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
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