Cultural construction is one of the key values in the study of Anthropology for several reasons. According to Peoples and Bailey in our Humanity book, Anthropology not only helps us understand the biological, technological, and cultural development of humanity but it’s also intended to teach us the importance of understanding and appreciating cultural diversity. By definition, “Cultural constructions are arbitrary in that they are created and maintained by each culture, cultural constructions are not fixed forever rather they are dynamic and change over time. (McGraw-Hill) In other words it would be impossible to gain an understanding for Anthropology without cultural construction since it’s purpose is to illustrate the birth, change, and differences of ideas and values within individual cultures.
Examples of cultural constructions can be seen throughout history in several forms such as gender, relationships, and marriage. “Cultural construction of gender emphasizes that different cultures have distinctive ideas about males and females and use these ideas to define manhood/masculinity and womanhood/femininity.” (Humanity, 239) In many cultures gender roles are a great way to gain an understanding of just how different the construction of gender can be amongst individual cultures. The video The Women’s Kingdom provides an example of an uncommon gender role, which is seen in the Wujiao Village where the Mosuo women are the last matriarchy in the country and have been around for over one thousand years. Unlike other rural Chinese villages where many girls are degraded and abandoned at birth, Mosuo woman are proud and run the households where the men simply assist in what they need. The view of gender as a cultural construct ...
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...not only would we not have an understanding or respect for different cultures, but we would never be able to fully appreciate let alone understand the origin or meaning behind our own cultural constructions that surround us in our every day lives.
Works Cited
Peoples, James, and Garrick Bailey. Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 9th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003. Print.
Nanda, Serena. Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub., 1990. Print.
Zhou, Xiaoli. "The Women's Kingdom." Vimeo. German Camera Productions, n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
Jahn, Beate. The Cultural Construction of International Relations: The Invention of the State of Nature. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2000. Print.
McGraw, and Hill. "FAQ." Cultural Anthropology | . N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2013
Robbins, R. H. (2014). Cultural anthropology: a problem-based approach (Second Canadian ed.). Itasca: F.E. Peacock.
Gender consists of the behaviors, and attitudes in which a group considers proper for each sex. Within China, the male children grow up to take over the land, or home and take care of their parents. They also are the ones that bring in the family, and carry on the family’s last name. When the Chinese government introduced the one-child policy, this made most men, want and desire to have male children. Then started the men throwing out Chinese children and the women to begin to leave the female children or abort them because a daughter was not acceptable. This shows that the males held the dominant position within Chinese society because of the fact they inherit everything, and are to take care of the parents when they become elderly. Also, in Chinese culture the women are more submissive, and throughout history were always the one that was sold, had arranged marriages and other more seen as someone’s property other than someone’s daughter. But because of the stigma against female children, they have predicted that in 2020 that around thirty million adult males to be unmarried. Some say that women are being held more precious and valuable, but as shown in the documentary, many women are being kidnapped and sold to men without wives. This leads to violence, and these women constantly living in a fearful and abusive environment. In the documentary, they also showed us a man that works to find these missing, or kidnapped women. Another person that spoke to us was a woman that he rescued, she was barely rescued because the whole village tried to fight off the police and detective. This resulted in her having to leave her son with the man. This shows us that within Chinese culture men just believe the female gender is meant to be submissive, and have no
In a village left behind as the rest of the China is progressing, the fate of women remains in the hands of men. Old customs and traditions reign supreme, not because it is believed such ways of life are best, but rather because they have worked for many years despite harsh conditions. In response to Brother Gu’s suggestion of joining communist South China’s progress, Cuiqiao’s widower father put it best: “Farmer’s have their own rules.”
Although there have been women in China that have held positions of power and even lead in prominent positions, the history of the Chinese civilization has been one of male dominance. “Unfortunately, no level of leadership, education or social prominence for women has changed the patriarchal nature of traditional Chinese society (Perry 279).” Women in Chinese society are still considered to be a possession of the man or are looked upon as servants. Because they are seen in this manner, except for a few, women have not been able to contribute spiritually, politically or scientifically to Chinese society. It is to say almost for certain that women being constrained in this manner has prevented China from advancing to its full potential. The morale of a suppressive society is not one that encourages imagination, exploration or advancement. Although the Chinese in general are an efficient people, they have not continued their at one time rapid advances in technology. This is partly due to the fact that women have so often been kept to the side and unable to be involved in the same aspect as men are. Some may argue that the women influence in the home as a caregiver would have somewhat of an impact on their value and importance. However, in Chinese and many other societies, “homemaker” is thought to be the only role for women and not considered to be one of great value. It is not surprising that after thousands of years, the transformation of the Chinese society still reflects the patriarchal history of traditional China and the defining characteristics that define women in a submissive role to men. This paper will examine the attitudes and feelings toward women, give examples of women in leadership positions throughout the history of China, discuss their inability to bring forth change to the patriarchal society and the modern day status of women.
