ANTH1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Warlpiri People, Informal Sector, Mary Douglas
8 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 3: LIVELIHOOD AND MAKING A LIVING (1)
• Culture is integrated:
o Cars are part of the shared, symbolic, material and learned culture of the Pitjantjatjara
people
• Symbols, signs and metaphors:
o Cars: a metaphoric relationship between Warlpiri people, country, technology and magic
• Catadores: material aspects of culture
o Categories:
• How culture classifies the world around us
• The symbolic and material dimensions of culture are interrelated or integrated
• Culture as a Process
o Work and Livelihood:
• How people operate within social and environmental constraints to build shared
meaning as well as livelihoods;
• How culture organises practical activity: the material aspects of culture
• Mary Douglas (1921-2007)
o All cultures devise classification systems for objects, persons, events and activities.
o 'Dirt is matter out of place'
• Catadores (Trash pickers in Rio de Janeiro)
o How do we understand the culture of contemporary capitalist societies?
• What constitutes a livelihood?
• What’s ultural aout ho e lie i apitalis?
• How do we understand work in the informal economy?
o There are always:
• Structures
• Symbol Systems
• Systems of meaning and value
• Forms of sociality
• Catadores: Millar's CLAIMS and EVIDENCE
o The advantages and disadvantages of autonomy
o The knowledge required to become a catadore
• How people learn the necessary knowledge
o The politics of working as a catadore
• How can people organise in a work environment that is egalitarian/non-
hierarchical?
o The morals and ethics of garbage
• How people make meaning of their lives
o The spatial organisation of Jardim Floes/Gramacho
• Favelas housing
• Garbage disposal as 'the end of the line'
• The politics of invisibility
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
