She became interested in China as a little girl, "reading a book about rural Chinese twins who did everything backward or upside down," she recalled. So, when she decided to study anthropology, she chose a world area to specialize in, and she chose China. Jervis conducted her anthropological fieldwork in Henan province and quickly made herself part of the local scene.
During her second visit to Dacaiyuan in , she stayed with the Shi family in the village. I found it inspiring. She has been very friendly to me and my family," Shi said. The village doctor recalled how his western guest got up at 7 am every day and dressed in plain cotton clothes like the natives.
At noon, she would cook and eat noodles with the other women, often squatting outside the courtyard chatting with neighbors. Later, I would ask the neighbors about it. The same happened in the French revolution in when they made a revolution and changed the ruling system. All of which proves that past experience has its noticeable effect in understanding the world and forming culture. Experience can be derived also from wars or diseases that affect the societies. For instance, countries who encountered war and witnessed its mental and physical loss would not like to ignite it again.
Thus, people learn from their previous experiences about a specific disease to invent a cure for it and avoid being attacked by it. Diseases might affect population and turn a stable society upside down for example the plague that hit London in and then hit the rest of the world. It was called the Black Death as a result of its devastated effects around the world. Although there were several competing theories as to the etiology of the Black Death, analysis of DNA from victims in northern and southern Europe published in and indicates that the pathogen responsible was the Yersinia pestis bacterium, probably causing several forms of plague WHO.
Thus, experience of several diseases affect the societies and help in its development through the creation of new treatment. Beliefs are one of the main causes that form culture.
They differ from one society to another and from one person to another. Each society has its own set of beliefs which might change over the course of time.
As mentioned before; the ancient Egyptians had their own myths and gods. Herodotus, the Greek historian, said that the ancient Egyptians were the most pious people of their time. He stated that they were heathens because they believed in many gods and they always kept this system of beliefs because of their conservativeness.
The gods were usually portrayed in the form of a human body that had the head of an animal. However, this aspect changed from one place to another. The Egyptians symbolized as a mummified king with the crown of Southern Egypt on his head with two feathers around it as a symbol of justice. Isis is the wife of Osiris and she was portrayed as a lady with a cap decorated with the sun with offerings all around it.
She was also portrayed afterwards in many figures as a cow and as an eagle as well. The myth says that she gave birth to her son Hours after the death of his father, Osiris. Isis was afraid from assaults of the uncle of her son, the god Set, so she went to the delta of Egypt to escape. The myth also said that Isis went all over Egypt to collect the body parts of her husband, Osiris who was massacred by his brother. She was known as the goddess of magic but no one knew where she originated from.
She was symbolized as a chair so she was the queen of gods. She was worshiped in many places around Egypt and her worship even extended to take place in the eras of the Roman and Ptolemaic eras. She was also worshiped outside Egypt in different regions Khalifa. Therefore, for the Egyptians ,as well as for others in different countries, women are responsible for protecting their families, helping them to achieve the best in their lives; as Isis did with her husband after his death and her son whom she brought up on her own and made him a god like his father.
It is on the shoulders of women that building a good society can be done. The same is found in Islam as the prophet Mohammad —peace be upon him- advised men to choose their wives very well. Islam also states that women should be treated kindly. The Greeks have their own myths as well as the one of Medusa which was mentioned before, and others like that of Prometheus who brought light to Earth.
It can be said that nowadays not everything is set upon the shoulders of women, but men help them in a lot of tasks that used to be confined to women.
This will be mentioned later in this paper. It is the stand of the relativists that each culture and society has its own integrity, its own system of values, and its own set of customs. The relativists believe that the values of any culture are to be understood, and evaluated according to the view of life or mental outlook of the people belonging to a particular culture. The standards of right and wrong are relative to the culture they are part from. Clifford Geertz — an emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton , New Jersey focused his anthropological studies on the symbolic culture and on different beliefs practiced by different societies especially in two main countries which he studied deeply which are Indonesia and Morocco.
The child-eating Rangda leads an army of evil witches against the leader of the forces of good — Barong. Rangda is a term in old Javanese that means "widow". Rangda is danced by a single male in a hideous figure. Her teeth become tusks curving up over her cheeks and fangs protruding down over her chin.
Her yellowed hair falls down around her in a matted tangle. They usually perform this dance on the occasion of a death celebration as they believe that by this dance they remove all devils from the area before they bury the dead body.
Not only are beliefs found in non-religious cultures, but they are also found in religious cultures. For instance, in Islam there is a sect called Shia, which glorify Aly, peace be upon him, the cousin of Prophet Mohammed, and his sons. They torture themselves on the day of Ashouraa as they mourn the killing of Hussain, peace be upon him.
