09/10/17.
We resumed class
from the distinction between FORMAL and
INFORMAL. The main consequence is
the fragmentation of TRADITION once informal
means are mostly used. Formal transmission tends to create a CANON, that is a set of transmissible
knowledge frozen in time and hardly
changeable. Informal transmission is keen to VARIATIONS both in teaching and in learning.
Q1.
Select examples of canonized knowledge.
Then we
discussed another opposition, between BODILY
and LINGUISTIC types of
knowledge. Bodily is everything we know that cannot really be entirely included
into a “textbook”, while linguistic knowledge refers to what we teach and learn
mostly through language. While the library could be the repository of
linguistic knowledge, formal bodily knowledge can be found in workshops and
labs, where transmission of knowledge hardly uses the language. VIDEO GLASSMAKING
Important
note: formal does NOT overlap with Linguistic, nor informal with bodily. We
have indeed FOUR TYPES of cultural knowledge:
1. Formal and linguistic
2. Informal and linguistic
3. Formal and bodily
4. Informal and bodily
Another way
to classify cultural knowledge is to locate its PRESTIGE or STATUS, that
is the level were the internal users trace that type of knowledge. Anthropologists
do not rank cultures in HIGH and LOW but they are aware that cultures
tend to rank cultural elements within and without themselves, as we have seem
with the story of the partner to be presented to your parents (a specialist in
playstation, or in wicker baskets weaving, or playing piano).
To sum up
once more, culture is knowledge that humans acquire through formal or informal
means, via language of bodily skills, and organized into different statuses.
But this is not enough. With a final example taken from PHONETICS we have learned that cultural knowledge itself can be
entirely UNAWARE and SUB-CONSCIOUS. In other words, there
are plenty of things, like phonetic rules, that we have acquired and we
normally use, yet we are not aware
of knowing or using them.
The story
of the two young fish (that meet the old fish and are not aware of what the
water is) exemplifies this unconscious dimension of important aspects of
culture. We need COMPARISON to
become aware, so we need cultural anthropology (which is a comparative
discipline) to acquire REFLEXIVITY,
the awareness of the cultural dimensions of our lives. EXOTICISM, the sheer collection of weird cultural facts, is not a
goal for anthropology, since our discipline aims at improving through
comparison our awareness.
Q2.
Elaborate a real or fictive example of a cultural comparison that can help us understand
some cultural rules (i.e.,
by investigating “polygamy” on a comparative basis I can become aware of some
cultural rules about monogamy, and discuss the political basis of marriage. By
discovering (through comparison) the cultural rules of monogamy I can think of
alternative rules maybe available to other cultures or as possible alternatives
to our own culture.
