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.