...Compare and contrast the legacies of cultural syncretism in Africa and the Americas with the resistance to cultural change Westerners encountered in China and India. What cultural factors caused the differences in outcomes? What legacies have the differences in types of encounters and degrees of cultural change left today? Had syncretism not occurred in the Americas, how might modern culture be different? If cultural syncretism had taken root during early encounters in China or India, how might they be different today? The quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to Indian shores in 1498 when Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese voyager, arrived in Calicut (modern Kozhikode, Kerala) on the west coast. In their search for spices and Christian converts, the Portuguese challenged Arab supremacy in the Indian Ocean, and, with their galleons fitted with powerful cannons, set up a network of strategic trading posts along the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. In 1510 the Portuguese took over the enclave of Goa, which became the center of their commercial and political power in India and which they controlled for nearly four and a half centuries. Economic competition among the European nations led to the founding of commercial companies in England (the East India Company, founded in 1600) and in the Netherlands (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie--the United East India Company, founded in 1602), whose primary aim was to capture the spice trade by breaking the Portuguese monopoly in Asia...
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...The Migration of Cultures Tracey Percifield, Penny Rogers, Cheryl Halford, Nate Conley and Amber Wirth American Intercontinental University Abstract In knowing how people of the past decades lived we must examine the past and study many things they left behind. By understanding how they lived and what impact they had as they migrated to the New World, it is then we understand how they lived and understand what the environment was like. Looking at the impact that immigrants had and brought to the New World we see what cultures and food dishes they brought to our civilization. The Migration of Cultures By 1830 the United States consisted of 2.3 million out of 12.8 million were of African descent and upon them settling after being brought here from Africa they brought many traditions and impacted the culture today. When they came to the United States they brought scientific and technological systems from the West and Central Africa as well as many food dishes such as; gumbo and rice, millet, sorghum, watermelon and black-eyed peas. They also brought tradition with them regarding funerals, celebration festivals, arts, music, dugout canoes, the banjo and language which also had an effect on the European culture as well and this is known as Africanism (Nps.gov, n.d.). Africanism is directly related to African American and Creolization which asks the question when you stop and give to the American or European culture. They point out that the African culture has...
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...CULTURAL SYNCRETISM Everybody has heard and knows from the earliest human history that the people who populated this earth five-thousand years ago happened during the Bantu migration; now moving forward to more current times of African people displaced by political oppressions, famine, economic factors, and conflicts. The slave trade encompassed four continents: Africa, Europe, North America, and South America. When slaves were forced to North America had not only brought people but different cultures within North America, too. Aside from African’s forced to North America, to understand cultural syncretism, one must take into account Asia and the Indian Ocean that took place a couple of hundred years earlier. The coerced labor from 1500 (Asia and the Indian Ocean) was an earlier account of cultural syncretism but Europeans found it more difficult to mingle two different beliefs into one. Over-time the different cultures in North America would not be so much forced syncretism, but would rather create a melting pot of beliefs (Lindenfield, 2008). Cultural Mergence Looking at the two different worlds that were oceans apart in some aspects may have been only miles apart. Thinking of what causes two different cultures to merge is usually simply religion. When settlers found the New World, had settled it in the image of Christianity. Everybody who lived on the New World’s land was expected to take in the ideology of Christianity, just like the Pilgrims did to the Native Americans...
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...Abstract Social syncretism has assumed a key part in molding diverse countries and societies into what they are today. I will examine the legacies of social syncretism inside different parts of the world including China, India, Africa and America. I will talk over the diverse sorts of experiences polished inside every zone and the impressions that social syncretism has left in up to date. Syncretism is the procedure by which societies are joined, by and large between conventional society and attributes of an acclimated society. This advancement was particularly recognizable in the Americas with the organization of provincial society with the station of both North and South America. In spite of the fact that the African and Latin American societies mixed, both India and China opposed the Western society. As the Europeans developed and investigated new locales, they exhibited religion, learning, weapons and prescription. These alone could have a real effect on existing societies. The European cooperation helped in converting societies. Although a huge some piece of African society originated from the European's dialect, religion, and traditions, just a couple of the African societies and ceremonies were adjusted by the Europeans. The Africans could use from a specialized side this exchange of societies with more progressive weapons, prescription and agribusiness. From a near viewpoint, the Western perspective of these newfound societies were extensions for the officially...
