Now at the end of this course I completely understand how important culture is for the human being—without culture humans could not survive, and vice versa, culture would not exist without humans. For my last reading of the class, I read couple of articles showing, in different aspects, how important is culture for the world—that culture is the key tool to survive and at the same time its diversity is essential as well. The readings for this week, brings together much of the things about culture that I have been learning through this course. With this post I get to my personal conclusions about culture.

The article that interested and impacted me the most is one by John Bodley. In this article, he describes the main contemporary struggles that humanity is going through right now. One of the main problems he says is the globalization and culture change. He says that global commercialization has become a process that has destroyed basically all previous cultural adaptations and has given humans the power to not only harm the environment, but to also harm themselves. One of the examples that impacted me the most is when he says that, the industrialization, world economy and overpopulation are the biggest problems humanity faces now. He gives the example of how humans, during the Paleolithic period, for around 3 million years lived hunting, gathering, foraging and creating small domestically cultures. He contrasts that showing that humans, with the creation of politics and commercialization, have threatened sustainability. He then shows how fast humanity has been changing concerning these aspects, and that that is what is coming between humans and the environment sustainability. He gives an example saying that most of the significant technological innovations, as antibiotics, television, computers, satellites, nuclear energy and mass organic compound appeared during the twentieth century. He adds that, “The present generation is experiencing the most profound changes humanity has ever seen”. He says that humans are experimenting changes at a too fast speed to adapt to the changes, and analyze its consequences to create a long-lasting survival method.

Bodley then explains how anthropology has the answer most of the problems humanity has. Going back tot the example of small cultures of the Paleolithic period, he says that, “Domestic scale cultures are humanity’s only cultural system with an archeologically demonstrated record of sustained adaptive record”. He then says that humans now have to learn from those ancient and contemporary small-domestic-tribal cultures in order to create sustainability and survive.

I once again confirm how important is the awareness of the world around us and the importance of learning from everything. It is much important as well to each individual think about what he or she does and how can each ne contribute in the creation of a better world. After all this reading and at the end of this course, as I have said several times in my precious posts, this course has really changed my vision of the world around me and it has change my life. Now I know many things concerning the world I live in that will help me in my life. This course has help me in my adaptation process through which I am going right now studying abroad. It has changed the way I see people here, and what I thought they think about me. Now I understand a lot of things I did not quite did before. Not only living in the United States, but this has also helped me understand the world we live in a broader sense. I am now more aware of problems and issues around the world that I did not know even existed. Before taking this course, I also had many culture stereotypes that I know are not like I though they were. I now think that everybody should learn these kinds of things so we could build a better world. I will carry all this knowledge throughout my life and little by little it would remarkably shape who I am and who I will become later, and will help me to contribute to this world in a better way.

More changes--good or bad

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The topic for this post is very similar to the previous one. It is about culture change around the world and how cultures influence in other cultures. In the previous post I showed how culture change in the case of Bolivia is harmful for them in many ways. For this post, however, culture change is the contrary. I am going to show how some cultures voluntarily choose to change. For this week we are reading in class the ethnography, The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World by Bruce Knauft. It is about a culture living in a rainforest in Papua New Guinea, who choose to completely change their life style, traditions and beliefs to new ones. He went to do fieldwork with the Gebusi in three different occasions. The first time was between 1980 and 1982, the second time was in 1998 and the last time in 2008. For this post I am focusing in part number two.

When Knauft first went to do fieldwork in 1980 he found a very unique, happy, harmonious and independent culture. He uses the term “in-betweeners” to describe them because the Gebusi were sedentary, but their life style was mobile and semi-nomadic, and they were horticulturalists (raise crops), but they also used to hunt and forage. Knauft portrays a very rich and complex (in a good way) culture. They were a very helpful community among themselves in which they all collaborated and helped each other in order to survive. He moreover describes their religious beliefs and death rituals. He explains that when someone died, the Gebusi always looked for a meaning related to sorcery (magic). If someone died they said that a sorcerer killed the person using magic. They then looked for evidence in the “crime scene” that led them to the “killer” to then kill him, which doing so was not considered murder.

However, when Knauft went back in his second trip, he found a transformed culture. During the period of time between 1980 and 1998, the Gebusi were changing and adapting to a western-like life style. They changed all their clothing, economic system and even marriage traditions. Not everyone changed his or her customs, but most of the Gebusi adapted to a new life. One of the aspects that the Gebusi changed in their lives that I found more interesting was the religious belief. They completely left behind all sorcery and superstitions and most of them converted to Christianity. Ones converted to Catholic, others to Evangelical and others to Seventh Day Adventists church. Among the changes they had were issues concerning death. Since they converted to Christianity, they no more related deaths and murders to sorcery. For them now, all was a matter of God, as truly Christians believe. One example that stroked me was about a man to whom Knauft talked with back in 1982 about sorcery and that in 1998 he had totally converted to Christianity. He had nothing to do anymore with sorcery, for him everything was about Father God in the heavens. They had completely changed their view of the world.

I think everybody has his or her own choice, power and election of changing. One case is if the influence and changes to a culture comes unexpected and without choice or control, like the case of Bolivia. But, another case is if the influence and change to a culture comes by choice and with benefits, as the example of the Gebusi. For my life, I somewhat relate these culture changes to the fact that I am living abroad in a new culture. Going back to my fifth post where I said that I had to learn how to combine my culture and the American in order to adapt, I can say that, as the Gebusi, I have voluntarily chosen change my life. I have had to change traditions and daily customs in my life in order to blend myself into this new culture. If changes in a culture or in the life of an individual are for good reasons and by choice, these can help people grow and to view the world with different eyes.

World Culture? Changes and more changes

In this post I am going to talk about how cultures are influenced and shaped by others. One of the aspects that can most prejudice a culture is change in its economic system and sustainability strategies. These changes can bring undesirable consequences to the culture’s life style and survival. Among the readings done for this week I would like to focus on an article about Bolivian villages whom their economic system have been influenced by globalization and the economic world system.

From the beginning of humanity, culture has been the mediator between humans and the environment. However, more recently in history, economic world system has become part of this aspect—it has influenced in the people’s interaction with the environment around them. Because of this, isolated and small cultures have had to learn to adapt to these new changes and demands. What cultures do to adjust and what they do with their traditions, for their survival to accommodate themselves to these demands, are not always good.

Pocona, a Bolivian village, has been influenced because of the demand and use of cocaine in the United States and Europe. For the people of Pocona and other surrounding villages, the coca leaf is one of their basic scrubs for survival. It is present in their economic system and in their daily diet. Since coca leaves are the staple of cocaine, the drug traffic industries have taken advantage of the fact that in countries like Bolivia coca leaf is widely produced. And, because of these actions taken by the drug dealers, the American authorities have made the decision on trying to cease the drug consumption by militarily intervening in these Bolivian villages.

Economy in Bolivia have been poor many years before this situation with the coca leaf, however, it contributed in making the economy even worst. These actions taken by the drug dealers have even brought to this community changes in family structure, generation of deceases, inflation, among others. An example, which I think demonstrate the magnitude of this cultural influence and change, is concerning the family and economy. People in Pocona are poor—they almost can sustain themselves with what they produce. They cannot have meat because the price is to high, the coca leaves cannot be grown there because of the height of the place, and the community is partly isolated. For these reasons, men of the community find the necessity of leaving the village with the purpose of working in the coca fields in another village, Chapare, to earn some money and survive. Women then, stay alone without husbands or sons, working their land on other crops for their survival. However, these crops cannot be sold because they cannot compete with the ones that people in Chapare consume—truck drivers and traders do not go any more to Pocona because is too far away. This situation brings to the people of Pocana the decline of the economic survival system and changes in the family nucleus. With time, although people try to adapt to new circumstances and find their way to survival, these changes will generate the deterioration of these cultures and communities. There have been, however, cases in which people face these problems and fight back, gaining back their rights and traditions, as the actual president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has done. He came from those Indigenous communities to the power to change their situation. Adaptation processes of some cultures have been good enough to survive, but some others have been not.

Since I was teenager, I have heard the issue of the globalization around the world, and since I live in an “undeveloped” country, that topic is all around the news and people always talk about that in the streets. Later on, I heard people talking about the unpleasant consequences of globalization—that it affected cultures around the world—Indigenous and less develop ones—and made the poor countries even poorer. By that time I had not understood why was that and how could that happen, I just knew and understood that globalization was present around the world. Only after enrolling in this cultural anthropology course, I began to see the world and the cultures around it with different eyes, and not just my vision has changed, my understanding as well. And now, after reading these articles and book chapter, I more clearly understand the concept, causes and consequences of globalization and how it effects toward cultures. After reading theses articles I feel like I would like to do something significant for the world’s situation—something that can really help the world turn into a better place. However, right now I feel so much powerless, or at least incapable of coming up with some idea or action that I could take for changing this kind of situations. Personally, I have not much interests in politics and economics, but these readings have gave me a little bit more of interest in putting my “rice grain” to each day build up a better place to live. I have gained a desire of contributing to this world in the ways I can.

New horizons, new challenges

For this post I am going to talk about the process and demands people have adapting to a new culture and/or society being an alien to it and vice versa. Among the readings for this week I would like to talk about an ethnography, Guest of the Sheik by Elizabeth Fernea, dealing with a village in southern Iraq called El Nahra. Fernea went to El Nahra accompanying her husband for an anthropological fieldwork and research. To help her husband, she decides to record all her interactions and relationship with the people from there.

What first stroked her, when she got to Iraq, was the fact that she had to use the abayah (the Muslim veil that women use). She knew that every woman was required to use it, but at the beginning she did not wanted to wear it. However, her husband told her to wear it because then everyone would stay staring at her, and at the same time she would feel more comfortable going around and interacting with people. At first she found it uncomfortable, but with time, she got used to it. Fernea had to start making relationships with women and be part of their social life, and share with them in order to record her experiences and observations. After a while she got the opportunity to get together with a group of women. At the beginning it was difficult for her and for the other ladies because of the cultures differences and the language barrier. But then, little by little she learned to adapt, and she was accepted by the women, and even at the end of her fieldwork, she got really good and close friends.

A specific situation where Fernea had difficulties adapting and been accepted, was when she was for the first time invited to the Sheik’s house (a religious leader in the town) to have dinner with his wives. There, she faced the language barrier—she did speak Arabic, but not as fluently as the other women. In that occasion, women were making fun of her because of her accent and pronunciation, and she could not express clearly because she did not dominated Arabic very well. Besides the language barrier, later on she had other situation where culture differences were very notable. One day, some women went to her house to visit and they were talking about what Fernea knows to cook. They tasted some food and then the other women were laughing at her, because they said she did not know how to cook rice, and that that was why her husband went somewhere else to eat. That night Fernea felt really hurt by those comments. But, the next day, other women that heard what she was told, came to her house to teach her how to cook rice as their style. Fernea, eventually felt better. As time went by, she determined herself to learn to adapt to that society and culture, and to be accepted by them. She started to practice and improve her Arabic with the help of her servant, and later on, she got better on it to the point that she could easily communicate with the people in town, and clearly express her thoughts. As for the cooking, one night she invited the Sheik to her house to have dinner. She looked for help from some friends and learned how to really make a good feast. After that, she got more accepted by the group of women. With her efforts, she learned to be part of that community—not anymore an alien.

Since I am an international student from the Dominican Republic studying in the United States, I deeply relate to this. My country is very economically influenced by the United States, and that brings together with it the cultural and social influence as well. However, although there is a lot of Americanism in my culture, there are many differences, many different customs and many attitudes. As Fernea did going to Iraq, I had to learn to adapt to this new culture to me, and struggle to try to fit in and be accepted into social groups. When I came here, I thought that adaptation was going to be easier that it really is. I have had to learn to apprehend in my life new customs, and many new things. What I have learned in the process of being and alien to a culture and try to merge into it, is not to go to the “extreme corners”. By this I mean that one should not stay too close minded that one remains with it own believes and customs, and refuse to interact with new culture’s people to learn from them, nor one should not forget from where it came from and appropriate all from the new culture. What I have done is to try to blend together both my own beliefs and the good ones from the new culture in order for me to get through this experience, and to grow as a person. I believe this balance in very important for surviving as an alien. I am who I am because from where I come from, but it is also important to have a wider view of the world by learning from other cultures.

Just a little bit more about culture--marriage?

Since my first post, going trough the third one, I have pointed out how many different cultures are in the world, so many life styles. I have also said that culture depends on how people see the world and understand everything around them. This post is focused on marriage, and as everything else I have talked about in my previous posts, that things vary from culture to culture, so is marriage as well. In this modern western culture, when we think about marriage, what first comes to mind perhaps, is the union of two opposite-sex persons united by love, with the purpose of creating a nuclear family and have children. However, around the world in different cultures, the concept and practice of marriage changes, a lot.

First of all, since the definition of marriage is very diverse in the world, anthropologists have created their own cross-cultural definition that covers most known cultures. There are three main characteristics anthropologist point in their definition: One, marriage is culturally constructed. This means that there is not a universal definition for marriage, rather that each culture, from their ethnocentric point of view, gives a particular definition. Of course, there are some similarities among many cultures, but I have read articles of very singular concepts about marriage. Two, marriage is an adjustment to a particular environment or context. Each type of marriage and concept makes sense on each culture from their point of view. Even one can find absolutely absurd, from one’s ethnocentric view, a kind of marriage, but for that culture makes completely meaning to them, and it is because its concept is shaped by the environment around them, and it meets specific needs for the culture’s survival. Three, marriage, in most cases, is more important to the context of society than to the people getting married. This means that marriage’s purposes and benefits go much further than the people getting united—it is more about creating social and community connections in order to survive according to each culture’s context. These three main points together is what many cultures share about marriage’s concept.

From the readings I did, one of the types of marriages that stroked me the most was about the called “walking marriage”. This type of marriage occurs among the ethnic group called Nari in southwestern China. This culture is matriarchal-based; the household turns around the mother. All children live with the mother even after maturity and they stay living with her with the purpose of taking care of her when she gets older. It can even not be called marriage, because, in theory is not a marriage since the father and mother don’t live together. It is more like a “visiting relationship between lovers”. What happens here is that, men go around their village and go meet a woman with whom they have sex. They meet during the night, and the next morning men go out. This is no more than a casual encounter, where the main purpose is to have children. Eventually, children will know who their father is; however, the relationship between them does not involve any social or economic obligation. All purposes of surviving and responsibilities of families goes toward the mother, people live with their mothers and for their mothers.

For me, marriage was all about love and connection; after reading this, I was shocked. I have lived my entire life with both my mother and father and with my siblings. The concept I have had my entire life about marriage is about a nuclear family, formed by the father the mother and children, living together in one house, parents working to survive, and educating children so later they go from home to repeat the same process. This is what I see to be the more rational definition for me, and of course it is, since I have live, and will keep living, based on what my parents taught me and what I learned from my culture. This is what I want to do later in my life when the right time comes.

Finally, with all this about marriage and culture aspects I have been reading so far in the semester, I get to a conclusion that had helped me in seeing the world around me differently. I see that cultures are really unique, that everybody has their own interpretation of the world and that sometimes is very difficult to understand them. But, no matter how odd for one or how senseless from one’s ethnocentric view a culture’s concept is, it would always have an explanation, and will always make sense for the other culture as they see the world. The same as happens to one looking at others, they could think the same about one. Something that is completely normal for one, and makes totally sense in its way, it may be totally strange for other people and they could find no explanation. I now see more clearly the real culture diversity we have in our world—what humans are and think. This is something we all have to be aware of in order to understand and coexist harmoniously in peace to live in a better world each day.

Even more about culture--mothers, children, raising.

Relationship between children and their mothers is the most universal relationship that exists. In all cultures (or most) this relationship has something special—it is different from any other relationship someone can have in his or her life. The mother is the person who had that someone inside her belly for nine months. She fed him/her and took care of. All this turns into love, and this love is what makes this relation so special and different from other. At the same time the mother is giving her love and doing what I said before, she is raising her children. The way of raising children, however, varies from culture to culture. This is because parents raise children in order for them to become acceptable adults in their society and play a good role in it.

In the readings for this week I read about things parents do when raising children and how culture shapes that. Mothers, however, have a more important role in this, because from the birth through the first years, in most cultures, she is the one that spends more time with children. From the readings one of the examples that impressed me the most was an article written by Ronald G. Barr. This article compares the baby’s cry between the !Kung and western culture. Barr explained how !Kung babies cries less than western babies. He says that, because !Kung mothers spend most of the day with heir babies, they respond to the minimum complain of the baby nursing and calming them. In contrast to western mothers, most of them do not spend much of the day with their babies and even leave them with a babysitter during the day. Once more, it can be seen how culture really shapes people lives.

I feel related to this since I am part of the western culture and I see how truly it is. But that is my culture, is part of who I am. That is the ways I was raised and I cannot change it. My mother is my mother, and is my only one. She is the one that had me inside her for nine months, took care of me (still does) and educated me to turn me into the person I am today. After reading about different relationship and ways of raising children in different cultures, I now appreciate more the way my mother raised me, and the kind of relationship I have with her. I now see how differently people, depending on culture, raise their children. I could not think how would it be if I wouldn’t be raised the way I was raised. Because of that, I am who I am.

More about culture--!Kung

For this week blog post I am writing about a “classic” ethnography in anthropology. This is Nisa by M. Shostak, which describes the life of Nisa, a !Kung woman, through her own words and stories, plus observations by the author's fieldwork.

!Kung is a gathering-hunting society which lives in the area between Botswana and Namibia, southern Africa. As the description goes, !Kung’s life is based on gathering and hunting—that is their way to survive. They spend most of the day gathering food: fruits, nuts, vegetables and whatever other thing they found that is eatable. They also hunt a wide variety of animals, from cows to giraffes. Usually mothers go gather food with their children and father go hunt by themselves. Having this lifestyle—living in the bush and the wild—does not mean !Kung people are less smart or intellectuals than other cultures. As I said in my previous blog post, culture is how people see and understand the world. They live that way because it is how they see the world and how they understand the environment around them, not because they are not intellectual or have lack of reasoning.

!Kung people live in villages and have no boundaries. Each family has a set of huts where they sleep. !Kung people has a lot of customs that I found interesting and that are much different from my culture. One of the aspects of the !Kung people I found more interesting is the relationship they have in each nuclear family. There are things I like about them and that I would even like to apprehend in my life, but there are other things, from my ethnocentric point of view, I found very extremists that I don’t like. One of the things I found interesting is the relationship children have with their parents. Based on Shostak’s observations, children do not view parents as a great figure of authority—the relationship between them is very intimate. !Kung children have a closer relationship (compared to many other cultures, including mine) with the father. Since fathers are not a notable authority figure, !Kung children see them more as friends and peer than a rule figure. The kind of conversations they have one another is different from the ones I would have with my father. In my culture, parents are a very important authority figure. I was raised with the idea of always respecting my father and doing what he tells me to do. The relationship with my father is very close, and we talk about many things, but comparing it to the !Kung, it is much different. This kind of relationship in !Kung life is influenced by their lifestyle. Since they live in small villages and families spend much time together, they develop that kind of relationship.

While I was reading the book, each time I found an aspect of !Kung customs very different from my culture, I tried to think back in my life to see how I see that and how I experienced that, and then tried to compared it to their way of seeing it. I imagined myself being one of them to try to understand why and how they did something in such way and had such understanding of something. Reading this book, I now realize how true are things anthropologist says about how the environment and its elements, shape people’s view toward the world and things around them in order to create what is called culture. Each time I imagine myself as one of them and kind of understood the reason why and how they see things in their own way, made me realize how there are people in the world that think completely different than myself and people around me. With the background of readings I have now through this course I have a wider understanding of world cultures, not only in the new culture I am currently surrounded by, but of gathering-hunting cultures like the !Kung.

My view of Culture

Culture is what all human beings are. Culture is what defines us, shape us, and teach us. Before reading the assigned readings for the week, for me culture was something really simple, no more than only “people’s customs”. However, now I know that is not like that. Culture is not as simple as saying “people’s customs”, it is much more complex and deep than that. Culture is not easy to define and it is a very complex concept. Culture is still a nebulous research topic for anthropologists.

As I have learned through my readings, culture is a set of customs, traditions, beliefs, knowledge, ceremonies, food, cloth, likes, and dislikes of a group of people who little by little creates what is called culture. These things are passed on generation by generation to descendants. As time passes, descendants learn their culture and at the end these become part of their life style. Moreover, that life style is labeled as their culture, and at the same time culture characterizes and differences them from other groups of people, which makes them, in a sense, unique. In addition to all these things, culture also is what tells people what is wrong and what is right. For people, their culture becomes the lens through which they see the world. The way people understand the world and how they react before it depends on their culture. Most people believe (including myself before reading these articles) that folklore artifact, flags, clothing, musical instruments, religious objects, etc. is culture. But, culture really is the meaning behind those objects, which is given by people. Depending on what people believe according to their “culture” they give different meanings to things that could mean completely the opposite to other people. In the world there are many cultures, ones that are not even known by most people. There are isolated cultures, which are very unique in its way to see the world and that has traditions that any other has. Every culture has its own way of seen the world and based on that they give meaning to objects and artifacts.

Now that I have read all these articles and chapters I totally see differently everything around me. I now understand more clearly the concept of culture and how it is created. Since I am an international student studying in the United States, I am constantly experiencing culture issues and shocks. Now that I understand the meaning of culture and everything around it more clearly, I now see myself differently as a person and (most important for my life now), as a foreign student. I now know how to manage my cultural issues and understand more how Americans see me. And at the same I now know how to see other people. When I go back to the Dominican Republic I would now understand how to see foreign people there. It may be that the way I see things now is not completely the correct one, but it has helped me in my personal life. In the last few days, the lens with which I see culture has change. I now have become a more analytical person when it comes to culture matters.