人类学家实际在都在做什么?(3)

Some anthropologists have gone to creative lengths to prove that what \"we\" do isn't better, right or civilised. As American anthropologist Horace Miner demonstrates in his 1956 fantasy ethnography of the Nacirema people (hint: say it backwards), magic and medicine have more in common than you might think. It's all about culture.

As such, culture is understood very simply as that which we do, think, say and feel. These things wouldn't necessarily make sense to someone who was not \"one of us\", but we could explain them.

Among the bullfighters

In my own career as an anthropologist, I have studied many different peoples and their culture.

Ihave lived in Spain for 15 months to learn about the lives of mounted bullfighters. Back in Australia, I went to every fixture of the South Australian National Football League one season to learn the role of alcohol in fan culture.

Ihave also spent as little as two weeks catching rides in the cabs of train drivers to learn about fatigue at the controls, and I have interviewed animal owners about the risks they take to save their pets from bushfires.

In every instance, I have been the student of someone else's way of life.

Ican now understand and explain why aficionados of the bullfight don't see bullfighting as cruel and why killing the bull in the bullring is, in fact, an expression of love.

Ican explain why some football fans drink to dangerous excess, why metropolitan train drivers are loathe to report their fatigue and why some pet owners will run into burning homes to save their cat while their child waits in the car.

Imay or may not agree with those behaviours and beliefs, but I can explain the internal cultural logic that makes them important, meaningful, natural and persistent.

If you listen without judging, you may learn about other ways to see the world. If you can handle knowing that your view might not be the only one – or even the right one – you may even see your own cultural beliefs and behaviours more critically than ever before.

If you can use this insight to explain cultural difference to someone else in terms they understand, but with which they may not necessarily agree, then you have started to walk your first mile in the shoes of an anthropologist.

文章来源：《人类学学报》 网址: http://www.rlxxb.cn/zonghexinwen/2020/1111/421.html