The Role of Anthropology in the Communication - Essay Example

Engagement in the "thick description" of culture is predicated on the anthropologist's assuming the role of an ethnographer and within the context of that role, to understand the culture's codes and symbols from the inside. The point here is, according to Geertz, that loci of culture are the hearts and minds of its natives and this imposes the imperatives of entering the hearts of minds in order to understand the culture and communicate it, not from the anthropologist's subjective point of view but, "from the native's point of view" (Geertz, Local Knowledge, p. 56).Cultural relativism is the optimal approach, not just to the study of cultures but, to their accurate comprehension.

Geertz's "thick description" of culture, which translates into understanding culture "from the native's point of view" implies the comprehension of cultures from an internal perspective. To be able to understand a culture on its own terms, from an internal perspective, the ethnographer needs to engage in "experience-near" as opposed to "experience distance" (p. 57). The first necessitates that the ethnographer listens to an informant's description of his culture and his explanation of how he and his fellow cultural adherents perceive, feel, think, and imagine the world around them.

Listening to the informant and engaging in experience-near, as compared to maintaining distance, gives the ethnographer a solid sense of the intricacies of the culture in question and helps in the understanding of the underlying meaning of its symbols. This understanding is the cornerstone of "thick description;" relativist descriptions of culture which emerge as intelligible and deeply understood.The imperatives of exercising cultural relativism when studying alien cultures are further emphasized by Schneider.

As he writes, "the assumption that culture cannot be reduced to any other system makes it possible to study culture on its own, apart from all other aspects of behavior" (p. 197). Culture is whole and all-inclusive with the implication being that culture does not simply define and transmit meaning and symbol but that contains its own self-explanation. The exercise of cultural relativism is, in other words, facilitated by the fact that the wholeness of cultures implies that they explain themselves, thereby negating the need to turn to other cultures for possible explanations.

In sum, it is apparent that the works discussed are intent on the preservation of the integrity of individual cultures. Cultural relativism, understanding cultures "from the native's point of view" and composing "thick descriptions" of culture, is the means by which anthropologists record cultures while preserving their integrity.