Anthropology in Nursing

The first day of class we all introduced ourselves and mentioned our majors. Quite a few people were nursing majors.  I researched how anthropology relates to nursing.  These three sites are pretty interesting:

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1036575/pdf/medhist00047-0114.pdf
• http://www.conaa.org/en/calls-announcements.htm
• http://www.medanthro.net/

The first is an article about nursing and anthropology.  The second is the website for the Council on Nursing and Anthropology- I never even knew that existed! The third is the Society for Medical Anthropology's website which is part of the AAA. It is pretty neat to just explore the websites.

Lithuanian Culture

In Anth 1200, we discussed kinship charts and family origins.  In my kinship chart, there are ninety people, ranging from my grandparents to my cousin's children.  Sixty-six of the ninety are from my mother's side, the Naumovich family, a clan from Lithuania with strong family ties.  Out of curiosity, I did some research on Lithuanian culture mainly with this site: http://www.litfood-fair.com/lithuania/culture.shtml, and found that my family has aspects of it in our lives today.  Literature is big in Lithuania and our family is huge on reading and sharing books.  Music is also very popular, my grandmother has played the organ and piano as well as sung in a choir for more than fifty years.  My aunts and many of my cousins are members of various choirs.  My grandfather is a wonderful cook and we have many traditional European dishes around the holidays including kielbasa and pizelles.  Happy Holidays!

The Bhagavad-Gita

In English class this semester, my class was assigned to read the book The Bhagavad-Gita. This book was pretty interesting, but raised a lot of questions for me and I ended up not agreeing with it's teachings. The book describes many traits of Hinduism and dives deep into the Hindu culture. The main character, Arjuna, is being taught by the god Krishna the ways to find enlightenment. One point Krishna makes is that one must be nonattached to their actions. This is the only way they can fulfill their dharma, which is basically what a person is destined to do. For example, a teacher teaches, a mailman delivers mail. I had a problem with this idea though. How can somebody do their dharma and do it well without being attached to their actions? Could Michelangelo have created the David without being completely absorbed by what he was doing and being 100 percent passionate about being an artist and creating something beautiful? I don't think so. But in Hinduism culture he could have. This opened my eyes to how vastly different people are across the globe. For someone like me, Hinduism is completely odd and doesn't make sense, but to many other people in the world it makes total sense, and many live by teachings of Krishna.

gangster culture

in the 1990 mob movie Goodfellas you can get a really good glimpse at the various cultures that make up a gang in NYC from the mid 20th cenury on. what most of the common known mafia groups are is Italian or of Italian decent. when you are in the mob you have to be one hundred percent italian to ever be made, which is pretty much becoming a boss of your own crew. this is so that people could trace back your family to the old country where the mob came from. the main characters henry and jimmy could never be made because they had irish blood in them even though they were really good gangsters. also the main character henry had to pretent to be jewish so that his girlfriend's parents would approve of him and let them date.

Ancient Mayan Culture

One of the groups did Mayan culture for the group presentations last Tuesday in class. They talked about many different aspects of ancient Mayan civilization. There is a film called Apocalypto that does a superb job at visually showing us many of these aspects. Certain human behaviors of the ancient Mayans are illustrated in Apocalypto in great detail, and certain aspects of the culture, such as human sacrifice, is shown in vivid and gruesome detail. This is important in my opinion because it successfully demonstrates the brutality and strangeness of the customs of ancient Mayans. I wonder how accurate the portrayal of these customs are in the film, but listening to the presentation in class, there are a lot of parallels between the actual facts and what happens in the movie. It seems that the film makers really did their research, but there is always the chance that they glamoured it up and emphasized things to make it more dramatic and enjoyable.

