Final Blog Post

When I started this class, I didn't know what to expect. I remember learning the first day that we had to blog at least once a week, comment on other's blogs, take online quizzes, and etc. I was overwhelmed after a few weeks and it was getting harder for me to catch up. For me, it was a problem because I barely even went online and it was hard for me to actually express my thoughts in a blog. I didn't like the idea that other people were able to read my blogs. I would've have felt more at ease if we had to hand in our essays. I actually learned a lot from the videos Prof Gaunt showed us in class and the ones she posted on the group blog. The ones I absolutely loved the most was the ones from TED. My favorite has definitely got to be the Sarah Jones video. I also enjoyed all the guest speakers Professor Gaunt invited to class. Not only were they inspirational, but they provided us with motivation. My favorite guest speaker was Josh Klein and how he hacks basically anything and everything.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed being part of this class. I learned a lot about cultures overall and just life in general.It has taught me to be more open to conversations about race and gender. Every day that I went to class I came out learning something new. I really enjoy having Prof Gaunt's presence because she's so enthusiastic and always has something up her sleeve. What I would suggest for this class is that students be allowed to participate more. What I mean by this is that there should be something similar to a fishbowl discussion where we can just freely discuss things relating to what we have just read.

Chapter 9- Mixed Blood

Ana Ontaneda
ANT 1001/ TV24A Gaunt
April 30, 2009

Mixed Blood

After reading the first few pages of "Mixed Blood" by Jeffrey M. Fish, I was definitely hooked. It's somewhat amazing at how humans think. Fish mentioned in the book that"race is a social rather than a physical classification (Fish, 89)." I know of people that are mixed races although they were born in America. For example, I have one friend who has a Chinese-Brazilian mother and an Italian father. When people ask him where he's from he insists he's Brazilian, even though his mother is not exactly Brazilian (she was born and raised in Brazil from 100% Chinese parents). This agrees with what Jeffrey Fish said about hypo-descent. The Brazilians have various tipos that serve as a description of a person according to their physical features. Likewise and according to my experiences and knowledge, Spanish people also classify people according to their physical features. I myself, would consider myself a morena although I am somewhat pale. In spanish, if someone were to say "morena," one would immediately think ok the black girl. All this race talk and classification makes me somewhat frustrated. No one's perfect. We don't all look alike. Latinos come in many different shapes, sizes and colors with a huge array of features. I don't know what to consider myself. Why can't I just simply be hispanic?

In conclusion, all these stereotypes are just a huge pet peeve for me. What's even more funny is that when people have to guess what "race" I am, they say everything but Hispanic. This chapter was very interesting overall and I really admire Prof Gaunt for her work with race and mostly for emphasizing on these social constructs of race throughout the semester.

Chapter 13- Baseball Magic

Ana Ontaneda
April 24, 2009
TV24A / ANT 1001 Gaunt

Baseball Magic

Whether it is for good luck or for superstition, many sports teams perform rituals and routines. It is true that it is more known and seen in baseball. I am not a baseball fan at all, but I have been invited to a fair share of several Mets games. I never really understood why the players constantly touched the plates with their bat and why they would unstrap and re-strap their gloves. At first I thought it was simply an OCD that a player gets when in a game. Only now do I have that "Ah-ha!" moment.

Although I haven't watched nor played baseball enough to make assumptions, I have played volleyball for a great time in my life. I can agree that there are some sorts of rituals/traditions that we used to do before a game, during a game, and after a game. I can remember back in 5th grade when I first started playing volleyball, my teammates and I would all dance to a Brazilian chant (or song? I don't even know what that was) in the girl's bathroom before every game. I also remember doing something that may seem silly now but back then it meant a lot to several of us. My teammates and I would put on a bandaid under our knee guards. I have no idea how that tradition even started but I remember how we would lock ourselves into the bathroom and put bandaids on our knee. I guess all this sounds very silly now but it was so important to us back then and these rituals are so important to players nowadays.

This chapter taught me that baseball is just a reflection of life. There are many rituals that we perform on a daily basis. No matter how strange they may be, they work for us.

Bibliography
Gmelch, George. "Baseball Magic." Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed. Spradley and McCurdy, 2008,126-135.

Chapter 5- Mother's Love: Death Without Weeping

Ana Ontaneda

April 23, 2009
ANT 1001/TV24A Gaunt

In our society, it is said that a mother’s love is priceless and meaningful and that her virtuous of kindness can hardly ever be repaid. However would we still be saying the same thing about a woman who wishes and anticipates her baby’s death? It is hard to believe that any woman would wish the worst for their children.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes depicts to us some information on Brazilian women in Alto de Cruzeiro, a hillside shantytown in Northeast Brazil. These places were nothing near luxurious. Women would go to their dollar-a-day job and often leave their babies safe and secure at home—unattended of course. According to the text, mothers were indifferent to a death of a baby. It's almost as if some babies were born "doomed to die" and some were not. It was an amazing privilege and blessing for a baby to live past the first couple of months. Of course, my etic perspective was that these mothers do not care for their babies. Thinking it carefully I realized that a mother's love can differ due to economic restrictions. We can’t assume that they are cold and emotionless. What if these women were taught to react this way? What if they were forced to give up their nurturing nature? As stated in the text, “everything is mobilized as to prevent maternal overattachment and, therefore, grief at death.” (Scheper 52)

It’s sad that countries like this small town in Brazil are living in these extreme poverties. I understand that there may not be enough resources and money to feed these babies and give them the luxuries parents give their babies here but it’s startling to hear that the mothers in Alto de Cruzeiro usually do not visit the graves. If more babies were dying, there would be less maternal attachment and this in turn would cause mothers to be more careless and indifferent.

