Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography

Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography Introduction During the 25 years since the publication of Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography, a great deal of discussion has accompanied it. In this essay I place this book in the context of the literary turn in anthropology, and concern with the postcolonial encounter as well. Throughout the analysis of the main themes in the book, attention is paid to the construction of ethnographic authority and two relationships of ethnographer/reader and ethnographer/informant centered in Writing Culture. The essay also provides a perspective of the influential power of the book by presenting some ethnographies conducted by Chinese anthropologists. Finally, I will argue the risks of the textualism trend and different patterns in Writing Culture approach. Background of the Book: In and Beyond Anthropology More than ten years after the publication of Writing Culture, in a review article, George Marcus (1998:5) quoted Schneiders words referring to the book: I dont think Jim Clifford is famous for his monograph on Leenhardt. I dont think that George Marcus has achieved some notoriety because he worked on Tonga. Indeed, I dont know anybody whos read the ethnography he wrote. In fact, Ive often talked to people and asked them, Hay, have you read George Marcuss ethnography? No!-but I read that other damn book. It is a very typical and interesting comment. As an anthropologist, George Marcus is best remembered for editing the collection of essays rather than his own ethnographic work; and similarly, James Clifford, a historian, is frequently regarded as an anthropologist by force of being the editor of the same book. The comment also reveals that the book is controversial, and it has witnessed harshly criticism after its appearance. However, there is no denying that Writing Culture is one of the most important books throughout the history of anthropology-the milestone of the post-modern era and the cornerstone of the experimental ethnography (Gao 2007, Scholte 1987). 1. The literary turn There is nothing outside the text. (Derrida) The book, with eleven essays in it (including the introduction and afterword), is based on a series of seminars at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the United States of America in April 1984(Clifford and Marcus 1985). By taking the making of ethnographic text (Clifford and Marcus 1986:vii) as the focal point of their seminars, the participants not only viewed WRITING as a elementary method, but also the central issue of social cultural anthropology. Ethnographic writing is then critically examined in aspects of social context, the use of rhetoric devises, the limitations of disciplinary traditions, the definition of its genre, the political engagement, and historical transformations.[1] Why is writing becoming a principle thing in anthropology? In order to answer this question, inevitably, we take into consideration the literary turn, or say textualism trend in anthropology in the 1980s. The literary turn, just as its name implies, by taking text, writing and literary devices as key concepts and employing textual and literary analyses, is a radical shift which provides strikingly different epistemological and methodological approaches in the discipline of anthropology (Scholte 1987). Although it is difficult to figure out whether Writing Culture is more a cause or a result of the literary turn, the book is definitely a key ingredient of it. I would further suggest that Levi-Strauss, Geertz and Writing Culture should be considered as a sequence in the context of the literary turn. What the Writing Culture authors claim, such as the diversity of representations, possibilities of interpretations, at a glance, are totally different from Levi-Strausss pure unity, reduced models and deep culture grammar. At the same time, Levi-Strausss strong sense of symbol and meaning within a symbolic language system and his linguistic analogy approach (Barrett 1996) are valuable legacies to Geertz and Writing Culture. Furthermore, his research on mythology threw fresh light on the interdisciplinary studies across anthropology and literature. Then, Geertz, who is profoundly influenced by Levi-Strauss and Weber, has a more important and complex influence on Writing Culture. Firstly, his concern of anthropological interpretations and thick descriptions, fieldwork and post fieldwork, (Geertz 19751983) provided the basis for Writing Culture explorations. Secondly, Geertzs local knowledge, natives point of view (Geertz 19751983) and assertion of an amiable and intelligible style insp ired Writing Culture authors to portray fieldwork as a dialogical approach, and consequently take the interactions of ethnographers/the indigenous people (Barrett 1996) and ethnographers/readers in to account. Thirdly, Geertzs ethnographies became important materials of Writing Culture 2. Postcolonial encounter and Cultural Representation I used to rule the world Seas would rise when I gave the word Now in the morning I sweep alone Sweep the streets I used to own One minute I held the key Next the walls were closed on me And I discovered that my castles stand Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand Lyrics of Viva la Vida (Coldplay 2009) The birth of this book is not narrowly concerned with the inheritance and development of theory and methodology within the discipline, but rather deeply rooted in the historical background and the reconstruction among the entire academic community. As an academic discipline, anthropology is developed in the context of imperialism and colonialism. The long-time contact between European conquerors and the colonists shaped forms of power and knowledge, and anthropologists at that time entered into non-European aboriginal communities as observers and describers (Asad 2002). Anthropology narrated power relations; at the same time it was also potentially counter-hegemonic (Clifford 1986:9). In 1980s, which was the postcolonial and postwar era without the umbrella of the colonial power, anthropology started to face a more complex nexus of power relations. The postcolonial situation affected the main interests of anthropology and challenged the authority of ethnography. Moreover, anthropology from then on, was not only carried out by Europeans and Americans, but also by those from the so-called Third World who were studying their own cultures; and neither Western culture nor the non-Western cultures remained the same in the ever-changi ng world (Clifford 1986, Layton 1997). In Writing Culture, the analyses of ethnographic discourses- asking who speaks? who writes? when and where? with or to whom? under what institutional and historical constrains?