OLPC Donate one laptop per Baruch Class

SEND THIS LINK TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY: http://www.firstgiving.com/barucholpc

.

Creating our Marketing Campaign for One Laptop Per Class Campaign

We need to make at least 200 paper airplanes to release into atrium on Thu Dec 10th during club hours. Please use the Nick's Plane design in the video or your best version otherwise.

For more on the design visit: http://www.paperairplanes.co.uk/nickplan.php
This paper airplane is a superb glider it is very well balanced indeed even when made by the most inexperienced child. It can be quickly made from a sheet of A4 paper and I really like it. I drew this page up and placed it on the internet within a day of learning to make this paper airplane.

Jane Elliot's A Class Divided (Frontline Doc)

Originally posted 10/5/07 12:17 PM

FRONTLINE: A Class Divided - 1 of 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjDxAwfXV0


If you missed class or want to see the video we watched in class, here it is. I posed that WORDS create WORLDS and that Jane Elliot's experiment with her third grade class shown in this documentary gives you a etic view of how this works around discrimination.

You should watch parts 1 and 2 on YouTube.

What were your thoughts?

PS Also here is the link to the Opinion in The Ticker on "Exclusive Diversity" at Baruch College published 9/24/07 by several editors on staff.

Race & Racism in Brazil

Originally posted 5/19/09 4:37 PM
After we read Jeffrey Fish's essay on race in Brazil titled MIXED BLOOD in the Conformity & Conflict textbook (McCurdy & Spradley), you could be left thinking racism doesn't exist in Brazil. This video paints another picture.

The Leech and the Earthworm

Originally posted 11/20/07
Marc Silver directed a documentary about indigneous people's views on genetic engineering. This is the title sequence based on a folktale. What do you think about the emic vs. etic view of such a tale? What assumptions come up for the outsider who is white, from a colonial nation, from the US, or for the native Australian seeing this tale in a film for the first time?

Check out Marc's cool website.
http://www.marcsilver.net/#

HOMEWORK: THU NOV 3 HOW CORPORATIONS BECAME LEGAL PERSONS

Originally posted 5/13/09
The last few weeks I have been emphasizing how individuals are shaped by culturally-defined contexts of race, ethnicity, nation, sex, gender, class, achieved vs. ascribed status, and much more. Ethnography gains insight into the cultural mindset through the ways individuals understand how their culture and/or the world works. This presumes a mindset that seems like it is reality but it is the glasses we were conditioned to see with.

In your introduction to anthropology (ANT1001) we examined how we evolved as a human species from the band, the tribe, the chief and the state out of which grew state economies and capitalism. Westernization, colonialism, and cultural imperialism was an outcome that could not be consistent with the values of the generalized reciprocity of the band. Or so we've been taught. Enculturation and acculturation is everywhere but it is not the end of possibilities in our choices as individuals or groups. But we'd have to be responsible for HOW we learned what we know and WHAT that learning has been for. Ethnography is the tool to excating that learning process and knowing way of being.

I didn't get to a set of short video clips from the award-winning Canadian documentary THE CORPORATION (watch the whole documentary here). Now that you have begun to see the power of ethnography as a tool for understanding cultural mindsets, probably one of our best tools students of culture and humankind has, this documentary takes the conversation to a level not often thought of.

How corporate culture has usurped the status of the individual and the effects that is having on our existence as part of a global human culture.

YOUR RESPONSE: Check out these segments and I'd love to hear how you think this connects to the evolution of the study of man -- anthropology.

YOUR HOMEWORK rather than reading an essay is to watch the documentary THE CORPORATION (3 hrs) on google videos



Come back to class Thu, prepared to share at least one thing that really stood out in this documentary about how the corporation has become a person in our culture.

Kottak Ch. 10, World System & Colonialization

Rarely do we consider that music and dance and poetry play a key role in how everyday people learn about the global politics of the world. Kottak's title "World System" might be today referred to as the global economy and how capitalism came to be. Colonialization played a huge role in shaping the power dynamics and relationship between nations and its peoples.

This chapter reveals the etic framework. The song "ARE MY HANDS CLEAN?" helps us make the macro level of the economics more real and palpable...and uneasy. This is not a nice story or a myth about how the core nations came to be connected through power, wealth and prestige over the periphery and semi-peripheral nations. But it makes it real. Gets to the emic level of looking at from the outside in and the inside out.

Are My Hands Clean?
Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985
Performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock from the album Live at Carnegie Hall (1988)

I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of Dupont
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela
Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day

Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador
In South Carolina

Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric
for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—

Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day
My sisters make my blouse
It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount
Are my hands clean?

Ch.4 Language: Does Your Culture's Language Shape How You Perceive the World

Language: As Kottak discusses, it is based on "arbitrary, learned associations between words and the things they stand for." Humans, not other animals as far as we can tell, have the linguistic capacity to discuss the past and future, share their unique or cultural view of their experiences, and benefit from their experiences.

