Yesterday morning my four year old daughter begged me to watch a tv program she had seen advertised earlier this week on Nickelodeon, entitled, Tak and the Power of Juju. For better or for worse, I was popular culture savvy enough to know that the characters and setting of this cartoon are based on a popular set of video games.

Here is my understanding of the show, cobbled together from my one episode and a little reading on their website: Tak (voiced by Hal Sparks of Talk Soup fame) is a teenager of indeterminate age who lives as part of the Pupununu tribe in a jungle setting including at least one volcano (“lava rock” was referred to multiple times in the episode I saw). He is a junior shaman with a cool magic staff with a jewel on top and has a best friend named Jeera who is the sassy, independent, and totally rockin’ chief’s daughter. Jeera is contrasted with the other prominent girl in the tribe (whose name I did not catch), who is depicted as obese, unnaturally strong, poorly dressed, and demonstrates her stupidity by speaking slowly and in partial sentences. Tak is contrasted with the other prominent young man of the tribe, Lok (voiced by Patrick Warburton – Puddy on Seinfeld), who thinks Tak’s magic is unmanly, and prefers to solve problems with a dash of bravado, a pinch of brutishness, and a gallon of misplaced egotism. Tak was given his magical powers earlier than traditional in the tribe, so he has trouble controlling them, and generally getting the “juju” to cooperate. He and Lok compete for the attentions of the both the chief and his daughter, while the very large girl pines for Lok and his chiseled chin.

In the short time I watched (one 15 minute episode entitled “Loser”), reciprocity, oral tradition, and public shaming as a form of social control in a small-scale society were demonstrated. There was a very interesting scene where the tribe sat in a circle around the fire listening to Lok tell the tale of one of his exploits. The details of the story shifted as he took requests from the group and adjusted his tale to keep the pleasure and attention of the chief and his daughter. It was actually a fairly interesting depiction of the flexible nature of certain types of oral traditions and folkstories, as the essential message of the tale (heroic Lok saved weak creatures from destruction by a giant lava rock with his brute strength) stayed the same, yet the speed of the rock, the creatures being rescued, and the method of the rock’s destruction were actively negotiated with the audience.

Perhaps it was the presence of Warburton’s voice (he voices Kronk in the spinoff television series The Emperor’s New School), but I was reminded of the movie The Emperor’s New Groove – a cartoon movie that took place in the Inca Empire. In this movie, the emperor, Kuzco, also a teenager, gets turned into a llama by the evil sorceress Yzma (voiced by Earth Kitt) and has to learn to be a better guy with the help of a commoner named Pacha (voiced by John Goodman). The movie was filled with deliberate historical anachronisms, as is the television show – where Kuzco attends a high school with cheerleaders and a track team – as well as a bunch of smooshing together of attributes of Mayan, Aztec, and Andean cultures that was likely done unintentionally.

So, is any publicity really better than none at all? There’s something kind of appealing about a children’s program set in an indigenous hunting and gathering society, and yet… does it actually increase awareness of the reality of such peoples in the real world? Do kids who love Kuzco end up reading about the real land of Tawantinsuyu, learning for example that “Inca” actually referred to the royal status, not the empire? Or how about Lilo and Stich? No doubt it sold a lot of aloha-wear, but was anyone drawn to a greater understanding of Native Hawaiians and the particular social and political challenges they face as a minority in their own lands?

I’m sure that everyone could add to this list with numerous examples of both animated and live action fictional depictions of historical and anthropological peoples. (I’ll admit to having been a huge fan of the show Xena, which kept its anachronistic tongue wedged firmly in its cheek, for example.) Pocahontas famously got the Disney treatment, and history buffs and Native Americans alike cringed. Interestingly enough, however, I was in Hawai’i the summer after the movie was released and found that the Native Hawaiian children in the activist group I was living with had adopted the song “Colors of the Wind” as an indigenous worldview anthem. They loved Pocahontas and they identified with her desire to share her love of the natural world with crazy capitalist caucasians. It was hard to find anything negative in their enthusiasm, except maybe the naivete.

