American or Pohnpeian?

During the Nest in the Wind presentations, it became apparent that many of the differences that students were trying to make between American and Pohnpeian culture were actually similarities that were slightly tweaked. The concepts that governed these cultural rules were the same even if some of the ways these rules were carried out were different. For example, when a woman in Pohnpei is pregnant, she is able to say anything she wants in whatever style of language she pleases. The regulations of language, which are extremely binding and a symbol of status, are brushed aside for a pregnant woman. Likewise, in American culture, when a woman is pregnant, she is justified in eating whatever she wants, no matter how absurd the craving. American women value being seen as thin as more important than many other things, but when they are pregnant, they consider it to be within their job as a pregnant woman to eat whatever they desire. For both cultures, what is seen as a major restriction to women in their respective societies is excusable for pregnant women to partake in during pregnancy. This is just one of many examples of how two cultures that appear to be extremely different are in reality rather similar, reinforcing the idea that Americans should not be so quick to judge cultures that we deem to be less civilized than our own.

College Culture

Not only has anthropology taught me how to better observe other cultures, but it has taught me to investigate my own culture, or various culture groups that I fit into, with a new perspective. In doing so, I am beginning to recognize the college life as its own culture, filled with its own set of norms and abnormalities that may be quite different from that of the “real world.” Because I live on campus and do not have a car, I do not often leave campus, and if I do, it is to set locations. As such, I am living in a city that I probably would not be living in if I were not going to school here, and I have no idea where anything is off-campus. Thus, everything I do is on-campus, causing me to live in a world largely separated from the rest of society. College culture utilizes time in a unique way. Where when I was living at my house I had a set curfew; many activities in college do not start until after when my curfew was. Socialization as well as homework time is pushed back later in the night, and I am able to wake up later than when I am elsewhere. Space is also experienced in a new way. Since I am living with other people, I am constantly sharing space with others and only occasionally completely alone, and even that requires more effort than when I am home. I am learning how to change the method in which I use space to better fit this environment. Likewise, campus food is different from food elsewhere. Students walk into the Commons or Plaza to receive food already prepared. Granted, the food may not be what the student is used to eating, but the student did not have to do any work to get it. These are just a few examples of how college has created its own culture, made possible by students rarely ever having to leave campus.

My Two Cents on Anthropology

I have found my time in the Introduction to Cultural Anthropology class to be very interesting. Initially, I had no idea what anthropology was actually about; I guessed that it investigated past civilizations and cultures that no longer existed, which I figured had little value to me living in today’s culture. However, I was delighted to discover that anthropology is in fact about currently existing cultures and how everything – language, space, time, relations, bodies, etc. – is related to culture. This makes sense because cultures are so diverse, which explains the way every aspect of society is run. I understand anthropology and how important it is to understanding people of different cultures, especially since I am now more aware of the emic and etic points of view, which remind me to avoid judging others from an ethnocentric viewpoint. The concepts of anthropology are also useful in helping me understand my own culture. I am extremely interested in learning about different cultures, which stems from my love of travel, and so anthropology appears to directly fit into one of my already-established passions – I just did not know how to name this passion before looking deeper into what anthropology is all about.