My cat Delilah seems to know the difference between night and day but she can't discuss what happened two days ago with me (or it seems to another cat) to share me how much she loved the petting session we had or hated that I was away all day long.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis claims that a culture's language has a significant impact on how the members of the culture perceive things. For example, in American English we use a lot of metaphors about battle and war. What is we replaced them with metaphors of dance? Would we perceive our interactions differently?

"I shot down all your points" vs. "I'm tired of dancing to those points"
"You're always attacking my points" vs. "You're always dancing around my points"
"I win." vs. "What a great dance!"

What about the metaphors we use to talk about love?

Below, I offer 3 examples to bring your into the anthropological world of language, into the study of linguistics. First, language change in English literature, then two quotes and finally a TED Talk video that I love. All is followed by a suggestion for comments.

Language Changes in Bible: (taken from Wesch lecture notes):

English 11th Century:
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum; Si þin nama gehalgod
English about 1400 CE:
Oure fader that art in heuenis halowid be thi name ...
English 1611 (King James):
Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name.
English 1963 (Phillips):
Our Heavenly Father, may your name be honored;
English 1970 (K. Condon):
Our Father in Heaven, let your holy name be known

On the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (or the "linguistic relativity hypothesis"):

[Language] diversity is a diversity not of sounds and signs but of ways of looking at the world (Karl Kerenyi, 1976).

From a TED talk by anthropologist Wade Davis:

Language is not just a body of vocabulary or set of grammatical rules. A language is the flash of the human spirit. It is vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind; a watershed of thought; an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities....fully half [of 6000] are no longer whispered into the ears of children.

[22 mins TED TALK]

TRY IT ON (suggestion for comments): What kinds of metaphors do you notice yourself speaking as part of being male or female, Black, Caribbean, or Asian, as part of your student club, or your home country/nation? How have those metaphors or other uses of language shaped the way you perceive yourself and the world around you?

Biocultural Language Diversity (Terralingua.org)

Click the image for more FAQs on language

Most in the U.S., ethnocentrically think English is the most-widely spoken language. But if you think about it, that defies logic.

With just over 1.3 billion people (1,330,044,605 as of mid-2008), China is the world's largest and most populous country.

As the world's population is approximately 6.7 billion, China represents a full 20% of the world's population so one in every five people on the planet is a resident of China. (Matt Rosenberg, About.com).

If this is the case, there is no way English is the language with the most speakers. Check out the top 20 oral languages spoken on the planet.

William Kwamkwamba on Daily Show (the author of the book I shared)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
William Kamkwamba
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Kottak Ch. 5 - Making A Living (Subsistence)

HERE ARE SOME OF THE CHAPTER OBJECTIVES Know what an adaptive strategy is. In addition, you should be familiar with Cohen's typology of societies based on their adaptive strategies. Understand examples of how today's globalizing world and state policies are altering the ways of life of many communities that traditionally practiced different adaptive strategies. Distinguish between modes and means of production Understand how industrialism leads to the alienation of producers from their products. Distinguish between the various forms of distribution and exchange, including the market principle, redistribution, and generalized, balanced, and negative reciprocity. Click here to read the previous posts on the potlatch and watch two brief videos of the ritual. Specifically, you should know what it is, where it has been practiced, and how it relates to local and regional patterns of resource abundance and shortage. What role do religious and social ceremonies play in an economy? Answer: The potlatch of the native groups of the North Pacific coast of North America is a good example of the integral role a festival can play in a group's economy. The sponsors of a potlatch traditionally gave away food, blankets, pieces of copper, and other material goods. In return, they gained social prestige, and the more they gave away, the more their prestige increased. Like most regions of the world, the North Pacific coast of North America is subject to local fluctuations in resource abundance. One village might have a good year while another experienced a bad one. A village enjoying a good year would take advantage of its surplus to increase its prestige by hosting a potlatch and inviting the members of the surrounding villages to attend. In this way, the potlatch created and maintained a regional economy in which a series of villages pooled their resources. The needy villages would receive the surplus from the wealthy villages, which in turn gained prestige.

Kottak Ch. 3, Culture: Is Shared, Learned, Adaptive, Maladaptive....

What a great conversation and inquiry in the 4:10 section today! The 2:30 Section wasn't bad either but 4:10 rocked my world with their questions. Come on, great ones! Do it up!

Questions like:

• What is cultural and what is not?
  
• Is hunger cultural or biological?
  
• Is hearing cultural and/or biological? Is seeing cultural?? Thanks Liping for your inquiry with me after class ended.

So let's keep it going? If you are not the symbol of your name (Kyra) and that name is not intrinsic or natural to you? What does that information make available to you about who you are, could be or want to be??