The fear of scholars, of course, is that children and many of the adults who watch with them, will in fact take these mass-produced, heavily Americanized depictions of other people, places, and times at face value and let it go at that, never seeking out a deeper understanding. OR worse yet, can anyone tell the difference between the non-reality of the characters and situations in Monsters Inc. and the reality of for example, Amazonian tribes with shamans (which is what the Pupununu remind me of most despite their Polynesian sounding name)?

It was hard not to grimace when a comment from a student in my upper division prehistory class revealed that her first instinct was to trust the depiction of ancient Chinese culture in the movie Mulan over the data presented in our textbook. N.B. for you non-professors out there – in the business, when something like that happens and you manage not to have a psychotic break and beat the student over the head in fury it is called a “teaching moment.”

Speaking of “teaching moments,” I want to give a shout-out to my friends at Go Diego Go! on Nick Jr. for apparently creating one of their own. I had already written an ending to this blog when I went online to search for the presale code for tickets to Diego’s new live show… in the course of my search I stumbled across the parent message board and discovered this gem regarding a recent episode where Diego and his cousin go back in time to save a dinosaur: “You almost just lost a fan of Diego last Friday night with the promotion of a dinosaur rescue. No one knows how old the earth is and to state the fact that it could be over 100 million years old is just wrong…Also how do you know when dinosaurs roomed [sic] the earth it could have been with humans no one really knows when dinosaurs roomed [sic] the earth because no one has lived that long…” The individual continues, suggesting that the 9 foot tall beasts that Job fights in the Bible might have been dinosaurs. You can probably predict the rest of the content, or visit www.nickjr.com to cruise the message boards if you want to read more.

So there it is. I was already leaning to the “ (almost) any publicity of non-Western, non-modern cultures is better than none” side of the fence and this post pushed me over the edge. Maybe that Diego episode gave the child of the creationist-poster something to think about. Maybe his or her curiosity was piqued and books about geology will be snuck home form the library. Similarly, at least Mulan gave me a starting point to talk about family organization and kin groups. Lilo and Stich gave my Polynesian Cultures class an opportunity to not only discuss the controversies surrounding the modern use of the word ‘ohana but also why it might actually be realistic that one of the major figures in the characters’ lives was an agent from Child Protective Services…

So do others agree? Are you delighted when you when you see a fictional television show for children or adults set in another culture? Even if it’s filled with anachronisms, do you celebrate that at least we live in a world where such a show could even make it into the fall lineup? Or do you lament the fact that yet another time period or foreign culture has been subjected to Americanization? Is it worse for laypeople to think that the Ancient Inca were “just like us” only in different clothes and with an unnatural love for the sweet potato? Or would you prefer “they” just didn’t really think about the Inca at all if that’s how it’s going to be? And has any of this prepared us for the upcoming sitcom based on the cavemen characters from the Geico Car Insurance commercials? I guess I will just keep showing up to class and providing an alternative.

Not only am I not arguing what you say I am, I’m arguing some of the things you say I’m not.

Your title, “circling the wagons,” implies the exact opposite of what I was suggesting. This metaphor suggests insularity and defensiveness, at best. In fact, my essay could easily be interpreted as a call to anthropologists to come out of the closet and start insisting on their relevance not only to the academy, but to the world. If your response were actually about my essay, it might more accurately be called “Maintaining the four fields is not the way to improve anthropology’s relevance” – a point you might or might not actually agree with – readers can’t tell.

Furthermore, absolutely nothing in my essay implies that applied anthropology is lesser than academic anthropology. In fact, nothing would please me more than to see the military, the government, public education, business, entertainment, sports, hell, the hospitality industry – you name it – FILLED with anthropologists. My point precisely was… I think that the results would be better if they were trained as anthropologists – REAL anthropologists. That’s right, I said it: real. And by real I do not mean those with PhDs, I mean all those who have studied and understand the core principles of holistic, four field anthropology.