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...Various forms of art, music, and literature influence our day to day reactions to the ongoing changes in our society. Art powers society, people make this happen for the reason that all they are, do, have, and dream about is inspired by art. Art is music, literature, media, sports, technology, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Look anywhere around you–art is there; and most of the time that art is the best of its kind. People who work in advertising spend 10+ hours a day thinking of ways to get you to notice their product and the ones that have the best art work are usually the most successful. Even the hypothetical “lack” of art IS art in its own way. I am in the universe, and the universe is in me. I do art, and art does me… Art is expression, a statement, if you don’t have a statement to make, there is no art. So where do statements come from? Our life, our situation, our society. In an artistic process, I get an impression from something, and process it and when I release it in any artistic form of expression; someone else gets an impression from my expression. And so they can process it and share it and possibly express it so other impressions are made. In this sense, society influences my expression, which again influences others, if effective. And this communication is only effective when my process is honest all through and through, which means, my impression, my process and expression must be in synch. Helen Keller has always been influential in my life...
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...Vodun is practiced by the Ewe people of eastern and southern Ghana, and southern and central Togo; and the Kabye people, Mina people, and Fon people of southern and central Togo, southern and central Benin. It is also practiced by some Gun people of Lagos and Ogun in southwest Nigeria. It is distinct from the various African traditional religions in the interiors of these countries and is the main source of religions with similar names found among the African Diaspora in the New World such as Haitian Vodou; Puerto Rican Vodú; Cuban Vodú; Dominican Vudú; Brazilian Vodum; and Louisiana Voodoo. All of these closely related faiths are syncretized with Christianity to various degrees and with the traditional beliefs of the Kongo people and Indigenous American traditions. Theology and practice Vodun cosmology centers around the vodun spirits and other elements of divine essence that govern the Earth, a hierarchy that range in power from major deities governing the forces of nature and human society to the spirits of individual streams, trees, and rocks, as well as dozens of ethnic vodun, defenders of a certain clan, tribe, or nation. The vodun are the center of religious life, similar in many ways to doctrines such as the intercession of saints and angels that made Vodun appear compatible with Christianity, especially Catholicism, and produced syncretic religions such as Haitian Vodou. Adherents also emphasize ancestor worship and hold that the spirits of the dead live side by...
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...Introduction Throughout this paper we will compare and contrast the cultural syncretism and legacies of the Americas and Africa and the resistance to cultural change that the westerners encountered in both China and India. We will also discuss the factors of these outcomes, and the effects on modern cultures today. Many legacies have been given to us from China and India. China gave us the Great Wall of China. This was built during the Ming dynasty and was built to protect China from invasions from the north. During the Song Dynasty (960-1279CE) the printing press was revolutionized which allowed the transmission of knowledge into China. When Marco Polo arrived in China the Chinese scholar-painters resisted foreign domination. Luxury goods such as lacquerware was a very popular item. Lacquer is a clear liquid made from the sap of the Chinese Rhus verniifers tree. This was used to protect materials from water, heat, and acid. This is still used in todays’ society. Porcelain is ceramic ware produced in China and is still used in modern society. Dinnerware of today along with many gifts are still made from porcelain. The Sub- Saharan Africans were a large community united by kinship and generally were ruled by chieftains. The Europeans were interested in these people for purpose of slave trading. The church was interested in converting Africa’s pagan population over to Christianity. West Africa was believed to be the center of the regions culture. They gave us sculptors, and...