(Clifford 1986)-is a repercussion of the postcolonial encounter. Another important feature of the 1980s is the increasing flow of so-called postmodernism in academia-grand narrative was abandoned and details of everyday life took their place. Accordingly, singular culture was replaced by the plural one, and cultures were understood as representations and knowledge; and man with a small m took place of Man with variability. More importantly, the process of rethinking cultural representation again called into question the authenticity of representation itself and Writing Culture elegantly captured the main themes in this discussion. Three Main Themes of the Book In general, Writing Culture is an introspection, which attempts to examine anthropology traditions (especially the traditional ethnography) as well as anthropologists themselves. I will explore three main themes in the reflections. 1. Partial truth Knowledge is power,and that one must never reveal all of what one knows. Saramaka folktale, in Price (1983:14) cited in Clifford (1986:7) The most essential and fundamental point in Writing Culture is the questioning of ethnographic authenticity. In the 1920s, ethnography was defined and established not only as a genre of cultural description depending on intensive participant observation (Clifford 1983), but also a main research method internalised as a academic criterion in the field of anthropology (Gao 2006). This new style of ethnography-scientific ethnography, built by Malinowski, investigated the totality of culture with a holistic view and documented different layers of ethnographic reality(Kuper 1996). About 50 years later, the theorizing of ethnographic realism sprung up. In 1977, Paul Rabinow, who is a contributor of Writing Culture, published his book Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. His provocative descriptions of the fieldwork itself and his own feelings in the field reveal that fieldwork is a process of intersubjective construction of liminal modes of communication (1977:155) which constantly involve s valuation, and the ethnographer is not a objective observer but a real person with self-consciousness and certain cultural background who makes and remakes facts. Unlike the revelations of Malinowskis fieldwork dairy and the Mead-Freeman controversy, anthropologists started to look at themselves consciously and pondered-what is the ethnographic truth. This issue has been argued throughout the book. Take for example Vincent Crapanzanos Hermess Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description (1986); he analyses three ethnographic texts by George Catlin, Wolfgang von Goethe and Clifford Geertz to probe how does the ethnographer make his/her work convincing. The three authors use distinctive figures, namely hypotyposis, external theatrical narrativity and interpretive virtuosity, to convince the readers of the descriptions in their texts. He argues that, as a matter of fact, their rhetoric tools make the described events devoiced from the original settings, and finally, it is the ethnographers authority which covers the subversion up. However, the ethnographers authority-his/her presence, perceptual ability, disinterested perspective, objectivity and sincerity (1986:53), is questionable. Does being there mean witnessing everything? Is the perceptual ability trained in a certain culture adequate and reliable? Is disinter ested perspective or objectivity even possible? If not, how can one reach the whole truth by selected fragmentary information? The underlying institutional system and power relations work through all these issues and enmesh in the anthropological knowledge, not to mention the cultural filtering, the information is not completed at the source. Crapanzanos essay reminds us that the ethnographer, like Hermes who decodes and interprets messages, promised to tell no lies but did not promise to tell the whole truth (1986:76). From this perspective, ethnographic truth no longer pursues the true view of the whole world, as Clifford and Rabinow point out in the book, ethnographic truths are partial, committed and incomplete (Clifford 1986:7) and in bondage to cultural settings. 2. Literary devices All constructed truths are made possible by powerful lies of exclusion and rhetoric. As I have mentioned before, Writing Culture is related to the literary turn of anthropology with the foundation of seeing ethnographies as texts. It is easy to point out that another major theme of the book is the literary devices employed in ethnographies, and in which the rhetoric issue has been mostly discussed. For instance, Renato Rosaldos From the Door of His Tent: The Fieldworker and the Inquisitor (1986), by comparing The Nure written by Evens Pritchard with Montaillou written by French social historian Ladurie, demonstrates how ethnographic rhetoric could assist in building authority and objectivity. Needless to repeat, The Nure is a ethnographic masterpiece, and for Montaillou, it is famous for providing an ethnographic analysis of a French community in fourteenth century by using inquisition record. Rosaldo states that, in the first place, in the introductory section, by frankly acknowledging the inequality between the inquisitor / his subjects, the fieldworker/ the Nuer, the authors both indicate the calm presence of mind(1986:89); then, they style themselves as honest men through complaining about the difficulties in gaining information in uneasy tensions between investigators and informants. After that, they claim their information is gradually collected in particles in order to construct the reliability; meanwhile, distanced normalizing mode of discourse, rhetorical absences[2], correspondences[3], etc. are used to enhance the sense of objectivity. In sum, the rhetorical work in introductory parts of the two books by means of separating the context of colonial domination from the production of ethnographic knowledge (1986:93)establish the authors innocence and the ethnographic authority as well. Furthermore, in both authors, the pastoral mode is invoked. The literary mode of pastoral is, firstly a symbol of the spiritual liberty, secondly a mobile position of speaking, and thirdly a label of courtesy and respect. Rosaldos essay interestingly illustrates that, although the power and knowledge relations have not been completely kicked off, to a great extent, they are concealed by the rhetoric tools. Ethnographic rhetoric has a strong impact on the understandings of the ethnographic texts (Scholte 1987). 