Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Expressive Culture (Chapter 11)

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008

Expressive Culture(Chapter 11)


The BIG Questions

What is expressive culture? How is culture expressed through art? What do play and leisure activities

reveal about culture? How is expressive culture

changing in contemporary times?


Expressive Culture

Expressive culture is behavior and beliefs related to art, leisure, and play


Art

What is art? Art is the application of imagination, skill,

and style to matter, movement, and sound that goes beyond purely the practical

A wide variety of substances and activities can be considered art Beautifully prepared meal, stories,

paintings, sculptures, dance, architecture, landscaping, tattooing, etc.


Art All cultures have art and have a sense of

what makes something “art” Ethno-esthetics – refers to local cultural

definitions of what art is Can get intra-cultural (within culture)

variations in opinions of art e.g. Gender

Men of Shipibo Indians of Peruvian Amazon liking abstract art while women find it ugly

Male shamans take hallucenigenic drugs and may relate more to the abstract, “psychedelic” images than women

Class


Studying Art in Society

Anthropologist who study art are interested in… The products and characteristics of art in a

society Who makes the art and why The role of art in society The wider social meaning of art


Purpose of Making Art Art can have a variety of purposes depending

on the context… May socialize children into the culture May legitimize political leaders May be associated with a group’s identity and

sense of pride May serve as a form social control May serve as a catalyst for political resistance May be a form of self-expression May be a religious means through which

individuals connect with the supernatural realm


Purpose of Making Art

May reinforce social relationships / gender relationships Male strip dancing

May be a form of resistance Hip-hop, rap music Graffiti

Protests economic oppression


Focus on the Artist Add to the understanding of art by studying

art from the artists’ perspective Look at the social status of the artist

May be revered and wealthy or stigmatized and economically marginal

May have gendered divisions among artists Geisha – female Japanese art form

May have a great deal of specialization and exclusiveness or little specialization and inclusiveness Foragers – artistic activity is open to all, artistic products

shared by all State-level societies – may need a special kind of

training to produce certain types of art, artistic products may only be available to those who can afford them


The Artist

May be revered or stigmatized

Native American male carvers were initiated into a secret society

In foraging communities, artistic activity is open to all

Often gender division exists


Performance Arts Include music, dance, theater, rhetoric

(speech-making), and narrative (storytelling) Ethnomusicology – the cross-cultural

study of music Are men and women equally encouraged to

use certain instruments and repertoires? Is musical training available to all? Are the performances of men and women

public, private, or both? Are women and men allowed to perform together?

Do members of the culture give equal value to the performances of men and women?


Performance Arts Theater is a type of enactment that

seeks to entertain through movement and words

There are often strong connections between myth, religion, ritual, and performance Performance arts often occur at ritual

events – feasts, special ceremonies, funerals, weddings

May serve to both entertain and keep important cultural or religious knowledge alive


Kathakali Theater (S. India)

• Blend of mythology, acting, and music

• Dramatizes great Hindu epics

• Features elaborate hand gestures, make-up, and costume

• Audience recognizes characters from their make-up

• Similar to European opera

– Zarrilli 1990


A new use for classical dance-drama in India is in neighborhood street theater that includes topics such as wife beating and dowry in the play


Architecture Highly mobile foragers’ dwellings are the

image of the family and not wider society Only take the family to build

Pastoralists and horticulturalist have designed portable structures like the tepee Social status may be reflected in where the

housing is located (e.g. chief in center) States show their power through the

construction of impressive urban monuments Shows ability to mobilize enough labor to create

them Architecture may reflect class differences and

social rank


Gardens Gardens for use, especially food production,

are differentiated from gardens for decorative purposes

Decorative gardens are a product of state-level societies Japanese gardens may contain no flowers

Trees, shrubs, stones, water Traditional Muslim gardens are enclosed by

four walls Traditionally flowers are not a prominent motif in

African art, but cut flowers are important economic products in many parts of the world

Contents of a personal garden makes a statement about its owner’s preferences, identity, and status


Taj Mahal in Agra, India


A morning scene in the Netherlands. Dutch people buy on average 12 bouquets of cut flowers a year. But raising cut flowers and

transporting them is highly energy intensive.


Play and Leisure Play and leisure

Have no direct, utilitarian purpose for the participant

Play Has rules Contains chance Often contains tension

Leisure activities Often lacks rules, chance, and tension


Play, Leisure, and Culture

Anthropologists think about… why some play/leisure involves teams and

others are individual activities social roles of people involved “goals” of the game and how they are

achieved how much danger and violence is involved how activities relate to group identity how such activities link or separate

different groups


Games and Sports Can be interpreted as reflections of social relationships

and cultural ideals A “cultural microcosm”

American football Model for corporate culture

Clear hierarchy with leadership vested in one person (the quarterback)

Goal of territorial expansion by taking over areas from the competition

Income distribution

Baseball U.S. – individualistic plays and strategies Japan – “team spirit, unity, the ball club always

comes first." wa – discipline and self-sacrifice for the good of the whole


Games and Sports In many contexts sports are closely tied

to religion and spirituality Asian martial arts

spiritual self control Hindu male wrestlers in India

Strict routine of discipline – for perfected physical and moral health

Play, pleasure, and pain are often linked Blood sports – competition that explicitly

seeks to bring about a flow of blood or even death Often with animals – dog fighting, cock fighting


Leisure Travel / Tourism The tourism industry is one of the world’s

largest industries Ethnic tourism Cultural tourism Ecotourism

Often individuals travel from the West to the West or from the West to the Rest Westerners are doing the consuming

Tourism’s effects on indigenous people can be positive or negative Positives – jobs, shares of revenues Negatives – loss of land, environmental

degradation


Leisure Travel / Tourism

Often marketed as providing an “authentic” view of “primitive” cultures

Tourists often seek to find the culture the tourist industry defines rather than the real one

Anthropologists are concerned with the impact of tourism on indigenous peoples


Change in Expressive Culture Globalization brings new materials, new

technology, new ideas, and new styles to many parts of the world

Much change is influenced by Western culture through globalization Attempts by colonialists to eradicate certain

indigenous art forms and activities Introduction of cricket on the Trobriand

Islands to substitute for warfare and overt sexuality Over time Trobriand Islanders melded

British aspects of cricket with more traditional Trobriand ways


Change in Expressive Culture Indigenous people adapting artistic styles to meet tourist

demands May keep indigenous arts alive, whereas indigenous people may

be more interested in western arts, music, and sports Growing worldwide support for the preservation of material

cultural heritage Sites, monuments, buildings, and moveable objects considered of

outstanding world value in terms of history, art, and science

Also growing worldwide support for intangible cultural heritage Living heritage manifested in oral traditions, languages, performing

arts, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices about nature and the universe, and craft making

The view among United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is that the preservation of both material and immaterial cultural assets is a human right

People-first cultural heritage preservation is especially important – cultural preservation managed by the community


Change in Expressive Culture But influence does not only occur in one

direction African musical styles have transformed the U.S.

musical scene since the days of slavery Japan garden styles are popular in the U.S.


Example of Gullah culture as major tourist attraction


The BIG Questions Revisited

How is culture expressed through art? What do play and leisure activities

reveal about culture? How is expressive culture

changing in contemporary times?

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Expressive Culture (Chapter 11)

Documents

Transcript of Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2008 Expressive Culture (Chapter 11)