Hundreds of Shia Muslims in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, flog themselves to mark the festival of Ashura on Wednesday. The festival marks the martyrdom of Hussain, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, in the battle of Karbala in Iraq in the year Shia Muslims mourn for a month as part of the festival.
The whirling is a kind of purification of the soul in which they escape from reality falling into a trance. It started in Turkey based on the orders of the famous mystic Rumi The practice of spinning around is the group's distinctive form of sama. The whirlers, called semazens, are practicing a form of meditation in which they seek to abandon the self and contemplate God, sometimes achieving an ectastic state.
The Mevlevi sect was banned in Turkey by Ataturk in , but performances for tourists are still common throughout the country. Sifism Thus, beliefs contribute to culture whether they are religious or non- religious. Values are main components of culture. Most anthropologists agree on that as it was mentioned in the table of the diverse definition of culture stating that culture is Normative as it is ideals, values, or rules for living.
Yet these values might be religious or non- religious and they are in constant change. Non-religious people describe and define themselves in various ways. These variations do reflect some differences in meaning and emphasis, though in practice there is very considerable overlap. The denial of religion began to be publicly acceptable only during the 19th and 20th centuries. During this period a range of organizations began to serve and represent the interests of the non- religious.
The following lines display some general definitions and beliefs of non-religious values. It can also mean something much firmer: that nothing is known, or can possibly be known, about God or supernatural phenomena, and that it is wrong of people to claim otherwise. That is the original meaning of the word, and 19th century agnostics lived their lives atheistically in practice — that is, without any reference to any concepts of gods.
Along with this often, but not always, go disbelief in the soul, an afterlife, and other beliefs arising from god- based religions. It was a very popular term in the 19th century and is still used in different languages in some European countries by non-religious organizations to describe themselves.
Humanists base their moral principles on reason, on shared human values and respect for others. They reject the idea of any supernatural agency. They believe that people should work together to improve the quality of life for all and make it more equitable. Rationalists usually reject religion on the grounds that it is unreasonable.
Almost all humanists are secularists, but religious believers may also take a secularist position which calls for freedom of belief, including the right to change belief and not to believe. They believe secular laws — those that apply to all citizens — should be the product of a democratic process, and should not be determined, or influenced, by religious leaders or religious texts. This was the title of an article at The Times newspaper in March in which the writer Oliver Kamm claims that religion becomes a source of confusion rather than light when it is used to seek reasoned and compassionate judgments.
Kamm argues for the argument of Ian McEwan at the Oxford Literary Festival on the same week as they both believe that the secular mind is by no means better than the religious mind which leads to confusion and bewilderment. It should not be controversial. Religious belief resolves no moral problem and yields no knowledge. On the contrary, much suffering is caused by people who believe they know the will of God and have a duty to enforce it. The Times Thus, secularism is a belief which trusts mind more than religion, and believes that morals, good behaviour, and ethics can be derived from nature, from society, and not from religion.
There is a clear theoretical dividing line between beliefs and values but in practice the values are based on the beliefs and so there is close correspondence and interaction between them. The values are to do with reason, morality, social attitudes, and meaning and purpose Pollock. Regarding the analysis of the World Values Survey data made by political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, there are two major dimensions of cross cultural variation in the world: Traditional values versus Secular-rational values and Survival values versus Self-expression values.
Traditional values emphasize the importance of religion, parent- child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who embrace these values also reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride and a nationalistic outlook.
This can be applied to the Arabs and Islamic societies. On the other hand, Secular-rational values have the opposite preferences to the traditional values. These societies place less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia and suicide are seen as relatively acceptable. This can be applied to the European countries more and those who disbelieve in religion.
Survival values place emphasis on economic and physical security. While, Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, growing tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality, and rising demands for participation in decision-making in economic and political life. Thus, the Arabic Islamic culture can be categorized in the zone of traditional, survival values.
Depending on the previous categorization, the more the countries move simultaneously from the traditional survival values to the secular —self -expression values, the more they achieve democracy and welfare in their societies.
Thus, such societies, the Arab Islamic cultures, need more freedom of expression and acceptance of others in order to reach democracy that they seek. This was crystal clear in the survey conducted by the WVS as they triggered different values in industrial , post industrial and rural societies.
They even discovered a change in the rate of happiness in Russia especially after the demise of the Soviet Union and communism. The post-industrial societies seek knowledge which leads to democracy and freedom of mind.