This article discusses how a deaf village in Malawi. It describes how a charity event is working to help the deaf villagers in the city by training interpreters. Although the deaf community has been mostly forgotten.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/charity-for-deaf-trains-interpreters-to-help-in-malawi-1.1072845

This is the National Association of the Deaf's official website. It describes the mission of its organization, its visions and values, and its about its diversity statement. This will give students a better understanding about what this organization does and what it is trying to do.

http://www.nad.org/about-us

This powerpoint goes into detail about L’Abbe Charles Michel de l’Epee. He is known as the "father of the deaf." He was a contributing creator of the French method.

http://deafed.net/PublishedDocs/lepee.ppt

This article is discussing Caster Semenya who was the women from South Africa who won many medals at the Olympics in Berlin. There has been a lot of controversy over the past year about whether she should be allowed to compete as a women. After many of the tests, it has been decided that she will be allowed to compete with other women.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20009781-10391704.html

This is a small article about Gallaudet University, which is the world leader in schools for teaching deaf and hard of hearing students.

http://aaweb.gallaudet.edu/About.xml

The Connection of Sports

As I was cramming for finals I took note of the Trobriand Cricket movie we needed to watch and study for the final exam.  This video was full of information regarding the diffusion of sports between two different cultures.  It also got me thinking of a show that I love to watch (when its available) called "Dhani Tackles the Globe" on the Travel Channel.  I have watched this show for two seasons( not sure if there is going to be a third) because of the amazing stories, cultural explorations and respectful connections it displays. 
The premise of the show is that an american professional football player Dhani Jones,who plays for the Cinci Bengals, uses his off-season time to learn about compete in numerous international country's sport of choice. For instance, he took a week to prepare for English Rugby in the UK and though it is not far from football, he found it extremely difficult and challenging to make the transition.  The bowtie-sporting athlete Dhani also takes time from practice to immerse himself in the history, cuisine, and libations of the local culture and this is where the show becomes really interesting.  My favorite parts are when he finds time to break away from the sport practice and a local takes him around to sample local cuisine and drinks.  The destinations included in this series are incredible too.  Like any other Travel Channel show, you are given a visual journey to places like Croatia, South Africa, Jamaica (where he played cricket), France, and Australia.
This show really impressed me with the amount of acceptance and generosity of international countries.  It seemed that Dhani was sent to learn and compete in cultural events and his efforts were respected and reciprocated by others.  I really hope that students can find time to catch this program in the future.  I have already marked half of the places Dhani went to put on my list of PLACES TO TRAVEL. 
Cheers, Brian R

The Thrashing of Margaret Mead

I went to see Paul Shankman talk about his book "The Thrashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of a Controversy," at the beginning of the semester but had trouble registering to post about it.

He discussed his book and research into the controversy over Mead's work in Samoa and essentially weather the adolescent girls there lied to her or told the truth about their sexuality. The entire controversy hinges around a revisiting of her work and sources by Derek Freeman.

Shankman presented a dispassionate and panoramic view of the controversy. He compiled a lot of evidence that Freeman was full of shit and had an egotistical and or moral agenda to fulfill. Freeman's whole case hinged on one then elderly woman who he said was Mead's primary contact/source for her findings but this did not seem to be the case upon further inquiry and cast doubt on the credibility of Freeman's accusations. Shankman was able to show on the old analog projector a snide Christmas letter that read something to the effect of "...you are wrong and I dislike you.. merry Xmass" but written in a superficially pleasant/academic tone (its been a while so I can't remember it verbatim).

I think Shankman did his very best to give Freeman the benefit of the doubt... But Freeman reminded me of an internet troll you see on various forums online. He just wrote a lot of trollish letters and attacked the reputation of the defenseless dead instead.

Medical Anthropology and Manifestations of Sexuality

Studying medical anthropology in Chapter 14 I frequently thought of a particular movie that I saw awhile back. This film is called The Painted Veil, and it is primarily set it a 1920's Chinese village with a cholera outbreak. It is an interesting film in that it not only illustrates human behavior and customs in an unfamiliar place to most, but medical techniques of the times as well. Another film I watched recently made me think of a few chapters ago when we studied genders and sexuality. I was watching Titanic and couldn't help to notice the corseting of the rich, first class females. There is one scene in which the main female character, Rose, is being corseted up by her mother. It looks painful and after reading about it in the anthro book, I'm sure that it must have been. The other examples of women body exaggerations in the book also seem pretty crazy and ridiculous, such as the Chinese footbinding. Various cultures really do some interesting things when it comes to the emphasis of the woman form.

