the concept of culture as “performance”

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THIS IS ANTHROPOLOGY CLASS. In Performing Piety, Elaine Peña uses the concept of culture as “performance.” She sees culture as reproduced or changed, legitimized or contested, in moments of interaction among people and between people and their environment. Performance takes place within a framework of understandings of the world and rules for behavior, but it is not necessarily constrained by them.

In your essay, discuss ways in which we can understand culture as performance in our first two case studies.

Our first case study included Turnbull’s and Grinker’s work on culture in the Ituri Forest of Congo, as well as the comparative material on ethnicity/race in the Dominican Republic and for Dominicans in the U.S.

Our second case study was about Trobriand culture.

Be explicit in your examples of how people can reinforce or shift culture through their actions. Be sure to discuss material from each of our first two case studies.