Rituals And Traditions: It Takes A Tribe

“Rituals and Traditions; It Takes a Tribe,” written by David Berreby and “Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” written by Jane Tompkins, both exemplify a typical controversial topic in the United States of America today. The US prides there self on the basis of freedom, and how Americans are made up of individuals with backgrounds from all around the world. Many consider the US to be a “melting pot”, a society where cultures are just blended together and not recognized fully on their own, where as others consider the US to be a “salad bowl”, where people of international cultures hold fast to their traditions and practices and coexist with the cultures around them. Both authors of the readings propose that generally speaking,

Tompkins and Berreby share both corresponding and deviating points in their works that keeps each viewpoint on opposite ends of the spectrum, yet perfectly balanced.
In “Rituals and Traditions; It Takes a Tribe,” Berreby proposes that groups and beliefs are naturally created and they exist at the expense of another, thus creating “us” vs “them”; similar to the analogy of the salad bowl, with a society made up of this idea. In “Indians: Textualism, Morality, and the Problem of History” Tompkins discusses the history of groups and how they depict the issues that are usually made by alternate points of views. Tomkins feels that history is vital, yet understudies of history ought to be mindful that the perspectives are skewed to their own particular judgments, which in a way is a reverse “melting pot”, because individuals are independent on their own regardless of group; “because history is bias, one must use their own judgment when studying historic occupancy”. Berreby argues people have a common need to generalize one another, and which variables may emphasis the procedure. Regardless of age, people tend to feel the need to acquire a group to maintain a personal comfort level of their own. When attending college, students will