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Characteristics of African traditions
Eating christmas in kalahari summary
Eating christmas in kalahari summary
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• The article Eating Christmas in the Kalahari by Richard Borshay Lee was about an anthropologist who wanted to by an ox for the tribes to eat on Christmas day so they can dance and everyone could get full. The whole article was a long trick they were playing on Richard they were telling him the ox he bought to eat for Christmas wasn’t going to have enough meet for everyone that it was all bone and it was old and about to die. It turns out in the end it was fat and full of meat and everyone had enough to eat they ate it for a couple days after. It turns out that’s the way the people talk about food they don’t want anyone to get a big head and raise their pride they are afraid that it will create an individual who will feel his is superior
Kwanzaa was first celebrated in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, his family and Friends. Dr. Karenga, a professor of African-American History at CSU, Long Beach, was effected by the Watts Riots of the summer of 1965. He felt that African-Americans had lost touch with their African heritage. He began to study ways that they could help themselves and each other. Dr. Karenga wanted to unify his people and instill a pride in their joint culture. He felt that there should be a special time of the year set aside to reflect upon and reaffirm the black community. He studied the harvest and "first fruit" celebrations on many African tribes, and although they all celebrated differently there were similarities in many ways. These similarities are some of what Dr. Karenga incorporated into the celebration of Kwanzaa. Even the name for this celebration was taken from Swahili, which is a nontribal language spoken in many parts of Africa. Kwanza in Swahili (AKA Kiswahili) means "the first" or "the first fruits of the harvest". Dr. Karenga added the final "a" to distinguish the holiday from the Swahili word.
“Araby” tells a story about a little boy’s romance and his disillusionment in the end. While people tend to focus on the ending of the story trying to find some clue from Araby the market alone, I believe there is another site that we should not forget—the room where the priest died. It seems Araby symbolizes the numb, dark adult world while the room is holy, romantic; but as I read more, I find they are quite the same. Comparing the two buildings, one of the hidden reasons for the boy’s anger dawned on me: he is deceived by both sites.
Ethnographic fieldwork in Anthropology challenges the experts to be less attached to the subjects of study; to leave their own believes, understandings of culture, and opinions outside of the research. While “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” by Richard B. Lee takes place in foreign location, “Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS” by Claire E. Sterk occurred in a familiar urban setting; nonetheless, they both experienced the advantages and disadvantages of working in a known area versus an unfamiliar location.
Food preparation is a feature of culture that can be seen amongst humans and primates. Humans prepare their food by cooking it as this helps with easier digestion and extraction of nutrients from the food. Although primates do not cook their food, Japanese macaque monkeys have been observed to wash potatoes that are covered with sand prior to eating the potatoes (Boesch, 2003). This behavior not only displays culture amongst the macaque monkeys, it also
In her article, “Sweet, Sour, and Resentful,” Firoozeh Dumas directs us through on how her mom readies a feast. She gives us detailed description on how her mother cooks the food for the guests by starting out grocery shopping until the part that the food is ready to be served. She writes about how because of their Iranian traditions they have to prepare a Persian feast for their newcomer friends and family, which brought joy to everyone, but her mother. Yet, we can see that she is trying to make sense to it all, every weekend they have guests over since the Iran’s Revolution started. Vitally, traditions stay great just when they convey satisfaction to the individuals celebrating those traditions. Also, the food that we choose tends to be based upon our culture, economic and social aspects. I agree with her even though traditions within various cultures are very different, but they all are supposed to do one thing that is bring everyone closer to each other, and bring happiness. However, that’s not always the case, especially in this article.
Scholars with a more anthropological twist have written about the different social perceptions of obesity, e.g. the positive view of fatness among some indigenous peoples (Swinburne et al. 1996). In an article entitled, “An anthropological Perspective on Obesity “ (Brown and Konner 1987), the authors found that “cross cultural data about body preferences for women reveal that over 80% of cultures for which shape preference data are available, people prefer a plump shape” (cited in Sobal 2004, 383).
Latin America has seen 500 years of integration of the cultures of the native Indigenes (indigenous people), Spanish colonizers and African slaves. And Christmas season is one of the most beautiful times of the year to witness these traditions. The Christmas season is a time for the Latin American community to showcase their culture, customs and traditions.
