Week 7 Monday October 18-Thursday October 21
“Expressive Culture” (Miller Text Chapter 11)
Expressive Culture October 18:
Expressive Culture is: Behaviour and beliefs related to art, leisure, and play.
- linked to other cultural domains such as:
Exchange: pot latching art and dance, Bodily modification. Decorations, tattoos
Religion: clothing, practices, etc.
What is Art? Art is application of imagination, skill and style to matters movement, and sound that goes beyond the purely practical. * High art= in a museum * Low art= graffiti
Who decides: What is Art? Emic/etic confusions regarding art * Emic: insider (member) view or members of culture * Etic: outsider (observer) view or anthropologist based on observation
Modern Art? North America, Western Europe, Folk Art= woven bowl
- as anthropologists what sort of meanings does this art have?
Ethno-aesthetics- refers to local cultural definitions of what is art and what is good art.
- (ex. Wood carving standards in West Africa, Graffiti Banksy)
The Anthropological Study of Art: Influence of Franz Boas in first half of the 20th century
- We need to look at artist in cultural context that we find the art in.
- The process of creating and using the art, social functions of art, thoughts, emotion
John Chernoff: study of drumming in Ghana, learned to become a drummer, He had to learn about the culture and how drumming fits into it.
ART: has a role of socializing children into the culture (teaches you things you should value as a child, relationships, communication of personal and group identity. Legitimize political leaders, political resistance and social change (such as graffiti) and art done during times of war.
Performance Arts: music, dance, theatre, rhetoric, narration, etc.
Ethnomusicology: cross-cultural study of music links cultural anthropology and musicology.
- Studies music both from technical aspects (sound) and