Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Final Blog Comment

When I registered for anthropology, I thought it was the study of ancient cultures. Something similar to history. I expected to learn a lot of facts, names of ancient tribes, etc. Basically mostly things I would never need in every day life. However, I was very very wrong!!! The Kottak chapters presented many interesting concepts, that could all be applied today (not only to ancient tribes). The conformity and conflict essays were all captivating and full of things I have never heard of. What I liked most about both texts, was that they were both thought provoking. I was left thinking and analyzing.
Another unexpected thing was the mini-ethnography experience. When first reading about it in the syllabus, I thought it would be just like any other paper that you do, hand in and forget it. It is definitely NOT the case. My cultural consultant happened to be my best friend, and it amazed me how much I did not know or understand about the person I am so close with for many years. Moreover, aside from learning things about my best friend, I realized that there are many things around me that I never bothered to understand. I began to find myself more curious about why people do certain things, and how things originated. I noticed that in every day conversations with different people at my job, I am more patient even when the cultural differences are great.
On a more personal note, I cannot say enough how much I appreciate the understanding, caring, wise and inspiring Professor that I had a privilege to study with and meet. Thank you so much Professor Gaunt for always being there and always understanding, it meant the world to me and I will see you next semester in BLS =) Looking forward to more great times!!! Have an amazing summer =)

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Dianna Shandy "The Road to Refugee Resettlement"

Dianna Shandy "The Road to Refugee Resettlement"

The author in the very beginning mentions how we tend to label anyone who comes to the United States from other countries an immigrant. We fail to realize that people have different reasons due to which they choose to leave their home country. All of them have their own story and hopes and beliefs and dreams. Yes, some of them will happen to be similar but what this essay made me realize is that if you start listening you will begin to see the differences. Refugees are immigrants in a sense, but they come to the United States and other countries not simply out of a desire for a better life but because it is very difficult for them to continue living in their home country.

Reading about Thok Ding, I could not help but admire the courage he had to leave his family. Not only to come to the United States but to travel across Africa from one refugee camp to the next. Dianna Shandy clearly describes how difficult it is for a refugee to adapt to a different environment and how quickly they are forced to do it. The author’s essay also showed how important the work of the United Nations and volunteer groups is in helping refugees begin a new and hopefully better life. When Thok Ding came to a completely new country the volunteer took him into his home, and the organization found him and apartment and job. Without these people the transition would have been much more difficult.

It was interesting to me to see the analogy between the Nuer’s nomadic lifestyle in Sudan and in the United States. The Nuer people easily relocated from state to state as it was convenient for them. Many people I know are not as willing to move to a different place even if they do not have family ties where they are. They simply are used to the place they live and do not deal well with change. The Nuer people spent most of their lives moving with their cattle from low to high ground and back. So, they are more accustomed to changing conditions and less permanent homes. Overall, Ms. Shandy’s account of Thok Ding’s experience really touched me and introduced me to the difficulties faced by refugees. It amazed me how determined this person is in creating a better life not only for him, but his family.

Bibliography
Shandy, Dianna. “The Road to Refugee Resettlement". In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 151-160.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Jeffrey M. Fish "Mixed Blood"

Jeffrey M. Fish "Mixed Blood"

Reading Mixed Blood by Jeffrey M. Fish really opened up my eyes to how much race is a social construct. It is a product of the society defining what “race” really is. As seen in the comparison of Brazil and the United States, in different cultures emphasis is put on different characteristics in order to group people into a race category. The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary provides several different definitions for race.

One of the definitions is “a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock”. If the race of a person is defined by their background, such as parents, a child whose parents are black and white would be equally white as he/she is black. This made me think of the American “hypo-descent” concept, the author was discussing. According to “hypo-descent” the child would be classified as the race of the parent with a “less prestigious” race. This in turn brought me to the next definition provided, which is “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits”. However, the American concept of race does not fit even this definition according to the work of Mr. Fish.

After reading about the broad range of characteristics used to “classify” people into races in Brazil, the United States folk taxonomy seems to be focusing simply on skin color and broadly clumping any variation together. While the Brazilian system struck me as an attempt to group people based on as many physical traits as possible, the United States’ system seemed very basic in comparison. The broad groups did not even scratch the surface of the many distinct traits which made up each “typo” in Brazil.

