...tribe in Venezuela that was stuck in the Stone Age. Good’s mother, Yarima, is a member of the Yanomami tribe, a tribe that still maintains the vast majority of its ancient traditions, including rituals, feasts, games and living in the “shabano,” a large, circular communal house. After marrying Kenneth Good, an anthropologist studying the tribe, she lived with him in the U.S., but found the isolation from her family too hard to bear. She returned to the Amazon Rainforest in Venezuela, leaving David and his siblings with their father in America. After years of separation, David Good finally went to Venezuela to find his mother, and to face up to a fact he had avoided for so many years: “My mom’s a naked jungle woman.” At its heart, this story is one about love and family, which can sometimes be a truly multicultural experience. David Good is a true-blue American son. As a child, he played Little League baseball and had a paper route. For a boy raised in Pennsylvania, his story is one that many men his age would recognize from their own childhoods, but to a certain degree, David was also an anthropological celebrity. He recalled one time when a prominent anthropologist asked him what he wanted for Christmas and he told her he wanted a Nintendo 64 and Super Mario Bros – one of the most popular games for kids his age at the time. Her response was...
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...The Overseas Development Institute’s mission statement and values mirror my own professional and personal objectives. Having lost one parent to a disaster, the Joplin, Missouri tornado of May 22, 2011, and nearly losing the other when Hurricane Charley impacted central Florida in 2004, my life is dedicated to understanding the many components of community vulnerability to natural and technological hazards and working to mitigate these issues. For post-disaster communities, I focus on the recovery process; what factors expedite or hinder recovery, how communities define recovery, and how to improve the recovery process for future disasters. As an applied, cultural anthropologist, I employ ethnographic field methods to look beyond demographic and census information and identify cultural practices and worldviews that influence human interactions with their environment, how communities and cultural groups apply meaning to traumatic events, and how they select which risks to address and which to ignore. Scheduled to defend my doctoral thesis on June 3, 2016, I will soon have my Ph.D. in cultural anthropology with a specialization in disasters. Examining the resilience of Joplin, Missouri over the past five years of recovery, as noted by their receipt of the Rick Rescorla...
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...Extended Essays in Social and Cultural Anthropology These subject guidelines should be read in conjunction with the “Introduction”, “Outline” and “Details—all essays” sections of this guide. Overview An extended essay in social and cultural anthropology provides students with an opportunity to develop an awareness of what constitutes a distinctively anthropological approach to the organization of human life in society and culture. Extended essays should be based on published ethnographic research. Students are expected to demonstrate, in the presentation of the research, their knowledge and understanding of the methods and aims of social and cultural anthropology. Choice of topic Social and cultural anthropology is not a “residual” category for essays that do not fit into any other extended essay subject. Students must choose topics that lend themselves to anthropological investigation, and must carefully consider their choice of topic in terms of the assessment criteria. An extended essay in social and cultural anthropology should analyse a topic from a theoretical or comparative perspective, based on the student’s own original analysis and on a solid understanding of the theoretical issues concerned. Students who intend to tackle comparative projects must be aware that research strategies involving two or more societies may call for greater narrowing of the research focus than a study in a single society. For example, a comparative analysis of Mexican and...
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...Organisational Theory Assignment Baruch Spinoza once said, “The highest activity a human can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free”. Spinoza quoting that understanding leads to freedom – emancipation – can be interpreted as a statement from the perspective of a critical theorist (Green 2004) and if left unchallenged this statement would prove absolute. However, using a modernist perspective it can be argued that understanding would lead to quantification (Hatch, 2006) that could in turn, lead to greater efficiency. Solely from referencing the two theories above and the 2 ways of looking at a single statement we can ascertain that a combination of perspectives gives us a greater understanding than a single perspective. This essay explores how using a multi perspective approach would provide the individual with a more comprehensive and well ronded understanding to organisations, an increased capacity to understand how to better embrace structure and its implications and the holistic simplification and explaination of cultural effects. It also brings to light the conflicting nature of these theories and its inherant biasness. The first advantage of using a multi-perspective approach to understanding an organisation would be that it provides us with a more comprehensive and well-rounded understanding to organisations. This greater understanding begins with the internalisation of the different perspective’s ontology and epistemology...
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...The essay assignment was to gather data about some aspect of food habits, and to compare the findings to some aspect of the book Good to Eat by anthropologist Marvin Harris. Write comments that will help the student reformulate this essay for another revision. In your comments, focus on 1) the argument structure, 2) the claims and their support, especially the integration of quotations, and 3) the overall organization of the paper. Does travel influence what's good to eat and bad to eat? Every culture has food taboos. Some, of course, have more than others. Asian countries such as China, Japan, and Thailand, for example, tend to have a more diverse cultural diet than do European countries. I conducted a survey to see how a country's food taboos correlate with the personal eating habits of those who have traveled there. I found that people who have traveled to Asian countries tend to have less food taboos than do those who have traveled to Europe. In fact, people who have traveled to Asia often could not cite one food that they refuse to eat. Everyone who has been to Europe on the other hand, could name at least one food that they personally consider to be inedible. I believe that the reason for this disparity can be found in the economic differences between the East and the West, and also, in the personal reasons people have for traveling to either Europe or Asia. Southeast Asians lack specific food types they refuse to eat. Besides the more conventional meats, i.e., beef, pork...