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...8 Creolization in Anthropological Theory and in Mauritius Thomas Hylland Eriksen A great amount of intellectual energy has been invested in cultural mixing during the last decades. Reacting against an idea of boundedness, internal homogeneity, and stability that has been associated with mainstream twentieth-century anthropology, hundreds—possibly thousands—of anthropologists have tried to redefine, reform, revolutionize, or even relinquish that abhorred “C” word—”culture.” The range of engagement is suggested in the apparent congruence between postmodernist American anthropologists (for example, Clifford & Marcus 1986) and their now classic critique of the Geertzian notion of cultural integration, and the older European critique of the structural-functionalist idea of social integration, which was led by people such as Barth (1966), whose rationalism and naturalism is everything but postmodernist. In both cases, presuppositions of integrated wholes, cultures or social structures, have been debunked. From being a discipline concentrating its efforts on understanding nonliterate societies, often implicitly positing the uncontaminated aborigine as its hero, anthropology increasingly studies cultural impurity and hybridity, and the dominant normative discourse in the field has shifted from defending the cultural rights of small peoples to combating essentialism and reifying identity politics. While this development has been important and necessary for a variety of reasons,...
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...Post-National Enquiries Post-National Enquiries: Essays on Ethnic and Racial Border Crossings Edited by Jopi Nyman Post-National Enquiries: Essays on Ethnic and Racial Border Crossings, Edited by Jopi Nyman This book first published 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2009 by Jopi Nyman and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-0593-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0593-3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... vii Chapter One................................................................................................. 1 Introduction Jopi Nyman Part I: Crossing Racial Boundaries Chapter Two ................................................................................................ 8 Between Camps: Paul Gilroy and the Dilemma of “Race” Tuire Valkeakari Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 30 Breaking the Apartheid: Blocking Actors of Color in Globalized Multicultural...
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...Diasporic Cross-Currents in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost and Anita Rau Badami’s The Hero’s Walk HEIKE HÄRTING N HIS REVIEW of Anil’s Ghost, Todd Hoffmann describes Michael Ondaatje’s novel as a “mystery of identity” (449). Similarly, Aritha van Herk identifies “fear, unpredictability, secrecy, [and] loss” (44) as the central features of the novel and its female protagonist. Anil’s Ghost, van Herk argues, presents its readers with a “motiveless world” of terror in which “no identity is reliable, no theory waterproof” (45). Ondaatje’s novel tells the story of Anil Tessera, a Sri Lankan expatriate and forensic anthropologist working for a UN-affiliated human rights organization. Haunted by a strong sense of personal and cultural dislocation, Anil takes up an assignment in Sri Lanka, where she teams up with a local archeologist, Sarath Diyasena, to uncover evidence of the Sri Lankan government’s violations of human rights during the country’s period of acute civil war. Yet, by the end of the novel, Anil has lost the evidence that could have indicted the government and is forced to leave the country, carrying with her a feeling of guilt for her unwitting complicity in Sarath’s death. On one hand, Anil certainly embodies an ethical (albeit rather schematic) critique of the failure of global justice. On the other, her character stages diaspora, in Vijay Mishra terms, as the “normative” and “ exemplary … condition of late modernity” (“Diasporic” 441) — a condition usually associated...
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...Diversity in the Workplace Alain Kraussman Hall Baker College Online Human Behavior Management of Organization/BUS615 December 6, 2012 Introduction Diversity is defined as “the condition of having or being composed of differing elements: variety; especially: the inclusion of different types of people (as people of different races or cultures) in a group or organization” ("diversity," 2012). These differing elements are becoming more and more prevalent in today’s society, and especially in the business world. Emigrants from every country in the world have made their way to the shores of America, and from there, to millions of companies and organizations across the nation. From the owner of the neighborhood corner store to the CEO position at Citigroup and Pfizer, foreign-born employees are giving this country a new, diverse, face. Diversity is not just of race, but of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, and disability. In every decade since 1900, the percentage of women 16 years and older in the workplace has increased, going from just 18.3 percent in 1900 to 53.6 percent in 2010 ("Women in the," 2007). The same holds true of disabled workers. In December 1976, there were roughly 2,088,242 blind and disabled workers in the United States. Growing nearly every year since, the Social Security Administration reports that as of December 2011, there are 6,996,435 blind and disabled people in the workforce ("Ssi annual statistical...