What could you then play with about who you are?? What cultural processes that we are reading about could you use to play with??

Mapping our Locations : Who We Are

Click the link or map below to go to our own ANT1001 Google Map for class members' locations and restaurants starting Fall 2009. CHOOSE MY MAPS. Then select our class map from the right sidebar and click EDIT.

Add a placemark for your home (use male or female figure and your first name and last initial only for privacy's sake). You can mark your neighborhood or your exact location. Add a placemark for your favorite restaurant.

We can then see who we are as a group based on some primary data. You can change the type of placemark from male/female figure to a form of transportation placemark to signify how you got from other locations where you once lived (airplace, bus, train/subway, etc.).

Check it out. Then we can really see who we are and where we have been and travel.

Welcome Fall 2009 Sections of ANT1001 with Prof. G

Hello and Welcome to our Group Blog!
Both sections of ANT1001 meet here. One is a learning community. The other is not -- but we will share the same things. Each of you will be sharing this blog as a community of about 60+ students from dozens of countries, a lesson in itself. Maybe we are the real text to be studied.

HOMEWORK: You should read Kottak's Mirror for Humanity, Chap. #1 for a quiz in class Sep 3rd.

HOW TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF IN YOUR FIRST POST
Please introduce yourself to the group.

1. Share your name and/or the name you'd like to be called.
2. Share where you are from originally and where you live in the Metro area.
3. What train do you ride to Baruch College?
4. What's your favorite food when eating out?
   
5. Why drew you to choosing Baruch?
   
6. How do you greet someone your age in your native culture? What do you say and/or do, if anything, that differs from the generic "Hello, how are ya?" with or without a handshake here in the city?
   

BEST QUESTIONS: Inquiring minds want to know

1. After reading the Conformity and Conflict essay on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by David Thomson, Kevin C. wrote:

Why is it that when an unsightly person on the street mutters non-sense to imaginary figures, they're crazy? But when someone talks to a figure they believe to be true but can't prove, on their knees, in a pointy building, its prayer?

EXTRA CREDIT: TED TALK ON CULTURAL WEB OF LIFE--THE ETHNOSPHERE

Watch this video and read about Wade Davis and write a 250-word comment relating it to what you learned from the video and from the class about cultural anthropology and how you think it relates to the real world in your life. 

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures.html

You can earn 1-3 extra points towards your overall grade. Post the comment HERE below not on your personal blog for credit. 

Ethnography: Emic Perceptions

Reality and Perception (from http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/001200.html)

People who say "perception is reality" should stop saying it. Perception is a reality, in the sense that it's something we have to deal with. But perception isn't reality itself. In fact, perception is often demonstrably false. {CHECK OUT OTHER PERCEPTIONAL TESTS}

OK, the following test works better if you hear these instructions rather than if you read these instructions.

That said, here's the test:

1. Look around the room you're in.
2. Now, close your eyes.
3. Answer this question: Is the room still there?

Posted by Ara Rubyan on April 23, 2003 at 8:02 PM

For the conversation of race, how do you describe/identify a diverse group of people without talking to them about their race/ethnicity? Does it mean anything that you describe them a certain way ultimately? How does our enculturated view of race shape our views or perceptions of race? Does it change and how when you learn that race was learned as a social construct?

The science of anthropology -- ethnography -- is not about getting rid of things. It's about assessing different views of life and comparing how we view life. You could come to the conclusion that ANYTHING is possible rather than things don't exist. I'll talk more about this the last day of class.

It's hard to see the world beyond ourselves.
It's even harder to see the world beyond our clan, our country, our religion . . .

It's hard to see justice.
It's easy for blind bigotry to backfire.

UNTIL WE
DEVELOP THE NEEDED
PERCEPTION, WE DO
NOT "SEE."

"The more we learn and understand, the more we realize that most of the universe is, in fact, outside our understanding -- like most of the electromagnetic spectrum is outside our perception. Much -- and likely most -- of that "outsideness" is in ways, in dimensions, that we find hard or impossible to grasp (see falter points)." Might ethnography be essential to us?

Everytime instructors communicate, new concepts compete with preconceived ideas of the listeners. All students (in classrooms or of life) hold these ideas but they are unaware of their private theories or universes. Ethnography is a conduit to awareness (think Josh Klein's interviews in college). It is our job as enlightened beings to discover how to free ourselves from the private universe we were born into, raised in, taught by others and accepted as if the only or right truth or reality. An important conduit is not "knowing" but "not knowing" being willing to let go of being right or wrong.

By doing ethnography, you may discover we are all inventing taxonomies, rituals, and beliefs or myths we live by.