For my paper I wrote about Mayan dances and we did not have time to show videos. This link that I'm posting show the performance of the Jarana at the festival Vaquerias in Yucatán. The Vaquerías is a honor of the patron or patroness of the acienda or village. The festival is a party that lasts three days and four nights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNkuwHo4CPE&feature=related

My presentation on Tuesday was on the Kurdish culture and this webpage will give readers a lot more information that will help them better understand their culture. I focused on the Gender roles and division of labor for my section of the final project and I found that this article went into great detail about how women are struggling in all Kurdish cultures to have rights.


http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/06/12/18426957.php

Here is a lot more in-depth information about the how the Trobriand Islanders play cricket.

http://www.berkeleymedia.com/catalog/berkeleymedia/films/arts_humanities/trobriand_cricket_an_ingenious_response_to_colonialism

Anthro Online Study

I found a website that offers a bunch of questions and answers about cultural anthropology most of which are what we have been studying and they might help some people out so I thought i would share it

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/Humanities/Anthropology-16941.html

International DAY!

The University of Wyoming has been very good about having cultural events for their students to participate in, i was able to attend was International Day through my Kung Fu class. Throughout out the day each club would present a presentation of the culture they represented. There was salsa dancing, brazillian line dancing, African drums. My kung Fu class did Lion Dancing. We had musical instruments and actual lion dancing. For those who are confused at what lion dancing is i have a website link to what it looks like.
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/lion-dancing-in-ouatic-3/534cdca6aa9807ec6bb2534cdca6aa9807ec6bb2-255405457761?q=Lion%20Dancing&FORM=VIRE3
We also did the lion dancing during the homecoming parade in which we won best small Float. The lion dancers were in the back of the bed of a pickup while the people playing the instruments were in another. IT was very fun to be apart of it. I would continue to encourage everyone to participate in the Cultural events the university has to offer since it is a unique opportunity to expierience Anthropology without leaving Laramie.
Here are some links about the history of lion dancing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_dance
http://www.chcp.org/lion.html

Lion dancces have been around for a little over a thousand years. They  can be found at mos major chinese celebrations including New Years, dedicatoins of new temples and the opening of chain stores. The Lion dance we preformed was the Southern lion Dance style which originated in Guangdong Province.

Death in the Clouds: Bioarchaeology in the Northern Highlands of Peru By Dr. Catherine Faither

In the lecture "Death in the Clouds: Bioarchaeology in the Northern Highlands of Peru" by Dr. Catherine Faither she explains about burials of humans found in Peru. She talks about the burials, different types of trauma, infectious disease, genetic disorders, nutritional deficiencies and dental disease.
There was a lot of different mortuary burials found at the site of Chachapoya. THese contained circular structures and semi-circular structures. Dr. Faither wanted to see if there were other types of burials other than elite males. In the bodies that Dr. Faither studied in Peru she found that every single age of both femals and males were represented. She also found out aht the people were pretty tall for being a part of Peru Culture.
The different types of trauma that Dr. Faither found were accidental trauma and surgical trauma. Accidental trauma was discovered in the bodies and had pubis bone's broken out, a break in the femur or a break in the femoral necks. All of these seemed to be consistent with a fall of some sort. The surgical trauma dealt with healed skulls. There had already been pre-existing trauma, meaning that the people of this culture were doing skull surgery.
The disease and the disorders that were found in the bodies in Peru were infectious disease, genetic disorders, nutritional deficiencies and dental disease. In the infectious disease Dr. Faither discovered Saber Shin, Capitation and Mastoiditis. These were non-specific indicators of stress. One of the genetic disorders that she found in her study was a case where there werew not average size bones with Osteoporosis throughout the entire skeleton in a male's body. An interesting fact about this body is that although it is male, the body also looked female. The body was as well buried with some femal artifacts. Another genetic disorder that she found on a different body was a tumor located on the parathyroid glands. There were some signs of nutritional deficiencies in the bodies found. Although, the environment was rich in foods and in vitamin C the people of Peru were still dealing with the disease Scurvy. Dr. Faither believes that one of the reasons behind this is from children getting sick with something else and stops receiving the nutrition that a person needs. What was also noticed in analyzing these bodies was that males seemed to have more dental problems that females did.
Overall, I found it interesting when she spoke about the surgical trauma. It amazed me about these operations that they were performing on the skull. The pictures that Dr. Faither showed on her slides really gave a good interpretation to help better understand what she was talking about and they were all really interesting to look at.

