What is ethnography?
African American family member talks to Chief Ethnographer and Park Ethnographer about the significance of Magnolia Plantation landscape to his family.
In cultural anthropology, ethnography refers to the description of cultures derived from the anthropologist’s personal observation and participation in the day-to-day life of the cultural group being described. The anthropologist validates his or her observations through information provided by members of the cultural group that explain their particular systems of meaning, ways of organizing their society and their material culture.
The Ethnography Program of the National Park Service, is concerned with the peoples associated with parks, with their cultural systems or ways of life, and with the related technology, sites, structures, other material features and natural resources that they value (National Park Service 1997:157).
What is “culture”?
Culture is a body of learned behaviors common to a given human society. It has patterned and predictable form and content to a degree—yet is variable from individual to individual within a given society. Culture is changeable over time. In fact, one of culture’s most predictable aspects is its constant state of change. It changes because people learn culture.
Culture can be further broken down into the following essential features:
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Systems of Meaning that include forms of communication of which language is primary, traditional beliefs, performances and practices, religion, ceremonies, and celebrations.
Prisoners’ work songs convey the meaning of life on a chain gang.
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Social Order, which includes peoples’ social structure, their families, for example, social institutions such as churches, and social organizations like the Sisters of the Holy Family and the Rhode Island Women’s League.
Officers of Women’s League, Newport, R.I.
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Material Culture includes the distinctive techniques of a group and their characteristic products, which include economic/material culture (e.g. subsistence, food ways, crafts, and architecture), objects, structures, and technology. African American material culture includes Gullah traditional crafts, ironwork, and traditional building crafts.
Vera Manigualt demonstrates the art of sewing sweetgrass baskets.
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Culture Change which include acculturation (e.g. adaptation, social integration), accommodation, assimilation, and cultural resistance strategies, and counter-cultural resistance strategies.
Patterns of Cultural Change: When people of different cultures come in contact with one another they may change or resist change. Europeans and Africans in the colonial Americas adapted their customary diet to include corn, a staple of American Indians on the East Coast.
Poor peoples march, Connecticut Ave, Washington, DC 1968.
Historically, most African Americans adapted to segregation and discrimination, two cultural characteristics of American society before the Civil Rights Movement. They taught their children to adapt as well, illustrated in the picture below. The 1960s Civil Rights and Anti-Poverty Protests are examples of counter-cultural resistance strategies that people used to bring about culture change in America.
Where and when Africans and African Americans could, from the 16th century until the present, they have used the democratic process and judicial system to resist domination with varying degrees of effectiveness.
People may not change to new cultural customs but rather adjust in ways that both group find acceptable. Africans in the Americas for example used building techniques they knew to create houses in the customary architectural forms of their homeland, but made them out of the material resources abundant in their new environment. Englishmen called Africans by European names that sounded like their names in African languages, like the name “Joe” for the African name “Cudjo” or Jack for Quacko. Many Africans and their descendants voluntarily or were forced to accepted Europeans cultural and social forms as in the case of in their dress, gender-related work roles and diet.
Adaptation: Drinking from the segregated fountain on county courthouse lawn, Halifax, North Carolina, 1938.
Where power differential exist between cultural groups, the subordinated group usually develop ways to avoid the social and cultural effects of domination or to change the inter-group relationships toward a more equitable distribution of power. Africans and their descendants resisted enslavement by running away , political agitation, or self-exclusion, to name a few resistance strategies.
Culture takes diverse forms across time and space.
This diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation, and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature. In this sense, it is the common heritage of humanity and should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.
Each unit in this course will explore, describe, and explain African American cultural heritage in terms of the essential features of culture.
Aspects of African American Cultural Heritage
| Systems of Meaning | Social Order | Material Culture | Change |
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