Defining Important

While I think that Delaney did a good job at picking important people, places, and performances, the VIPs that she picked were meaningful to her due to her personal experiences. Because Delaney and I come from different backgrounds, we find different VIPs significant. I consider American president George Washington and Rwandan president Paul Kagame important. Both of these outstanding men were the first presidents of their respective countries, and as such, they were responsible for setting the precedent for how their country would run in future years. Both men initially refused the presidency because of their fear of having too much power, but were forced into it anyway. The precedents that Washington set in many areas of his presidency and way of life are evident in various aspects of the United States government today. This shows the immense impact Washington had, deeming him worthy of VIP status. I chose Washington because a large part of my identity is based on my life as an American, as are the identities of a large proportion of Americans, a culture widely influenced by the policies Washington enacted while in office. President Paul Kagame was responsible for leading the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which was influential in ending the Rwandan genocide. As such, he became responsible for rebuilding the country of Rwanda and directing it along its path to reconciliation, which he has thus far done a superb job of doing. Kagame is of importance to me personally because genocides and the aftermaths of genocide is something that I have been interested in for a large portion of my life, largely because my mother is a survivor of the Cambodian genocide. I expect that anyone interested in following the development of post-genocide Rwanda or the development of Africa in general would agree with this choice.
Places can also hold significant value to people, based on their culture. The White House, which is host to the president and his family, is a symbol of the president and the quintessential American family. The First family is highly esteemed in American culture, and the American populace tracks the movement of the First family closely. The White House is also symbolic of the American Dream, because the personalities of the past and present presidents are so varied that one can envision oneself becoming president, even though in reality the presidents tended to fit into a set demographic. I chose the White House because I have grown up looking at the White House and often thinking of it as more of a symbol of the presidency than perhaps of the president in office, as I think many Americans do. Israel, specifically Jerusalem, is another place of importance, because it contains holy sites for Muslims, Jews, and Christians around the world. Being a Christian myself, I hold the sites of Israel in high regard, as would many other individuals of those three religions.
I could not think of a more important performance than the Olympics, which Delaney used. The Olympics is a huge performance that brings together a large number of countries in civil competition. The symbolic nature of the Olympics is seen in the pride that exists in carrying the torch and the opening ceremonies. The Olympics is a time for countries to show the world the best athletes that their country has to offer and pit them against the best athletes from other countries. The Olympic Games heightens sporting events in a massive forum that is dependent on nationalism.

Relational Food

During my observational trips to the Plaza and the Irvine Commons, which happened at varying times during the day, I noticed an assortment of interesting things about food and how it relates to other orientations. Individuals who frequent the Plaza tend to do so at hours that are not the stereotypical mealtime hours, especially on weekends. This is because the Plaza is open during the hours when the Commons is not. The tables at the Plaza are smaller than the tables in the Commons, indicating a varying use of space between the two. This makes sense because people tend to go to the Plaza in smaller groups than they would go to the Commons. This is seen in the increased amount of individuals coming to the Plaza by themselves, compared to the number of people that go to the Commons by themselves. However, for both venues, individuals who are by themselves are likely to grab their food and leave. For those who stay to eat alone, they tend to eat along the edge of the room or closer to the TV. In our culture, food is related to socializing and the building of relationships, which explains why individuals who eat alone feel awkward and strive to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Linguistic Enlightenments

I am currently taking Chinese 101, and it has been quite an experience for me. My family is Cantonese, so I have been exposed to Cantonese my whole life, even though I cannot speak it very well. I have also been around people who speak Mandarin, which is the dialect that is taught in schools. Although the two dialects are very different, they have some similarities, especially in the way Chinese culture and values plays out in language. Much of my extended family now speaks English a lot of the time, but for some of the members of my family who grew up with Chinese as their first language, some of the phrases and references they say are either direct translations of how they would say it in Chinese, or somehow related to the Chinese way of speaking, either grammatically or otherwise. As I take my Chinese class and learn about some of the idiosyncrasies of Chinese, I am able to have a better grasp of some of these references. For example, I learned last class how to say, “not bad” in Chinese, and my teacher explained that in Chinese culture it actually means “good,” but the Chinese just prefer not to say “good” in many contexts. I connected that with my family, where some of the members of the older generation prefer to say “not bad” when they really mean that something is “good.” They had translated the phrase directly from Chinese to English and continued to use it because of the way it had been used in their culture. I learned something else regarding the way my dad talks. My dad enjoys using various words and names and twisting them to make them something to make fun of in the strangest ways. A month or so ago, when we were learning how to say numbers, I realized that one of the things in his cache of words he makes fun of is the number “6” in Mandarin. He says it slightly different and puts it in a different context so that he gives it an entirely new meaning, and yet it is pronounced in such a way that it could still be construed as the word “6.” By taking Chinese in school, I have become better able to understand some of the language that my family uses and how that is a direct result of the cultural ways their first language was used. I also comprehend some of my father’s and other relatives’ more bizarre jokes.