While, in the industrial societies, like most of the middle east societies they just seek the basic existential components of life with no emancipation of values which tie them to the ground, where they are, as they just seek the survival values including security, and they emphasize on national pride and respect for authority. Thus, values can change every now and then depending on the way each society think and the degree of freedom it grants to its people.
Consequently, cultures are changing, they are never static, and they are affected by the values in each society. Also, companies and governments have different attitudes towards different projects.
Simply put, it is a settled way of thinking or feeling about something or somebody. Attitudes may be tackled from different levels such as racial, ethnic, or religious level.
Race refers to the physical appearance of a person like the skin colour, or the bone structure. For instance Africans have dark skin colour and strong bone structure that is different from the Europeans who are almost characterized by their fair complexion and blond hair.
The segregation included separation in restrooms, restaurants, buses, houses, education, employment, and even in the army. In the United States and South Africa laws were enacted to justify this separation. In the Supreme Court confirmed that separate but equal facilities did not violate the U. It was not until the Brown V. Board of Education in which stated the elimination of separation at public schools that racism began to be taken into action, and it was the spark for following actions against racism.
He had a dream of equality and justice. In South Africa, it was the Apartheid system which Nelson Mandela suffered to abolish and return the country to its inhabitants in Martin Luther King People who argue for racism justify their cause by what is called scientific racism which employs physical anthropology in order to classify and separate human races.
However, in the late 20th century scientific racism was demolished especially after the holocaust in the Second World War in Although European countries, America, and the world in general pretend that there is no racial discrimination or segregation in the 21st century, the truth says otherwise.
Despite the fact that Barack Obama, the current president of the United States is descended from an African American origin, the notion of treating blacks with equality is not intrinsically profound in the American society. They still face different situations that prove the presence of racism, yet; they have to be patient about it as they can not change it overnight.
Also, Oprah Winfrey, the famous announcer of the American program Oprah Show witnessed a situation of racial discrimination in the second millennium when she was in Zurich, Switzerland in which racism kept pricey bag out of her hand. Attitudes as expressed in history. It is inherited from the previous generation to look with inferiority at coloured people. People think that they eliminated the idea of racism, or differentiating people according to their apparition, yet what they do is completely the opposite.
It is affected by their history, heritage, and what they accustomed to do by judging people through their apparition or religion. Ethnicity refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language. Some people have positive attitudes towards their nations, they are very proud of them, and they believe that they are the best, while others have different opinion. This can be exemplified through the Nazis, the Jews, and the muslims.
The Nazism arose from a German nationalist movement. The pride of the Germans started as a political idea that sought originally to unify all the German- speaking populations of Europe. The National Socialist party adopted some beliefs as racial hierarchy in which the Germans were the best race, they were depicted as Aryans.
They also believed in the territorial expansion of the Germans and they were anti-Semitic. All of which led to the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Racism, especially anti-Semitism, was a central feature of the regime. The Germanic peoples the Nordic race were considered the purest of the Aryan race, and therefore the master race. Jews and others deemed undesirable were persecuted and murdered. Opposition to Hitler's rule was ruthlessly suppressed.
Members of the liberal, socialist, and communist opposition were killed, imprisoned, or exiled. Our culture identifies who we are and how we behave in social environments and provides us with a foundation in which to live our lives and raise our families. Each individual culture has certain customs and courtesies that are important. Exposure to the cultures of others can be intimidating and can leave a person feeling confused and unsure about how they fit in Schaefer Culture shock can leave a person feeling out of place in an unfamiliar culture Schaefer West Chester University, 28 Jan, Open Document.
Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Defining culture has been a debate among sociologists and anthropologists since the 19th century. Culture is vital for the perseverance of a society and has its own identity that distinguishes it from others. Culture is not rooted into a person from birth, but it is learned from wherever he or she is from. It acts in a subconscious manner in that when a culture differs, one society may find another society to be odd.
Every society has a different culture where the people share a specific language, gesture, belief, behavior, norms, sanctions and more. I dare to say I would disagree: culture and civilization are however different. Nancy Jervis is a cultural anthropologist Ph. Columbia , specializing in China. She lived and worked in China for three years , having first visited that country in Her most recent visit was in , when she curated a photographic exhibition of old photos of Beijing at the Museum of Chinese History in Beijing.
Her anthropological fieldwork is in Henan Province in north central China. Jervis studied film and filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College and with Jean Rouch in a summer workshop in Massachusetts. In , she was the first foreigner after the Cultural Revolution to work at the China Film Corporation in Beijing.
Her job including viewing and writing synopses as well as creating sub-titles for newly-released Chinese films for the English-speaking market. Civilization , Nancy Jervis.
View my complete profile.
0コメント