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM + ETHNOCENTRISM = LACK OF EDUCATION

HammerSickle
February 24, 2007
YouTube-Outcome Of Consumerism And Pop Culture

"Intention of this video is to show how pop culture and consumerism are making people superficial and stupid. People in 1st world use resources five times more than people in 3rd World but their level of knowledge and understanding is far lower than any 3rd world country" (More info from YouTube). Most citizens are clueless about the basics. At one point the interviewer asks about the "Coalition of the Willing" and the anwers are humorous but our ignorance is what keeps the core's hegemony and imperialism in place.

REMADE IN AMERICA: NY Times series on Immigration

http://projects.nytimes.com/immigration/

Refugees, Poverty and Venture Capitalism

CURIOUS CONVERSATIONS OF RACE/RACISM
Well we had a unpredictable conversation today. My intention was to as I said "push you off the edge" of the social construct of race/ethnicity or more importantly "difference" as if being different means something. Perhaps it means everything and nothing.

Today was an agree to be offended kind of conversation and I truly appreciate you being willing to stay in the conversation even when it was uncomfortable, confusing, or difficult to hear or talk about. Race, racism, are both social constructs but what do we need to really get about that to make a difference for our children's children and in what way? This conversation might be THE conversation of the semester for you. Maybe not. And if it isn't, it's all good. You'll pop anyhow. Promise!

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE: THE ROAD TO REFUGEE SETTLEMENT
I didn't get to have a conversation about Thok in the Conformity & Conflict chapter on refugees in class today. So you should share any thoughts about that chapter. Share in regards to this question if you like:

QUESTION: How does Thok's story influence your views of U.S. immigration policies? or immigration policies in your home country?

After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Child Custody

“My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.”

There was a related article in NYT about refugees that is a must read. One of the other TED Fellows brought it to my attention serendipitously just after class today.


TED TALK: A VENTURE CAPITALIST FOR POVERTY
I mentioned I wanted to share a TED talk related to the chapter.



This video was chosen inside the intention of having your POWERFULLY RELATED to what's possible of out the process of ethnography, out of the ethnographic method of participant-observation and interviewing.

Jacqueline Novogratz heads the venture-capitalist organization for poverty called THE ACUMEN FUND. Here's a short video about what the Acumen Fund is all about.

TED TALK: Actress Sarah Jones transforms blackness into elderly Jew & fast-talking DR

See Homework post below on RACISM: A HISTORY.

I am delighted to share one of my most favorite TED TALKS from the Long Beach conference. Sarah Jones is a locally-born actress, a Broadway star, and she won a major battle against the FCC over language in a hip-hop critique based on her poem THIS REVOLUTION.

Homework for Thu: RACISM A HISTORY

PLEASE WATCH the following clips (30 mins total) from the BBC documentary Racism: A History

NEW FEATURE: Indicate your reaction to the post at the bottom near the comment button.

1) Racism a History - The Colour of Money Part 1/6



2) Racism a History - The Colour of Money Part 2/6



3) Racism a History - The Colour of Money Part 3/6



PS: Remember this from early in the class. Puts religion and other concepts we studied in perspective as if now a retrospective of what you've now learned:

BONUS: "What we are" Dance Monkeys Dance by Ernest Cline - www.ernestcline.com

Cultural Anthropologists are Hacking Cultures

Next class, just before spring break, we have visitors: A hacker and a simplicity expert

Joshua Klein is a fervent hacker of all things, including wet, pulpy systems like animals and people and the way they behave.
• Josh’s TED talk The Amazing Intelligence of Crows
http://www.wireless.is/about.php

Bill Jensen: "80% of what you need, you've already got!" & "Everything you do uses a portion of someone else's life."
• One of Bill’s videos: Making it Easier to Get Things Done
http://www.simplerwork.com/about_us.htm

Cultural Anthropology: Quoted from http://www.aaanet.org/about/WhatisAnthropology.cfm

"In North America the discipline's largest branch, cultural anthropology, applies the comparative method and evolutionary perspective to human culture. Culture represents the entire database of knowledge, values, and traditional ways of viewing the world, which have been transmitted from one generation ahead to the next — nongenetically, apart from DNA — through words, concepts, and symbols."

"Cultural anthropologists study humans through a descriptive lens called the ethnographic method, based on participant observation, in tandem with face-to-face interviews, normally conducted in the native tongue. Ethnographers compare what they see and hear themselves with the observations and findings of studies conducted in other societies. Originally, anthropologists pieced together a complete way of life for a culture, viewed as a whole. Today, the more likely focus is on a narrower aspect of cultural life, such as economics, politics, religion or art." [For your mini-ethnographies: even narrower units of observation are expected]

"Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the internal logic of another society. It helps outsiders make sense of behaviors that, like face painting or scarification, may seem bizarre or senseless. Through the comparative method an anthropologist learns to avoid "ethnocentrism," the tendency to interpret strange customs on the basis of preconceptions derived from one's own cultural background. Moreover, this same process helps us see our own society — the color "red" again — through fresh eyes."