Kinship Charts

Kinship and My Family

When the variety of ways to identify kin in class readings and discussions was first introduced, I was interested, but confused as to how other cultures would classify their kin, since I have only been exposed to the Eskimo way of describing familial relations, or so I thought. As I contemplated this further, I realized that I have also had contact with the Iroquois way of naming family members. Awhile ago, when my mother’s cousin (a very Euro-American way of describing him) came to visit my mother and her sisters, they all referred to him as brother, half-jokingly. He is their father’s brother’s son, and thus a parallel cousin. This makes him their brother, according to the culture they grew up in. However, when they called him “brother” in English, it sounded far stranger than when they called him that in Chinese, because of culture’s interconnectedness to language, which causes certain things to sound acceptable in some languages and yet out of the ordinary in other languages. It was surprising to me to discover my relationship with the Iroquois system, which ended up helping me better understand the different systems used to name kin.

Body Conformations

I believe that at some point or another every person, especially adolescents, wish to change their bodies in some way to conform to a standard that that culture has help up as ideal. While I have at times suffered from this predicament as well, I would say that the time when I felt the most pressure to conform my body to a certain standard was when I was a part of the color guard at my high school. In color guard, our uniforms were not the most flattering, unless a person had the “ideal body,” leading each of the girls on the team to be self-conscious of the fit of their uniform, even though the uniforms were custom-made to fit each of our individual body types. Besides merely fitting into our uniforms, our instructors expected those on the team to be able to contort our bodies in particular ways and do certain motions in order to properly execute our choreographed routine. I wasn’t particularly good at color guard, nor was I very flexible, so I struggled to be able to perform as I was expected to. The insecurities I felt were not so much related to society as a whole, but more so to the band and color guard culture I had become a part of, and the expectations of those in that culture regarding the way I looked and performed. As part of the color guard, the band constantly told us that our job was to make them look good, which led to further expectations of the members of the color guard from the band. Ultimately, I ended up quitting color guard. I quit for a myriad of reasons, however, I think that if I had been better able to meet the expectations of that culture, I might have considered remaining a part of it longer. Nevertheless, I chose to remove myself from the “bando” society rather than push myself to achieve the cultural norm or standard that was expected of me.

Careers in Anthropology

The movie on careers in anthropology was interesting because it showed the variety of jobs that a person with a degree in anthropology could have. I never realized that a degree in anthropology could be used for such a wide range of careers. The section on using anthropology in solving crimes was extremely intriguing, because I never considered the way that anthropology might be used in the criminal justice realm. It was also fascinating to learn how anthropology relates to nature conservatories, because the way humans use nature is a major part of culture, and it can be used to communicate the worldviews of a culture, in particular if that culture views nature in high or low esteem. I was surprised to see how anthropology relates to the business world, but it makes sense that business people would be interested in ensuring that their product fulfills the needs of their consumers, and that their product does not conflict with cultural norms. Businesses need to know that what they are doing works well with the cultural expectations of the society they are catering to. Viewing this movie on careers in anthropology was encouraging because I was able to see the possibilities that are available to anthropology majors, and that anthropology majors really can get a job both directly related to their field and a job that they can truly feel passionate about.

