Week 3: Language

During the first experiment where I could not use any language to communicate, I did find it a lot harder (and frustrating) than I expected. I initially thought it would be funny, until I decided to just randomly try the experiment without letting my partner aware. My partner was my younger brother, when he came home from school he was trying to ask me to help with his homework, I simply just shook my head yes and walked into his room and began reading what it was his homework was. He looked at me kind of funny, but ignored it and kept going. Lucky for me, he began telling me which homework he actually needed help with. I found it hard in trying to explain to him what he had to do, to where it became frustration for us both. Since he did not know why I wasn’t talking, he was becoming frustrated with what I was trying to say. He began just asking if he does this or that and I would simply shake my head yes or no. It is tremendously hard to engage in a conversation where you can say little to nothing at all. The speaker has the advantage in the conversation since they are able to both, listen and respond. They do not have to deal with trying to figure out ways, besides ASL, to tell you what it is they want to say. However, for the speaker it may be hard trying to carry on the conversation with someone that cannot communicate back. I recently had an incident where a Spanish speaking woman wanted to know the color number of my hair dye. I do not speak any Spanish, so I was trying to explain that I did not know the color number to her by using hand gestures and facial expressions.

When engaging in a conversation without any physical embellishments, I found the conversation to be extremely dry and not really interesting. Although we were able to finish the conversation, I am not sure my partner really wanted to. The hardest part for me was reminding myself I could not do any vocal intonation. In a regular conversation you do not realize how much you do them and it really changes the tone of the conversation. My partner seemed to be confused as to whether I was interested in their conversation really or just listening to what it was that they were saying not trying to be rude. Their facial expressions and vocal intonations made up for my lack of them. Their voice seemed to decrease and be less interested more and more. They also seemed to have no really excitement in telling me their story, probably because they felt I didn’t really care about it anyway. This experiment shows that using signs in our language really helps get whatever it is across. The highs and excitement give off that feeling, as does the lows and non excitement. Body language is also another big factor in communication as it better helps tell your story and makes the conversation more comfortable. The benefits of being able to read body language, is simply using that with the conversation to tell what and how they speaker really feels. The only types of environments that I can think of where there may be a benefit to not reading body language, is when the body language is negative. If you cannot read body language, you will have no really emotion from it.

If I was able to use writing in the first experiment, I feel the conversation would have been almost exactly like a regular conversation with both people speaking. Being able to write what you want to say, allows the other person to know exactly what it is you are saying as oppose to guessing. Although writing will take a lot more time, it will help a great deal having the conversation. Written language allows you to always keep whatever it was said. We find old writings and are able to use that to find out about the culture it came from, the time period, and other factors. Written language is something that can be kept forever and tells more about a culture than anything else since it was written by someone from that culture. The findings of old scriptures helps tell the world about our history and gives us more information on the differences of the people. The makings of newspapers, allows us to know about local and international news. Its keeps us up to date on current news, as well as, allow us to keep historical news from older newspapers. 

Week 2: Environmental Adaptations

     Environmental variations cause many different adaptations in both humans, and animals. Some adaptations are physical; where one has different appearances that help them remain homeostasis. Also cultural adaptations are learned techniques to help with their environment. Two groups we have looked at, Zulu people and Andean Indians live in two totally different environments that they have had to adapt to. I will go into depth on these environments they live in and the adaptations they have acquired. 

Zulu People

The Zulu people live in KwaZulu-Natal, the eastern border of South Africa. It has a subtropical climate, with hot summers and cool winters. The temperature in summer ranges from 70-80 degrees, whereas during winter it’s usually 50-70 degrees.  Majority of the year the weather is hot and humid with long hours of sunlight. To cope with the sun, the Zulu people have darker skin and thick, coarse hair. Melanin is produced to help protect our skin from UV rays; depending on where you live you will have a different type. Eumelanin produces a dark brown to black color, which is what is found in Africans.

Zulu women have many labor chores vary from cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and collecting water and wood which require many hours of hard work. To fetch water and do laundry, women in urban areas often must walk long distances. To save less energy, women have mastered holding buckets on heads without the use of their hands. This technique also allows for their hands to be of use for other things, like children.

            The race I would consider the Zulu people is black, or African. I usually differentiate black and African, black would be people that are African American whereas as African would be people who were born in Africa. I would consider them black &/or African based off of where they are from and the color of their skin. 

Andean Indians

The Andean Indians live throughout the Andes Mountains from Ecuador to Peru to Chile. The weather varies by countries; in one country it can be hot and humid, while the neighbor country can be freezing. Seasons are determined by precipitation rather than temperature, the higher up, the precipitation increases. In the tropical areas, the snowline is 4500-4800 meters while in the drier areas it increases to 4800-5200 meters. The temperatures in the summer are in the 70’s, while in winter they decrease to about 50 degrees, but can drop as low as below 0. The Andean Indians have many physical adaptations that allow them to be more immune to the cold weather and high altitudes. Enlarged chests allow for an increased lung capacity when up in those high mountain altitudes. Also Andean Indians have a higher blood flow which helps keep them warmer in the low temperatures. Wool clothes and lots of layers is a cultural adaptation that helps keep the Andean Indians warm. During cold seasons they also have different sleeping patterns and sleep in stone huts.