In a meantime, women in ancient China cannot participate in elections, nor involve political activities—their main job is taking care of their husbands and children, doing housework and cooking for their family (Huang, Anderulis and Chen). There are other means to restrict women: binding feet is also one of the popular Confucian ways to control and dominate women in ancient China, because such inhumane action can reduce women’s mobility, therefore they can be more loyal to their husbands. Hence, the social status of women in ancient China is extremely inferior and such “philosophy” still influences present Chinese gender roles. Gender Roles in People’s Republic of China (Form 1949-Present) Gender roles have also changed multiple times since the establishment of People’s Republic of China, because of numerous revolutions, campaigns and policies, which are pushing the equality of gender roles.
Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 14th Edition William A. Havilland; Harald E. L. Prins; Bunny McBride; Dana Walrath Published by Wadsworth, Cengage Learning (2014)
The book “Neither Man nor Women” is an ethnography about the Hijras of India published in 1990. Serena Nanda, author of the book, is a professor of Anthropology in City University of New York. When beginning her fieldwork in the study of the Hijras, she only had brief information about the Hijras since there was not much written about them before. Nanda knew she would encounter conflict in communicating with the Indian community and that she would need translators. In the city she settled in, Bastipore, which is located in south central India, there were three spoken languages. She states in the introduction that the translation process was “time consuming, but [she] felt it was necessary to make sure that [she] had correctly understood the subtleties and complexities in such conversations and to increase the reliability of [her] data” (xix). I can understand why it was so imperative to have a translator, especially because she wanted to provide readers with valid information of such unique group of people. Her organization of the book contained chapters with different informative topics about the Hijras. A few of the different sections consisted of: defining Hijras, an overview of the roles they played in society, description of their rituals and spirituality, the operation process, work, personal interviews of individual Hijras. The way she selected to organize the book is acceptable and easy to follow through. As a result of Nanda’s fieldwork, she was able to accumulate comprehension of the Hijras of India and give readers a glimpse of their lifestyle in great detail.
Nanda, S and Warms, R.L. (2011). Cultural Anthropology, Tenth Edition. Belmont, California: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. ISBN – 13:978-0-495-81083-4.
Schultz, Emily A. & Lavenda, Robert H. 2005, Cultural Anthropology, 6th edn, Oxford University Press, New York, Chapter 3: Fieldwork.
The role of the Chinese family in pre-modern China included thoughts centered on Confucian thought and methods. The Chinese family followed different methods of Confucian thought and the division of family responsibilities in China developed because of it. The original text of Confucius that dictated the roles of filial piety in China did not specify gender dichotomy but the implications led Chinese scholars to distinguish the position of men following filial values from women. Pre-Modern China had the dominative power of dozens of dynasties. Confucianism developed ideologically during the Spring and Autumn Period (722-476BC) as an intellectual movement. Although Confucianism’s beliefs stem from the thought of acceptance involving humanities right to learn and grown through personal understanding and knowledge of outside influences there is a division between the male and female tasks in filial piety. The woman’s place in pre-modern Chinese society always depended on the male figure in the household unless the woman held an elder position. In most cases, women under Confucian control had little direction in life that men did not manage. In this paper, I will discuss the relationship among self, community, society, and the state as well as the gender relations and definitions of public and private spaces between men and women in China.
Park, M.A. (2008). Introducing anthropology: An integrated approach, with PowerWeb, 4th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978–0-07-340525-4
Welsch, Robert L, and Kirk M Endicott. “Should Cultural Anthropology Model itself on the Natural Science.” Taking sides clashing views on controversial issues in cultural anthropology. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Print.
Schultz, E.A. & Lavenda, R.H. Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition, Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005.
“It takes time to adjust to a new cultural system and learn new things” (Lake 97). Everyone’s culture is not the exact same, some people do things completely different than others depending on where they are from and their environment. Because of that it will take some time to learn another person’s culture. Another way culture can guide a person is not by recognizing that someone else’s culture is different from one. “He is not culturally ‘disadvantaged’ but he is culturally ‘different’” (Lake 97). By not noticing that someone else’s culture is not like another’s, people can commonly make mistakes for labeling the person. Once a person gets a label they will feel a certain way which is not okay, they will know for sure that they are different before they even figure it out
Culture is an important concept in anthropology. Culture is defined as, "sets of learned behavior and ideas that human beings acquire as members of society. Human beings use culture to adapt to and transform the world in which they live." (LS:512). Culture has been used in anthropology to understand human difference, but within this understanding there have been benefits and drawbacks to the ideas of culture. Finally, the study of language and humans as symbol using creatures helps us have perspectives on different parts of the world. All anthropologists share a certain reliance on culture to have a starting point in understanding human experience as a whole.