【全英文读书笔记】Questions of Anthropology
在读Questions of Anthropology这本书，是很多论文的合集，每一章都在讲一个文化中的一个话题。好像还没有中文翻译版，强推有能力的文科人去读一读，目前我读的几篇都还挺有意思的。
这篇读书笔记不知道为什么越写越长……不奢求有人读完了。
Acknowledgement
I myself am only a high school student who studies A Level sociology and intends to major in social anthropology. I’m neither academically trained nor fulfilled with professional knowledge. There will definitely be some mistakes in various aspects, please feel free to point them out.
Chapter 1: What does it mean to be alone?
Apologies: The reflection of this chapter is much too detailed. I just wanted to include everything in my notes but didn’t consider preciseness or briefness. I will try to use short and accurate words as I write more reading notes.
This essay illustrates the topic of being alone. The term is manipulated from different dimensions: the aloneness of not getting married as a female or a male, which is the main focus, the aloneness of not having enough family members such as children and the aloneness in certain vulnerable situations like sleeping. The essay is actually an ethnography about southern Manggarai, a place in Indonesia, Southeast Asia. The comparison of European-American culture and this specific culture is included, being another horizontal way of illustrating the question.
An alone male and an alone female
We often assume there’s a gap between different genders. European pattern shows the malice towards spinster and “left-over” women: But for men, it seems normal to see them walking alone on the street. Is that extended to Indonesia?
Unmarried women in Indonesia don’t take their condition as something miserable. Not getting married doesn’t make them seem erratic or different from others. Actually, this will most likely to happen in a European context where it seems anti-norm to not get married. Marriage and singledom are both attractive for a young woman.
However, it is worth noticing that marriage is also seen as “lack of freedom” by the local single women. Women have to subject to their husbands and are required to do things by the latter. That’s an essential reason for many not to get married. There seems like being an ethnicity or community of unmarried women cohabitating and supporting each other, which is another reason.
“By contrast, unmarried Manggarai men lack a clear role. Unlike his industrious spinster sisters, a man’s rejection of marriage is seen as evidence of his laziness, his fear of working to support a family.” Maybe we can infer that the inner structure of family is like that of the west: men work to support the family (instrumental leader) and women work to give emotional aid( expressive leader, as Parsons claim).
Anyways, in Indonesia the norm of the society is the opposite of west. Does that mean the social status of women is higher than men? Does that promote feminism? Does that lead to more gender equality? I cannot find the answer from this essay; I will try to find more ethnographies on Indonesia.
What is exactly being alone?
“It is not the unmarried, or even the childless, who are thought to be most alone but those who, whether through fate or because of their own actions, are excluded from the benefits of siblingship.”
Siblingship has two representations in Manggarai: the relationships between siblings and the spirit guardian of every individual. For the latter, the locals believe that everyone is born with a unique guardian spirit, which is “closely connected with that individual’s health, fate and happiness”. The unmarried women take these spirits as their husbands who are not found by them yet. This can explain why the women don’t take marriage as serious as western people do.
Furthermore, the author lends the concept of “withs” and “singles” from Goffman to explain why unmarried women are not “alone”. The unmarried women are in the status of “single” in terms of marriage, but not in the status of living their own lives. They are accompanied by their siblings, who are weighed as important as their spouses. That’s a situation of “with”.
Danger of being alone
Even if the local doesn’t take an unmarried woman seriously or criticize them, there is still social norm about not being alone. Interestingly, it is believed not suitable to do certain things alone because that’s relatively vulnerable situation. For example, sleeping is always the situation when one has no awareness of defending, so that people cannot sleep alone. Another norm is not eating alone, which seems quite hard to understand for me. According to the description of the author, the local kids and adults simply wait for at least one another person to have meal. I myself don’t think eating is a vulnerable situation, but maybe this is another social construct that differs from society to society.
Chapter 2: How do we know who we are?