3. Writing of Self Continued from the preceding paragraph, the mobility in ethnographers positions is demonstrated cumulatively in other chapters of Writing Culture as well. Fieldwork in Common Places by Mary Louis Pratt (1986) provides an illustration. Her essay focuses on the significant history of the relationship between personal narrative and impersonal description (1986:27) in ethnographies and travel writings. Pratt starts with a controversy that anthropology graduate Florinda Donners work Shabobo: A True Adventure in the Remote and Magical Heart of the South American Jungle is facing accusations of plagiarism, because there are some events in her book which are the same as others. Here, Pratt asks a very inspiring question: as ethnography demands accurate descriptions, for describing the same events at the same place, how could Donners work not resemble others? Pratt argues that the authority of ethnography, in some sense, is based on the unique and original personal experience in the field not the factual accuracy (1986:29) of a certain ethnography. From this perspective, personal narratives cannot be eliminated from ethnography, and it also explains why the subgenre of formal ethnography, such as Malinowskis diaries, has not been killed by science (1986:31), but turned into a prolonged tradition of anthropology. Even in formal ethnographies, personal narrative is an integral part. It marks the relationship among the fieldworker, indigenous people, and the audience. It also serves as a regulator, reconciling the inconsistency between the subjective engagement in fieldwork, and the detachment; the self-effacement in formal ethnographic writing. Moreover, her analysis shows that, even in the time of so-called scientific ethnography, ethnographers were writing from multiple, constantly shifting positions, and self is never a scientist-observer (1986:39). To consider further from this point, we could identity a difference between classical ethnography and experimental ethnography. For Malinowski, and his students Firth and Evens-Prichard, the writing of self is a strategy serving for building the authority of scientific ethnography; however, for Rabinow and his contemporary anthropologists, the consciously self-realization in ethnographic writing successfully opens up a dimension for reflective thinking. The self, thus, is public, and mediates in different cultures. The appearance of the new kind of self writing is very provocative: epistemologically, in view of the production and explanation of the knowledge,it penetrates into the relationship between knowledge of self and knowledge of the Other and how knowledge is hermeneutically represented(Rapport, and Overing 2000); methodologically, it seeks for the diversity of ethnographic writing, more specifically, the expression of the subjectivity, the utilization of rhetoric, or, I would say, the writing style. 4. A summary of the three themes: one centre and two basic relationships Throughout all three themes-ethnographic truth, rhetoric in ethnography, and the writing of self, there is a central point-the construction of ethnographic authority, which cannot be comprehended without reference to the power relations. The power relations derive from the Foucaultian intertwining of knowledge and power in the academic discipline as well as the fluctuant historical and political affiliation. Here, I will not repeat these issues which I have argued in the first part, rather, I would suggest two relationships existing in the main themes of Writing Culture: a) ethnographers and the natives they studied, and b) anthropologists and their readers. Having inherited the tradition of Geertzs interpretive anthropology, Writing Culture highlights the reconstruction of the ethnographer/informant relations (Wang Gao). Indigenous people and their culture are no longer viewed as silent and uniform objects. Ethnographic knowledge, as suggested by Rabinow (1977), is built on a bilateral understanding in certain cultural contexts. At the same time, more importantly, the book pays close attention to the relationship between anthropologists and the readers. Same as the literary outputs, ethnographies shape the relations with the audiences through texts (Xu 2001). Both the completed texts and reading activities are certainly influenced by the literary processes (Clifford 1986). By scanning how ethnographies communicate with their readers, the reflexive essays[4] portray ethnography as a kind of dialogue, and the conversational readership allows, or I could say, encourages the readers to take part in the investigation of ethnographic writing. In addition, the discussions regarding the ethnographers distinguished positions in describing others and expressing Self, permit the readers to obtain the different perspectives which the ethnographers have themselves. As Spencer indicated (1989), the correspondence to multiple positions provided by a master hand is a feature of a good ethnography. Why is it important to tak e the readership of ethnography into consideration? I think it depends largely on the unique and versatile character of this readership. Marcus and Cushman (1982) present six categories of readerships of ethnography. The categories differ in purpose, positions, and some of them may merge with another (the first and second one in particular) or others: (1) the specialist readership, (2) the general anthropological readership, (3) readerships from the other social sciences (4) the student readership, (5) the action oriented readership,(6)the popular readership(1982:51-52). Ethnography, firstly, as a genre and a method as well, interposes itself between humanities (relating to category 1 and 2) and social sciences (relating to category 3); secondly, serves as a puberty rite for professional anthropologists (relating to category 4); thirdly, emerges into social and political decision-making for certain historical and institutional reasons (relating to category 5); and finally, attracts common readers thanks to its literary feature and exotic nature (relating to category 6). It is obvious that the readerships of ethnography are extremely complicated and should be carefully identified. Both ethnographers and readers must be self-conscious (Rapport 2000). Hence, the ethnographer/reader relation issue raised by Writing Culture writers, from this angle, is stimulating from the 1980s till today. The ethnographer/reader relation, together with the ethnographer/informant relation, is located in the power discourse and knowledge discourse. Once again, the two relationships echo the central idea of Writing Culture-the authority and power. In a word, although the three themes I proposed are not a very complete summary of the book, the one centre and two basic relationships they conveyed, in my opinion, have demonstrated the most insight and innovation of Writing Culture. Writing Culture: the Chinese Experience In the preliminary report of the Writing Culture seminar and papers, Clifford and Marcus state that Writing Culture is lacking the feminist point of view as well as Third World or non-European approach (Clifford and Marcus 1985). For the former omission, I agree with Schotle (1987) that, some feminist perspectives is inconspicuously harbored in Pratts essay. However, for sure, there is not a so-called Third World standpoint in Writing Culture, which I think is a significant irony for its analysis of power play in the post-colonial time. In Third World countries, anthropology is in a very different context. Their people and cultures have for a long time been discovered, observed, described, and represented by Westerners. Non-Western anthropologists and their ethnographic works are the symbols of the reconfiguration within the discipline, and most of them naturally locate their fieldwork sites