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Intercultural experience essay
How can these cultural differences
Essay personal cultural experiences
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After watching video of Chimamanda Adichie: “The danger of a single story” and reading “The Cultural Experience” of Spardley, I have learned more ways to observe different cultures.
As an anthropologist, our job is to look at cultures as an insider of the culture rather than an outsider learning a culture. As Adichie said in her video that she didn’t knew that people like her were able to exist in a book, she also started writing books with main characters just like she read. Later when she wrote a book about an Africa, that is not stereotypical, her professor said it is wrong. That is because we see the world as we have been taught to see it. If we see an Asian automatically we will think that they are geniuses in mathematics and science,
The story Navajo Lessons conveys the theme that “It is important to learn and appreciate your heritage.” This story is about a girl, Celine, and her brother that visit her grandmother on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Celine arrives at a place in the middle of nowhere at her grandmother’s house and is not excited because she had better plans for the summer. Her family is encouraging her to deal with it and make something good out of it. Over time, Celine learns that this trip was worth it because she realized that it is important to learn and appreciate your heritage. Celine learned this in many ways, one of them being that she wanted to learn and listen to the stories that her grandmother was telling.
This short story, Abitibi Canyon, by Joseph Boyden consists several of important principles of Indigenous people that I would like to make connections to my own life, the world around me, and a video talking about biased assumptions people make without meeting them.
In Thomas King's short story "Borders," a Blackfoot mother struggles with maintaining her cultural heritage under the pressure of two dominating nations. Storytelling is important, both for the mother and for the dominant White society. Stories are used to maintain and pass on cultural information and customs from one generation to another. Furthermore, stories can be used both positively and negatively. They can trap individuals into certain ways of thinking, but they can also act as catalysts that drive social change within society.
The Return to Laughter is a fictionalized account by Elenore Smith Bowen about her experiences with the Tiv culture in Africa. It describes her struggles to learn and understand the local culture and beliefs, and juxtaposes her own conflicts, morals and beliefs. Bowen engages in what anthropologists termed participant-observation. The anthropologist made a few mistakes that provided revelations about herself and the Tiv people. Language difficulties provide the greatest barrier: as when the researcher is trying to understand the context of the conversation, while still struggling with the intricacy of a difficult language. Secondly, like most anthropologists Bowen knew that social relationships are a research requirement: informants are needed, yet she quickly realized that identification with one family, status or group in the society could hinder other critical relationships. These lessons are among a few that the anthropologist seeks to overcome. This essay will discuss that culture and language are dependent on each other and how forming social relationships can propel research and reveal insightful knowledge into a culture, while possibly hindering other useful information.
All around the world there are many different customs, beliefs and different cultures. These are the things that interest anthropologist and it’s what makes them want to learn about society. Laura Bohannon is an anthropologist who went to visit the Tiv tribe in West Africa. While staying there she had to learn to overcome the changes in culture and ethnocentrism. While doing so she learned the idea of human nature.
Anthropology is the study of the development of humankind within their different cultures. When one looks inside a culture, they can see the true aspects and meanings behind a societies behavior and traits. By following the principle that is cultural relativism, one can also determine that no culture truly surpasses another culture, and that each society has key differences that are important to its culture and location. This is a method that can also be seen in many intriguing films from this semester, one in particular being The Emerald Forest. Throughout this essay, this film will be analyzed around one character who greatly represents what it means to truly immerse oneself into a different culture to gain a new perspective, and many key terms in anthropology will be explored through 4 different films from the semester.
Chimamanda Adichie, in one of her eye-opening speeches, The Danger of a Single Story, provides the audience with a new insight into the negative impacts that can occur as a result of viewing a story from a single perspective and not putting in an effort to know it from all available viewpoints. Adichie in her simple, yet well-grounded speech, filled with anecdotes of her personal experiences effectively puts across her argument against believing in stereotypes and limiting oneself to just a single story using a remarkable opening, the elements of logos, pathos and ethos, repetitions, as well as maintaining a good flow of thoughts throughout the speech.
