SMALL PLACES, LARGE ISSUES question answers

    SMALL PLACES, LARGE ISSUES

   An Introduction to Social and

               Culture anthropology

Short answers:

1.     1)   What is the common “common concern” that all anthropologists share?

The common concern that Thomas Highland Eriksen believes that is common between all anthropologists is that they try to understand the connections within the societies and between societies.

2) What do you think Eriksen means when he says:"As an ethical principle, however, it is probably impossible in practice, since it seems to indicate that everything is as good as everything else, provided it makes sense in a particular society. It may ultimately lead to nihilism." p6

Eriksen through this quote is trying to say that cultural relativism may be ethically impossible to practice due to the simple fact that what makes sense in one society may not make sense in another, though if it is what a person wants they may not see consequences and react to it causing nihilism.

Paragraph response:

Eriksen says anthropologists, "warn against the application of a shared, universal scale to be used in the evaluation of every society." (p 6) Why is this the case? To what extend do you agree or disagree with the approach? Why?

In Eriksens book Small Places, Large Issues under which he has discussed topics like “the problem of ethnocentrism”. Ethnocentrism, this term means when one believes the culture they are a part of or are studying about is somehow superior to others. However to answer the question above, using the same shared and universal scale to evaluate every society is not correct. This is used in various times like GNP (gross national product), democratic rights, literacy rates and longevity. This is occurring due to simple facts that these things are to be compared between countries however, I disagree with it due to the simple fact that situations may arise where comparing the GNP between two countries isn’t practical. Lets take a hypotheses, one of the countries that are being compared isn’t allowed to eat beef where as one is, comparing these two countries in terms of this situation is not practical. However in a larger picture, a countries GNP may be low due to situations like the tertiary sector may be the sector which is more important to the country than the other two sectors however another country may have the primary sector as the most earning sector due to lower educations of citizens therefore it is simple that in most cases the tertiary sector earns much more than the primary earns lesser. So, how can we use universal scales and judge countries or compare countries? It is simply against cultural relativism. In Nepal we get a limited amount of electricity, we have our issues but we do go forward with our life yet in a perspective of another country we may be living the hard life in their eyes, the tribes of the Amazon forest may have minimal education yet does that mean they are any less intelligent than us or inferior to us in any way? O couse not. Situations like this need the use of holism where more than one segment of the situation is seen and then evaluated and ranking people isn’t what anthropology is about.