in their own cultures to study their own people. Generally speaking, anthropology[5] of the Third World witnesses a fruitful period in the postwar era, which is also the golden age of experimental ethnography, and to some extent, it could be taken as anthropology at home which employs the self-reflexive approach mentioned in Writing Culture. I will then, taking China as an example, look at some ethnographic cases conducted by Chinese anthropologists relating to Writing Culture. I assume it a good perspective to explore the influential power of Writing Culture and its echoes. The first case is Huang Shumins ethnography The Spiral Road:Change In A Chinese Village Through The Eyes Of A Communist Party Leader(1998). Depending on his one-year fieldwork (first ten chapters) and a revisit (chapter 1112) in a village in Fujian province, China, Huang provides a picture of the huge political and economic change and development in a Chinese village from the founding of Peoples Republic of China to the 1990s as well as the impact on the personal and pubic life of a peasant, who is the a political leader in the community. The political struggles, the hardship of raising a family, and the peasants life wisdom are vividly described through a first-person narrative life history approach. Although his novel-like ethnography is first published in English, Huang is regarded as one of the best Chinese anthropologists for his proficient writing skills and great success in narrating the complexity of historical events in rural China in a lighter tone. The second case is drawn from Li Chunxias PhD dissertation Television and the Life of Yi People in China (2005)[6]. As a Yi[7] anthropologist, her ethnography explores how television profoundly incorporated into the fabric (2005: 5) of local peoples daily life. In the text, Lis fieldwork notes collected during her three-year fieldwork at her own village give expression to her close emotional ties with native people, and deliver her concerns and worries of the ethnic minorities living circumstances in contemporary China. Meanwhile, as a scholar, she keenly captures the metaphorical meaning of modernization, development and prosperity by television. Her analysis penetrates into the relations of Yi people/Han people, and pre-modern/modern. The reflexivity about the periphery/centre relations is a main steam in contemporary anthropology of China. The third case is Zhuang Kongshaos ethnographic research on a hot topic in Chinese culture and society: the family education (Zhuang and Feng 2006). He describes the communications and conflicts between a mother and her seven years old daughter and the relations among school education, family education and social education. Zhuang is a pioneer in anthropology of China, not only because he introduces a new approach called educational anthropology, most importantly, the final production of Zhuangs fieldwork is an ethnographic film named My Wife, My Daughter. It is actually beyond the scope of Writing Culture, because it is no longer about the writing and the text. I adopt this case here, trying to argue that, Writing Culture highlights the diversity of ethnography, and now, facing the radical form of ethnography, can the arguments in Writing Culture on ethnographic texts fit in ethnographic films? What is the same and the difference between the grammars of ethnographic writing and seei ng? Are pictures more worthy than words in constructing ethnographic authority? Can texts and films be combined in ethnographic enterprise? Why and how? The book it self is an open ended text, and constantly simulates new questions for anthropologists in the post Writing Culture era, and that also explains why Writing Culture, after more than twenty years, is still being quoted and debated all over the world. It is true, as Schotle harshly points out (1987), that lots of questions in this book remains unclear and unsettled. However, I appreciate the original questions it raised and the appeal to dialogue. Rethinking Writing Culture Following the reflexive direction, I have three points to make on rethinking the book. Before that, I present a brief schema of the three-stage ethnographic research as follows. There is nothing new, however, my questions are based on it. First, with the text-orientation, has the importance of writing been stressed over that of doing ethnography in the book? The potential risk in the textualism emphasized in Writing Culture is that fieldwork retires from the leading position, it has provided a context for substituting the empirical research. As we can see from the schema, fieldwork is the centre of ethnographic research in time and space, and it is also the foundation of anthropology. In this experimental moment, we should not only look at the outcome of fieldwork, but also reflect upon the limitations and new characteristics in fieldwork processes in this Writing Culture or post Writing Culture era. Second, going back to the very first stage, I would argue, different backgrounds of Western and non-Western ethnographers shape two distinguished patterns of reflexive thinking. First, the Western pattern could be called coming home, after studying the Other, from outside in, anthropologists return to the Self, their reflexive thinking is about their own tradition in their own cultural institutions. Second, the non-Western pattern could be named as being home, they do not have a return perspective, their reflexive thinking is still deeply in relation to the West. I fear, in reflexive anthropology, which is greatly established by Writing Culture, anthropologists in the Third World would be more marginalized through their resistance in this centre-periphery discourse. My final thought is on rhetoric issue, which is still an incomprehensible question to me. If rhetoric is an integral component of ethnographic writing, as Rosaldo (1986) argued, there are using and abusing of descriptive rhetoric, then, the next obvious question is: what is the boundary between use and abuse of rhetoric? It seems to me that, use, is a kind of abuse in itself, if so, how can one control it? Epilogue In the final part of my essay, I would like to do an experiment. I will write about my reading experience instead of the conclusion of the whole passage. I originally read this book in Chinese in my junior year at college. As a literature student, I found the book interesting and inspiring, and it positively influenced me in the choosing of anthropology for graduate study. Later, I reread the book both in English and Chinese, and accessed some related articles written by Writing Culture writers. Surprisingly, I found several articles written in collaboration with Clifford and Marcus. Other than this landmark book, Marcus, together with Cushman, wrote Ethnographies as Texts (1982), which is a harbinger of Writing Culture; and he, later, with Fischer, produced the companion volume of Writing Culture-Anthropology as Cultural Critique (1986). Behind these collaborations, I can imagine the interactions of sparkling thoughts as well as understandings and communications. They are spirits of academic research, and also the anthropological endeavor. References Archetti, E.P. (ed.) (1994) Exploring the written: anthropology and the multiplicity of writing. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. Asad, T. (1986) The concept of cultural translation in British social anthropology, in Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (eds.) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Asad, T. (2002) From the history of colonial anthropology to the anthropology of Western hegemony, in Vincent, J. (ed.) InThe Anthropology of Politics: A Reader in Ethnography, Theory and Critique, Oxford: Blackwell. Barrett, S.R. (1996) Anthropology: a students guide to theory and method. Toronto. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Clifford, J. (1983) On ethnographic authority, Representations, 2, pp. 118-146. JSTOR[Online]. Available at:http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928386 (Accessed: 13 March 2010) Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (1985) The making of ethnographic texts: a preliminary report, Current Anthropology, 26(2), pp. 267-271. JSTOR[Online].Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743141 (Accessed: 13 March 2010) Clifford, J. (1986) Introduction: partial truth, in Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (eds.) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clifford, J. and Marcus (1986) Preface, in Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (eds.) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Crapanzano, V. (1986) Hermess Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description, in Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (eds.) Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fabian, J. (1990) Presence and representation: the Other and anthropological writing, Critical Inquiry, 16(4), pp. 753-772, SAGE[Online].Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343766 (Accessed: 13 December 2009) Gao, BZ. (2006) The three periods in the development of ethnography-translators preface to Writing Culture, Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 28(3), pp 58-63. CNKI[Online]. DOI: cnki:ISSN:1002-3887.0.2006-03-012 (Accessed: 10 November 2009) Gao, BZ. et al.(2007) On Writing Culture, Reading, 2007(4), CNKI[Online]. DOI: CNKI:ISSN:0257-0270.0.2007-04-026 (Accessed: 10 November 2009) Geertz, G. (1975) The interpretation of cultures. London: Hutchinson. Geertz, G. (1983) Local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, G. (1988) Worksandlives: the anthropologist as author. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Harrell, S. (2001) The anthropology of reform and the reform of anthropology: anthropological narratives of recovery and progress in China, Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, pp. 139-161. JSTOR[Online]. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3069212 (Accessed: 03 March 2010) Huang, JB. (2004) The contending of Writing Culture-Post-modern discourse in anthropology and the change in the sudies, Thinking, 30 (4), pp. 39-43. CNKI[Online]. Available at: cnki:ISSN:1001-778X.0.2004-04-009 (Accessed: 10 November 2009) Huang, SM. (1998) The Spiral Road: Change in a Chinese Village Through theEyes of a Communist Party Leader. 2nd edn. Boulder: Westview Press. James, A. Hockey, J. and Dawson, A. (eds.) (1997) After writing culture: epistemology and praxis in contemporary anthropolog

Cognitive Psychology False Memory Essay

Theoretical and Applied/Practical Perspective of False Memory The human memory is subject to a multitude of errors, including source misattributions, distortion and creation of false memories. In order to do justice to this paper one must first determine what is â€Å"False memory†? False memory is memory for an event that did not occur or distorted memory of actual events (Gleaves, Smith, Butler, & Spiegel, 2004). This type of memory has been an area of intense research interest for both theoretical and practical reasons and psychologists have long been interested in memory illusions and distortions, as such errors can inform theories of how the memory works (Hunt & Ellis, 2004). From a theoretical perspective, false memories have been the subject of intense debates about the nature of human memory and a focal point for old and new memory theories. Memories are not simply stored and retrieved, information is encoded and memories are reconstructed using previous knowledge to p iece together the situation as one thinks it occurred (Loftus & Ketchan, 1994). Therefore perception and comprehension of ongoing events always brings related information to mind. For example, an individual mentions that he/she had a great trip to the beach over the weekend. In comprehending what the individual is saying; one may imagine their last visit to Miami Beach. Later one remembers that the said individual mentioned his/her visit to Miami Beach when, in fact, the individual said nothing about which beach he/she visited. This example illustrates how frequently one might remember information related to ones ongoing perception and comprehension, even though the events represented by that information never occurred (Hunt & Ellis, 2004). One of the most common ways that false memories have been studied is through the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect. This list learning paradigm provided a traceable means by which false memories can be created and studied in the laboratory. Gallo, McDermott, Percer & Roediger III (2001) explained that the DRM paradigm was a method of using converging semantic associates to induce false memories. It basically referred to the high confidence false recall or recognition of the critical lure. Within the study subjects were given a list of words for immediate free recall. These words were all associated semantically with a critical lure which itself was not presented. For example, if the critical lure was sleep the list would have consisted of fifteen words most highly associated with sleep such as bed to the least highly associated which would be drowsy on free association norms. Even though the critical lure was not on the list, subjects often falsely reported it and on recognition tests, these individuals often â€Å"remember† these words with a high degree of confidence (Surgrue & Hayne, 2006). False memories arising from phonologically associated lists may indeed be enhanced by phonological encoding in comparison with semantic encoding. False memories therefore can be elicited by presenting lists of phonologically related words in both recognition and recall tasks (Chan, McDermott, Watson & Gallo, 2005). According to the fuzzy traced theory (as cited in Howe, 2008), subjects encode both verbatim information about the experience to gist information about the experience. Applied to the DRM paradigm gist information represents the semantic commonalities among lure’s studied associates, which lead the fuzzy trace theory to propose that lure errors