3 May 2016 "Cultural Anthropology"

Within the discipline of sociology, there has typically been a trend of observing foreign cultures as “less than”. It has been a trend of understanding Western cultures as more “modern” and other cultures as “traditional”. Cultural anthropology seeks to remedy this trend by understanding culture as important regardless of where it comes from, and regardless of its mannerisms. In fact, it is the interpretation itself that has historically been flawed because they reduce the culture of a people to a thing that must be interpreted, or based off of the understanding of something else.

            The understanding of culture, according to the readings from this week, can be understood through two concepts: culture as meaning-making, and culture as meaning maintenance. Culture as meaning-making refers to the idea that it is the culture of a place itself that shapes the actions and traditions performed by the people of that culture. For example, to understand the reasoning behind Balinese trances through the lens of culture as meaning-making would mean believing that it is something inherent in the culture of the place that causes such a strange custom to occur. In other words, it is the culture of the Balinese people that developed the tradition of trances, and not the tradition that developed the culture.

            Alternatively, culture as meaning maintenance refers to the idea that a culture serves as a reinforcement of certain norms. For example, in order to understand the reasoning behind Balinese trances through the lens of culture as meaning maintenance, one would believe that the culture of the Balinese people only reinforces the tradition of trances. In other words, the culture of the Balinese people facilitates traditions such as trances.

            Both of these concepts have different implications in the subject of sociology. Culture as meaning-making puts culture at the center of study, labeling it as an independent variable that shapes other variables around it. The culture of a place defines that place, rather than the place defining the culture. Culture as meaning maintenance, on the other hand, defines culture as a more dependent variable. Rather than being a variable that does the shaping, culture as meaning maintenance is a variable that is shaped more by outside factors.