ABSTRACT
As an anthropologist, I spend a lot of time thinking about what culture is doing to us. I mean this in two ways. First, as a teacher of anthropology, I incorporate local cultural artifacts as illustrative examples in my lecturesMadonna, Gap ads, an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, a walk across Harvard Yard-in the hope of keeping my students attentive, or at least awake. What do these things have to say about who we are and how we experience the world? What can we make of them? What are they making of us? Is it possible anymore, even in the relatively homogeneous space of a Harvard classroom, to speak with any assurance of "we" and "us"?