are familiarity based (Arndt, 2010). Memory errors to unstudied items arise from how well they match gist traces and that memory errors are limited by the extent to which unstudied items produce retrieval of verbatim traces. Therefore lure errors increase when they match the gists representation of their studied associates but decrease when retrieval is inspired of the verbatim traces of their studied associates (Howe, 2008). Once the gist representation is reasonably strong it can produce an illusory subjective experience of its actual presentation, this is known as phantom recollection (Gallo, McDermott, Percer & Roediger III, 2001). When this phenomenon occurs an individual may confuse the gist trace strength with the psychological experience of recollecting, which is normally mediated by retrieving verbatim traces of studied items. As lure items tend to match very strong gist traces in memory individuals believe they can recollect DRM lures. According to Arndt, (2010), â€Å"this theory proposes that although these errors are often phenomenologically similar to items that were episodically experienced, lures’ recollection phenomenology is representationally distinct from that of study items† (p.67). There is evidence however that false memory can be based largely on automatic processing and is amenable to only limited conscious control. For example, Dodd and MacLeod (2004), showed that mere exposure to DRM lists was sufficient to create a false memory: They presented DRM lists as coloured words in a Stroop test. Naming colours reduced accurate memory for list words as compared to reading coloured words, but false memory remained high for critical words. Furthermore, the elimination of false memory is difficult in that certain â€Å"encoding manipulations may lead to reductions in false memories through metamemorial processes occurring at retrieval† (Gallo, McDermott, Percer & Roediger III, 2001, p.339). For example slowing presentation rate decreases the probability of false remembering, but may not eliminate it (Gallo, McDermott, Percer & Roediger III, 2001). False memories are remarkably persistent. For example, Toglia, Neuschatz and Goodwin (1999) found that false recall rates remained high over a three-week period, whereas recall of studied words revealed the typical decrement. In short, the DRM paradigm allows for the easy and reliable elicitation of false memories in the laboratory. From a practical perspective, false memories are a threat to the validity of eyewitness testimony, a misleading source of autobiographical information in psychotherapy, and a biased representation of lessons taught in educational settings. For this assignment the validity of eyewitness testimony only, will be discussed (Hunt & Ellis, 2004). According to Greene (as cited in Loftus, 1995, p.720), â€Å"memories do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they continually disrupt each other through a mechanism that we call â€Å"interference†. For instance, memories can be disrupted by things that an individual experienced earlier, this is known as proactive interference or situations that one may experience later, which is known as retroactive interference. Based on the interference theory from a retroactive interference perspective, when new information is received that is mislea ding in some ways individuals make errors when they report what they saw. The reason for this is that new information often becomes incorporated into the recollection, supplementing or altering it in a significant way (Porter, Bellhouse, McDougall, Brinke & Wilson, 2010). Elizabeth Loftus (as cited in Hunt & Ellis, 2004), pioneered laboratory research modeled on eyewitness situation demonstrating the intervening events that occur between witnessing an event and subsequent testimony in court. The paradigm for this research was simple, participants witnesses a simulated violent crime of an automobile accident half of the participants received new misleading information about the event and the other half did not received any misinformation. The participants in this experiment were influenced by presuppositions invoked by the verbs smashed and hit based on the question asked, which was â€Å"About how fast the car was going when they hit, smashed each other †. Smashed presupposes a more violent collision a fact that influences both estimates of speed an d amount of damage. Therefore individuals who stated that there was broken glass saw the word â€Å"smashed†, but no broken glass was actually depicted in the film. The presupposition dramatically, but subtly influenced memory for the actual event (Loftus, 1995). What was being remembered was the integrated memory of the two events, memory for the original film, plus memory for the additional information that was inherent in the question asked later. As the two memories blended over time the end result would be a single blended memory that is a distortion of the original event (Hunt & Ellis, 2004). Higham (1998), showed that the latency between exposure to misinformation and time recall also influenced the misinformation effect, such that recent exposure to recent information was associated with greater recall of false details. Therefore both the response bias and memory change accounts have important implications for how one might regard the reliability of eyewitness testimony. According to Loftus & Pickrell (1995), false memories can be implanted as was demonstrated in the â€Å"Lost-in-a-shopping-mall† study. It suggested that memory of an entire mildly traumatic event can be created and that further questions may be asked, such as, is it possible to implant a memory of abuse. For example one of the most dramatic cases of false memory of abuse ever to be documented was the case of Paul Ingram from Olympia, Washington (Ofshe, 1992; Watters, 1991). This individual was arrested for child abuse in 1988 at the time he was chair of the county Republican committee. From the outset he denied everything, but after five months of interrogation, suggestions from a psychologist and continuing pressure from detectives and advisors, Ingram began to confess to rapes, assaults, child sexual abuse, and participation in a Satan-worshiping cult alleged to have murdered 25 babies (Loftus, 1993). Ofshe (1989) noted that this was not the first time that a vulnerable individual had been made to believe that he had committed a crime for which he originally had no memory and which evidence proved he could not have committed. What is crucial about the Ingram case is that some of the same methods that are used in repressed memory cases were used with Ingram. This case also provides further insights into the malleable nature of memory. They suggest that memories for personally traumatic events can be altered by new experiences. Moreover, they reveal that entire events that never happened can be injected into memory. Therefore false memories range from the relatively trivial (e.g., remembering voting) to the bizarre (e.g., remembering forcing one’s daughter and son to have