We can turn the principle around and see our everyday surroundings in a new light, with the same sense of wonder and discovery anthropologists experience when studying life in a Brazilian rain-forest tribe. Though many picture cultural anthropologists thousands of miles from home residing in thatched huts amid wicker fences, growing numbers now study U.S. groups instead, applying anthropological perspectives to their own culture and society.

For example, why do Americans have customized urinals like the one to the left? Or what drives the popularity of the video game Grand Theft Auto? Other cultures would surely see these as senseless. But an ethnographer is interested, willing to be interested, in how it makes senses to its users through the ethnographic method.

Use the ethnographic method as often as possible from here on out.

SHARING PROJECT QUESTIONS

Please submit your questions to peer-review and review by Professor Gaunt here. In a comment, post the following elements of your mini-ethnography

1. What is the cultural unit of observation you are observing?
   The mosque on 116th and Lenox in Harlem
   
2. What is your project question?
   Q: What is the significance of the mosque in Muslim culture and how does it differ from
   experience in a Christian church?
   
3. Who your key cultural consultant is and why (first name and their role will do)
   The imam of the mosque
   
4. What is your participant-observation?
   Attending a Friday service and a evening event at the mosque

Anyone can respond, pock and prod. Invite each other to step beyond the obvious, the familiar and what seems cliche. Thanks, Prof. G

Oral Presentations Makeover

Well I realize that each class has different needs. The Spring 09 section could use a bit more guidance on the presentations. So here goes. Check BB for some new leads on presenting and here is a really great example of a young person like you presenting with powerpoint and images to tell a story that is entertaining and fun. The latter video is bit edgier.


Sky McCloud Presentation from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

For something less full of slides, check this one out with video in the presentation:


Bungee Chord Parenting from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

Ch. 8 Gender, pt 2: Sex vs. Gender Identity

Check out this National Geographic Video on women in Samoa. How can all these varieties of what defines women co-exist in the world? Should they? Why or why not?

For more on the Etoro read here.

Here's another video of eunuchs in India also from NG.

Life Without Fathers: The Mosuo People or the Kingdom of Women in China

VIDEO LINK: China's "Kingdom of Women"

If you think the Na people's practice is not contemporary watch this National Geographic video of a similar group in China. The Mosuo peoples.

Why do you think we resist thinking this is normal, contemporary or modern, and natural? Why do we always make it different and distant?

Here is another video of the Mosuo where they have no word for father:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoTrARDa8BU

As of 10/2009 this link is not working.

Visit
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/07/introduction_to.html#

or Read article in Slate magazine. China's "Kingdom of Women" by Cynthia Barnes
Posted Monday, Nov. 13, 2006, at 1:03 PM ET

Ch. 8 Gender: Mindblowing TED Talks on Women & Gender Roles

The author of this week's ethnography in C&C Nancy Scheper-Hughes writes "I argue that a high expectancy of child death is a powerful shaper of maternal thinking and practice." in "Mother Love" an article appearing in New Internationalist in 1994. This quote makes sense if you have read Chap. 5 in C&C already.

I am not arguing that mother love [in Alto do Cruziero/Brazil], as we understand it, is deficient or absent in the threatened little human community of Bom Jesus. Rather, the course of mother love is different, shaped by overwhelming economic and cultural constraints. The discussion attempts to overcome the distinctions between ‘natural’ and ‘socialized’ affects, between ‘deep’ private feelings and ‘superficial’ public sentiments – to show how emotion is shaped by political and economic context as well as by culture. It can be understood as a ‘political economy’ of the emotions.

Although gender has tended to be discussed relative to women only it really is a dynamic shaped in relationship to the other sex. Male to female and female to male.

For instance, while the United States still lacks gender equality, women's roles are no longer restricted to the domestic sphere in many places around the world. But women are still vulnerable esp in economic downturns according to representatives of the UN in a report on International Women's Day (March 6):

Yakin Ertürk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its Causes and Consequences, ... marked the Day with a statement underscoring the importance for men and women to join forces in this time of economic turmoil.

“The scale and impact of the current crisis is still largely unknown, but it is expected that women and girls in both developed and developing countries will be particularly affected by job cuts, loss of livelihoods, increased responsibilities in all spheres of their life, and an increased risk of societal and domestic violence,” said Ms. Ertürk.

She highlighted the World Bank’s prediction of 53 million more people being driven into poverty in developing countries this year, bringing the total number of those living on less than $2 a day to over 1.5 billion.

“Studies have shown that violence against women intensifies when men experience displacement and dispossession related to economic crises, migration, war, foreign occupation or other situations where masculinities compete and power relations are altered in society,” added Ms. Ertürk.