Folsom Point Manufacting Decisions: Who Gets to Play? by Nicole M. Waguespack

I went to a presentation by Nicole M. Waguespack. In the presentation, Waguespack speaks about folsom points. She starts out her leture with a quote from the South Dakota State Historical Society, "Folsom points represent perhaps the pinnacle of the flint worker's art in the America's." Waguespack goes on to describe why folsom points are a type of art and how they are a very distinct form of projectile points. Her main points throughout the lecture are about how difficult folsom points are to make and about how skillful a person needs to be to make good folsom point without wasting material.
Folsom points are extremely difficult to manufacture. Failed attmpts to remove the flute often irreversibly damage the piece resulting in a wasteful expenditure of invested time and raw material. Waguespack explains that the dilemma is that reliance on such a failure-prone manufacturing step runs contrary to an overarching lithic production strategy based on conservative raw material use. To solve this dilemma a person should abandon fluting, rely on various fluting contraptions and rely on craft specialists.
Craft specialization is when a person sits back and lets others perfor tasks for us. This specialization would occur when at some distance, available raw material approaches. Another reason this would occur is further and further away the cost is increasing (about 20%-50% of fluting attempts fail.). IN making folsom points there are high skill makers and low skill makers. High skill makers can usually make a folsom point and be left with two channel flakes. A low skill worker usually is left with multiple channel flakes after making a folsom point.
I thought that the lecture was interesting for the fact that I have never really heard much about folsom points before. For projectile points, I have only mostly heard of arrowheads and spearheads. I would have never realized that folsom points would be that difficult to make. The fact that she stated about the percentage of fluting attempts being a failure is 20%-50% really shows how difficult they are to create.

Whalerider-review.

Here is a movie review of Whalerider. I thought it gave a good description of what this movie was about.



http://www.movie-gazette.com/391/whale-rider

Maori Culture

Since we just watched Whale Rider I thought it would be nice to find some more inrofmation on the people from movie. Firstly, they are called the Maori and are from New Zealand. I then looked for several sites that offered general information on them so that a little bit better understanding of the movie might be possible.

Very Brief Description but a Short Read with Good Information:
http://www.virtualoceania.net/newzealand/culture/maori/

Interesting Article on Smoking Habits:
http://tvnz.co.nz/health-news/price-hikes-turning-smokers-off-3877497

Another Brief Overview:
http://www.newzealand.com/travel/about-nz/culture/culture-maori-culture.cfm

Horrific Cultural Double Standard

The weekend before last I needed something to do and I remembered that the play “Extremities” by William Mastrosimone was playing in Cheyenne. So I called my best friend and the two of us headed over. The play was very intense. During the first ten minutes I almost walk out because it was too much for me. To be completely honest I just put my head down and didn’t even watch. Seeing a woman being assaulted left me speechless to say the least. After Marjorie took control of the situation it was a little better and I could resume watching. I don’t think I would go so far as to say that I enjoyed the play but it was very interesting to contemplate after it was over. My emotions toward the characters seem to change the more I think of it. At first I was thinking that Raul got what he deserved and wished something like this happened to every rapist. After thinking about it I realized that Marjorie had pushed it too far and should have sought help and medical attention sooner. I do understand that she was confused and scared but that is not an excuse for creating that much harm to another person. I also find culturally it very interesting that during the attack of Marjorie in the beginning most of the theater was like me and had to turn their heads away and could barely handle what was going on. However when Raul was being attacked, burned, and tortured no one seemed to have a problem with that. Interesting that a woman being attacked is hard to handle but a man being tortured is tolerable; it makes me rethink the double standard that we have set in our culture. How did such a nation where equality is so important create such a horrific double standard of inequality.