All anthropologists in today’s world have career trajectories that compel them to engage in the application of their research to real world problems and peoples – regardless of whether a university writes their paycheck. Similarly, all anthropologists have an obligation to be analytically rigorous, well-versed in both the strengths and weaknesses of their discipline, and to make informed, deliberate decisions about the theoretical concepts that underpin their work – regardless of whether a commercial enterprise writes their paycheck.

You’ve also thrown in a total red herring in the form of post-modernism, utilizing a manipulative rhetorical device popular with political pundits called ad populem: “Everyone hates post-modernists. I’ll imply that her opinion would please them and thus avoid needing to use sound reasoning to disagree.” Suggesting that the strength of anthropology lies in the intellectual tensions created by dialogue and negotiation among the four fields is hardly a post-modern concept!

In fact, as you specify in your blog when you purport to “only speak to cultural anthropology,” you reveal that it is you who writes from an academically provincial viewpoint. This is particularly absurd when you are accusing someone else of having a narrow vision of the discipline.

If anyone in (on?) this blog should be tsking and shaking her head in disbelief it is I, Cindy, not you. No amount of posturing or rhetorical misdirection on your part is going to turn me into your anti-applied, holier than thou academic straw-chick. And sorry, we all know you chose to get an advanced degree in anthropology, not business. Maybe next time I’ll choose to respond to your self-serving distortions of my opinions with an anthropological version of “The Word.” For now I’ll settle for giving you a wag of my finger, and letting you know – you’re on notice, Dawson.

Anthropology’s strengths lie in the combination of attributes that make it unique: these include commitments to the concepts of extended fieldwork and cultural relativism, a comparative perspective that encompasses all of human space and time, a humanistic perspective that views individual variation and difference as objects worthy of study, and the holism that is embodied in a thorough consideration of how the four fields can bring insight to any given question about the human condition – even if they yield contradictory data!

Every anthropologist I have ever known is passionate about his or her vision of the discipline in one way or another. My call to arms is both a call to share the object of that passion and to insist on its value – don’t take just culture – take anthropology, and anthropologists, too.

For me, the short answer to this question is obviously, yes. We want EVERYONE to know and love the concept that we consider to be our finest intellectual creation, the lynchpin of our diverse discipline. And yet, could it be the case that we have shared ourselves out of jobs, or worse yet, allowed our baby to be turned into the “working girl” of the social sciences? This is the undercurrent of Tony Waters’ opinion piece from the December 2006 issue of the AAA Newsletter entitled, “Who Stole Culture From Anthropology?”

Waters, a sociology professor at CSU Chico, has three major points he would like anthropologists to consider. These are as follows:
1) In not more carefully guarding culture as the intellectual purview of anthropology we are “Giving Away Curriculum.” He points out that students are just as likely, if not more likely, to hear about the concept of culture from professors in departments of “education, business, genetics, political science, psychology, history, or sociology.”
2) These professors, however proficient in their own disciplines, are unlikely to truly have a background in our discipline and this means we are, as Waters puts it, “Losing History,” and giving the impression that intellectual issues of “culture” can be taught by anyone who knows the word.
3) Anthropologists, he argues, are now suffering the practical effects of not stopping these intellectual leaks in the realm of “Academic Politics.” That is, because courses on culture have been “hijacked,” new faculty lines are not going to Anthropology Departments, but rather to all of those other departments “where culture is now taught.”

Now Waters, who says he routinely hires anthropology PhD’s as adjunct faculty in his department when he needs a course taught “about culture,” clearly loves anthropologists, for as he says, “Who but an anthropologist can talk about Durkheim, chimpanzee behavior, linguistics, archaeological stratigraphy, and mitochondrial DNA?” It’s true, and it warms my heart to say so, but why then, why, why, why, in an era when diversity, multicultural, and globalization are some of the most common buzzwords in forward thinking academic administration, do anthropologists not rule the roost?