Eating Christmas in the Kalahari is an effective piece of literature which shows that a culture might understand a holiday or another's cultures traditions in a sense but they might practice it in another way and might find something offensive which wouldn't be in another culture. Richard Lee went to Southwest Africa to the !Kung expecting for the people to be happy and grateful that he brought the fattest oxen but the oxen were no more generous than the expression of his gratitude for the assistance and hospitality.
year, most of which go unreported”(Michon). Food; one of the pleasures of being a human being in this world, the way it looks, the way it smells, and the way it tastes. All that pleasure can be diminished by
Throughout the development of an individual’s cultural identity, one must take into account the factor of location. Depending on where someone lives, will determine the types of food they eat. One writer, Patricia J. Williams, wrote a personal essay, “Ethnic Hash, which develops the importance of food in culture. She comments, “Having grown up and learned that you are what you eat, I have worked to broaden my horizons and cultivate my tastes” (Williams 14). It is interesting that the author uses figurative language to show that the foods you eat make up who you are. Furthermore, food helps provide a sense of uniqueness in distinguishing one culture from another, while still creating an individual’s sense of self. Another author, Santha Rama Rau, writes “By Any Other Name”, which also helps discern a person’s distinctive cultural identity. Food helps provide a sense of uniqueness in distinguishing one culture from another while still creating an individual’s sense of self. Also, in “Everyday Use” the author, Alice Walker, mentions, “We sat down to eat and right away he said he didn’t eat collards and pork was unclean. Wangero, though went on through the chitlins and cornbread, the greens and everything else” (Walker 24). To respect the beliefs within a culture, food choice should be taken into account. For example, many faiths such as Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism exclude certain foods from their diets, due to their religious beliefs. Overall, the food that appeals to an individual, coincides with where they are from, as well as their
Food has now become embedded as part of our identity and serves as one of the key ways that men and women display gender under what types of food are eaten and under what circumstances they are done so. What produces this result is the institutions and social structures that project meaning and power to an individual’s identity as it either becomes negotiated or constructed (Nash & Phillipove, 2014, pg.205). Calvert describes a concept where the consumption of meat necessitates the concept of power and domination, as over the centuries the notion of ‘man as hunter’ began to develop through the correlation of men and meat (Calvert, 2014, pg.18). As a result of this meat-eating contributes to the development of a “patriarchal structure of human-male supremacy, celebrating a primitive masculinity and the normalization of the consumption of meat to be a masculine activity (Calvert, 2014, pg.19). As a result of this, when men consume less amounts of meat products they often faced with the misconception seen by their male counterparts that they hold a form of masculinity that is far from one that displays “proper” hegemonic characteristics. This gendering of food serves an important process in describing the presence of hegemonic masculinity as food consumption practices allow men to confirm and subscribe to the
Some days people were able to catch fish. When they did, they ate it in a variety of ways: some preferred to cook it, others were too hungry to waste time and ate it raw. There were times when people were so hungry that they ate their cats, dogs and other pets. In the steppes, some were lucky to find a gopher, or a rat. They were happy to eat anything that they were able to catch to survive: mice, frogs, worms, beetles and other insects. When there were times when people saw a wounded or a dead horse, they had “parties.” This is because one horse can feed many people and it is very rich in iron, zinc, selenium, phosphorus, niacin, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12. Perhaps, one horse’s live was able to save a dozen of
It is important to study diet in different cultures in anthropology as food is essential in human existence. Food is insufficient commodity and thus offers a good platform for debate and advancing anthropological theories and research methods (Hockett & Haws, 2003). In addition, the study of diet brings about light on societal processes like political economic value creation, social construction of memory as well as symbolic value creation (Dirks & Hunter, 2013). This topic has created a good arena for debating cultural and historical importance in relationship to structural and symbolic explanations of human behavior. Through this, it is possible to respond to ethnographical questions as our understanding
As defined by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, food is “material consisting essentially of protein, carbohydrate, and fat used in the body of an organism to sustain growth, repair, and vital processes and to furnish energy.” However, can food not provide something more than simply nourishment? For ages, scientists all over have been noticing patterns in the ways various cultures think of food and make it parts of their everyday lives. These patterns teach us more about these cultures, as well as the many ways that food affects them. Food influences many parts of these cultures, such as religion, relationships, gender, and finally communication. Communication is a vital part of one’s everyday life and Anthropologist E.N. Anderson describes food as “second only to language as a social communication system” (Anderson 124). Thai director Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman and Latin American director María Ripoll’s Tortilla Soup, a Latino re-make of Lee’s film, reveal the similarities of two seemingly different cultures and their use of food as a means of communication.
Russia celebrates Christmas with great festivities despite the fact that the entire country is covered with snow. Similar to other Eastern Orthodox countries, Russia also celebrates Christmas on the 7th of January. Russia was ruled by the communists for a very long period of time due to which Christmas, just like other religious festivals, could not gain much popularity among people. Christmas was even replaced by the "Festival of Winter". Majority of people in Russia were atheists and that’s why they did not celebrated Christmas for a long period of time.