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Michael F. BrownGreg Tanaka’s article in the current issue of Anthropology & Education Quarterly presents provocative findings from an action research project on a U.S. university campus (AEQ, Volume 40, Issue 1 [March 2009], pages 82-95).
The project reveals that a large percentage of white students cannot trace their identities to a particular nation in Europe and are, as a result, unable to name the shared meanings of an ethnic culture. Each time “minority” classmates describe their ethnic histories, it is European American students who feel dissociated.
Tanaka raises two specific questions:
(1) How can U.S. anthropologists continue to deploy the concept of culture at field sites outside the United States when so many in their own population cannot claim an ethnic culture?
(2) Given the recent turn in events in the U.S. political scene, shouldn’t anthropologists begin developing new constructs for social analysis after race and culture?
Filed under: Publications
[...] & Sharon, Tanaka in AEQ: U.S. Anthropologists Should Address “The End of Culture” The AAAs show off their new-look blog! This post covers an action research project on student’s [...]
Americans, and America, has culture too….what is this simplistic view of culture that only includes ‘ethnic culture’. Where has this person been? Of course, I haven’t read the article.
The sense of lacking a culture recorded among American students parallels that mentioned by some New Zeland ‘European’ students. The important thing for us to consider, I believe, is not that culture is an outdated concept, but that too many of us teaching anthropology are giving our students the idea that ethnicity and culture are the same thing.
This is a critical failing, not only because it leaves “European American students … dissociated ” as mentioned in the original blog, but also because it limits the capacity of these students and their “minority” peers to recognize cultural commonalities within a multi-ethnic society.
[...] in the discourses of higher education is a popular topic across AAA’s 20+ publications; most recently, George Tanaka questioned the continued usefulness of culture as a construct for social [...]