The essay “Funeral Specialists in Cantonese society: Pollution, Performance, and Social Hierarchy” by James Watson illustrates the concepts of magical thinking, a way of ordering the world based on the fundamental essence of an object, described in Carol Nemeroff and Paul Rozin’s essay, “The Making of a Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking.” Their “ law of similarity” – the idea that all objects with the same essence share the same properties – is easy to see in the yin and yang essences of men and women and in how the villagers treat those associated with the death essence. On the other hand, the “law of contagion” states that essence can we transferred from one object to another, either contaminating it or
from solid or not. He is going to conduct an experiment that will tell him if
The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion’s account of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. The book shows how she attempts to cope with the grief of the death of her husband while tending to her daughter’s, Quintana, severe illness. In the book Didion does something, which might seem abnormal to some people. While Didion is cleaning out her husband’s closet at work, she cannot find herself throwing away her husband’s shoes because “he would need shoes if he was to return” (Didion). Joan Didion reactions to death are typically American because of how people in America cannot cope with death and refuse to accept the notion that their loved one has passed away while other cultures are able to accept the idea of death because their loved ones are not gone but still here with them.
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...
For example, when Uncle Po got sick and was admitted into the hospital, a couple of the Hmong people decided to go visit him. When they went, they checked to see if his nose is broken, because a broken nose indicates if a person will die soon. They noticed he did have a broken nose, and knew he was going to die soon. They all started preparing for his death. The Hmong people have an extensive funeral for him, which involves a chicken so the chicken can help him find his soul in the afterworld (McSilver & Siegle). Hmong people rely heavily on culture and the area around them when it comes to health and wellbeing. In Western culture, people usually wait for the doctor to announce a person dead. They also do not send a chicken with that person so when the person finds their soul, the chicken can co. Western culture is heavily dependent on the doctors orders, as it is assumed that the doctor knows
...ral differences in patterns of behavior and of social support includes each culture’s sense of what is sane and healthy, as opposed to life- and health-threatening. Thus, what people do protects the bereaved and in some senses everyone around the bereaved form. The cross-cultural emphasis, in fact, is a kind of metaphor. To help effectively, we must overcome our presuppositions and struggle to understand people on their own terms (i.e., not having the intention or the reason why the man placed a rose over Bella J. Bhukhan’s name).
As Walker lightens the reader with the importance of quilts in “Everyday Use”, she amplifies the significance of it by presenting Maggie, the younger of two sisters. Maggie’s strong attachment to these quilts have carved memories in her heart that she ‘”can’ member Grandma Dee without the quilts”’ (Walker 321). I contrast is Maggie’s sister, Dee, who refers to them as “priceless” (Walker 320). Observing them from an economic view, she tries to posses them. The author implies that although both sisters differ in reasons to value quilts, the legacy that the quilts represent is indeed priceless. In “Hangzhou”, Chang presents the reader with a different legacy. Represented by the legend of the Pagoda, a female trapped spirit, the author reveals it as “a punishment” (Chang 101) for trying to hold a husband using dark sources instead of fathering him with a son. A strong belief handed down for generations. Regardless of their origin, these legacies encourage both families to deeply treasure the traditions that have formed each of
According to a study, many difficult cultures have the tendency to establish their methods of coping, whether it is through religion, culture, or/and personal ideologies (Chen, 2012). Mourning and burial ceremonies play a pivotal role for Lossography due to individuals having the ability and liberty to express melancholy and sometimes jubilation during the times they once had with their loved one. These types of beliefs and practices used as coping mechanisms can be very meaningful and profound for the comfort of the individual who’s going through a mournful experience (Chen, 2012). These types of coping mechanisms is important for Lossography, due to the fact that individuals are able to convey emotions through traditional practices, archaic arts and crafts, and spiritual rituals to fully find meaning with the death of their loved one. In addition, having established beliefs can definitely change the perception of what death signifies based upon religious and cultural expectations of the afterlife. However, not all cultures and religions put much emphasis into the afterlife. For instance, the monotheistic religion Judaism does not contain any interpretation of what happens after someone dies. Judaists believe that nothing happens after death, death is considered a taboo and not something that is commonly talked about for these religious individuals. Lossography, in religion may take on many forms for how death is perceived and for what actions can people take to ensure that their death will bring them to a place of peace, joy, and everlasting life. Lossography regarding religion, gives individuals hope that death is not the end, it gives them hope that knowing that person may not be here with us in the flesh, but that person is somewhere smiling down. Lossography in religion,
