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.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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