Nanda, S and Warms, R.L. (2011). Cultural Anthropology, Tenth Edition. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. ISBN – 13:978-0-495-81083-4.
In 2009 Chimamanda Adichie gave a TED talk about the ‘danger of a single story’. A single story meaning, one thought or one example of a person becoming what we think about all people that fit that description, a stereotype if you will. In today’s America, I believe that we have all felt the wave of stereotypical views at some point or another. Adichie gives many relatable examples throughout her life of how she has been affected by the single story. Her story brings about an issue that all humans, from every inch of the earth, have come to understand on some level. A young child reading only foreign books, a domestic helper that she only perceived as poor. Her college roommates single story about Africans and her own formation of a single
Ruth Benedict’s anthropological book, Patterns of Culture explores the dualism of culture and personality. Benedict studies different cultures such as the Zuni tribe and the Dobu Indians. Each culture she finds is so different and distinctive in relation to the norm of our society. Each difference is what makes it unique. Benedict compares the likenesses of culture and individuality, “A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought or action” (46), but note, they are not the same by use of the word, “like.” Benedict is saying that figuratively, cultures are like personalities. Culture and individuality are intertwined and dependent upon each other for survival.
Readers who cringed at the thought of their unusual activities might feel ethnocentric in the sense that their culture may seem a lot more “normal” compared to the Nacirema’s culture. Nonetheless, the study of anthropology teaches individuals to look at cultures through the cultural relativism lens. Cultural relativism raises the importance of analyzing cultures in their own terms before criticizing them.
The Navajo take pride in their family life and the events that surround them. Their seclusion from society is the base of their customs and activities they treasure used to entertain their People. The Navajo culture is rich in past heritage, ceremonies, and rituals. In everything they do whether it be the birth of a child, planting crops, or healing the sick, some type of ritual is done. These rituals and ceremonies can last fro...
Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology, Robert 2. K. Lavenda and Emily A. Schultz, (United States of America: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2003)
Anthropologists research and write. They participate and observe in order to produce ethnographies. While some anthropologists venture to “exotic” lands to study the “natives,” others conduct ethnographic research within their own culture. Despite the diverse cultures they examine and the use of a tape recorder instead of a pen and a notebook, the ethnographic process is virtually the same. Or is it? Although similarities between ethnographies exist, when it comes down to it, ethnographies differ from one anthropologist to the next and one culture to the next based on the writing techniques applied by the ethnographer, the position of the anthropologist (age, gender, class, culture), and his or her life experiences. Some ethnographers use reflexivity, a writing tool that personalizes ethnography as the anthropologist writes about his/herself in the work. In a reflexive ethnography, the anthropologist positions his/herself in relation to the examined culture and writes about his/her ethnographic experience, an experience which hopefully bridged the gap between the anthropologist’s culture and studied culture, converting the “outsider” status of the anthropologist to an “insider” position. Reflexivity allows the ethnographer to show how and why it is that he/she empathizes with a culture and to allow the audience an opportunity to identify with a culture that is not his/her own. Ultimately, reflexivity conveys the importance to acknowledge the similarities and differences that exist between cultures.
It analyzes similarities and differences in various cultures and societies. Culture is learned and affects our perception of the world throughout our life. Overtime, a sense of cultural superiority is formed amongst individuals who are constantly exposed to their own culture. Anthropology can help eliminate culturally based biases, also known as ethnocentrism. It is a common practice we all in engage in when evaluating other cultures, however, by practicing anthropology this allows us to learn about other cultures by placing themselves into the cultural environment allows us to learn the traditions and customs by experience. Marjorie Shostak`s study of the !Kung people revealed that they organized themselves differently than Western cultures, which included solving conflicts with discussion, communal behavior, and basic living traditions. Moreover, by interviewing and living in this cultural environment, Shostak was able to empathize with the !Kung people and she also considered that all humans share an emotional life, which is important when studying the history of our human