Reflections on How to Read Cultural Anthropology
Prof. Luis Vivanco
If you've gotten to UVM as a student and you are reading this, I trust that you know 'how to read,' in the sense that you have proven that you meet certain acceptable standards of literacy. There is, however, an important difference between being generally literate, and knowing how to read at the level of comprehension that most college courses in the social sciences and humanities demand. Part of the problem, you will soon find out if you don't already know, is not that you can't eventually puzzle out the meanings of words or complex sentences with a dictionary and determination, but that you are overwhelmed by the quantity of reading. You are simply trying to get through a huge number of pages just to stay afloat!
A dirty little secret - nay, a survival skill - of academics is that we generally do not read every line of a book or article with the same level of attention as other lines, and we do not aim to memorize all the details of every text we read. This is because we too are overwhelmed by the number of things we need to read. And no, many of us are not speed readers (at least I'm not...), and I didn't say that it's alright to outright ignore some lines of a text while paying close attention to others. After years as 'professional readers' we have generally become accustomed to disciplinary jargon and formats: we recognize key terms and know where to look in an article or chapter to get to the juicy stuff. We also have more of a foundation from which to evalutate what we are reading, so the ideas may not be so new to us and they are therefore easier to grasp. Unlike mathematics where there are such things as 'child prodigies,' learning in the social sciences and humanities tends to happen by accretion - so have patience, since chances are that you'll eventually get the hang of things. In the meantime, however, you should strive to develop a reading survival skill that many of us have developed: the ability to distinguish between what is important to focus on and remember, and what is not.
But here's the rub: every discipline has different foci and standards for what is important to grasp through reading, and so cultural anthropologists will find some things in a book or article more important than, say, a psychologist. Keep this in mind as you read my advice below - your economics, history and physics professors will probably have different expectations for your reading, and you will need to find out from them what their expectations are. This is one of the challenges of college, developing the ability to adapt to different ways of reading through specific disciplinary lenses. So here are some suggestions on how to read for this course...
General advice about reading...
- Establish and reinforce the good reading habits listed below NOW. These will serve you throughout and beyond college.
- Keep up with your reading as it is assigned. Once you fall behind, it is more difficult to follow class discussions and lectures, and catching up is difficult if you don't have a good sense of what has been going on in class and in other readings.
- Try not to do all your reading in one sitting. Spreading your reading over several days or sessions decreases the chances of exhaustion, and increases your comprehension.
- Recognize that neither I nor any other professor is assigning all this reading to punish you. If you believe it is so, get over that sentiment quickly, as it will save you a lot of grief in the long run. Sometimes it may take several times through a text before its subtleties are apparent to you (yes, several times...). Reading is hard work, and you (at least right now) will have to trust that your professors are taking your best intellectual interests into account when they assign you some piece of difficult (or seemingly boring) reading.
Before you start reading...
- Glance or skim over the entire chapter or article before you begin reading. Notice the main sections of the text, and recognize that every section heading marks an important place in the overall discussion. Also, take a look at the pictures if there are any, and read the captions - these should reveal a lot about what the author is going to say in the text.
- Examine the chapter's or article's abstract (if there is one), as well as the introduction and conclusion before you start reading. This will help you understand the main ideas the author wants you to appreciate. Make note (mental, or on paper) of these main ideas, also called the 'argument,' that generally draw on theory and (should be) supported by evidence. Class discussions will usually revolve around explicating and evaluating the appropriateness of the argument and the theories it is based on, and whether or not the evidence supports the argument.
- Review your course or other reading notes before you read. Reading should not be an activity that happens independently of a class session or other readings, in the sense that what we talk about in class and the other readings should both help you understand what you have already read, as well as inform how you will read in the future. Professors usually assign readings together because they want you to think about comparisons or contrasts between the authors' perspectives. Reviewing your notes before you read is a helpful way to keep your current reading, past readings, and classtime in the same mental frame.
- If you've gone over the chapter well enough ahead of time, you should be in a position to know where to focus your attention while you read, and where you can read more quickly and lightly.
While you read....
- Approach the text as an exchange between you and an author, not a monologue in which you are the passive recipient of the author's knowledge. If something the author says makes you angry, write something about it in the margins. If it's something you agree with, affirm it with a comment. Express yourself!! If you want to remember it, underline the passage or mark it. If you have a question about something, write it down. Fill your pages with scratches, comments, paper clips to remember which page the passage is on, etc (as long as you own it...don't do this with library books or reserve readings!!). I feel naked if I don't have a pen in hand while I am reading (or pencil if I don't want the marks to be permanent).
- Take notes on the reading. I always have a pad of paper next to me where I write down comments, questions, confusions, or long quotations I want to remember later. It sometimes takes a bit of extra time to read something, but I find it helps my comprehension, and the bonus is that I can then go back and review my notes on the reading when I want or need to, which is especially useful when I am going to write about the text or talk about it in class.
- It is often said that the Devil is in the details. I take this to mean that it can get pretty ugly when you're trying to keep track of many details (anthropologists call this 'ethnographic' data or information). But there is also Good in the details, if you take that to mean that the details (should) serve to illustrate the larger argument of the text. Whenever I feel like I'm getting bogged down in ethnographic details, I often pull back and ask myself and the text, 'What is the point?!' I do this by returning to the introduction, to remember the main ideas the author wants me to come away with, or by jumping to the conclusion, to see if the author summarizes or restates the details in a new way.
- 'Reading lightly' depends on having a good sense of what the discussion is about ahead of time. Don't read lightly if you aren't sure what the author has said in the introduction or conclusion. With jargon, sometimes called 'technical language,' slow down and try to get the author's meaning before plowing ahead. It can be a nightmare reading on if you donšt know the meaning of a particular term that keeps getting repeated.
- Think about the credibility of the information the author is presenting to you. Could this happen in the 'real world' (as you know it...)? How does it fit with the rest of the story the author is telling you? Does the author have any philosophical or political assumptions you agree or disagree with? What are the unwritten assumptions - and practical implications - of the author's position?
When you are finished reading...
- Think about which of your questions are left unanswered, or which issues you think the author may have missed or not explained well. Try to think of at least one thing for every article or chapter you read. When you combine this with a sense of how this text relates to or differs from other texts you've read, you are on your way to developing a critique of a text.
- Just because you've read it, your relationship with a text is not over. In fact, it's probably just begun. It's important to revisit a text, especially since you'll have inevitably learned something new in the interim that helps you understand the text better the second (or third, or fourth) time through.