“The whole character of Chinese popular religion flows in the direction of plethora of rituals and obligations without much discernable doctrinal underpinning” (Corduan, 2012, p.410). The Chinese popular religion has gravitated away the gods of Buddha and Daoism and captured the philosophy of luck and materialism (Corduan, 2012), while it “is less concerned with philosophical issues and
Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism are religions that also act as a complete way of life guiding ethics and philosophy. These Asian traditions emerged as an explanation of mortality and have a long history of mutual influence on China, India, and Japan, developing during a time of war and political instability. These three schools of thought each have no gods and teach in improving the followers relationship with the universe. Confucianism and Daoism are complimentary traditions that share beliefs on ancestral spirits, Tian or “heaven”, and Yin & Yang (the balance of forces) however, they diverge on the expression of the Dao. The Dao is a unity that connects all things together, however it is not viewed as an ultimate god or deity. Daoism
In the face of the universal fact of death, attitudes to the corpse are various and changeable. These attitudes are formed through the practices of treatment of the dead and are embodied in various ways (Parker Pearson 1999, p. 45).
The Chinese burial customs of the 1890s to 1930s are very different than what we see from burial customs now. There are many different, interesting things about the early 1900s Chinese burial customs:: The steps taken when a family member dies, the superstitions about burials, and the difference between our burial customs and the burial customs of the Chinese people during those times.
There are many types of pollution. The main types of pollution are water, air, soil, thermal, radioactive, noise, and light. The topic for this experiment is Water Pollution. Water Pollution became a problem in the 1900’s when water started being treated like sewage. Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970 because of 1900’s pollution. Water Pollution also affects humans and animals. There was a Cholera outbreak in 1854, before water pollution became a problem, and a Typhoid outbreak in New York from 1900 to 1915. There are multiple possible causes to Water Pollution. Humans let out chemicals into the environment, and when some of those chemicals
What is pollution? Pollution is a detrimental enemy to all species that walk on earth. It is a product of mankind carbon foot print on the environment. It consists of chemicals or particles in the air that can harm the health of humans, animals, and plants. Pollution occurs when pollutants contaminate the natural surrounding; which brings about changes that affect our normal lifestyles adversely. Pollutants are the key elements of pollution which are generally waste materials of dissimilar forms. Pollution disturbs our ecosystem and the balance in the environment. With innovation and development in our lives pollution has reached its peaks; giving rise to global warming and human illness. When raw materials, water, energy and other resources
Efforts to improve the standard of living for humans--through the control of nature and the development of new products--have also resulted in the pollution, or contamination, of the environment. Much of the world's air, water, and land is now partially poisoned by chemical wastes. Some places have become uninhabitable. This pollution exposes people all around the globe to new risks from disease. Many species of plants and animals have become endangered or are now extinct. As a result of these developments, governments have passed laws to limit or reverse the threat of environmental pollution.
Although, almost very frequently, people tempt to relate taboo and norms all the time, this is not always so. A taboo can originate from beliefs in supernatural forces such as magic, sorcery or witchcraft. There are rationals why people believe in unseen power that exist in vacuum, namely impersonal supernatural force. The potential of a supernatural force is not as de minimis as it seems to be. In fact, the reason why taboo and supernatural force could be related together is due to their capabilities to reduce anxiety, provide social control and emotional comfort, especially when people are facing crisis, regardless of its severity. Taoism Chinese particularly, are being faithful in universal force named ‘chi’. ‘Chi’ works in both micro and macro perspectives of the world but the operational principles underlying are no different. For instance, ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, two opposite forces that stay in conflict with one another. And for one to be in the state of perfect harmony, the individual has to resolve the conflicting force and gather them as one. This is the reason why, there are taboo that prevent and even restrict a family to organise or participate any form of celebrations in a fixed period after the funeral, as an evidence of one is sad over the lost of the deceased. This is due to the belief that celebrations are considered happiness while the death of a deceased is considered sadness. Hence, these two emotions are seen as conflicting with each other and is believed to bring disharmony and therefore, bad luck to an individual, as modelled with the principles of ‘yin’ and