Ms. Pillay noted, however, that there is a new generation of powerful women growing up around the world with a strong sense of their identity and strength.

“They say ‘no’ to harmful practices such as early marriage, female genital mutilation and sexual harassment. They want to go to school and get an education. They want to be lawyers, doctors, judges and members of parliament. They want to change the world.

These two recently released TED Talks feature two remarkable women transforming ordinary conversations about who women are, what is possible from both disability and ability, and what strange and unpredictable things they can inspire.

ASSIGNMENT: Watch BOTH videos and write a comment. ALSO read other people's comments.

Short and Swift Inventory for Pre-Interview by Email

TRY ASKING YOUR CULTURAL CONSULTANT TO ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:

What is your name?
Where were you born?
Where were your parents born?
Where were your grandparents born?
Where were your Great Grandparents born?

What were you doing 12 minutes ago?
12 hours ago?
12 weeks ago?
12 months ago?
12 years ago?
24 years ago?

Did you go to University? Where?
Are you easy to approach and start a conversation with?
What are you doing now as a hobby?
What activity could you do all day long without getting bored?

What community groups do you belong to?
What is your favorite source for news?
Have you ever witnessed a perception-changing event in your life?

Who defines greatness for you?
Have you changed your lifestyle significantly? How and why?
What is your wish for the world or idea worth spreading and to whom?

THIS WEEK (Mar 10 & 12): Intro to Mini-Ethnography & TED Talk

I want you to check out the following links (as well as the tags above): "MINI-ETHNOGRAPHY" and "INTERVIEWING".

Here's a great video on doing interviews: It's 30 mins long but a must see, take notes, and learn how to get people to talk and what NOT to do.

THIS WEEK: COMMENT ON 30 min VIDEO

--------------------------

FROM TED2009:

In the meantime, TED released the most AMAZING media technology I saw while at TED2009. It's called "Sixth Sense" and it was created by the MIT Media Lab.

Politics: Influence and Power

Ch. 6 Political Systems - Social Networks from Bands and Beyond

I was thinking about why humans created political systems. Was it to create ways of dealing with conflicts within bands or among tribes? Is this what led to the creation of laws? And who gets to make the laws and why?

The following list about the complexity of groups helps me understand the need for political systems on a level I hadn't considered before. As human population began to increase and more and more "strangers" began to interact. Their ideas of how to subsist changed and needed to be managed on some level. And there was a need to cope with the exponential relations that came with larger and larger populations--governance became a necessity or so it seemed.

The Complexity of Groups
2 people = 1 relation
3 people = 3 relations
4 people = 6 relations
5 people = 10 relations
12 people = 66 relations
35 people = 600 relations
50 people = 1225 relations

Wesch has a diagram that suggests two ways humans have organized themselves -- (uncentralized) INFLUENCE and (centralized) POWER -- as we moved from bands and tribes to chiefdoms and states. You might consider Chapter 6 a way of looking at how "law & order" came into being. If you add the barrel model of culture to this and think about ideas alone, somehow we need uncentralized and centralized ways of organizing ideas alone. That's what the information age has come to be about in some ways. It's also what TED is doing with their tag "IDEAS WORTH SPREADING". They use video to share ideas with a world of people no matter what their level of wealth, power and prestige (Weber).


Wesch's list (above) of the complexity of groups also makes me think of Web 2.0 (click the tags for references to Web 2.0 at the top of the blog). Web 2.0 or online social networks like MySpace and Facebook are allowing a new kind of governance for the people, of the people, by the people more or less. Or is it a return to the egalitarianism of bands?

The Internet, esp. Web 2.0 -- user-generated-content stage of the WWW-- is allowing millions of users to mix both the INFLUENCE of being in a small band or tribe with the POWER of industrialization. Individuals can broadcast like state governments once exclusively did. You and I can talk to the writers of our textbooks or government officials with ease.

Students can write THEIR OWN textbooks and create THEIR OWN education with other students around the world whether in Russia, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, or just the South Bronx. They all can access and use info immediately without being limited by wealth, power or prestige (Weber). That was nearly impossible in my time before the Web appeared esp. for the lowest class of folks in our society or for folks outside the U.S. in developing countries. Now with a laptop at an Internet Cafe you can reach the world with the click of a mouse and a keyboard.

QUESTION FOR COMMENTS: How are people in industrialized nations claiming or reclaiming being egalitarian in the anthropological sense? Conversely, how are people in developing nations becoming powerful--in the sense of the "achieved status" found in the U.S.? Could someone from a lower caste in India move beyond their "ascribed status" today and how so? Do a little homework on Google with this one. Don't just share your own opinion. Gather evidence online.

P.S.
I love the image (below) of the world that shows the various social networking sites that dominate each region. Facebook and Myspace are dominant in the U.S. but not so elsewhere.