The race I would consider the Andean Indians is Native American, or Indian. Although they do live in Central America and could also be considered Peruvian, Colombian, etc; I feel like that would not give someone the image of an Andean Indian. 

Summary     


   From looking deeper into the Zulu and Andean Indians, I feel like physical and cultural adaptations give a more in depth explanation of groups. I feel like my choice of race for the two is a more generic description of the groups and does not necessarily tell where they are from. For example, calling the Andean Indians "Indians" does not give much information about the type of Indians they are, nor does really give you any other information on the Andean Indians. Since the Zulu are black, I feel like calling them "African" really isn't much of a problem but it fails to recognize that in Africa, there are other races that too are African. It is extremely important to study environmental adaptations, as oppose to race, as an anthropologist because it gives a more in depth explanation of the group/culture.  




Sources

• "The Zulu People." Zulu-culture.co.za. Durban. 2010. Web. 17 April 2012. <http://www.zulu-culture.co.za/index.php>
• "KawZuli-Natal province, South Africa." Southafrica.info. Big Media Publishers. Web. 17 April 2012. <http://www.southafrica.info/about/geography/kwazulu-natal.htm> 
• "People of Africa." Africanpeople. African Code, 2001. Web. 17 April 2012. <http://www.africanpeople.info/>
• "Andean People." The Free Dictionary. Research Machines plc, 2009. Web. 17 APril 2012. <http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Andean+Indian>
• "Indian Tribes and Languages of the Andes." Native-Languages. 2011. Web. 17 APril 2012. <http://www.native-languages.org/andean-culture.htm>
• Koelsag, J.H. "Population Hometostasis." South African Medical Journal 20.2 (February 1978) 2.11
• De Lorenzo, F. "Cold Adaptation and the Seasonal Distribution of Acute Myocardial Infarction." QJM 92.12 (1999): 747-751

Week 1: Culture Descriptions- The Nacerima

Part A: 
The 5 words I would use to describe the Nacerima population are ritualistic, sadistic, occult, superstitious and private.

Ritualistic: The Nacerima spend an abundance of their time daily devoted to certain rituals. They also have specific rituals for men, women and children. Children are to do a special mouth cleanse ritual which is said to help with moral fiber. The Nacerima have shrine rooms of charm-boxes that are displayed on walls where daily, each family member must do a ritual inside.

Sadistic: It is said that the Nacerima enjoy watching when the holy-mouth-man perform pain inflicted rituals on others. The daily routine of men involves cutting their face; as the women, although just 4 different times, bake their heads in ovens. It seems from watching pain, the Nacerima enjoy inflicting pain on themselves as well, as they believe it will improve the human body.

Occult: The Nacerima are extremely into magical potions, powders, & materials. Magical potions are believed to keep one alive and are kept in the charm-boxes in shrine rooms. They go to the holy-mouth-man once or twice a year so he can put magical materials in holes of teeth, which are sometimes made, in order to gain friends.

Superstitious: The Nacerima have many rituals designated for the mouth in belief that it helps with social relationships. They also will not dispose their charms given from medicine men in belief that it will help them, although they may not remember why it was even given to them.

Private: The Nacerima do their shrine rituals private, they are not family oriented, however they do share the same shrine room. Bathing and restroom use is only done during their daily body rituals in the shrine rooms. The Nacerima hide their bodies and never expose it; some couples do not see each others' bodies until ceremonies they go to where everyone must fully undress and do a variety of rituals. Women also, when pregnant, wear clothes that can hide their pregnancy and give birth alone, in private.


Part B: 
1. As an American, I can say that all of my descriptive words do still describe us, although may not to such an extreme. Ritualistic and occult can work when talking about our own cultures, and even religions. We all know plenty of superstitions: if your palm itches, you will get money; don't open an umbrella inside; breaking a mirror is back luck; and the list goes on. We are also private, certain things we do not show, or share with others. Sadistic is a more trickier word, as we would like to think we couldn't be; but from being on social networks, I have found that people will re-post/share a video or photo of something bad more than they will of a good picture. Also we have all types of surgeries to help improve one's appearance that inflict a lot of pain on ourselves.

2. I can say all of my words exhibit ethnocentrism as I am making my own assumptions on The Nacerima based off of my own limited experiences. To the Nacerima everything they are doing is perfectly normal, in fact they could hear about us, Americans, and have 5 descriptive words that would be bias based off of what they do. One word I could say may be less ethnocentric is occult, since they do believe in magic potions and powders. I would consider private to be unbiased since Miner does explain how they do stuff in private, away from others. The other 3 words: ritualistic, sadistic, & superstitious all are biased because I am basing it off of my own culture and what we don't do, as oppose to accepting what they do in their culture.

3.  Instead of ritualistic and/or superstitious, I could have said traditional since they are just following their Nacerima traditions by performing these different rituals daily. Experimental or fearless could have been used instead of sadistic because the things that they are doing that's causing the pain are pretty gutsy and scary to try to do.

4. I think it is extremely important to avoid ethnocentric judgments when talking about other cultures as it is not completely thinking like an anthropologist and it is talking negative on another culture based off of what you don't have any experience in. In a way, I do think it can be impossible to not think ethnocentric because one has not experienced everything but must form some opinion. I think once understanding the ethnocentrism, you can easily notice and stop yourself from those judgement. You must always remember that you are not the only person (or culture) in the world, and there are others who may not be familiar with how you things also.