. What to do?
I became an applied anthropologist who studies academia. I first returned to Grinnell (I had taught here in 1989-90) to do contract research, and a year ago I was hired full-time as Grinnell's Director of Institutional Research. In this job, I do anthropology almost every day, and I can constantly indulge my interest in academic institutions (even while serving on committees!). My work is enormously varied, as my office provides research support for any academic or administrative department in the college that needs assistance. All of this work involves a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Rather than struggling to find time to do my research, my problem is juggling my many research projects to make sure people get the results soon enough to make use of them.
This touches on a key difference between academic and applied research. As an academic anthropologist, I could choose research topics that reflected my own interests (contingent only on convincing others that the work was worth funding), but I could not create a community of scholars with whom to share my interests. As an applied anthropologist, my research skills are for sale; I study what other people are interested in. In return, I am surrounded daily by lots of people who want to hear what I discover, and can contribute to it. For me, this is definitely the better deal; I can get interested in almost anything if I am doing research on it, and I find good collegial interaction to be more stimulating than almost any particular topic. In addition, I constantly feel that my work is not only interesting but actively useful.
My ethnographic research is not the job's primary activity, but it is the anthropological plum contained within it. My original assignment, on which I continue to work, was the problem of students feeling silenced with respect to the discussion of diversity issues on campus. This is not a topic I would have chosen for myself, but I have found plenty to fascinate me. Each semester, the project grows: approaches to dealing with disagreement, reasons for wanting to discuss things, perceptions of what makes someone powerful and/or knowledgeable, how new students' expectations of Grinnell are met oraltered in the first semester. I even get to do the one sort of teaching I still enjoy, which is modelled on apprenticeship. Each semester now I teach a research methods course, in which the students work with me on the current stage of this research and learn interviewing and analytical skills in the process. The involvement of student researchers is critical to the success of the project, since I would never have time in among my other duties to interview enough students to produce meaningful results. The insights these students share with me about their own lives at Grinnell are equally fundamental to my growing understanding of the culture here.
Applied work is little publicized within anthropology, and hardly any Institutional Researchers are anthropologists. But it's a good match.