This article discusses the practice of "veiling" for Muslim women in Java, Indonesia. I thought this was an interesting account of how a world religion adapts or does not depending on where it is. It discusses a holiday that is Islamic however the celebration of it is unique to Java. There are ways in which they do not mix however and that is evident in the trouble that many women who chose to veil face.

https://uwmail.uwyo.edu/owa/attachment.ashx?attach=1&id=RgAAAACJuOzdc9KYQIB292%2bdsiQbBwDW%2fBe5GA%2bvRJyMGF25ncuvABRHq5FqAADW%2fBe5GA%2bvRJyMGF25ncuvADSFMHkfAAAJ&attid0=EAAw0s9ZtAagTKlEoHLMlOsU&attcnt=1

baseball magic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDhs-hypmqk&feature=related

In class we talked about baseball magic and how it is only magic if you are pitching or hitting. This video shows the magic of pitching and it is really funny.

I was really surprised by this article; it talks about Jesus in Buddha eyes. When I see different religion talking about each other it is mostly about what is wrong with the belief of other religions. This article is it did both, It started on the good aspects that Jesus proves his followers. It really made me think of what type of person Jesus was. It talks a lot about him giving food to the people and doing everything to help them out. Then it switched to talking about Jesus not being spiritual as Buddha. I think this article is interesting and gives you different perspective s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/beliefs/jesusandbuddhism_1.shtml

Politics in my familyt

Last class we talked about politics and power... in my family there are some very heated arguments about politics. My mother, being a democrat, and her brother, also quite liberal, consistently get in arguments with their parents, since my grandparents are very republican. They were huge supporters of the McCain/Palin campaign two years ago when Obama was elected president. Well, shortly after Obama won the election, me and my family went to grandma and grandpa's house for Christmas. I love to mess with my family and play jokes on people, so I did something that would get my grandparents worked up. Every Christmas I get a new Santa Clause figure for our Santa collection and this particular year I bought a very special Santa. One of the reasons my grandparents basically hate Obama is the fact that he's black... yes, my grandparents are racist but that's just the way it is. So, they weren't too pleased to see the black Santa I had bought and set up in their house. I happen to like Obama so I was just representing, but my grandparents weren't impressed by the joke. That's what politics does to my family!

Social Conflict

In our class last week, we talked a lot about social conflict and if they can ever be resolved. This article focuses on how our government needs to make a change to resolve the conflicts that we see today. Also it gave pointer on how we as individual can make a change to end social conflict. I’m not sure if social conflict can end but I did like that this article for giving us a good start on how to changes because its not just about our leader but about ourselves also.

http://www.helium.com/items/974439-how-to-resolve-social-conflicts?page=3

Amazing Journalism

I have to recommend that students try to watch or follow a program called Vanguard on Current TV.  This program has been one of my favorites for about two years and is an amazing source of investigative reporting and global news.  Vanguard is an investigative journalism show featuring highly controversial topics with first-hand reporting.  These topics range from "Soccer's lost Boys" and "American Jihad" to "Narco War Next Door" and "Lost Vegas". These shows were some of my favorites so far but there is a great diversity in the type of stories covered by this group.
We are touching on the topics of warfare and political conflicts in class I thought that one interesting show that related to our class was the episode "Narco War Next Door".  This episode focuses on the drug violence that has changed the towns of Juarez and Tijuana Mexico, both close to the US border. There is a great section in this episode surrounding a drug lord and the influence his cartel has over public relations and communities loyalty.
If this sort of show seems interesting to you, free episodes can be watched at hulu, http://www.slashcontrol.com/free-tv-shows/vanguard
or you can visit http://current.com/shows/vanguard/ for complete details.
Vanguard has earned Peabody Awards (excellence in electronic media) and also the 2010 Television Academy Honor Award for its excellent reporting and journalism.  This show is the new era of powerful investigative journalism.  Also, a three part series looking deeper into our "war on the border" should be featured some time soon so be sure to check it out!
breisig

Journal Articles

Hey everyone,
I was browsing through http://www.sciencedirect.com researching for another class and then realized that you can also find journal articles and books most of which you can read on-line over just about every topic we cover in class. Most of the stuff is research based and I thought it might help you out with your papers. You do have to create an account but its free and last forever so you can use it for other classes too.

