Toree Dobson

ANT 3212
Professor Gorman
11 September 2022
Week 3 Homework Assignment

Dead Birds Discussion Questions

1. What fieldwork techniques are used in this ethnographic film?

This film depicts an example of engaged anthropology with added components of participant
observation and reflexivity. The anthropologist’s knowledge of the names of the men in the tribe
they are studying tells us that the anthropologist and the people they’re studying have more than
a superficial relationship which would illustrate participant observation. The demand of the
anthropologist to remain as objective as possible throughout participant observation breeds the
need for the anthropologist to engage in reflexivity because the (even temporary) denunciation of
one’s culture and subsequent saturation of another’s culture require the anthropologist to
challenge his or her own beliefs, perspectives, biases, and relational limitations so that the
anthropologist can most honestly and accurately capture other cultures. Because these techniques
require the anthropologist to become educated-in and willing to commit to ethical principles, this
fieldwork is also engaged anthropology. Whenever a person is steeped into another culture, they
invariably have to learn to come to terms with systems of power, and individual people (who
create literal societies, who create an abstract collection of ideological societies, creating
ideology and culture) are the foundation for systems of power.

2. How would you use qualitative measures? Quantitative measures?

While observing the behavior patterns of the individuals within a tribe, the anthropologist might
begin asking themselves questions to collect data. Upon initially observing people fight one
another with weapons, a curious rather than a judgmental or critical anthropologist might ask
themselves a qualitative and a quantitative question at the same time: How many—why are there
—people are—people—fighting? That is: How many people are fighting? Why are there people
fighting? Next, the anthropologist might interview individuals within the tribe to build a
framework for ideological understanding such as 1) why there was a battle three weeks ago in
the first place? 2) what is the nature of the intimacy between these tribes considering that they
have a tradition for rest, recovery, and reflection? and 3) when told that this battle is to restore
balance for a life lost three weeks ago, how does the tribe who took a life define balance (how
does the tribe seeking balance define balance?). The language responses to these kinds of
questions indicate qualitative data while the anthropologist’s subjective, literal observation of the
movement of mass through space relative to time-irreversibility.

3. Are there ethical questions involved in filming a battle?

On the one hand, our culture may lead us to believe that filming a battle would be an ethical
violation. But because the key anthropological fieldwork principle is “Do no harm,” engaging
with battling groups might cause a harm that we can’t perceive. For example: what if this battle
is the way in which these two groups communicate with one another in a context that isn’t
culturally relevant in our own culture? These two battling factions might be settling an
imbalance, and by battling, they might be communicating concepts such as boundaries, limits, or
emotional vulnerability, and the action of battling itself may the language these groups use to
ensure that they’ve agreed upon an interpretive meaning for certain actions. Therefore, filming a
battle might not be considered an ethical battle. But an anthropologist may experience a moral
conflict, especially if the anthropologist is committed to the ideation “Do no harm.” In this case,
the anthropologist would have to weigh interpretations of harms relevant to these two cultures,
first, before considering interjecting in the conflict.

Franz Boas Discussion Questions

1. One of Boas’ key contributions to anthropology is the idea of cultural relativism, to see each
culture on its own merits. Do you see any evidence of this perspective in the selection? What do
you think may have inspired that perspective?

Boas had a multi-perceptual/conceptual framework for thinking. He posed ideological questions

that presupposed constraints within the perimeters of perceived liberties (“shackles” and
“tradition” are the constraints and liberties, respectively). Boas also had a willingness to alter his
own beliefs and cultural perspectives—in part, simply because he was so curios and awed by so
many notions and artwork in his life.

2. Fieldwork is often very personal, even if conducted in a context entirely foreign to one's
experience. How do you think Boas’ personal life influenced his ideas and his work as an
anthropologist?