Okay, by now it is probably obvious that the metaphor of culture as a beautiful, headstrong child we let run away for a life as an academic streetwalker came from me, not Waters, but you see it breaks my heart to see culture, our pretty baby, so misunderstood. Now she’s turning tricks for business and communications, selling herself cheap to evolutionary psychologists and literary analysts. Oh sure, all of these “others” think they know her, but they fail to grasp her complexity. They fail to see how she requires constant attention and stimulation; only thrives in a context of rigorous debate, and stagnates if you treat her as a utilitarian means to an end.

For one thing, although it may seem cliché, poor culture comes from a broken home: four parents, all in different sub-disciplines, and these days often refusing to speak to each other. I was a PhD student at Berkeley when Tim White (the famous palaeo-anthropologist) packed up and left Anthropology for Integrative Biology. I don’t recall anyone shedding a tear or suggesting family counseling. Well, except me.

I’m sure the question of the future of four-field anthropology is one to which I will return in this forum, because it preoccupies me greatly. But for now, let me say that culture without the “culture” of anthropology, is a poor culture indeed. It’s like eating pad thai and thinking you understand Thailand, watching sumo on ESPN and then writing a book on Japan (with apologies to Ruth Benedict), or collecting Kwakwaka’waka masks and then assuming you could hold your own potlatch. Or, indeed, wearing a Cesar Chavez t-shirt and imagining that you’re part of the revolution while you sit at Starbucks contemplating number 38 down in the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle over a chai latte.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of the above activities, but they illustrate something that American anthropologists have known since Boas et al. vanquished the museum model of the “hall o’ spears” and “hall o’ basketry:” cultural traits removed from their context lose much of their meaning (not to mention analytical power). Hula without knowing the context of Hawaiian spirituality it celebrates is a tiny bubble compared to the glorious and powerful religious artform it can be when thriving in its traditional context. Similarly, culture, without an understanding the full context and culture of anthropology, is impoverished.

Culture grew up in the crucible of the four-field tradition. She thrives on the continuing tension among perspectives of natural sciences, historical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Culture is a robust and beautiful analytical concept precisely because of its continued negotiation – it is the dialectic that keeps her alive and relevant. One day she is an algorithm, the next a web of significance, then a material culture trait list, or even a suite of behaviors – she is all of this and more, and that is why we love her.

For you see, culture is not only the concept most dear to us American anthropologists, but also the most contentious. Students do not leave my Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology without learning at least four different definitions of culture. They understand that the one you chose to believe in and employ makes a very big difference in choosing a research topic, the nature of the questions you will ask, the data you will perceive as relevant to record, and the conclusions you will entertain as feasible.

When culture is imported to these other disciplines, it becomes static in their hands. Without the constant bickering of the four fields, culture starts to become reified. It goes into their “toolboxes” to be pulled out at opportune moments, but doesn’t really get the attention it deserves. Take the hula without understanding Hawaiian culture and it is still exciting, but you sure are missing alot. Take the culture without understanding the rest of anthropology and it is still useful, but you sure are missing alot.

So, should anthropology share “culture” with the rest of academia, not to mention journalists, educators, etc.? Absolutely. But, can anthropology share the concept of culture without giving away its (meaning anthropology’s) heart and soul? This is a harder question. It is also one we should face head-on, and not ignore. Waters concludes his essay by stating that “while the anthropologists were out in the field, the subject of culture was appropriated by others” and so were the jobs.

It’s time to fight for primary custody of culture and the holistic anthropological perspective she embodies. Sure she can visit those other folks, but unless anthropologists can convince the world that there is something truly unique and relevant about our holistic perspective and our insanely broad training (compared to other academics today), we are destined to become the “Roman Empire” of academia. Our culture, language, history, and even genetic material will be assimilated into daughter disciplines — hybrid cultures to whom we are a distant, dimly understood ancestor. Maybe that is an inevitable course, and maybe that is even better for culture (and anthropology?) in the long run, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Most everyone in the anthropological community is familiar with the controversial human skeletal find known as Kennewick Man. Discovered in 1996 by some hikers on the Columbia River, Washington, Kennewick Man was initially identified as a 19th century Euro-American settler, but closer inspection revealed a projectile point embedded in his pelvis that was common about 9,000 years ago, a date that radiocarbon dating later confirmed. In short, Kennwick Man sparked an epic controversy around two primary topics: 1) who should have legal stewardship of the remains; and 2) what was “Kenne’s” race.

