Ground Up

The field of cultural anthropology centers on the scientific study of our human species, societies, and societal development, concerning itself with - of many - four specific UPs: (1) examining cultures and cultural differences from the ground UP, (2) analyzing perceived hierarchies across and within cultures, (3) the concept of “catching up” with the goings on of disparate civilizations and societies, (including reflexive scrutiny of ideologies and biases within the literature), and (4) the uncovering - or “digging up” - of truths within the familiar culture of origin and other(ed) cultures. In the first and most fundamental UP, the field can be seen to build ethnographies as foundations, working from observed fact and exploring the unknown from that point. Between these rather broad, arbitrary categories of distinction I have drawn, there are many smaller, language-based UPs within cultural anthropology, such as increasing, or heightening understanding, (hopefully this is a shared UP with all other disciplines), and up-setting establishment thought as the discipline has diversified over the past century. A particularly stinging example of the latter is the hierarchical discourse on civilization - ie. pitting “developments” of the western world against the “primitive nature” of foreign cultures. As Lakoff and Johnson summarize their status metaphor, “Status is correlated with... power and... power is UP” (L&J 16). A false sense of western superiority - status power - is visibly damaging to a global community. We cannot pretend the world flat, or create such senses of high and low, in a modern discipline that examines no society as more backwards or upside-down than the next. We are all equidistant from the atmosphere above us, and the known ground below. As modern cultural anthropologists work to distance themselves from hierarchical dichotomies and center introspectively on their own societies, this concept of the unknown UP physically beyond our grasp, and the study of the known world springing UP beneath our own feet (L&J 20), becomes increasingly urgent.

Here are some Turkey street dogs presenting the ground beneath Istanbul, and some backgrounds.

More overexposures below the cut.