Consider all the networks being created BEYOND BORDERS with the WWW. For example, you've heard of doctors without borders, but what about teachers without borders, mothers without borders, architects without borders, students without borders, lawyers without borders, to CEOs without borders. Google any of these for more info.

The Ultimate ReBoot: THE FIRST TALK AT TED2009

Juan Enriquez:
Beyond the crisis, mindboggling science and the arrival of Homo evolutis

Chapter 5: Making A Living (Subsistence and A Brief History of Mankind)

One of the professors who inspires my teaching is Prof. Mike Wesch at KSU (National Teacher of the Year). I love his cultural anthro syllabus and the intention of his course:

Cultural Anthropology explores different cultures in all of their manifestations - from how people make a living to what people live for. In an increasingly interconnected world, cultural differences lie at the root of many of our most pressing challenges, throughout the world and in our own personal lives. There has never been a time when Cultural Anthropology has been more important than it is right now.

Subsistence.

• minimal (or marginal) resources for subsisting; "social security provided only a bare subsistence"
• a means of surviving; "farming is a hard means of subsistence"
• the state of existing in reality; having substance http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• The means of living; obtaining food and shelter necessary to support life; everything that is done to "make a living" resweb.llu.edu/rford/docs/VGD/GSLVT/gslglossary.html

Last week you read about culture. This week about making a living.

Chapter 5 - Making a Living seems rather dry and uninteresting to most students. However, this chapter begins to explain the history of mankind through five adaptive strategies used to subsist, to survive, to ... make a living. It is useful to know these strategies, which are still part of modern culture in some places. These strategies help us distinguish between the ways humans in the past and the present organized into groups that shape our the shared, learned, symbolic and integrated culture we live by as well as reflect adaptive and maladaptive approaches to our survival.

This chapter will also help you understand the documentary The Corporation (which we will watch) that explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time that rose out of industrialization. "Taking its [the corporation's] status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask 'What kind of person is it?' " As we look at the forms of reciprocity that are common in each adaptive strategy, the example of corporations reflect the tensions of balanced and negative reciprocity.


YOUR COMMENTS THIS WEEK: Rather than quoting the chapter this week, write a 1-3 sentences responding to the (1) video above IF THE WORLD WE A VILLAGE as well as the (2) videos below on the Kwakiutl potlatch which was once outlawed by the government in British Columbia.

Ch. 2- Culture: What We Are

Thursday the world celebrates the 150th birthday of Charles Darwin the author of the Origin of the Species. Do you believe in evolution? Why or why not?

Chapter 3 is about how humans adapt to this world. Culture is our access to adapting to who we are and what we are and can be. Here are the objectives of the chapter:

• Understand the defining attributes of culture. In particular, you should understand what it means that culture is learned, shared, symbolic, all-encompassing, and integrated; the relationship between culture and nature; and how culture can be both adaptive and maladaptive.
• Identify the different levels of culture and why it is important to distinguish between them.
• Understand the relationship between culture and individuals.
• Distinguish between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and how both relate to human rights and anthropological research.
• Know the differences between cultural universalities, generalities, and particularities, and be able to provide examples of each.
• Understand the mechanisms of cultural change.
• Know what globalization is, the forces that are bringing it about, and its effects on local communities.

This video is a sort of reflexive ethnography of Western society and culture. Irony and humor are often useful in bringing out hidden social constructs. So check it out:

What we are; Dance Monkeys Dance by Ernest Cline - www.ernestcline.com



Many people believe in evolution. Some do not. Perhaps life is not about our beliefs per se but rather about what we can discover about ourselves from such explorations. The humor of Ricky Gervais' Introduction To The Bible (1/2) makes fun on Darwin, if you like.


I'd love to hear what struck you, what thought or ideas from Chapter 3 struck you as new or different from your previous ways of thinking. Everyone should comment on the chapter once a week or blog at least once a week.

PS. Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4

Prof. G meets BG and many more at TED2009!

Last week was the most amazing week of my life. I fell in love not only with TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) but with the 40 other TED Fellows who, like me, were selected for our work as "polymaths" - people excelling in more than one field.

There was one person I really needed to meet. I came from a somewhat humble beginning but more than that I thought I could never hobnob with the big boys. Now that it's happened...well...it seems so...ordinary. Yes! I met Bill Gates. You may have heard he released mosquitos, live ones, into the conference during his talk about Malaria (they weren't infected).

BG and I talked. Even if only briefly. I wanted to feel like this man and I were two ordinary people up to two extraordinary paths. And I got that! It happened on Friday at 8:20am. Friday February 6. 4 days ago almost to the hour. OK. It was more than a normal moment, but ithe Wow of it was that I belonged. Being at TED was amazing for me. I fell in love with my purpose fully and wholeheartedly (the picture is of me giving my talk titled RACISM AS A RESOURCE). It was filmed and (fingers crossed) it WILL be on the TED.com site eventually. My mission: to empower and enable individuals and organizations to empower people's words not their difference. I am out to transform conflict in a single conversation rather than going to war years later. That was my unveiling.

