Slimshandy wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 2:31 pm
WellPreserved wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 2:13 pm
Slimshandy wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2024 1:16 pm
As far as the article posted, this is a spin off now because they were shown to be members…
But do you think someone who did not come from a specific culture should be labeled an expert on that culture, with their opinion being heard louder than the members of that culture?
What good would it do to silo the study of every cultural group so that the only people who can be considered experts must be members of said groups. That doesn't seem beneficial for placing cultures in context with each other, armchair or otherwise. I would hope anthropologists would care about that.
If you don't like what they said, you could have just said that.
I didn’t ask the question based on disliking what they said…
Anthropologists are taught cultural humility. You can be a lifelong learner and researcher on a different culture and write books about your experiences/findings, but you should never be considered so much of an expert on the subject that your voice is louder than the members of that culture.
I'm not familiar with the concept of cultural humility being a stand alone but rather in conjunction with cultural competence. I agree that in order to understand and appropriately study a culture, one needs cultural humility (“Cultural humility involves an ongoing process of self-exploration and self-critique combined with a willingness to learn from others. It means entering a relationship with another person with the intention of honoring their beliefs, customs, and values. It means acknowledging differences and accepting that person for who they are.") One also needs cultural competency (Cultural competence is the ability of an individual to understand and respect values, attitudes, beliefs, and mores that differ across cultures, and to consider and respond appropriately to these differences in planning, implementing, and evaluating health education and promotion programs and interventions.") I would also add that someone needs an understanding of historical reference and the culture's place in time as well as comparison with other cultures of that moment but that's because I studied history, lol.
People who study cultures whether historians, anthropologists, sociologists, most often have access to data and perspectives that an individual or even group within that culture does not. To accurately study a culture, one has to remove biases and again, those within that culture have inherent bias. So in answer to your question, I think it's inaccurate to say that the voice of members of a culture should always take precedence to the voice of an expert but of course, any study of a group must include perspectives of those within the group.
To swing it back to another topic in this forum, "White Rural Rage". It really is an interesting read and quite informative not despite but because it is full of interviews from a wide variety of white rural residents as well as data collected. The two authors aren't anthropologists, they're historians. That is what any good historian would do.
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show its own shame." - Oscar Wilde