Those interested in reviewing the sensational circumstances surrounding Kenne’s eventual disposition (these included the mysterious dumping of many tons of rock on the original location of the find by the Army Corps of Engineers, and a multi-year law suit in which scientists won the right to study the skeleton), will find many sources on- and off-line.

Equally intense was the controversy surrounding the investigating archaeologist’s characterization of the skeleton’s features as “caucasoid” – a word that the media immediately equated with caucasian – rather than a set of metric traits characterizing a variety of world populations including the indigenous Ainu of Japan. A reconstruction of Kenne’s face was widely circulated in which he bore a striking resemblance to Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek: The Next Generation, a character played by British actor Patrick Stewart.

The publication of this image in association with the very early date of 9000 BC, led to rampant speculation in the public media: had Europeans been the earliest settlers of the North American continent? And so, in the blink of an eye, the 19th century fantasy of a lost race of White Americans was revived, although nobody can say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints looked surprised.

This was the Kennewick Controversy that I was teaching in Spring of 2006 to my class on Native American cultures when in April a shocking event occurred: Time magazine published an opulent cover portrait of Kenne in which he looked decidedly mongoloid, his features invoking those of modern Arctic peoples. How could this be, the class demanded to know? We scoured the magazine article for clues. Who had authorized this new reconstruction? The students demanded answers.

There was no mention of the cover image in the article. There was no acknowledgment of how very much this representation diverged from previously published images. Encouraged by the students, and now personally quite intrigued, I wrote to the scientists quoted in the article asking if they had authorized Kenne’s new face. I received no response. I wrote to Time asking where they had gotten the cover image and they referred me to the tiny artist’s credit on the inside of the cover: Kam Mak.

Two days and many Google inquiries later, I had discovered that Kam Mak had a part time academic appointment at an arts college in New York City and had left my home phone number with the department assistant, saying I was an anthropologist eager to discuss his recent cover art for Time. When I came home from teaching the next day, there was a message on my answering machine, “Hello, this is Kam Mak. I am delighted in your interest. Please phone me at my home in Virginia.”

Kam Mak, I discovered, is a charming and thoughtful man with a gift for painting vibrant images that touch the soul. Born in Hong Kong, but raised primarily in New York, he has illustrated the covers of many young adult novels and has written and illustrated a beautiful children’s book about his childhood in Chinatown. We had much to talk about immediately, as he was working on a project depicting food in Chinese markets and I had just finished teaching a class on food and ethnicity that had included a week stay in Honolulu to explore ethnic cuisine there.

I turned the conversation to Kenne, however, and learned the following: 1) Time had not requested a particular image; 2) they had contacted him based on his having done a portrait for them several years earlier with which they were pleased; 3) they had sent him a handful of articles about the skeleton, so he did know something about the controversies. So, how, I pressed, had he decided on Kenne’s features? Mr. Mak’s response was unexpected and yet made a delightful sense: he had used his own face!

Yes, and Mr. Mak was kind enough to send me a digital photo of himself and there it was – the high cheekbones, the set of his jaw and lips, even the thoughtful expression in the eyes – our new Kennewick Man was Kam Mak – “with a little Eskimo thrown in” – as he described it to me.

The students were initially horrified, after all I had spent the semester talking about how significant images of Native Americans were to their public perception – from the cigar Indians to contemporary sports mascots. I talked them down, however, and soon they saw the humor in the situation and appreciated the humanity of Kam Mak’s vision of Kenne not as a symbol or stereotype, but a real man, like himself.

My choice for best book on Kennewick Man and why he caused such a fuss: Thomas, David Hurst. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity New York: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0-465-09224-1