sex) (Loftus, 1993). These false memories, with more or less detail, of course, do not prove that repressed memories of abuse that return are false. They do demonstrate a mechanism by which false memories can be created, by a small suggestion from a trusted family member, by hearing someone lie, by suggestion from a psychologist, or by incorporation of the experiences of others into one’s own autobiography planted (Loftus, 1993). Although false memories of ones childhood can be implanted, it does not imply that all memories that arise after suggestion are necessarily false, although the experimental work on false memory creation raises doubt about the validity of long buried memories such as repeated trauma, but it in no way disproves them. Even with the most experienced evaluator, it is difficult to differentiate true memories from ones that are suggestively planted (Loftus, 1997). True memories represent events as they really occurred, whereas false memories shade, distort or entirely misrepresent events as they really happened. Research on memory distortion indicates that memory is not at all like a mechanical recording device. The original experience is not stored as some veridical trace of what was out there but, rather, is the result of interpretive processes of perception and comprehension. The intriguing picture of memory that emerges is one of a powerful, adaptively important and usually reliable psychological process that sometimes is completely wrong (Hunt & Ellis, 2004). References Arndt, J. (2010). The role of memory activation in creating false memories of encoding context. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 36(1), 66-79. Chan, C. K. J., McDermott, B. K., Watson, M. J., & Gallo, A. D. ( 2005). The importance of material-processing interactions in inducing false memories. Journal of Memory & Cognition, 33 (3) 389-395. Dodd, M. D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2004). False recognition without intentional learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 137-142. Gallo, A. D., McDermott, B. K., Percer, M. J., & Roediger, L. H. III. (2001). Modality Effects in False Recall and False Recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 27 (2) 339-353 Gleaves, D. H., Smith, S. M., Butler, L. D., & Spiegel, D. (2004). False and recovered memories in the laboratory and clinic: A review of experimental and clinic evidence. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11 3-28. Higham, P. A. (1998). Believing details known to have been suggested. British Journal of Psychology, 89, 920-930. Howe, L. M. (2008). What is false memory development and the development of comment on Brainerd, Reyna and Ceci (2008), Psychological Bullentin, 134 (5), 768-772. Hunt, R. R., & Ellis, C. H. (2004). Fundamentals of Cognitive Psychology (7th Ed). McGraw Hill. Loftus, E., & Ketcham, K. (1994). False memories and allegations of sexual abuse: The myth of repressed memory. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Loftus, E.F. (1997). Creating false memories. Scientific American, 277, 70-75. Loftus, E.F. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 48, 518-537. Loftus, E.F., & Pickrell, E. J. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals , 25, 720-725. Ofshe, R. J. (1992). Inadvertent hypnosis during interrogation: False confession due to dissociative state, misidentified multiple personality and the satanic cult hypothesis. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 40, 125-156. Ofshe, R. J. (1989). Coerced confessions: The logic of seemingly irrational action. Cultic Studies Journal, 6, 1-15 Porter, S., Bellhouse, S., McDougall, A., Brinke, T. L., & Wilson, K. (2010). A prospective investigation of the vulnerability of memory for positive and negative emotional scenes to the misinformation effect. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 42 (1) 55-61. Surgrue, K., & Hayne, H. (2006). False Memories produced by children and Adults in the DRM Paradigm. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 625-631. Toglia, M. P., Neuschatz, J. S., & Goodwin, K. (1999). Recall accuracy and illusory memories: When more is less. Memory, 7, 233-256. Watters, E. (1991). The devil in Mr. Ingram. Mother Jones, 65-68.

The South American Country Economics Essay

IntroductionThis paper is concerned with the economic consideration of one of the South American states and analyzes the impact of an economic concern on that peculiar South American state that has been chosen and identifies the tendency of the economic concern with in specified part on the footing of informations sets accumulate from the beginning. The south American states has major impact on American economic system and the economic concern of one of an of import state raise our organic structure of cognition sing the economic tendency in that peculiar state and its impact on overall economic system every bit good.South American StateThe economic system of South America consists of 12 states with three districts and comprise of 6 % of population in the universe. I have choose Brazil among other South American states as Brazil is the largest South American state and Brazil is one of the fastest turning economic systems of the universe. It is ranked at 5th topographic point in the universe sing population and geographical part and fifth largest economic system sing GDP in the universe. The economic concern of Brazil is efficaciously contributes to universe economic system and interesting tendency of economic system can be seen. ( Abreu, 2005 ) .Economic ConcernAmong four economic concern including GDP, measures of specific Goods and services gross Domestic Product & A ; Acirc ; ( GDP ) , and unemployment rising prices I have selected rising prices. Inflation is an of import economic concern that will consequence the economic system in great extend and rising prices rate of a state economic system is an of import index for a state growing prospective. Inflation means rise in the general monetary value degree of the state and loss the existent value of money as fewer trade goods will purchase with each extra unit of currency. Inflation straight associate to the economic productiveness and has positive and negative both consequence on economic system as it create economic uncertainness which may deter salvaging and investing. High monetary values of general trade goods and billboard will be its largest disadvantage. In positive sense it may promote not pecuniary investing. But the rising prices rate demands to be control in order to prolong state economic system.Inflation tendency in BrazilThe rising prices rate in Brazil is fluctuating over the old ages. No consistent tendency can be seen in the rising prices rate Acs past twelvemonth informations support this premise. Harmonizing to the informations displayed by ( IPCA ) in 2002 the rising prices rate was 12.53 % that is rather high rate. Then the diminishing tendency of rising prices rate can be seen in Brazil economic system as 9.3 % in 2003, 7.6 % in 2004, 5.69 % in 2005, and 3.14 % in 2006 that is least in this decennary. Then the little increasing t endency can be seen in rate of rising prices. 