Based off of previous courses in psychology I had never thought of Edward Sapir as an anthropologist. However, the section of Sapir’s, The Unconscious Patterning of Behavior in Society and Richard Handler’s Vigorous Male and Aspiring Female reveal Sapir’s influences on linguistic and cultural anthropology. Sapir’s method of anthropology blends together psychological aspects in order to maintain that studying the nature of the relationships between different individual personalities is important for the ways in which culture and society develop. Sapir was born in Lauenberg Germany but as a young child he and his family emigrated to the United States. Family dynamics were often turbulent and strained, but Sapir’s parents instilled in Edward …show more content…
The Vigorous Male and Aspiring Female portrays Sapir (as well as Benedict) as a tortured poet that explored his theories on personality through his poems. I found it interesting how Handler views Sapir as an artist and anthropologists simultaneously due to the fact that it humanizes Sapir as a figure. In which writing poetry provides an alternative method to work out developing culture theory that show his concern for the “dialectic between traditional discipline” of anthropology and “individual creativity” (134). After closer inspection it made sense to me that Sapir found poetry as an outlet due to the fact that his anthropological work on linguistics stressed the “aesthetic phenomena” of social behavior (136). Sapir’s psychological grounding and methodology is shown in his epistemological critique of culture. In which he finds that culture is not a thing shared by everyone within the cultural “boundaries”, rather every person has a unique culture because personal history brings unique configurations of influence (147). This view highly individualistic view of language and consequently experiences that shaped culture, give individuals tremendous agency within their culture. Therefore, Sapir fundamentally disagreed with the “superorganic” approach to
Literature shows us the changes of our society from time to time. It also gives us an idea about people, culture, politics, gender traditions, as well as an overall view of previous civilizations. As a part of literature, poetry introduces us to different cultures with different perspectives. Ancient Egypt and ancient China may differ in terms of culture, politics, economic stability, tradition, or even in religious belief. However, in poetry, especially in love lyrics both Egyptian and Chinese poems portray common area of describing women, social attitudes toward love, sexuality and the existence of romance or selfishness in relationships. . If we look at the Egyptian poem “My god, my Lotus” and the Chinese poem “Fishhawk”, we will see both poems have similarities in describing relationships. Also, they have the similarity of imagining the lovers and their expression of love toward each other. However, both poems have some significant differences in terms of representing female sexuality, gender disparity and the display of love.
Masculine identity has been constructed and represented in numerous ways in literature throughout the Western literary canon. The representations change based on a plethora of reasons, such as when the text has been written, the audience or the message the author is trying to convey. Benjamin Franklin’s The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein differ in many ways such as narrator frame, tone and writing style. However, they are both narrated from the perspective of men with grand ambitions. In this essay, I will be comparing the construction and representation of masculine identity by analysing the narration, tone and the use of plain direct language vs. figurative language of the texts in reference
Gender is deeply embedded into our society. It is pretty much at every level; it is something complex that goes far beyond just being a male or female. Gender impacts what occupations individuals have access to do, what type of activities they can and can’t do and even what colors they can and cannot wear. As mentioned by Catherine G. Valentine, in The Prism of Gender, society has taught us that a real woman is feminine; a real man is masculine and heterosexual; and any deviation is unacceptable and unnatural (3). Therefore, we live in a society that is binary, and has taught us that there are only two acceptable genders, male and female, and as a result everything is shaped by that idea. Nonetheless, like stated by Kate Bornstein in Gender
Gender is a social construct created around the idea that the two sexes of male and female define whom we are, what we are like, and how we should live. In our modern world, many people have come to the realization that biological sex and gender identity are two separate categories and often have no impact on personality. For many thousands of years, in various cultures however, there have been defined jobs and lives for men and women. In The Sphere of Women, Goethe constructs definitions of male and female by creating separate lives for women and men and exalting in the personal traits naturally found in both genders.
In the bildungsroman Drown by Junot Diaz, the topic and idea of cultural identity appears multiple times throughout the book, especially in the short stories “Ysrael” and “Fiesta, 1980”. Diaz employs the use of code switching between Spanish and English to portray how it can be a common occurrence for people who have emigrated. Diaz also highlights how the culture differs with the behavior that is exchanged between family members. Masculinity is shown to be an extremely important quality to the men of this culture, in order to establish dominance. The pattern of cultural identity is shown through the use of code switching and language use, family dynamics and the importance of masculinity.
Throughout Gendered World sociologist argue that gender and sex are socially constructed instead of being innate. The authors present evidence in regards to history, biology, and contemporary viewpoints using day-to-day examples. Although alternative viewpoints may argue that through a biological perspectives gender and sex is an innate characteristic through deeper examination it can be determined that gender and sex are truly socially constructed.
