Cultural analysis in anthropology is used to collect data on cultural phenomena as help in the interpretation of this cultural representation and practices. The aim of cultural analysis is to help in gaining the new knowledge and understanding through the analysis of the collected data and collected processes. Cultural analysis helps in the understanding and mapping trends, influences, affects and effects within cultural. There are four themes for sociological, educational analysis on how culture is used to survive, as an adaptation and change. Expressions and holism, as well as, specify.
Cultural anthropology has been apprehended with divergent rationalities with explaining how and why various cultural communities think, reason and live in the world as they do. However, classical anthropology practice and thinking is exemplified by great witchcraft and rationality debates of past decades (Scheper-Hughes, 409). According to Scheper –Hughes anthropology is not just about the practice, and how people act, but a question of ethics and power. Scheper-Hughes traveled and visited many countries recording their cultural practices, but what surprised her was the necklacing and squatter camps in South Africa, where people were affected by AIDS.
Children were sentenced to necklacing because of stealing 400 Rand was something unheard and it surprised how people could be so unethical. Mothers could not defend their own children because they were afraid that their shanties could be burned down. When she showed concern, she was threatened and told to back off from the community. However, the essence of human rights was violated and in this case, it was not a matter of punishment, but violation of human rights, which was both unethical and immoral (Scheper-Hughes, 409). The children were only 14 years of age and a better punishment could have been found for the three boys.
Rosaldo in recording cultural analysis of the reason for rage in the Ilongots. He did not understand why a person would resolve to headhunting to take away the grief they were feeling for losing a family member. When he met a man who had lost his three year old child in moaning and crying he did not understand why. He asked the man and he said that he had lost seven children to death (Rosaldo 292). This period the government had placed a ban on headhunting and the only solution left was to join the revolutionary Christianity. When Rosaldo asked, why the man decided to join the church he was informed that to take away the rage. However, personal experience taught Rosaldo a lesson after he lost his wife and felt the rage and grief that resulted from the loss. That is when why Ilongots went headhunting after a loss. He described it as a ritual.
In comparing the two anthropologists, it is clear that they shared the same opinion on how human we’re treating each other and the issues of ethics in their writing. Both Rosaldo and Scheper-Hughes have encountered challenges and dilemmas in cultural anthropology not understanding how a fellow human can enact laws that affect another person (Rosaldo 297). For example, in the case of Rosaldo he could not understand how headhunting could help and individually overcome rage. In that how could take another man’s life be celebrated as if it was a normal thing. He felt that it was wrong in the way it was practiced and the ritual itself. On the other hand, Scheper-Hughes could not understand why 14 year olds could be slashed, until they were too weak even to urinate. It saddened her that nothing could be done to help the children.
Additionally, when she tried to help the people from Brazil they saw as an enemy and a person who was representing political powers than the people living in the shanties making it hard to do her work. She became an anthropologist and a companheria to fit in the circles of the Brazilians (Scheper-Hughes, 413). She states that she was there to observe, to document the pain of the people like truthfully and sensitively as she could; however, the women wondered what good anthropology was to them if it were not helping them deal with the political parties. Rosaldo, on the other hand, personal experience helped him understand why the Ilogots preferred headhunting to another form of punishments to take away their rage. When the Ilogots men how bereavement could make a man cut another human head told him, he considered their thinking as stereotypical, implausible, thin, unsatisfying and too simple. However, experiences the pain in a personal level helped in understanding what people mean by rage.
The difference between the two authors and great anthropologists is that first Rosaldo understood rage and grief at a personal level. Hence, making it easier for him to explain the unethical concepts related to the cultural anthropology. However, although Schemer- Hughes related to the communities in a personal level by even helping them come up with policies that would help the community especially in South Africa she could not understand their cultural practices and thinking because she was not in the peoples shoes. She was forced by the Brazilian women to become a companheria she could not as she was an anthropologist and her role was to record the occurrences and the cultural practices of the Brazilians.
Secondly, Rosaldo uses emotion in his cultural analysis in the Ilongots people but does not include political subjectivity in his concept. He looks at the traditions and cultures that are involved in the community and why they do what they do (Rosaldo 301). How rage causes people to behead others, but does not inform the reader about any political issues. However, in cultural analysis by Scheper- Hughes, she discusses political subjectivity and the enactment of political parties to help people to make laws that will benefit them. For example, in South Africa, she helped the community to come up with laws that were based on ethics and were moral. The community did not want the involvement of the government in their security issues and they preferred coming up with their laws that would govern the community (Scheper-Hughes, 430). She went ahead to get rid of slashing as it was a cruel form of punishments.
Cultural relativism was axiomatic in anthropological research by Boas articulating that civilization was not something absolute, but relative; therefore, making human ideas and conceptions true as far as civilization is concerned. Therefore, cultural relativism involves specific methodological and epistemological claims. This makes it the view that all beliefs, ethics and customs are relative to the individual within the social concept.
Rosaldo embraced cultural relativism because even though he understood rage the people of Ilongots felt that was because of bereavement he still did not like the idea that people could go to the extent of taking another man’s life to make them feel happy or take away the grief that they felt in them. Headhunting was wrong and although the martial laws were imposed to provide for punishments for headhunters it was an absurd culture that was ethically wrong in all forms (Rosaldo 298). Grief is associated with rage but people should not cause other people the same way as they are suffering by taking another person’s life. Rosaldo stated that when he was dead a life insurance policy for his wife after her death, he felt rage to the extent that he wanted to take a man’s head. However, due to his moral values he controlled himself and learned how to control the rage that came from bereavement.
Schemer- Hughes holds the same position of cultural relativism as Rosaldo in the sense that people should live in a community that respects other people’s human rights. Reason being each person has a right to live and they should not be subjected to a life that does not conform to the right ethics and morals (Scheper-Hughes, 415). For example, the United States denied people the opportunity to study AID’s at the time when it became an epidemic in South Africa and Brazil. This was wrong because a solution to the disease could have been found and people could not as they do today. Additionally, subjecting people to cruel punishments is wrong as she writes in her article, in the case of the three boys who were even denied medical attention. Therefore, this means that the two authors hold that cultures should be relatives to the needs of the people and they should not be oppressive.
Work cited
Rosaldo, Renato. Cultures Truth: The Reamrking of Social Analysis . Boston, U.S: Beacon press, 1993. Print.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Primacy of Ethical: Propositions for a militant Anthropology."Current Abthropology 36.3 (1995): pp. 409-440. Web.