Gangs and Families- Examples of Social Groups

After this week's discussion I started to think of examples of social groups in aspects not necessarily covered in class. What came to mind initially was Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and how certain families are major social groups. Romeo is born into the Montague clan and Juliet into the Capulet clan, obviously. In this story, the two households consistently have conflicts and disagree with ideas of the opposite household, much like two different races or countries may. This leads to fighting and bloodshed. We can see families in society everywhere who feel threatened by other family households, causing similiar conflicts. This can be a conflict as simple as fueding neighbors, a little more intense such as famous political families, or to extremes such as families of opposite races or countries literally battling in war. Referencing Romeo and Juliet also got me thinking of another film- West Side Story. This has supreme examples of a class of kinship group that is quite common; gangs. The gangs are formed due to the differences in their cultures and beliefs; the street punk Americans and the Puerto Ricans. People die and are hurt in this movie also due to the fact that the other gang can not accept the differences in race and thus they fight each other for street turf. A film with basically the exact same story (apart from the time period, setting, and cheesy love story) is Gangs of New York. The individuals in this movie belong to gangs according to race or beliefs also. Although the gangs fight over a specific piece of the city of New York, they more so battle because of their cultural differences. An ironic element of Gangs of New York is that the gang entitled "The Natives" are white people who were only just born in America. They hate the immigrants coming to New York, such as the Irish, but in fact, "The Natives" are no more native than the Irish. Actually, "The Natives" are descendants of Irish immigrants and people from other European countries. Often times social groups may hate each other because of differences in beliefs even though they are actually descendants of the same people.

new bball friends

i could really relate to the reading from the textbook where it talked about how baseball is played in japan. in the last few weeks i've been playing basketball with some new friends at halfacre. they aren't japanese but they are all first generation south korean-americans or korean native. they all know and speak english, some better than others. they play by the same rules for the most part but just some of the little things are different. i really enjoyed how they dont do any trash talking at all...or at least not in english. i have now became friends with them and have hung out with them just as friends. we are planning on hanging out one weekend soon and playing poker. i am looking forward to how they play that also.

Margaret Mead v. Derek Freeman

Margaret Mead is one of the most well known women in the field of anthropology. She is known for her book Coming of Age in Samoa published in 1928 as well as for her conflicting views with Derek Freeman. She is so well known that there was a stamp made with her image on it. She was the head of the AAA and one of the three best known women at the time of her death.

Margaret and Derek both studied the women in Samoa. They both came to very different conclusions. Freeman had many good cases built against Mead; at least they looked good until you did some research on your own. Derek accused Mead of being tricked by the Samoan girls. He said that when Mead was asking them what they did at night and they said they were “out with boys” that they were tricking her. Derek went back to Samoa after Mead and found the same girl that Mead interviewed and she said that Samoan girls are “terrific liars”. Upon further research it is discovered that in the Samoan culture you do not talk about things like sex in public or around someone of the opposite sex. The girls said they were joking around because that was what was culturally acceptable.

When another anthropologist, Paul Shankman, decided to look into Derek’s work things started to get ugly. Freeman wrote many letters and cards to Shankman that were mean in nature. When Shankman asked Freeman if he could see him postgraduate thesis and his field notes, Derek refused. It wasn’t until Freeman’s death in 2001 that Paul was able to see them. When Paul went through Derek’s field notes it showed something completely different than what Freeman had been saying. Basically his field notes completely contradicted just about everything he had said about Mead and the Samoans.

Polygamy

I thought this video was interesting because it shows the women's point of view of polygamy. It showed that their are different types of polygamy beside the Mormon polygamy. You would never think that the women in this video were in a polygamy relationship. In my Religion class I learned that you can not judge a religion based on your religious belief. When I look at this video it seem that polygamy is not always a bad thing. The women and children in this video seem happy and do not mind whether or not their children choose to have a polygamy relationship.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OEaRn3uHsc&feature=related

Western Tribes

This website shows some interesting facts and stories that can be found in some western cultures.