The novel “Women Without class” by Julie Bettie, is a society in which the cultural you come from and the identity that was chosen for you defines who you are. How does cultural and identity illustrate who we are or will become? Julie Bettie demonstrates how class is based on color, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The author describes this by researching her work on high school girls at a Central Valley high school. In Bettie’s novel she reveals different cliques that are associated within the group which are Las Chicas, Skaters, Hicks, Preps, and lastly Cholas and Cholos. The author also explains how race and ethnicity correspondence on how academically well these students do. I will be arguing how Julie Bettie connects her theories of inequality and culture capital to Pierre Bourdieu, Kimberle Crenshaw, Karl Marx and Engels but also how her research explains inequality among students based on cultural capital and identity.
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.
Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story “Hills Like White Elements” explores the way a couple discuss an ‘operation’ (42) which the woman is to receive, which is implied to be abortion without actually mentioning the word itself. It is set at a table at a train station somewhere between Barcelona and Madrid in Spain. The couple consists of an American male and a ‘girl’ (5), whose name is later revealed to be Jig (42), which might imply that perhaps she is younger, but not a local of Spain since she asks the American to translate for her in the first few lines of their conversation (15). Jig resists the idea of aborting the child throughout the course of the story and the American tries to convince her by
During the Victorian Period men and women's roles became more sharply defined than any time in history. Before the nineteenth century women could work alongside the men. In the nineteenth century, “The Victorian Period”, men went to work and women stayed home and their servants done all domestic duties. (bl.uk) The Victorian Period treat men as defenders and creators while treating women as cultured and mysterious. In The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde portrays men as being sleazy and liars and women as an ignorant and a maid.
I learned that Phycologists study the intellectual and emotional behavior of the individual, while anthropologists investigate the interrelations between social relations that make for ‘‘strenuous exercise’’ in a group. The primary concern of anthropologist’s are the group not the individual. Boas makes is clear that individuals ‘‘develops and acts as a member of a racial or social group’’.
In Susan Bordo’s The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity, the cultural specific syndromes, that is the illness recognized elusively by a particular culture, of anorexia nervosa and agoraphobia amongst middle- to upper-class Euro-American women (McGarry 2017), are made akin with the framework of femininity and the—often destructive—pursuit of control. The modality that females employ to express their resistance, or paradoxical compliance, to the hegemonic ideals of gender that pervade these cultures alike are eerily perverse and demand our critical attention and inquiry.
Gender plays an important component to the types of professions men and women pursued from the middle ages to the early modern period. The sexual division of labor was largely designated by the perceived capabilities of each gender, which was greatly influenced by its society and culture. Labor and space were also restricted by gender, and women were generally attached to the home or had low-skilled jobs. These activities were regulated and policed by society, which indicated that patriarchy was never isolated from gender and the profession. In the labor force, men and women had worked for survival and wages from the Roman to the early modern period in Europe, but femininity had rarely been tied to capitalism, the economy, and the profession.
In 1926, Mead began a career at the American Museum of natural History in New York, as an assistant curator. In 1942, she was advanced to associate curator and a full fledge curator in 1961. In 1969, “she was awarded curator emeritus. Her time at the museum culminated with a display of her own work in 1971” (Flaherty 2002, 3). The fact remains that Mead will not be forgotten and she has continued to be a role-model to many prospective and current anthropologist and scholars in the social science field. One od Mead’s most popular research includes a “propose that masculine and feminine characteristics reflected cultural conditioning (or socialization) not fundamental biological differences” (Flaherty 2002, 3). Hence, in the year 1933, Mead discovered that “human nature is malleable” at a camp in Kenakatem (Flaherty 2002). This thought occurred due to Mead witnessing three cultures, the Arapesh, Mundugumor and the Tchambuli. Mead realized that “each culture displayed different gender role qualities. In one culture both the women and men were cooperative, in the second they were both ruthless and aggressive, and in the Thambuli culture the women were dominant and the men more submissive” (Flaherty 2002, 4). As a result, Mead decided to publish an article entitle, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, in 1935 and explored the “subject more deeply in the next decade with Male and Female
The poets integrated ?metaphysical conceits? as focal parts of these poems. Along with these, they used effective language as a basis for their convincing arguments, they included subjects of periodical importance (e.g. ?courtship? and ?religion?), and use very clever structures that are manipulated in order to make the poem read in the desired way. The very clear indication of the theme in question was strongly aided by the way in which the personas portrayed the emotions they felt and the way they showed their attitudes towards the subject. Considering all these factors, the poets made critical arguments to the mistresses in order to alter their views, thus changing their minds, on denying the poets the sex that they desired so strongly.