As an anthropologist, linguist, theoretician, sociologist, and scientist Boas respected the

empirical process of collecting data and analyzing the data for bias, uncertainties, or unknowns.
When observing the Eskimos, Boas voiced a profound empathy for adorning the Eskimos’
identities, claiming a synchronicity with his and the Eskimos’ culture, “fortunes,” futures, pasts.
Boas wanted to understand the complex relationship between how his own culture identified,
perceived, and interpreted another culture’s qualities (and how his own culture presupposes the
authority on what constitutes a “quality”).

3. Boas is well-known for his four-field approach to anthropology. How do you think his
background influenced that approach? How do you think it might impact how he conducted
fieldwork?

Boaz had a foundational understanding of the ideological commitment in which he, and any
anthropologist, would have to adhere for the most accurate, objection communication and
interpretation of the dichotomous independent/dependent relationship between 1) an
anthropologists relationship to other individual people, 2) an individual and another individual,
3) multiple groups of people corresponding/ affected within a communication network, 4) the
anthropologist’s relationship to him/herself, 5) and the anthropologist’s relationship with his/her
environment and with his/her observation of others within their own environments.

We still Live Here Discussion Questions

1. How important is the language you speak to your identity?

I would argue that my use (or seeming lack of use at times) of language is integral to my
perception of my identity. On the one hand, there’s the language that I speak: English. The
language that I speak has its own identity because it preceded me and it will outlast me, and
therefore it has its own history and transformative process. On the other hand, there are certain
ways in which I employ English to communicate different empirical and abstract perceptions. If
I’m speaking English, then I’ve inherently agreed to previous interpretations and iterations of
English; therefore, if my linguistic mode of perception already has its own set of symbols and
meaning, then that meaning seeps into the way I initially use language until I learn how to
employ language to communicate facets of my identity in a way that aren’t necessarily congruent
with the contextual or conceptual understanding of the way I choose to communicate the
ordering of the words in my sentences and the wording of the sentences into paragraphs. Without
being too verbose, I’d propose that (for me, at least, and likely for others) the ideas of language
and identity are synonymous with one another. I’d be interested to know if they’re
etymologically cognate with one another.

2. There are more than 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, and, on average, one of them
disappears every ten days. What does that mean for the future of language diversity? What about
the future of cultural diversity?

Languages are disappearing because they aren’t being used with enough frequency to continue
circulating. Globalization has had this effect on language because of people’s desire to have
relationships with people on the other side of the world—people who they’d never considered
having functional, respectful economic, political, and societal relationships with one another.
Thus, the most popular languages have and continue to become more and more ubiquitous,
eliminating a need for less popular languages as speakers of ubiquitous languages like English
and Spanish travel for entertainment, vocational, educational, and economic purposes. The
seeming unification of the most popular languages around the globe are dualistically unifying
and stratifying the cultures sharing a popular language while separating the less-circulated
languages, isolating them to refined geographical areas until the language dies from lack of use
because of assimilation or lack of people to employ it because of an environmental (or other
external factor such as invasion) strains.
3. How is the revival of a language also the revival of a culture and a way of life? What else
might be gained, for all of us, whenever a language is revived?

Because language allows people to communicate about their perceptions of what is occurring in
the environment (things such as potential threats to safety, about the location of resources, and
about neighboring societies), language creates culture, thus a way of life, a way of interpreting
the world around a group of individuals who’ve chosen relationships with one another in order to
survive. So language revival brings the voices of minorities or previously unknown, unheard
perspectives. Diverse perspectives and ways of thinking allow us to learn what we think that we
know so that we can learn what we don’t know—and the more we know about other people, the
more equipped we can be to understand the seemingly un-understandable, to foster mutually
beneficial relationships, and to inform others of these new perspectives so that we can create
(hopefully?) a global culture based on reciprocity, respect, and unity. In the same way that
Bohannan couldn’t conceptually translate the literal English word “ghost” to the Tiv, dying
cultures’ language cannot communicate a concept without a literal symbol of reference.