http://www.papuatrekking.com/Dani_Lani_tribe_Baliem_valley.html

Wedding Traditions and Customs

Every country and every culture has their own definitions for what a marriage is and how it should be (or not be) celebrated. I managed to find a few websites about just this topic. The first is about simple wedding traditions and the second is a short article on why and where some tradtions are performed and come from.

http://www.worldweddingtraditions.com

http://searchwarp.com/swa294727.htm

Revolutionary Road- Kinship

Seeing that we have been studying marriage and family in class for the passed week, I thought that I would mention a film that focuses on a 1940's couple and the pressures that come along with being the model suburban American married couple. This film is called Revolutionary Road and it is quite an effective film in showing what often times really goes on in a marriage due to society and other outside pressures. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler who are stuck with the label of the perfect married couple. They desperately want to break away from the norm and achieve their dreams, but factors such as children, their careers, and security in the average life disrupt their plans. Societies' pressure on people to fit the roles of the traditional family actually ends up making Frank and April very unhappy and leads to problems such as adultery, unfaithfullness, extreme fighting, and very cruel actions towards each other. It is interesting that at this time in America, and still today, it is looked down upon to not fit what is considered traditional positions, but this strain ends up causing even more problems that are also frowned upon, such as cheating. Instead of being happy and in love, and doing what they are passionate about, Frank and April are stuck doing what does not make them happy and even start to despise each other. Not only is Revolutionary Road a great film, but in relation to what we've been learning in class it fits perfectly to many of the topics, such as sexual regulation and the social organization of societies.

I just attended a talk by two very interesting people. One speaker talked about indigenous languages in the Rocky Mountains. The other speaker spoke about the layers of history and his tribes stories and beliefs.

The first speaker covered a lot of information very quickly so there was a lot that I didn’t catch. There were some points that he made that I thought were very interesting though. He said that we, as human beings, are expendable, but language stays forever. This is in reference to the fact that even when people or a race die, their language can still persevere. When we looked at a map of the language boundaries in the Rocky Mountains I noticed that all of the boundaries are either on the left or the right of the mountains ridge. The speaker explained this, it is because no people live on the very top of the mountains, they all live in the valleys. It is easier to live in the valley and on the side of the mountains, so that is where the languages are.

Also in his speech he talked about how many of the languages are dying. He said that there is only good information on about 11 out of the 30 languages that are, or once were, in the Rocky Mountains. One of the great anthropological figures that documented some of these languages was Franz Boas. Even some of the languages that we know of now are dying. The people of the Rocky Mountain area are trying to teach their native language to young students in school in hopes of preserving the language.

The second speaker was part of the Maori tribe in New Zealand. He spoke a lot about how important history is, and the layers of history involved. In his tribe there are many stories that can explain various historical facts. For example the story of how the Northern island was created. It is said that their great ancestors went out fishing and didn’t want to bring their little brother with them. But the little brother snuck into the canoe anyway. When they were far enough away from the shore the brother popped up and surprised them. The older brothers said that he couldn’t fish anyway because he didn’t have any equipment. But the little brother was prepared, he used his dead grandmothers jawbone as a hook and his own blood as the bait. Of course he caught a huge fish, but the little brother asked the others to look away while he recited and incantation before reeling him in. The brothers did not look away and so the fish fell apart, creating what is now the northern island. When you look at a pictures of the island you can see that the fish was a sting ray, and in the southeastern part there is a chunk missing where the hook was.

Another thing that he talked about that I found very interesting was topophilia. Topophilia is the affective bond between people and place. One thing that they believe a lot in is mauri, which means life force. Everyone has a life force, a mauri, and there are certain places where a persons mauri can be replenished. Waterfalls the place with the strongest mauri, so that is where people will go if they need to be healed. He said that people go to waterfalls to be cured of sickness, depression, or even just to “recharge your batteries”.

Swidden horticulture in China

http://www.natureproducts.net/Agriculture/shifting_cultivation.html

Nice paper on swidden horticulture in Europe

This paper talks about traditional swidden agriculture in Northern Europe, something not usually mentioned in discussions of today's mostly tropical swidden agriculture:









http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/programmes/natcon/natcon_1.htm

Wyoming Ranching & Land Use

PDF on Wyoming land use

http://www.uwyo.edu/openspaces/docs/community-service.pdf

Changes in Eskimo Family Life

Limited view of changes in Eskimo family life

http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic28-2-86.pdf

Dad is Mom?

