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.