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