In this article it talks about how the modern views on each role of parenting is currently changing. It was cool to read this writers views on the subject compared to the views of the traditional family that were shared in class the other day. http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/20/p.meet.modern.dad/index.html?iref=allsearch.
Here is another article about the Afghanistan view on children. particulary about how boys are more cherished than girls. The family will sometimes dress up the girls as boys because of social pressures to have a boy in the family.  Definatly alot different than my own upbringing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/asia/21gender.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Boys%20liked%20more%20than%20girls&st=cse

Hindu Ceremonies effect enviroment negetively

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/26/green.ganesh.eco/index.html?hpt=C2
This is a cnn article about how different India ceremonies affect the enviroment. In an attempt to make it more enviromentally friendly the government offered a contest to the people that built the most enviromentally friendly staue. It ais a stark difference on how different governments view unwanted ceremonies (such as the potlatching). I find an article that can also help us as americans for our enviromentally unfriendly holiday, Christmas. It was pretty interesting read. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/340938_greenshopping24.html

What are they wearing on their, uhhh....

After watching some of the videos, I found myself wondering, "what are the Dani men wearing?" you know what I am talking about. And even more, is there a reason they are wearing them? Well there is an entire website dedicated to answering my question with some strange cultural implications. Like protecting the men from ghosts that would enter their living body through the unprotected orifice. Wowser.

http://members.shaw.ca/penisgourd/default.html

~GOOD LUCK~

Good Luck on the Test Everyone, sorry my study tips post didn't work out as well as I had hoped but hopefully you are all studied up and ready to go.

Remember to breath and not over think anything.

If it helps to relax (before or after the test) watch this link, I find laughter is always good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTasT5h0LEg

You tube Video on Potlatching

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/potlatch-scenes/3699ae0b7364e33417723699ae0b7364e3341772-136485995087?q=Potlatching&FROM=LKVR5&GT1=LKVR5&FORM=LKVR


There is the above link to watch a portion of the potlatching ceremony. Something that was not mentioned in the video was that potlatching was also banned in the united states as well, in the late nineteenth, for the same reasons as the Canadians. Some more information can be found on the link below.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Potlatch

cultural emotions

Cultures around the world are all so different! I find it interesting that one thing all cultures seem to have in common are emotions. The few basic emotions there are (ie. Happy, Sad, Angry) are actually very similar across all cultures. Here are some links of different cultures showing the same emotions..

http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/indigenous-tribe.html

study it up

since group 16 turned out to be so cool, we plan on all doing our study guides on our own, then meeting as a group and going over THE ENTIRE THING with each other. comparing and contrasting our answers. way to go group 16, which i will be referring to from now on as "the cool group".

Study Tips

Hey Everyone!
I noticed since we are in class only one day a week it is a little bit harder to stay motivated to study and decided it would be both helpful for everyone and interesting to see the different study habits and tricks of everyone in the class. I will share with you what I have been doing and encourage all of you to write comments to this post on what it is that you are doing (or should be doing).

I took the study guide that was given to us and instead of just finding the difinitions to all of the words from the back of the book I found them throughout the reading and highlighted the definitions and any relivant information along with that topic. I took it a step farther and then re-typed all of what I highlighted into a sort of bulleted list, but going back and looking at the highlighted stuff is also a great way to mix things up!

Good Luck to All and I Hope to Hear from You!

Animal Sounds in Other Languages

After talking about it in class I though it would be fun to see what other cultures use for animals sounds. So I found a few websites, enjoy!

Only gives words for the other sounds:
http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/animal.html

Gives sounds:
http://www.bzzzpeek.com/

Franz Boas History

Franz Boas, father of US anthropology, is particularly well known for his work with the Kwakwakawakw

Franz Boas photo collection at the American Philosophical Society


Kwakuitl Museum site

Welcome!

This is an occasional blog usually used for posting links to websites, video clips and articles of interest to new anthropology (usually cultural anthropology) students. Comments with suggested links particularly welcome.

all best,

Leila
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming