The semester maybe over, but the journey still continues.......

Kirsty Anne Prescott
May21(Due Date May22)
Ant 1001 Tv24a
2nd year Accounting

When i first joined this Anthropology class i thought i was doomed. I had never really understood what it was prior to taking this class. I must say that this has to be the most interesting class that i have taken. This class forced me to explore topics i would have never explored on my own like, race, religion and too numerous to list.
While doing my ethnography, i came up with an unusual twist to popular saying. We all know 'Knowledge is power', however this very clause that most people live by could be looked at by saying 'Knowing is more powerful than Judgment."
This class has really broaden my horizon, the simplest events have me searching for possible reason why they might have happened? Was that taught to me by my parents? Did i learn that from my peers? So as i leave this Anthropology class behind, the ethnography in me is very much alive, still lurking and looking to find more information.
World i have finally popped!

Mixed Blood by Jeffrey M Fish

Kirsty Anne Prescott

April 30th( Due April 30th)

ANT1001 TV24A

Accounting (2nd year)

Mixed Blood by Jeffrey M Fish

Jeffrey Fish's Mixed blood has made me now question the social classes and categories that i have known all my life. Race as can be defined by Britannica as the term that denotes a division of human kind possessing traits that are transmissible by descent and sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type, example Caucasoid or Negroid. However, this definition that i use to categorize people i meet everyday has now become null and void from reading Fish's piece.

Fish present the two varying definitions of Race from Brazil and United States. The United States has used race as a form of social construct that allows them to categorise individuals on not on their appearance, but by their fore parents. Whereas Brazilians are categorized by the way they look. This presents a case for individuals who may move from Brazil to America. Is the identity that they held for themselves in Brazil now lost because of the differences in the definition of Race?

It now makes me think about the context of Race in my country Trinidad and Tobago , the main racial categories are black or Indian, because that is what the population is comprised of. The number of whites and Asian descendants are limited. However, i am now a resident in the United States and have been characterized as African American, but why can't i be African Caribbean? I don't consider my self American, but i have to conform to America's racial segments.

Racial stratification impacts social inequality especially people of mixed blood. The example that Fish gave of an octoroon who is 1/8 black and 7/8 black is given the derogatory race as black. In times where racial standings were the determinants of jobs and place of residents , these individuals who were not born into a group , but branded by their inferior blood were given the inferior jobs and were categorized as inferior.

As Fish said, race is just a way to justify the exclusion of one particular group of people from others who felt it was necessary. It has no biological or physical reasoning behind it.

Bibliography

Jeffery M Fish, "Mixed Blood". Conformity and Conflict Special Ed. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.2008.

Baseball Magic by George Gmelch

Kirsty Anne Prescott
April 24th(Due Date April 23)
ANT1001 TV24A
Accounting( 2nd yr.)

Baseball Magic by George Gmelch

George Gmelch's piece Baseball magic is a classic example of a piece makes you rethink what you thought you knew. I would have never linked a relationship between Religion and the practices that baseball teams or individuals have on a day to day basis. It has now become evidently clear that these practices, whether it be eating in a particular spot everyday, or going to church faithfully every Sunday, have tremendous effects on our everyday lives.

Gmelch who presents his case with American baseball players, shows the various taboos and fetishes that these players have and they believe that these rituals are linked to their winning or losing a game. The most alarming factor is that these professional players forget or rather ignore the fact that they posses true abilities and skill, which is how they go onto the team in the first place. They idolize prized possession that they believe give them luck and the lack of these rituals or failure of these rituals doesn't stop them, but merely makes them create new ones to fit their needs. It is as if their skills got them into the sport, but their rituals keep them playing!

These players are not too far from me in my everyday life. If i studied in a particular way and earned good grades, it is more likely that i will continue this study practice and it then becomes a ritual until it fails and i create another one. It seems to be a common trend with the human species, it is how we make sense of the unknown.

Throughout Gmelch ethnography the most common trend that these players had was that they were trying to have control over what they deemed uncontrollable. These rituals gave them stability and hope that they have some effects over reality and even if the winning or losing the game had no co-relation, the fact that they might be able to control the outcome was thrilling.

Overall, we all part take in rituals on a daily basis , whether it be brushing our top teeth before the bottom, eating the skin off the fried chicken last, and it helps us cope with the day to day uncertainties of life. My main conclusion , it is not the power of the rituals that make us satisfied, but the power we give to the rituals that make us feel like we are in control and are masters of uncertainty.

Bibliography

Glench, George. "Baseball Magic." Mc Curdley and Spradley. Conformity and Conflict Special Ed:Person Education Inc.2008

KirstyAnne Prescott
April 22nd(Due date March 26th)
ANT 1001 TV24A Gaunt
Accounting Major(second yr.)

Mother's Love: Death without Weeping

Nancy Schepher's piece Mother's Love is a mind blogging piece that has me questioning my judgment of love everyday. Schepher is an anthropologist who from time to time studies the relationships between mothers and their new born babies in a poverty-stricken area called Bom Jesus da Mata in Brazil. In this society it seems that survival of the fitness is the overall theme. Babies who are ill or have a slim chance of surviving are left to die. "That is harsh and inhumane", one of my friends told to me after i shared this story with her. But is it really? In my own grinding these mothers are "loving" they babies in their own way.
It is generally society's doctrine that your parents do what is best, and in these circumstances these mothers have provided as much as they could. This village has no beneficial resources or even proper health services,neither do they have our society's precious health coverage plan. These mothers do their best everyday and have realized that this is no world for the weak! These mothers rather give their little "angels" back to heaven than let them suffer a dreadful life full of pain and sickness.
Sometimes we often point fingers at other who we think are strange and many of us may consider the neglect of these children as Taboo, but do we ever fry fish the same exact way? So why do these mothers have to conform to our society's notion of love? Not because they don't mourn the way we do does not make them less human. This is a subculture in the many cultures that make up Brazil, and this practice of putting more focus on healthy babies than weaker ones have existed for centuries.
In a sense i think if these mothers were to go against their teaching and cry and mourn for days, they would be looked down upon. They are just trying to cope in their environment and do the best they can with the labor-intensive under-paid jobs that they have. They are not complaining. Why should we? We can never cast judgment on anyone, unless we are in their shoes!!!!

Life without Fathers or Husbands

Kirsty Anne Prescott
March18th( Due March 19th)
Ant 1001 TV24A/ Gaunt

Clifford Geertz: Life without Fathers and Husbands

Can you imagine a place where marriage, jealously towards partners and even husbands don't exist? Well there was once such a place. Geertz did a review of anthropologist Cia Hua who conducted field work on the Na tribal group of Southern China. This group like no other had a matrilineal meaning all the mothers and her sisters and their offspring shared the same household and in this culture it was called Consanguineous(Geertz 78).
Geertz stated" There is no marriage in fact or word. Sexual intercourse takes place between casual or opportunistic lovers"(Geertz 76). It is there custom for a man to routinely visit a woman in the middle of the night without fear of persecution. It is astonishing to know that there consider incest to be taboo, however, "A man is free to sleep with his mother's brother's daughter"( Geetz,77).
The most thrilling part of this story was why the man had to visit the woman, instead of being vise versa. It is said if a woman may never visit a man because she may be scorned. This form of social duty was created by their God who was in charge of setting the rules Abaodgu. He did an experiment where he sent a woman to a man's house. In order to reach the man she had to make her way through 9 doors, and at dawn she had gotten through 7 of them. The experiment was repeated with a man in quest for a woman and he only made through 3 doors. Abaodgu thus concluded that women were too passionate to do the visiting( Geertz, 80).
It is really sad to confess that we who consider ourselves "normal people" always seek to change anything that does not coincide with our norms. The People's Republic of China staged there first move against the Na tribe's tradition, by trying to encourage the formation of nuclear families(Geertz,81). It was eventually made law that all qualifying counterparts must be married and if not you were considered as an outcast. Geertz stated " This change was ruinous for the Na"(Geertz,82), and I must agree. This "Cultural Revolution" robbed them of their culture and forced them to be ascribed to what was considered normal.


Biography
Conformity and Conflict, David McCurdy, James Spradley-Life without Fathers and Husbands by Clifford Geertz (75-83).

Life Without Chiefs

Kirsty Anne Prescott
March 6th( Due March 5th)
Ant 1001 TV24A/ Gaunt




Marvin Harris: Life without Chiefs

Marvin Harris' Life without Chiefs brought to light a great phenomena which I was not aware of. Harris claimed that for about 98 percent of our existence as a species, most of our ancestors were hunting and gathering bands containing no more than 50 people (Harris,96). He continues by showing how effectively these bands functioned without the everyday norms of judges,policemen and many others whom our society greatly relies on.
In Harris' piece he says the reason that these small group were functioning so effectively was because of there principle of reciprocity. As he states,"In reciprocal exchange, people do not specify how much or exactly what they expected to get back or when they expect it back(Harris,96)." He gives an example of another ethonographer Robert Dentan who worked in Semi of Central Malaysia, where it is impolite to say Thank you for the meat porvided from another hunter. It is impolite because it suggests, " That one has calculated the gift and that one did not expect the donor to be so generous(Harris,99)." This is so different from our present time where it is impolite not to say thank you for anything given to us.
This change led me to think that it had to do with the changes from headman, to big man and then finally to chiefs. The village man's quest was not one of power, his only job was to lead by example. They gave more of what they had to everyone else and it then became competition between many village men who can give more generously and thus big men arose. Big men had also struggled with competitors for generosity and the reciprocity was change when chiefs arose. Not only did the chiefs have dominion over multiple villages, but the villagers were now giving to them instead of the reverse( Harris'99-101).
"From peaceful origins, humans created and mounted a wild beast that ate continents (Harris, 102). This line sums it up, the rise of political systems have changed the way we operated as society and can not be reversed. However, I pose the question, Can we ever go back to the times of Village men? Would it change the quest for power and greed that we now posses?



Bibliography: Harris, Marvin. “Life Without Chiefs” In Conformity and Conflict: Reading to Accompany Miller, Cultural Anthropology, 4 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Pearson, 2008, Chapter 10.