It's that time of year again, when millions of Americans hit the streets dressed as terrifying celebrities, food items, and ethically questionable depictions of others' cultural groups. To prevent West Side Story-like brawls this Halloween, and to save you from seeing the looks of horror in your neighbors' eyes when they open the door and realize you and/or your children have absolutely no moral compass, here's a quick guide to how to judge if your costume is culturally appropriate or whether you need to dig out some cardboard from the basement and get to work on some sad, last-minute, duct-taped robot costume. And as a special seasonal service, feel free to post photos of your costumes on Twitter (@relevANTH_com) and I'll give my expert anthropological opinion on how offensive it is, … [Read more...]
There was “no racism before Obama”. Wait, what now?
Welcome to the (sur)reality that is the American election of 2016. The latest in a series of Perplexing Statements that People Believe Despite Immeasurable Evidence to the Contrary was uttered by an Ohio Trump campaign chair, Kathy Miller: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this.” Miller, who has since resigned, went on to paint a picture of a nation whose streets were paved with gold, and whose history was as accurate and factual as that of the land of Oz: “If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said. “You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. … [Read more...]
When Nature Has to Conform to Culture: Highly Sensitive People in a Nonsensitive Culture
Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person was like my own personal Da Vinci Code—riveting, compelling, and totally solved a mystery about myself I didn’t know existed. My whole life I felt more worn out than others, more overwhelmed and overstimulated. But being raised in a Catholic family with a Protestant work ethic and an American intolerance for anything perceived as weak, I saw my sensitivity and heightened perceptivity as personal failings to overcome. Why do I notice the tension in a couple’s conversation across the room when their immediate neighbors are chatting happily unaware? Or the fact that a child is about to fall off a chair fifteen feet away from me when his babysitter is oblivious next to him? <Just mind your own business.> Why do sore muscles, or tight … [Read more...]
5 Homophobic Myths Destroyed by Anthropology
After the horrific mass murder in June focusing on the LGBTQ community at an Orlando club, the only thing worse than the massacre has been the thread of homophobic comments following it. The folks who have been loudest about their disdain for LGBTQ members continue to rely on outdated, subjective, and outright false suppositions about sexuality to justify discrimination against LGBTQ members. It turns out that when you look globally at issues of sex, gender, sexuality, and marriage, it is extremely difficult to summarize human practices as universal or natural. They’re just too damn diverse. So, fighting “truthiness” with anthropological “factiness”, I present the top five homophobic myths that anthropology (and a little social psychology) completely demolish. Myth 1: I know … [Read more...]
How Karl Marx Ruined My Dinner Party
At dinner one night, I made two fatal social errors in rapid succession. First, during casual conversation with two good friends, I began talking about American culture. Not just culture, but how culture is linked to power and the broader social structure. If your eyes are glazing over at this point, you are beginning to understand how my dinner guests felt. Now imagine you are only half-way through dinner and I am seated between you and the door. My second social gaffe was that I invoked the name of the infamous social critic, Karl Marx. And I had the audacity to state my opinion that part of what he observed about culture is correct. The conversation went a little like this: Me: You know, I was thinking lately about Marx’s observation that modern society is divided between the … [Read more...]
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the Election Hunger Games
With Donald Trump defending the size of his hands, Ted Cruz dropping out of the race the week after recruiting former opponent Fiorina as a running mate, Hillary Clinton marketing a fundraising “woman card” to take advantage of Trump’s misogynistic gaffe, and Sanders supporters arguing that voter fraud is to blame for his losses in New York and Arizona, the 2016 presidential campaign has been nothing if not entertaining. But just ask Katniss Everdeen—whether you find the games entertaining or deadly depends very much on where you are in the system. Welcome to the 58th quadrennial American Presidential Hunger Games. The term “Bread and Circuses, or “Panem et Circenses”, was used by Roman author Juvenal to describe the political strategy that kept the diverse and contentious Roman … [Read more...]
Stop Blaming Parents for Our Society’s Failures
Yet another parenting article popped up in my Facebook feed this week. Not a How-To parenting article, which is annoying enough, but a You’re-Doing-Everything-Wrong parenting article. Generation X’s Parenting Problem, published in 2015 but making the rounds again now, is a diatribe about how today’s parents are doing everything wrong. Life was so great when we were kids. Parents today are stressed-out maniacs who need to relax. We turned out fine. Kids these days have it too easy. If only parents today followed their parents’ and grandparents’ choices, everything would be great. The problem is, we don’t live in our parents’ or grandparents’ world. Just like the insipid and ubiquitous memes about how "My childhood was awesome: I was beaten with a belt and I learned respect", these … [Read more...]
The Hidden Cultural Values of Massholes and Y’all Qaeda
Y’all Qaeda may be the newest sarcastic term for the Oregon militiamen, but embedded in the critique of militiamen as terrorists akin to Al Qaeda and ISIS (another favored term being Vanilla ISIS) is a regional slam. The use of “y’all” in the term is a signifier that these are country folk, with all the negative stereotypes that follow the category. And I’ll bet my daughter’s current college fund (don’t get excited, there’s like 3 dollars in there) that the term will spread well beyond the current militia-tastrophe. As a current resident of New England, I can tell you that the image behind the term is precisely how many northerners perceive almost all of the rest of the United States, from the South to the mountainous West: insincerely polite, “Y’all” and “ma’am” talking, racist, fascist, … [Read more...]
Surviving the Holidays, Anthropologist Style
As the holidays inch closer, and you’re beginning to dread joining the bag of mixed nuts you call your family, consider approaching them with anthropologists’ eyes this year. Participant-observation is the primary way cultural anthropologists come to understand people who live very different lives from their own, but we use it also to understand people who are *ahem* uncomfortably close to us, too. Rather than hitting the eggnog too hard and arguing with Aunt Fifi about her political views, pretend you’re writing a book on people you don’t know anything about and respectfully ask auntie about her politics. Sit at the kids’ table and check out how different the conversations (and the table customs) are from the grown ups’ table. Notice with new ears how, despite the fact that your black … [Read more...]
How creating your own ritual can bring surprisingly deep meaning
New Year’s Eve of 2007 was grim. My husband and I hosted a party of battered friends, most of whom were under the age of 35. Within the group, two were recovering from cancer, two were the primary caregivers and spouses of those recovering from cancer, and one was grieving the loss of a husband who had died unexpectedly, leaving her a single parent of a 2 year old son. Others were wrestling with “normal” life stuff: struggling to conceive, feeling overwhelmed at work or frightened by the job market, helping ailing parents, or striving to finish their education. All were stricken with the amount of suffering the others in the room had experienced, and had spent the year supporting each other: dropping off meals, visiting hospitals, attending funerals, or traveling to offer support. In … [Read more...]