The American use of “hypo-descent” in deciding the race of people, in my mind, is what causes the inequality and tension between races and even within them. I often hear people say “you are so white”, “you are not as white as me” or “you’re not as black as I am” and etc. The concept of a hierarchy of racial “prestige” causes people to feel that they are better then or worse than someone else, even if they are of the same descent. Aside from causing unnecessary tension between people the system is clearly far from accurate, as a result making much of the race related research very questionably. Largely the author is right when he says that it is a waste of time, time that could spent researching the descent and development of the many unique variations of human characteristics in the world today.

Bibliography
Fish, Jeffrey M. “Mixed Blood". In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 84-94.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

George Gmelch “Baseball Magic”

George Gmelch “Baseball Magic”

As I was reading “Baseball Magic”, I kept judging the different things people did to improve their “luck”. I thought some were silly, others weird and etc. However, I realized that it does not matter which actions a person takes, whether they are complicated or simple. What matters is the fact that the action is associated with a positive outcome, so repeating it puts the player into a mind set of doing well.

Through much of my life I participated in competitive gymnastics. Just like in baseball gymnasts often have their own rituals. Some things that I liked to do were: my warm up exercises in the same order every time, listen to a specific song before each of my performances, and when practicing my routine if I made a mistake I had to start the routine from the very beginning instead of starting with the move I made a mistake on. I remember a specific time when we arrived late for a competition, so our practice time was cut short. As I was practicing I made a mistake on a simple connecting move and did not get to redo the routine. When I came out to do my routine, I felt weird and agitated as if something was not right. I stumbled through most of my routine, although I never had an issue with it.

Looking back I understand the it was not the fact that I did not get the chance to fix my error in practice that somehow gave me “bad luck”, but rather my concentration on the disturbance of my ritual that took my attention off my actual routine. Rituals allow you to create a pattern and after using it long enough it has a way of composing you and calming you, because it is something familiar in a constantly changing and stressful setting. Unfortunately, they could also hurt you, such as mine did when I was not able to go through with it.

George Gmelch writes that the rituals in baseball are done for not such difference reasons as Trobriand Islanders fishing rituals. Although the rituals, taboos and fetishes are different they serve the same purpose in sports or other activities. They allow the person to feel in control of the circumstances and in turn be more confident. It is a sort of trick we play on ourselves much like the coach played of his team when he hired a driver to drive white horses past the players so they think they saw it by chance. We choose what to believe and we also choose what effect it has on us. So as long as we associate something with a certain action we will continue doing it until we associate something else. This use of rituals, taboos and fetishes in many different cultures shows that we are not all that different.

Bibliography
Gmelch, George. “Baseball Magic”. In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 126-135.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes “Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping.”

Nancy Scheper-Hughes “Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping.”

Living in our society, it is hard to imagine that a woman will easily live through the loss of a child. In fact, it is hard to find a person who will not be affected by a death of a young child, even if they did not personally know them or their parents. Due to the advanced healthcare system, industrialized cities, social welfare programs, child welfare programs, social workers and many other resources and organizations child mortality is not common in our society. It is not the norm and therefore evokes many different emotions.

However, Ms. Scheper-Hughes described in great detail the terrible and challenging conditions in Alto. Every day there, is a fight for survival on the part of the adults, not to mention children. These conditions have been consistently bad and have not improved for a long period of time. Therefore, they shaped the culture of the society especially when it comes to death. Since death is so common the society would not be able to function if every person took time to grieve each loss of someone close to them. Hence, they adapted and choose to protect themselves by believing that children “choose” to live or die and by not allowing themselves attachment. The author shows that unfortunately these “self-preservation” beliefs often left children to die that could have been saved.

The political and religious institutions encourage the “as-a-matter-of-fact” treatment of infant mortality. There is no negative stigma about a mother “giving up” on a sick child and no actions are taken by the government to enact laws governing child care. This cultural pattern however, creates a vicious cycle: the more infants die the less likely the mothers are to get attached to sick or weak children, and the less likely the mothers are to get attached means less likely to care for the sick child, therefore more infants will die.
It is very sad that women are forced to give up their nurturing nature and motherly love for a child in order to save themselves continuous pain from the deaths of their children. Unfortunately, living in their conditions it is not possible to change this pattern without first changing the welfare of these women, in my opinion. Perhaps if their quality of life improved enough to decrease the mortality rate at least from malnutrition, the women would slowly begin to allow themselves to get attached. In turn, they would decrease the mortality rate even more, because they would put effort into nurturing their children.

Bibliography
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Mother's Love: Death without Weeping”. In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 45-54.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Clifford Geertz “Life without Fathers or Husbands”

Yuliya Sesina
March 19th , 2009
Anthropology 1001 TV24A/Gaunt
Clifford Geertz “Life without Fathers or Husbands”

We are much a product of our society. Although we shape our society it in turn shapes us, through the processes of enculturation and often assimilation. When it comes to marriage many of us think of two people who fall in love, get married and have children. Their extended family consists of parents-in-law, grandparents, aunt, uncles, etc. It is a “typical” family structure that is reinforced by the media, education, family, etc. So, when we are faced with something different, such as the Na families, we are often shocked by the difference and often automatically see at as “wrong”.
As Clifford Geertz writes “…it is not licentiousness that powers most fear. Nor even immorality. It is difference.” However, when thinking about the reading, I thought that perhaps the Na’s way of life is very similar to a “single parent home” which is increasingly common today. Many women in our own society have children from a man who is not their husband and sometimes children from several different men throughout their life. In the past they too were ostracized by society, but with time and the increasing commonness society paid less and less attention to the “new family structure”. Similarly the single mothers were denied benefits such as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) if they did not oblige by certain rules such as “no man in the house”. Those enforcing the regulations had the right to come into the house of the woman receiving assistance at any time of night and if there was a man she would loose her benefits. The Chinese government’s approach of “reforming” the Na also took away much needed grain rations to those who did not participate in creating a “traditional” household through marriage.
Geertz writes that the trouble of deciding succession was one of the reasons that the government or dynasties tried to change the Na way of life. This shows that often it is not because people truly care or even know which way of life is wrong or right, but because of pure convenience that certain ways of life are eradicated. The author compares what was being done to the Na to someone trying to change our understanding of family but in reverse.
Personally, I believe that the personal life of an individual is for them to decide as long as it causes no significant harm to anyone else. The fact that Na children feel “different” once they go to school with children from “traditional” households is definitely hard for the children but most of us feel “different” in one or more ways. If the schools are really looking out for the best interests of the children they should than focus on helping them understand that being different does not make them “worse” or “less” than others. Simply exposing them to the idea of the “traditional” family will allow them to make a choice of what family they would want when they grow up, because they will have the information. That way it will be their choice about their own lives.

Bibliography
Geertz, Clifford. “Life without Fathers or Husbands”. In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 75-83.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Marvin Harris “Life without Chiefs”

Yuliya Sesina
February 26th, 2009
Anthropology 1001 TV24A/Gaunt

Marvin Harris “Life without Chiefs”

Power, is highly desirable. Many people spend their entire lives trying to acquire it one way or another. However, most of us also know that power has a tendency to corrupt, especially great power. When reading about the bands and tribes that existed for thousands of years with no “official” leader or “official” punishments for broken rules it at first seems impossible. Perhaps it seems that way because we are used to the vast human and monetary resources used by our society to simply keep order among individuals.
So, I thought about the reasons why people act “disorderly”. One of the reasons that came to my mind is to stand out, or to stand apart from the rest. These people are simply willing to do anything to be “distinguished”, and it doesn’t matter whether it is in a positive or negative light. Evidence of similar tendencies are seen in the abuse of power by chiefs when people came to ask for their help. It is easy to say that it is human nature to want what is best for yourself, because it gives us an excuse for acting the way we often do. However, the author really put it in perspective, our species lived without such egocentrism for many more years than with it.
Nevertheless, there is another trend that should be seen in the changes of our society. During the time when bands and tribes were most common, resources were scarce. As resources increased, certain individual or individuals began to hold positions of power. This made me think of the “if the world were a village” video, which said that only a few people will hold most of the wealth. Perhaps our drive for power and prestige were always present, but as resources that provide them increased so did our desire to control as much of it as possible.

Bibliography
Marvin Harris. “Life without Chiefs”. In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 95 - 103.