The Challenge of Representing Others

What Is Anthropology? ANTH 2301 The Challenge of Representing Others Representing the perspective of an insider is a contentious anthropological objective. Is it really possible to see things from a new viewpoint and go outside of your own identity? How is it possible for a researcher from one culture to know exactly what it's like to be a part of another? It is not uncommon for anthropologists to do research on members of other social classes, racial or ethnic groups, or gender identities. Is it feasible to portray others' viewpoints truthfully when their lifestyles are so dissimilar from your own? Is it morally right? Is it worth anything? For many years, anthropologists who were White, from Europe and America, performed studies and created ethnographies with the attitude that describing civilizations that were vastly different from their own was not at all difficult. Many anthropologists in the past, emboldened by White privilege and ethnocentrism, thought that extensive, long-term fieldwork would provide them with sufficient cross-cultural understanding of the viewpoints of the people they examined. All too often, those anthropologists simplified the complexity of the non-Western civilizations they researched to a single viewpoint, as though members of that society understood its customs uniformly and never disputed or altered them over time. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict outlines prevalent personality features of Japanese people in her book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), which discusses Japanese culture. These traits include veneration for the emperor and a moral sense driven by shame. Critics contend that her results are biassed due to her excessive dependence on a small number of informants, all of whom were Japanese individuals detained in internment camps during World War II. As this chapter has shown, every culture is made up of a variety of viewpoints that frequently disagree with one another, leading to sociocultural conflict and change. Realising this, modern anthropologists frequently carry out study across a number of distinct subgroups and geographic areas, combining knowledge from these many contexts to create a dynamic and all-encompassing understanding of cultural complexity. Subsequently, there's the issue of ingrained prejudice, which frequently functions subconsciously in both researchers and the subjects they examine. Think about the scenario where a White American anthropologist studies in an African nation that was formerly colonised by Europeans. White privilege is a legacy of European colonisation that persists in postcolonial African nations. In the past, anthropologists frequently failed to see how racist power relations may skew their writing and research and alter how they represented the peoples they studied. Anthropologists started giving these problems greater thought in the 1960s after learning that it is never possible to fully obtain an insider's perspective. Human enculturation, or our personal lenses through which we view and interpret the world, shapes our own viewpoints. If gaining an insider's perspective is unattainable, should we abandon the discipline's lofty objective? Researchers would only write about and study individuals who fit into their own sociocultural categories in such a circumstance. Americans would only study and write about other Americans, for example. However, do all Americans actually belong to the same social group? Could a Manhattan-based Asian American upper-class person conduct study and write about a Deep South impoverished Black community? Is it possible for a Latino male to write about a group of Latinx, Latina, or Latino individuals of all genders? The diverse range of identities seen in American culture is not exclusive to it. People in all cultures belong to several sociocultural groups and hence have various identities. In some ways, you could be an insider in your society, while in other others, you might be an outsider. Who can represent whom is an ethical conundrum full with obstacles. Furthermore, it would be equivalent to giving up on cross-cultural research and the understanding, empathy, conversation, and transformation that sometimes come from it if we confine ourselves to researching "our own people," whomever they may be. Rethinking American ideas about race, family, and sexuality—among many other urgent issues—has been made possible in large part by anthropological discoveries. More than ever, we require the expertise of cross-cultural research. Even while it may be difficult to provide flawless depictions of all communities and cultures, many anthropologists now use cutting-edge techniques to address the historical and power-related issues at the core of their field. The goal is to develop what modern cultural anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes has referred to as "good enough ethnography" by working ethically and cooperatively rather than striving for flawless ethnography.