4.46 % can be seen in 2007 and 5.91 in 2008. The fluctuating tendency can be seen in this scope in coming old ages every bit good. ( Inflation Statistical tabular array )Statistical TableInflation ( IPCA )200212.53 %20039.30 %20047.60 %20055.69 %20063.14 %20074.46 %20085.91 %Past two old ages Inflation TrendPast two old ages monthly rising prices rate tendency can be seen from this graph that shows the monthly frequence of the rising prices rate. The graph bars shows the tendency of rising prices from twelvemonth 2011 that is 6.01 % . The increasing incline can be seen from March, 2011 up to October, 2011. Inflation rate at the month of October is the highest that is 7.31 % . Then the control execution on rising prices increasing tendency can be seen from 7.31 % to the deep low rate at 4.92 % in July, 2012 that is complemented to Brazil economic system. The upward Trent at semi one-year bases can be seen in Brazil economic system. The la st recorded rising prices rate of 6.15 % that is rather high. Brazil authorities mark rising prices rate is 4.5 % with the asset and subtraction tolerance border of 2 % in it. The high rising prices tendency is of import consideration for the authorities as increasing rising prices rate impact the economic system in deep roots and do the investing and salvaging hard. Peoples buying power will be effected that will consequence their criterion of life and indulge the poorness degree in the state as trade goods will be hard to buy with even more money in manus because due to rising prices state will lose its existent money value. ( De Paiva Abreu, 2005 ) .Harmonizing to IBGE study it is recorded from 1980 the Brazil rising prices tendency has gone through assorted fluctuations. Historical information shows norm of 411.8 % Brazil rising prices rate that reached at highest rate of rising prices of 6821.3 % in April 1990 that was the highest rate for all clip. The low rising prices rate o f 1.7 per centum was found in December 1998. The step used to cipher rising prices is consumer monetary value index. Brazil of import part in consumer monetary value index are baccy, nutrient and intoxicant that covers 31 % of entire, 15 per centum by conveyance sector and communicating carries 5 % . . ( Brazil Inflation Rate )Statistical Evidence comparing assorted states rising prices rateInflation Rate of assorted states is demoing the Brazil high rate of rising prices as comparison to other states except India that has the rising prices Rate o f 6.62. An increasing tendency is rather endangering for Brazilian authorities for economic growing and required close consideration to command the rate in hereafter in order to stabilise the economic system. Top Economy Last Previous Highest Lowest Unit of measurement Mention Frequency ChartAustralia2.20 2.00 23.90 -1.30 Percentage Dec/2012 QuarterlyBrazil6.15 5.84 6821.31 1.65 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyCanada0.50 0.80 21.60 -17.80 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyChina2.00 2.50 28.40 -2.20 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyEuro Area2.00 2.20 5.00 -0.70 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyFrance1.20 1.30 18.80 -0.70 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyGermany1.70 2.00 11.40 -7.63 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyIndia6.62 7.18 34.68 -11.31 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyDutch east indies4.57 4.30 82.40 -1.17 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyItaly2.20 2.31 25.64 -2.44 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyJapan-0.10 -0.20 25.00 -2.52 Percentage Dec/2012 MonthlyNew Zealand0.90 0.80 44.00 -15.30 Percentage Dec/2012 QuarterlySoviet union7.10 6.60 2333.30 3.60 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlySouth Korea1.50 1.40 32.51 0.17 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlySpain2.68 2.87 28.43 -1.37 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlySwitzerland-0.30 -0.40 11.92 -1.37 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyTurkey7.31 6.16 138.71 -4.01 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyUnited Kingdom2.70 2.70 8.50 0.50 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyUnited States1.60 1.70 23.70 -15.80 Percentage Jan/2013 MonthlyDecisionThe Inflation rate and economic stableness are closely related to one another and required near concern in order to stabilise the economic system. Brazil increasing tendency provide the threatening for its hereafter concerns and shows that the authorities demand to closely see this government in order to stabilise the economic system and to accomplish the economical growing in the universe.

Hiv / Aids And Its Effects On Children s Fund And The...

Comfort Senesie Dr. DeJoy HIV/AIDS in South Africa Africa is arguably the poorest continent in the world as shown by statistics from World Health Organization, United Nation Children’s Fund and the World Bank. Growing up in Africa, I have been a first- hand witness to abject poverty which I believe is interconnected to illiteracy, higher infant and maternal mortality rates, life expectancy and the continuous presence of diseases. Even though Southern Africa has made some strides addressing some of these issues, the country’s inability to combat one of the deadliest diseases in the world, HIV/AIDS, remains a prominent public health concern. â€Å"The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) targets the immune system and weakens people’s†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"Southern Africa is the most affected region accounting for more than 70% of the global total of new infections† (WHO, 2012). As worrisome as these numbers are, researches have shown that HIV/AIDS disproportionately affect more women than men . â€Å"For every ten men infected, 13 women are HIV positive† (UNAID, 2013). This has additional implications for mother- child transmission which has been listed as one of the ways that the disease is spread. South Africa is still battling the remnants of racial discrimination that plagued the country’s recent history. This racial divide is evident in the trend of this disease as well. According to a recent UNAIDS report, â€Å"13.6% of black South Africans are HIV positive, whereas only 0.3% of whites living in South Africa has the disease† (UNAIDS, 2013). Like any other health condition, there are some behaviors and conditions that put individuals at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. UNICEF in a recent report explained that â€Å"However, it is also true that schools themselves may contribute to adolescent vulnerability by subjecting young girls to sexual abuse by teachers and by reinforcing adverse gender norms† (UNICEF,2008). According to a 2013 UNAIDS report, sex work is a practice that is common in South Africa and regions with high incidence rate of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted