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.