Cultural Anthropology
SAGE Journal Articles
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Journal Article 1.1 Ahluwalia, P. (2006). Race. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(2/3), 538–545. DOI: 10.1177/026327640602300298
Abstract: The concept of race is traced to the quest for the origins of language and the manner in which that led to the idea that a separate language indicated a separate racial origin. The Orientalist desire to know and dominate the other and to regard him or her as sub-human necessitated the invention of race. The notion of race is further traced through the slave trade and its contemporary usage in ‘race studies’.
Journal Article 1.2 Caduff, C. (2011). Anthropology’s ethics: Moral positionalism, cultural relativism, and critical analysis. Anthropological Theory, 11(4), 465–480. DOI: 10.1177/1463499611428921
Abstract: In a programmatic article, published in late 2008 in Anthropological Theory, the French anthropologist Didier Fassin explores the vexed question whether anthropology should be moral or not. Observing a general discomfort with the question of morality in the discipline of anthropology, Fassin argues that such a discomfort might actually serve a valuable heuristic function for the development of a moral anthropology in the near future. What Fassin means by moral anthropology is essentially a form of empirical inquiry that investigates how social agents articulate and negotiate moral claims in local contexts. In this response to Fassin’s article, I address a crucial challenge at the heart of moral anthropology, or the anthropology of ethics, as I prefer to call it. The challenge is to bring the anthropology of ethics into a productive relationship with the ethics of anthropology. Building on Fassin’s argument, I suggest that the discomfort with ethics indeed serves a valuable heuristic function because it is the spontaneous articulation of an ethics of discomfort.
Journal Article 1.3 Klein, A. (2008). Progressive ethnocentrism: Ideology and understanding in Dominican baseball. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 32(2), 121–138. DOI: 10.1177/0193723507313926
Abstract: This study is an effort to examine the problems associated with interpreting events and practices emanating in one cultural context (the Dominican Republic) by those of another (the United States)—part of the classic definition of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism has been considered to be a problem linked to close-minded individuals and agencies, but this study attempts to show that progressive thinkers can also fall prey to it. Two case studies are looked at—the case of buscónes (those responsible for finding and developing Dominican ballplayers) and the case of former Little League sensation Danny Almonte (himself a Dominican émigré). The cases involve young men who have been wronged in one way or another. Guilt and innocence has been reported in the United States. However, ethnographic research into these cases shows that one can be right on the particulars while wrong in matters of cultural context and therefore unintentionally furthering ethnocentric bias.