Technology Usage and Presence

Technology is a major part of my everyday life, more so than it was even one year ago. I use my computer to write school papers, check my grades and assignments, learn about news events, and even catch up on TV episodes I missed. Most importantly, I use technology for facebook. A year ago, I did not have a facebook account, even though most of my friends already had one. I have always been the one to be more cautious about conforming to trends, so I tend to be constantly behind when it comes to trends. However, as friends started moving away to college, and people I knew but didn’t see often joined facebook, I found more of a reason to join facebook myself to keep up with their lives. This agrees with the argument that Boyd made that facebook tends to be more for students either in college or headed for college, whereas myspace is more for individuals who are not identifying themselves with those headed for college. When I finally created a facebook account, I definitely noticed the difference in the way facebook changed the way I interacted with other people. Suddenly, I was able to write one little line and have everyone I’ve ever known in any setting know what I was doing. Such contact with the world shocked me. I was not used to having my world and thoughts be so widely publicized. Similarly, I could also see what everyone I had ever been connected to was doing or feeling, even if I rarely talked to them. Despite this ability to communicate with everyone I know, I still really only talk to the same people that I would talk to without facebook. Maintaining relationships via technologies such as facebook and skype require a different type of effort. There is an increased number of ways to maintain contact with people, yet with more ways to communicate with people, I find myself communicating with them less, and when I do, it’s often with a less personal touch than I would if my only means of communicating with someone was through physically meeting or letter-writing. In my daily life, I use a variety of types of technology, but I have found that the Internet, and facebook in particular, is to blame for changing the way I relate to and interact with people.

The Definition of Africa

I recently went to see The Lion King musical in San Diego via the Bulldog Bus. While I was there, I thought about how much of what we as Americans know about Africa comes from watching The Lion King and other such media portrayals of Africa. This past summer I had the privilege of going to Kenya for three weeks to serve the people of Kitale, Kenya. When I landed in Kenya, I recognized in myself the desire to see the acacia trees so clearly portrayed in Lion King, and it wasn’t until I saw the acacia trees and the huge black birds that are often in them that I truly felt like I was in Africa, despite the multitude of other clues that could have been used to prove that I was no longer in America. Throughout my stay in Kenya, I often looked for objects like those I had seen in Lion King. I even went so far as to ask the children I worked with if the word “Nala” meant anything in Kiswahili after discovering that “Simba” meant “lion.” I also took a picture of a scene that I like to describe as “My Lion King picture.” This just goes to show how powerful movies, and children’s movies in particular, are in giving people an image of what a certain place is supposed to look or feel like.

Money Money Money

Both “Money Money Money” by Abba and “Money, Money” by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony rant about the lack of money and the need for it, as well as possible ways to gain money. The singers of both groups are people from groups that are rarely at the top of the socioeconomic ladder: women and African-American men. Thus, both groups want to do what they can to better their economic position, though they propose different methods and express themselves in different ways. The Abba singers intend to marry rich so that they don’t have to work, enabling them to live carefree lives. They imagine that the world is a better place with more money, and that the sun would even shine brighter on the rich, which is what they desire for themselves. They talk about money “in a rich man’s world,” and in this world, it is often correct to say that white males are normally the highest paid, so that it really is a “rich man’s world.” In contrast, the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony singers mention the negative effects of not having money, of which there are plenty. They cited things such as living in ghettoes, facing discrimination, and robberies. They focus less on how to gain money and more on the lack of money. They do say that they need to work for money, but mostly they discuss the various problems that are typical of a poor African-American community. Money is so important to our society and our everyday lifestyle that two separate bands wrote a song to voice their distress over their lack of money and their need for more of it. Without money, there is so much more opportunity for injustices to happen and take root, and people are forced to do things that they would rather not be doing in order to survive.

The Savage Pocahontas

I recently watched Pocahontas with some people in my dorm. That movie was one of my favorites as a child, but upon watching it again as a college student taking an anthropology class, I was appalled at some of the scenes in this children’s movie. The British people come to the New World with preconceived ideas of the land and people, declaring the Native Americans savages before even getting to know them at all. The governor tells Thomas to kill a savage if he sees one, simply because he assumes that the native way of life is inferior to his way of life. It infuriated me how intolerant of other cultures the colonizers were, so much so that they were bent on shooting a native on sight. The colonizers had so much to learn about and from the “savages,” but they were not even giving them a chance to teach them, so set were they in their own ways and ideology. The thing that bothers me the most about this is that this situation is not one that occurred only during colonization, but it is a way of thinking that is apparent even now as people interact with people different from themselves. We could learn so much from other people, if we were open to investigating varying ways of doing things.

