Prime-Time Society by Conrad Phillip Kottak

Author:Conrad Phillip Kottak [Kottak, Conrad Phillip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781315421919
Google: wa9JDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-06-03T06:02:53+00:00

Anthropology and the Quest

The American preoccupation with adventure, exploration, and forging social relationships among strangers shows up not just in television, films, and fiction, but in science—for example, in anthropology. Every introductory course states that anthropology differs from sociology and psychology because of its global and comparative perspective. American anthropology is rooted in respect for the alien, the different, the other. A basic assumption is that statements about human life, society, and behavior should come from study of many cultures rather than just one.

Sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and economists study primarily their own societies. However, American (and British and French) anthropology requires fieldwork somewhere else. This is why Margaret Mead studied adolescent behavior in Samoa and why I did my anthropological apprenticeship in a Brazilian fishing village. It is also why I went to Brazil to study television.

However, this quest for the other is undeveloped in Brazilian anthropology. Most Brazilian anthropologists do not undertake fieldwork abroad or conduct cross-cultural studies. Instead, they do research on national issues and Brazilian subgroups, such as homosexuals, prostitutes, working-class communities, and domestic employees. Of dozens of presentations I heard at one annual meeting of the Association of Brazilian Anthropologists, not one reported on research outside Brazil.

Although American anthropologists also study their own society, most do so only after having done prior fieldwork elsewhere. Foreign research removes us from our own culture. It furnishes us with intimate knowledge of another society. It eventually makes us skeptical of explanations that fellow natives of our own society offer and accept without question. Anthropologists who study their own culture after working elsewhere can combine the expertise of the native with the detachment of the observer who knows that human nature varies from one society to another. That is what I am trying to do in Prime-Time Society.

Both cultural tradition and practical reasons explain why Brazilians do less foreign research. Brazil lacks the plethora of funding agencies available in the United States. A second reason is that Brazil still has isolated, technologically primitive Indian populations, which may be studied without leaving the country. However, the third reason is cultural: The United States has stronger traditions of exploration and of dealing with strangers than does Brazil.

In 1984, I spent weeks interviewing anthropology graduate students in Rio before finding two to participate in my television impact project. Fieldwork for the project required at least nine months of residence in small communities in other states. Anthropologists had previously studied all those towns, and all were perfectly pleasant places. My main problem was not any lack of competent, interesting graduate students, but finding people willing to leave Rio. Eventually I did find two, Rosane Prado and Alberto Costa, but neither was a native of "the marvelous city."

American history prepares us for exploration, strangers, and alienation. The same is true of the British and French, who became world explorers and later anthropologists, in their empires' most distant territories. Nor, apparently, were the early Portuguese explorers, leaders during the age of discovery, reluctant to travel abroad.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.