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...Participant observation is defined as first hand experience. Participant observation is a method developed by Anthropologists in the early 20th century. When Anthropologists noticed that in order to fully understand the question, “Why” in culture. Why do a certain people do this, why is that important, or why do they all do it, are just some of the questions anthropologists use participant observation. The key to participant observation is fieldwork, where the anthropologist actively lives with the people of the culture they are studying for about a year or more. Where the anthropologist goes through culture shock by leaving all their possessions at home and starting a new. This technique of studying gets the anthropologist to become one with the culture, where they participate in ceremony’s and traditions with the people as a member. So much so that they go through culture shock once they return home, because they have opened their minds to a whole new way of thinking and living. Colin M. Turnbull is an anthropologist who went to live in the Ituri Forest with a group of people called the Pygmies. The Pygmies is a culture that many people before Turnbull mistaken as uneducated and weren’t living life to the fullest because of this. Turnbull had two voyages to the Forest where in his first voyage he saw the Nkumbi ritual and was inducted as a member of the Pygmies. Two years later he went back to the forest leaving everything behind, unlike his first voyage where he believed he...
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...ETHNOCENTRISM Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behaviour, customs, and religion. The term ethnocentrism was coined by William G. Sumner, upon observing the tendency for people to differentiate between the in group and others. Ethnocentrism occurs when one culture or nation places itself at the top of an imagined hierarchy of cultures and nations and subsequently assigns other cultures and nations equivalent or lower value on that scale. To be fair, a system of belief in which someone doesn't consider his or her own as the right one is inherently inconsistent, for it is admitting its own falseness. With this in mind, it is important to examine the bases for our beliefs regarding other cultures and nations. The tendency to evaluate other groups according to the values and standards of one's own ethnic group, especially with the conviction that one's own ethnic group is superior to the other groups. "The fallacy of ethnocentrism is committed...
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...Creating Cultural Synergy: A Management Plan for a culturally diverse team Theresa Famolaro MGMT 615 Dr. Linda Smith 20 March 2012 Introduction This paper presents a problematic multicultural team scenario and a management plan to bring about the team’s effectiveness and success through cultural synergy. A summary of the conflict among team members sets the stage for an innovative solution, while a description of the emergence of multicultural teams in the workplace provides a context. Initially, an assessment of the cultural diversity of the team members is provided. Then, a plan to leverage the richness of culturally diverse team members working together is explored. Finally, in the event that the plan is unsuccessful, a backup plan is offered for consideration. Due to globalization, people from various cultures find themselves working with individuals from other cultures, often in an intercultural team environment. A team is an interdependent group of individuals brought together for innovation and the achievement of a specific goal (Northouse, 2010). Team cohesiveness is positively associated with openness of opinions and collaboration between team members. Disagreement within teams negatively affects team members from sharing points of view (Woerkom & Sanders, 2010). Multicultural teams are more likely to display less cohesion than teams with members that share the same culture. Cultural diversity...
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...Journal of Behavioral Studies in Business Marketing to the Generations, Page 1 Marketing to the Generations Kaylene C. Williams California State University, Stanislaus Robert A. Page Southern Connecticut State University ABSTRACT Each generation has unique expectations, experiences, generational history, lifestyles, values, and demographics that influence their buying behaviors. Accordingly, many companies are reaching out to multi-generational consumers and trying to understand and gain the attention of these diverse buyers. Multi-generational marketing is the practice of appealing to the unique needs and behaviors of individuals within more than one specific generational group, with a generation being a group of individuals born and living about the same time [1]. This means that marketers need to understand the six U.S. generations: Pre-Depression Generation, Depression Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y, and Generation Z. When a marketer factors in the different characteristics and behaviors of the generations, it should be easier to build relationships, gain trust, and close business. [2, 3] As such, an understanding of multigenerational marketing is very important to the marketer. The purpose of this paper is to describe briefly the U.S. generations in terms of the times in which they grew up as well as the characteristics, lifestyles, and attitudes of the group. However, the primary focus of the paper is to describe various marketing...
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