As a child, I didn’t understand the cultural discriminations in this movie that I understood when I watched it most recently. I know that what happened in the movie, in regards to the attitude of colonizers, is essentially what actually happened in the New World, but it still makes me angry that anyone would be treated like that and that people continue to be so ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism is something that I believe to be ingrained in most people, but that does not mean that it is right or acceptable, though it is hard to realistically change the mindset of anyone bent on considering themselves better than other people.

Invisible Children Participant-Observation

Victoria, one of the CA’s in my dorm, invited me to go with her to distribute Change-for-Change jars for Invisible Children. The point of the jars is that people put spare change in these jars to help raise money for Invisible Children, a club that fights against the Lord’s Resistance Army and its use of child soldiers in Uganda. I had watched the latest Invisible Children movie recently, but I had never done anything to help them out before. Victoria and I met a few other people in SLIC, where we divided up a big box of already-labeled jars into smaller, more manageable bags that we could take to the various dorms. Victoria and I then took some bags and flyers and trekked back to Grossmont and Fairmont, where we delivered a jar and flyer to every room that opened their door to us and allowed us to share a bit about what we were doing.

I was surprised by how almost all of the doors in Grossmont were closed, which increased the awkward factor as I had to knock on each and every door in Grossmont and wait for someone to answer, rather than the open-door community I’m used to seeing in Fairmont that would have enabled me to have easier access to the people I was trying to talk to. The whole event was a bit uncomfortable for me, especially since I’m not used to going door to door talking to strangers, promoting a topic that I don’t know very much about, all while clumsily trying to manage a flimsy bag filled with jars in one hand and a handful of fliers in the other hand. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, and that uncertainty was noticeable to the people I was trying to talk to, who likewise responded in an unsure manner. I feel like I was very unclear when I was trying to present my message and inform people of the cause I was helping out with, which made me incredibly self-conscious and unconfident in the way I spoke. This is not a part of my personality that I am strangers with. Rather, it is a part of me that I am working on changing to enable me to go out of my comfort zone and do this sort of thing more frequently.

Doing this activity with a key informant made it possible for me to have a better sense of what it was we were doing and how the evening was going to run. Victoria directed me as to where we were going to go, and she instructed me on the key points to say to the people I was handing jars out to. We went to one floor of Grossmont to pass out jars together, so I was able to hear how she talked to people and informed them of Invisible Children. She answered my questions and helped me wrap things up at the end, taking the remaining jars and fliers from me and informing me that within the month someone will need to come by to pick up the collected change and pass out more jars, making this a monthly activity.

Other than the few minutes where I was observing Victoria knock on people’s doors and talk with them, I was fully involved in this activity, doing just about the same thing that she was. Participating in this event gave me a better understanding of the preparation and face-to-face interaction needed to raise awareness and money for an organization and cause such as Invisible Children. If I had just observed someone in Invisible Children, I might not have completely internalized the hysteria of the co-president as she became overwhelmed at the daunting task of knocking on every single dorm room door. I also might not have felt the discomfort of talking to random people while dragging along my rather large bag of interesting objects. By participating in this activity rather than simply observing it, I was able to fully experience what the people who do this on a regular basis go through. I expect that the awkwardness that I felt vastly decreases as one becomes more comfortable doing such a thing as this, or if a person is more outgoing than I am, but the motions are still basically the same.