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...The Holistic Perspective Breadth in Time and Space 1.3 Methods of Anthropological Research • • • • Participant Observation The Fieldwork: A Case Study Cross-Cultural Comparison Ethics in Anthropological Research 1.2 The History of Cultural Anthropology • • • • • The Evolutionary Period The Empiricist Period The Functionalist Period The Contemporary Period The Period of Specialization 1.4 Cultural Differences • Culture Shock • Ethnocentrism • Cultural Relativism 1.5 Employment in Anthropology 1 cra80793_01_c01_001-032.indd 1 5/23/13 2:23 PM Section 1.1 The Breadth of Anthropology CHAPTER 1 This chapter explains what anthropology is, the history of the discipline, how anthropologists gather information about human customs, how different anthropologists analyze culture, and how anthropology has evolved as a discipline. 1.1 The Breadth of Anthropology A nthropology is the general study of humans and their ways of life. Anthropology is broader in scope than are any...
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...Life in a Day A time capsule is defined as “a container storing a selection of objects chosen as being typical present time, buried for discovery in the future.” But what falls under the category of a “container”? Can a camera? That’s exactly what director Kevin McDonald and producer Ridley Scott attempted to find out with the documentary “Life in a Day”. An experiment offered to anyone around the world that had access to a video camera on July 24th to film their life. According to McDonald one single day can show the basic temporal building block of human life—wherever you are and can show who we are. Was there plan just to show life? Or was there other alternative motives? Was there a plan of comparison of the people all around the world or is society just so different there didn’t have to be intention to prove that? The film was announced to the public on July 6, 2010. 75% of the film was footage shot by people who were contacted about sending their own videos in through traditional advertising and YouTube. The other 25% was shot by cameras sent out by production. All of the footage in the film came from the same day, July 24, 2010. Over 80,000 different clips of footage were sent in for possible entry into the film. Editing took several weeks to sort through all the footage. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2011 and on October 31, 2011 was put on YouTube to stream to the public for free. I chose this film for my final paper because...
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...spiritual continuance in the afterlife, philosophical justification of a fundamental essence, or scientific perpetuation of the physical self, brings meaning to life in relationship to the individual. The depth of this argument initially appears to be too ambiguous and irrelevant to every unique individual. First of all, the cases of immortality stated above, while all equally valid, are by no means inclusive of every possible situation. Rather, immortality shall be defined as the eternal perpetuation of any human component, which relates to personal identity. Second, while the “meaning of life” is something special for everyone, that meaning can only be pertinent to the individual, when the person can perceive it as being relevant. At any point in time, if people happened to die, without the everlasting retention of any component of their selves, the meaning of their life would be forever lost to them. Lastly, the context of the statement...
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... However, for the Malaita Kwaio, they did not see any problem with killing the dolphin for their purposes (ibid). The violence of killing a dolphin was acceptable in their culture, whereas in Keesing’s, it was not. These different definitions of violence were a result of their separate cultural backgrounds. As seen in this case, actions that are considered to be violent depends on the culture of the group itself. Sometimes, aspects of a culture can be manipulated in order to incite those within it to commit violent actions. During my interviews, Person A said that “culture can perpetuate or encourage types of violence.” The encouragement of violence by the manipulation of Cambodian cultural values is an example of this statement. As studied by anthropologist Alexander Laban Hinton, certain aspects of the Cambodian culture were used to perpetuate violence and spur people to commit violent actions outside of their typical nature (Hinton 95). They ultimately were pressured into killing because “…Cambodian cultural models related to face and honor, in combination with Communist Party ideology, came to serve as templates for genocide during DK [the Democratic Kampuchea regime]” (96). In Cambodian culture, there is a very predominant focus on hierarchy and the idea of ‘face,’ or preserving one’s self-image based on the opinions of others (98; 101). The government was able to use these “…preexisting cultural models to motivate their minions to kill” (96). In the example of one man,...
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...Introduction Communication has incontestable importance in organizational structure. The significant importance of verbal and nonverbal communication will be briefly highlighted in different situations. In order to make the process of communication effective, different theories will be discussed such as role of body language and facial expressions. Some general information regarding communication will be revealed then essay would be concluded. Importance Communication is defined as exchanging of messages, concepts and information by using different mediums such as speeches, actions and writings (Clegg, Kornberger and Pitsis, 2011). It does not only mean to pass on information but it is a way to develop and maintain relationships, sharing values and cultures as well as setting objectives and their successful accomplishment. Communication plays a vital role to improve the performance of employees by helping them to focus on their assigned tasks (Whetten and Cameron, 2011). Two way communication is very important in organizational structure which helps to minimize the stress within the organization especially when organization is under the process of change. It acts as a catalyst to speed up the change process and helps the managers to implement the change process effectively. Theories There are various theories of communication proposed by various authors. In one theory proposed by Whetten and Cameron (2011) Communication is the process of encoding and transmitting...
