Summary Of Social Time: The Heartbeat Of Culture

In Levine and Wolff’s article Social Time: The Heartbeat of Culture they talk about the culture of Brazil and how they casually show up late to their class, seeing as though he was a professor, and acted like it was the natural thing to do. Their stereotype being that Brazilians put off their business until tomorrow. He wasn’t shocked because he had heard of the about the term “manha” before. His class left early, or just when they wanted to, taking their time. To Robert it was different because he was from California, and nobody looked at the clock class was just over when you heard everyone shuffling their things and getting ready to go.
Helena went to antique shop, where the owner had given up farming to make more money, but his family still lived in the village. His plan was to make money so his children can have the best education and learn english. An old man came in to sell his butter jars. They argued about the price because he had promised him a higher price a few weeks before but with a few cracks in the jar the price was lowered. So he left with enough money to buy some sugar, and the old man scolded Helena for saying they were lovely since that meant they were worth more than what he gave him. He

was from his own village but he still had to put up a hard bargain. They were in city that had converted to using money but yet they were still bargaining because it’s what they’re used to.
In Helena’s Learning from Ladakh, she talks about how money is an economic issue and it just pushes people apart.

They mainly used money for their wants, but that quickly changed when they came more dependent and now their money went to noodles and digital watches. Money became more important farming because the more money you had the more food you could buy. They basically got money quicker than they could get wheat or barley. With their new economy, it was hard to stay a farmer because they didn’t have the money to pay the large amount of wages, so they abandoned their farms to make money in the city. With money involved the gap increased between the rich and the poor, farmers could only have so much barely but money could just go straight into the

bank.
In traditional culture money wasn’t needed, it was more of a trading system. When they are given a new economy they start to transfer from farming to working in the city to make more money. As they became more dependent on money, people moved from the village to the city to become shopkeepers and other things. They basically went from making houses with their bare hands to living in big buildings surrounded by little shops here and there. Going from bartering to consumerism didn’t seem difficult, except for the farmers transition. Money ruined relationships because people didn’t want to pay the laborers, so the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.