The title seems as if this essay is philosophical anthropology but it turns out talking about kinship, by the definition of “biological relations between two individuals”. It also talks about the differences between biological kinship and social kinship. The focus of the essay is about interviewing a groups of adoptees in Malaysia who searched for their birth parents and siblings. They did that in order to “find out who they really are”.
In the essay, two specific examples were shown. The first interviewee, Sam, was curious about her past life due to the “physical appearance, feelings about a personal name, the sense of not knowing who she was and the desire to know why she was given up for adoption”. She, like many others, was eager to find her birth mother than father or siblings. So she did. However, the meeting upset her totally. Her birth mother showed huge indifference towards Sam. Sam didn’t find any obvious physical resemblance expect that they both blush easily even if they don’t want to. Anyways, she showed no regret searching for her birth mother—“you do know how you’ve ended up where you are.”
The second interviewee was Elaine, a girl in her late twenties, similar aged with Sam. She began the search for her birth parents because she felt “I don’t think I could have ever gotten in a serious relationship. I never felt complete.” Her adoptive parents had been telling her that she was adopted ever since she was able to speak, which might be a reason of that. She was luckier than Sam as she got along really well with her birth mother.
She had some identical symbols shared with one of her siblings and birth mother. That helped a lot in the process of meeting with her birth mother— “I know that’s my daughter there.” Said by her birth mother. Elaine has established a stable and relaxing relationship with her birth mother and biological siblings ever since. However, she pointed out that she took her birth mother more like a big sister instead of a true matrilineal role because the aging gap between them is not huge enough.
From these two experiences, we can find a lot of similarities and a common model of the adoptees searching for birth parents. Firstly being adopted and realizing that lead to the feeling of being incomplete. The search is an exploration of self identity, in fact. Whether or not getting along well with the birth parents is not essential; having known the original role and identity seems the real aim of these adoptees. Like the author said: to exert agency in the present over events over which they had no control in the past.
The debate of nurture versus nature is included. “Those who are thought to be most alike are those who are nurtured in the same womb, and brought up together in the same house, sharing food as well as procreative links; in other words, full siblings. Siblingship is at the heart of Malay kinship.”
The western norm of kinship is declining compared with the Malay one. For the former, individualism is arising and generally speaking, most people do not have strong linkages with their siblings as Malays do in both emotional and material aspects. One reason may be that the establishments of self identity vary in the two kinds of cultures. Malays emphasize siblings and parenthood to establish a social capital net to find the role they take in social life, while the westerners are more introverting to their mind.
Some personal reflection
1
I just had a lesson about human nature, on philosophical anthropology. I personally am not in favor of the name, instead, I think it’s better if we call it philosophical-biological-anthropology.
Cultural relativism is the core of social and cultural anthropology, which is shown greatly in the book. The authors of essays won’t doubt the ritual and norms of other societies just because they are different from the western world. Instead, social anthropology studies what the differences are and why they are different. It is the differences between different cultures that make up the subject.
In contrast, if we take the views of philosophical anthropology towards human nature, that’ll be too absolutism. The views are teleological or metaphysical, the former meaning that the biological body controls the behavior of humans and the latter meaning that humans consist of both a material body and an immaterial mind. Both of the views assume there’s a universal model of human, whatever humans consist of.
I don’t believe social anthropology agrees with there’s a unique and universal human nature or discipline of our behavior, just as I don’t believe any anthropologists would agree with the morality of Kant. It is only biological anthropology that will agree with there’s something unchangeable or absolutely correct or wrong.
2
The second essay topic reminds me of the problems IVF children and their family face currently. A child born in a homosexual family must have received sperm or germ from someone outside of the family, will he face the same feeling of being incomplete because he lacks the connections of his biological parent? Will he search for that person? Will that be something that breaks the family or is the family willing to see that? There’re just so many ethical and legal issues with IVF children. I used to think it being a great invention but now feel it still needs time to show its effect.
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