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...Brittany Christian Professor Williams English 102 24 May 2007 How Race and Class Affect Individuals In society today, Americans are getting hurt physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We are not afraid to take action whenever these actions take place in different communities. People also have their own feelings about particular subjects. Race and class have a major impact in our lives because these are issues we face everyday. In Chapter 6 of The Generation of Ideas: A Thematic Reader, three questions are asked based on race and class: “Are race and class together just convenient ways for people to classify their society so that they can better understand it? Is there anything dangerous in doing so? Are there any other useful ways to classify society?” (Miller 576). Out of these questions are four issues that are taking place today involving race and class: people are judging only by race and class, letting materialism and consumerism rule their lives, neglecting or making fun of those who are less fortunate, and not looking for other ways to classify society. If we look past these issues, we can start making the world a better place to live. However, race and class are both in connection with each other, but also can be totally opposite from each other. The first question that is asked ties in with the issue that people are judging only by race and class. Sure, it is convenient to better understand society...
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... Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist who stated “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has”. In this paper I will discuss my thoughts on the video and how it supports Margaret Mead’s statement. I also will discuss social change, progressive organizing, and community organizing. I will then discuss some ways in which citizens can respond to social problems. Last I will consider the quote, “Activism is living out one’s values” and how it relates to how social changes align with people’s values. The video 21st Century Enlightenment discusses the process of people’s consciousness and our belief systems, what ones serve us and which ones our outdated, and our awareness of oneself. Understanding human behaviors with an evidence base such as how humans have bad long term decision making skills is an important aspect to the 21st century enlightenment. The video also discusses the importance for improvement in a worldwide need for more empathy towards others. The video also talks about many different dynamics that go into solving the problems today and also look ahead to sustainability for the whole world. I feel that by looking at our values, norms, and lifestyles we can understand better what may need to be changed in us and hence will give us a better understanding of ourselves. I feel that the video supports Margret Mead’s statement because working collectively together to...
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...Key Questions in ANT1CAG 1.What can anthropology offer to help understand global issues and problems? 2.How can anthropology contribute in our attempt to make sense of things that happen in or affect our everyday lives? 3.How do anthropologists think through things and how do they explain things? Emotional Knowledge Thinking and Feeling, Mind and Heart Anthropological Imagination What’s special about anthropology? ANTHROPOLOGY Clyde Kluckhohn ( Mirror for Man, 1944:16): “Ordinarily we are unaware of the special lens through which we look at life. It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water. Students who had not yet gone beyond the horizon of their own society could not be expected to perceive custom which was the stuff of their own thinking. Anthropology holds up a great mirror to man and lets him look at himself in this infinite variety” Anthropology subfields. -biological/physical – archeology –Linguistics – Social/Cultural Ethnology –comparative study of cultures or people Ethnography – a systematic study of a culture or people. History of Anthropology - Herodotus = father of anthropology? Age of Discovery (16th and 17th century) - Xuanzang (7th century chinese) - xuanzang said that the Indians were very clean, why has that changed? Ethnocentrism: evaluating other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of ones own culture. Edward Tylor –(1832 – 1917) 1st professor...
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...interpretation of things very differently from ours. This makes me wonder, if a company's vision is that all work in harmony to achieve the same goal?, then how important is understanding the behavior of people in an organization? I am convinced that the study of organizational behavior is a tool that will give us a way of understanding human behavior within an organization in a systematic and scientific way. There is no doubt that organizational behavior (which is abbreviated CO) is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals, groups and structures have on behavior within organizations, in order to apply this knowledge to the improvement of the effectiveness of such organizations. Furthermore, it is a field of study, this statement means that it is a specialty delimited and with a body of knowledge. What are you studying? Studying three determinants of behavior in organizations: individuals, groups and structures. If studying the individual and behave within an organization will be able to analyze the behavior of groups, with greater clarity because groups are composed by individuals who use structures established by the company already rules, procedures, rules to regulate their behavior. If this is the case I am confident that these three components are the key to success to understand organizational behavior and the importance of it for the company. If we understand these three determinants, we will have a clear view of the impact of these in organizational behavior...
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...CHAPTER-I INTRODUCTION The subject of matriarchal studies is the investigation and presentation of non-patriarchal societies of past and present. Even today there are enclaves of societies with matriarchal patterns in Asia, Africa, America and Oceania. None of these is a mere reversal of patriarchy where women rule -as it is often commonly believed -instead, they are all egalitarian societies, without exception. This means they do not know hierarchies, classes and the domination of one gender by the other. They are societies free of domination, but they still have their regulations. And this is the fact that makes them so attractive in any search for a new philosophy, to create a just society. Equality does not merely mean a levelling of differences. The natural differences between the genders and the generations are respected and honoured, but they never serve to create hierarchies, as is common in patriarchy. The different genders and generations have their own honour and through complimentary areas of activity, they are geared towards each other. This can be observed on all levels of society: the economic level, the social level, the political level and the areas of their worldviews and faiths. More precisely matriarchies are societies with complementary equality, where great care is taken to provide a balance. This applies to the balance between genders, among generations, and between humans and nature. The differentiated rules of matriarchal societies have been...
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