A questionnaire or survey would not have given anyone an adequate sense of the happenings of this activity, the feeling of going door-to-door, or the awkwardness of not knowing how to respond and react to certain people. A questionnaire or survey could, however, inform a researcher how many of the people contacted would do anything with the jars they were given, or how effective they thought this method to be. A written report could also give statistics on how many people were passing out jars, how many people were previously involved in Invisible Children and thus already had a jar, and how many jars were given out. While all of these things are important things to consider, it is important to get a feel for how an event is actually run, rather than examination of the outcomes alone.

Space and Setting

The space I live in at college has become my home, although I use space in exceedingly different ways here than I do there. My room in my dorm is set up differently from my room at my house. At my house, I have a headboard and drawers under my bed, both of which store the majority of my things and allow me to do a multitude of activities without getting out of my bed, because everything is stored so close to my bed. In my dorm room, I do not spend as much time doing homework on my bed, mostly because I use my desk, which I did not have in my room at my house, and because I often leave my room to do my homework, so as to not disturb my roommate. My dorm room is my sleeping space, as well as occasionally my homework space. I have to walk further to get to common rooms, like the lobby, than I do when I’m at my house. This does not deter me from going to common rooms; rather, it means that I must make more of an effort to get to one. Living on campus also means that it takes less time for me to get to my classes now than it did in high school, since I live at the same place that I go to school. I find myself walking a lot more than I do when I’m at my house, which enables me to utilize space in a more personal way as I have more time to observe and interact with the space that I am passing through on a daily basis.
While there is a kitchen in my dorm, I do not spend very much time there. Instead, I walk across campus, across the quad, to get to the commons for most of my meals. I eat in a large space with a large number of people all the time instead of with my family in my more confined living room. I constantly walk across the quad to get to the other parts of campus, such as classes or common meeting areas, since I live in Fairmont. I do not normally go to the athletic facilities, or that side of campus, since I am not an athlete and I don’t often go to many sporting events as a spectator. I work at a location off-campus, but my workplace is close to my dorm. I do not often go to buildings where I don’t have class, so during the day I mostly go to Lewis, Larson, Hall of Letters, or Gregory, aside from the commons and my own dorm. I do not know yet where some of the other classroom buildings are, and if I never have a class in some of them, I may never visit them, since I would have no need to do so. I generally need to have an express reason to be in a particular part of campus, or else I will not venture to that area. I tend to walk along the same paths every week as my schedule becomes more and more set in a routine, limiting the space that I use to the set paths I tread.

Malinowski's Myth and Magic

Bronislaw Malinowski draws upon his own fieldwork experience to draw conclusions on native magic and myth. Malinowski views myths as stories that dictate morals, religious practices, and social standings. They give a people group a precedent from which to base their practices and refer to for the purpose of solving quarrels, creating a tight-knit community whose values are all based on the same traditions. When I think of myth, I think of a story that explains why something exists or how something functions, such as how the sun and moon came into being, or how rain falls. I do not tend to think of a myth as something that governs my everyday way of life, as Malinowski does. Malinowski defines magic as a tool to be used when man does not feel that he has the ability to control the outcome of the concerned process or situation, leading him to resort to chants, ceremonial acts, and the use of an officiating minister to reduce the role of chance in his situation. I tend to think of magic as a more taboo force in literature or film, or as something that primitive peoples use to attempt to control their environment or other people around them. In some movies, magic is portrayed as a way out of a tight predicament for the characters involved, or a way to gain an advantage over an opponent. At the root, I agree with Malinowski’s thinking regarding magic: people resort to magic when they feel the need to rely on some sort of power greater than themselves in order to achieve their goals.

Cultural Anthropology, here I come!

Here I am, writing a blog for my intro. to cultural anthropology class to enhance my learning experience. Over the course of the past year, I have posted on and perused many blogs, and now I am starting one. This should be interesting. I am very excited to see what comes about as a result of this blog, and am intrigued to see what I learn as I embark on this new blogging adventure.

This is Gabrielle Wong, signing off for "Searching for Culture."