Classical Readings

8 Pages 1890 Words

Classical Readings on Cultural Anthropology
By
Gary Ferraro

What do we have to learn through the study of different cultures? I was hoping for some wonderful revelation in the collection of writings. I may have found one. This book was a difficult read for me. I am not sure whether it’s my age or my inexperience with classical readings. I also found it difficult to formulate a report on a collection of readings, the last report I did was on Laura Ingall’s Little House on the Prairie. This reading was a little more challenging. The main point that seemed to jump out at me is that perceptions change, our theory of reality changes with every viewpoint. Every culture can seem primitive, self destructive, nonsensical, immoral or just wrong, depending on who is doing the observation and what perspective they are observing from.

In the first reading, Narcirema, points very clearly to the fact that our own culture could seem very odd, irrational, and ritualistic to an outsider. But aren’t we all outsiders to everyone else? Don’t we see ourselves as “normal” and everyone else as “abnormal”? I think it is human nature more than ethnocentrism. My daily rituals would seem very irrational to another woman of my age in different circumstances. That’s where the saying comes from that you don’t really know a person till you walk a mile in their shoes.

The second reading of “Queer Customs” gets right to my point that culture is an abstraction; therefore each person doing the viewing views it differently. Culture is pointed out as being a “way of thinking, feeling, and believing” and since I have never met anyone who thought exactly the way I did about everything, one would have to conclude that we each have our own culture and our own views of other cultures.

I wasn’t really sure that the next reading really fit in with the others in the book. Rapport-talk versus Report-talk seemed insignificant to...