This year's theme was THE GREAT UNVEILING and TED lived up to that and more in 4 non-stop days of talks, performances (HERBIE HANCOCK, REGINA SPEKTOR & JAMIE CALLUM!!!), and beauty of architecture and scientific breakthroughs. We were introduced to unbelievable things never heard of before. I am sure I have enough to share with you ALL SEMESTER LONG and there was as much humor as there was innovation.

MY HIGHLIGHTS: Meeting Hans Gosling and Jill Bolte Taylor. Hanging with Quincy Jones Friday night. I sang for him "You taught my heart to sing" at the Gala Party after the TED Prize Winners gave their talks. The MIT Media Lab unveilings (mind-blowing). The new 3-D film technology from 3eality that had Bono touching my face!!! And three remarkable winners of the 2009 TED Prize: deep-ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, astronomer Jill Tarter, and maestro Jose Antonio Abreu. Each of them is a leader in his/her chosen field of work, with an unconventional viewpoint and a vision to transform the world. Each wins $100,000 plus "One Wish to Change the World." Quincy and I bonded after Maestro Abreu's wish:

José Abreu’s Wish

“I wish you would help create and document a special training program for at least 50 gifted young musicians, passionate for their art and for social justice, and dedicated to developing El Sistema in the US and in other countries.”

I will share the AMAZING inventions and innovations I witnessed like Siftables from the MIT Media Lab.

Siftables aims to enable people to interact with information and media in physical, natural ways that approach interactions with physical objects in our everyday lives. ... Siftables are independent, compact devices with sensing, graphical display, and wireless communication capabilities. They can be physically manipulated as a group to interact with digital information and media.

There is SO MUCH TO SHARE that I was exposed to that BLEW MY MIND!! Here is the FAVORITE TALK OF TED2009. It's essentially about the social constructs of the way we talk about genius. It's given by author Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame. TED is amazing to have these talks online 2 days after they appeared!!

Chapter 2 : Ethics and Method

I invite you each week to post a comment about the readings or about questions that you find yourself asking about cultural anthropology or our class discussions. Anything is possible to discuss as long as you can make it relevant to the group. No talking to yourself out loud, so to speak. Speak to forwarding the action of our shared community of knowledge. Thanks, Prof. G

Some key ideas to discuss in Chapter 2: ethics, ethnographic practices, etc.

INTRODUCING TED TALKS: Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares breathtaking photos and stories of the Elder Brothers, a group of Sierra Nevada indians whose spiritual practice holds the world in balance.
A National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Wade Davis travels the globe to live alongside indigenous people, and document their cultural practices in books, photographs, and film.

Where do you notice Social Constructs today?

Bonus assignment: Give 1-2 examples of other social constructs you notice between now and next class.

On Day One of the Spring 09 Semester, I introduced the concept of SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS using a map upside down. How did you learn that north was up? North is not UP in the physical universe, is it? Read a previous post explaining social constructs.

The definition I shared in class was "an idea (time), a concept (masculinity) or an artifact (money) that seems natural or obvious to those who accept it but in fact is an invention of a particular culture or society."

The most well-known example is the "earth is flat". While the earth may appear to be flat to our everyday perceptions, in reality we cannot see the whole earth and its curvature. Thus, the social construct is not the condition of the flatness we see, but rather the view itself that people share. This view affects people's behaviors, thoughts, feelings and actions. It is a context from which people may live their lives.

A more common social construct that seems invisible to us is money. Money is not real in the way we view it. It is worth much more than the material it is printed on but by social agreement in any country we assign it certain values.

"Mathematics is a social construct. Numbers are words and ideas, not physical laws. Math is used to describe the physical universe, so it is shaped into a form that matches the universe as well as possible, giving it a framework. All things we would call math use this same framework. But describing a Law and being a Law are different things. Math measures things that exist, and it does this very well. It can also do things that the universe that it is describing cannot. The truth in numbers is not fundamental. It is built by humans." (http://everything2.com/node/163462).

Here are definitions from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction):

A social construction or social construct any phenomenon "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular culture or society, existing because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules. One example of a social construct is social status. Another example of social construction is the use of fiat money, which is worth more than the paper it is printed on only because society has agreed to treat it as valuable.

Pinker (2002, p. 202) writes that "social constructions: they exist only because people tacitly agree to act as if they exist".

One of the main theses of gender theory is that genders and gender roles are mere social constructs, and that there is nothing natural about being a man or a woman, a heterosexual or a homosexual, or even a transsexual, since genders are mere social appearances and built-in ideas, not unlike men's clothes or women's clothes.