Bibliography
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Mother's Love: Death without Weeping”. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed. Spradley and McCurdy, 2008, 45-54.

Chapter 10 Politics and Leadership: Life without Chiefs

Ana Ontaneda
March 4, 2009
ANT 1001/ TV24A Gaunt

Politics and Leadership: Life without Chiefs

It's interesting to know that "for about 98 percent of our existence as species our ancestors lived in small, largely nomadic hunting-and-gathering bands containing about 30 to 50 people apiece (Harris 96)." In the past, people did not have presidents, monarchies, nor police offers to provide justice and ruling. Bands were able to know everybody else intimately because they were very small. As mentioned by Harris, reciprocity prevailed within the bands because people had to be generous. Members of bands would not say thank you to others because thank you was an expression implying that one did not expect such a generous deed. This is why the !Kung Bushmen treated Richard Lee the way they did. Band members are accustomed to sharing and "giving and taking." It is expected to receive, in their case.

Although life used to exist without a justice system, people would still be punished for freeloading or taking more than what is being given. Such behavior was eventually punished (Harris 99). Redistribution was essential in bands and villages. Douglas Oliver conducted an anthropological study of the Siuai, village people who lived on the South Pacific Island of Bougainville (Harris 100). The "big men" were known as mumis, and the mumi's job was to give away a feast and in return receive appreciation and support from his guests.

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

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Worlds Shaped by Words

Ana Ontaneda
February 26, 2009
Anthropology 1001/TV24A

Benjamin Lee Whorf claimed language, "may be shaped by the world, but in turn shapes the world." David S. Thomson mentions how Whorf studied various languages but ended up studying the structure and lexicon of the Hopi Indians in Arizona. Whorf was also influenced by a cultural anthropologist and linguist, Edward Sapir and together they formed what is now known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The most clear definition of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that "we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language (Thomson 115)." Whorf later discovered that to the Hopi, the past and future were just abstractions. There was no such word for past, present or future in their language. Therefore they did not think of postponing things until two days later. They just stopped when they wanted to and started when they wanted to. This is contrary to more developed language such as English. There is a past, present, and future in english, as well as other fancy forms of verb tenses. This is why we are able to postpone things or create a deadline for projects. Had we not known that there is a "future" we would probably not have deadlines, nor calendars. I have once experienced a young girl trying to explain to her mother something I had once told her in English. The girl was Chinese and I could tell that the young girl could not fully explain it to her mother without including similar vocabularies, or explanations that were not a translation of what I said but resembled it. Another example of why we can only perceive what our language allows us to perceive is when you're asked to name shades of blue. Unless you were an artist or a painter, many people would probably only recite navy, baby blue, dark blue or light blue. Artists are more exposed to different variations of blue than we would be. Therefore we can't perceive their language and only those who have the same perception can.

Bibliography
Thomson, David S. “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Worlds Shaped by Words.” Conformity and Conflict: Reading to Accompany Miller, Cultural Anthropology, 4 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Pearson, 2008, Chapter 12.

Eating Christmas in the Kalahari

Ana Ontaneda
February 22, 2009
ANT 1001 TV24A/Gaunt
1st Year/Psychology

Richard Borshay Lee. “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari”

In "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari," the author, Richard Borshay Lee, a social anthropologist, studied the culture of the !Kung Bushmen. As an ethnographer, he participated in the traditional ceremonial Tswana-Herero custom of killing an ox and sharing it with the members of the tribe for Christmas. He decided to buy the biggest and fattest ox available from a Herero friend. Lee, who tried to pass on his own culture's (American) tradition of "friendship and brotherly love (Lee 16)"on Christmas day, found that the !Kung Bushmen constantly criticized him and made him feel like a miser (Lee 12). They told him that the ox he bought may be big, but in their eyes, it was only a "bag of bones (Lee 13)." Lee could not believe that they were not satisfied with the size of the ox so he asked several people for their opinions. His wife agreed with him, yet all the Bushmen insisted that the ox was thin. The constant comments and ridicule he received from the Bushmen upset him and he felt that all his efforts to enjoy Christmas with the Bushmen have been ruined. Although he has spent nearly three years performing an ethnography for the !Kung Bushmen, the author was experiencing cultural shock. His curiosity lead him to experience the butchering of the ox, where the Bushmen laughed about the ox being thin and sick.
Afterwards the author, as an ethnographer, asked Tomazo why the Bushmen have been joking all along. Tomazo explained that for a young man to brag about his victory of killing an ox was like saying he's chief and therefore everyone else was inferior (Lee 17). This explained why the Bushmen criticize Lee's choice of ox. In Lee's perspective, these indigenous people were less wealthy than he was and offering them a gift of a healthy and fat ox would be a gift of generosity. However, to the Bushmen, "there are no totally generous acts (Lee 17)." The author believed that the Bushmen would appreciate and be grateful for the gift of ox that he gave them but in reality, the gift was nothing more than a normal meal they would always eat. Through an emic perspective, the ethnographer realized that sharing between them was not unusual. However through Lee's etic perspective, he believed that sharing the gift of the ox with the !Kung Bushmen was an act of generosity.

Bibliography

Kottak, Conrad. Mirror for Humanity. 6^th ed., City: McGraw-Hill
Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 2007. Chapter 2.

Lee, Richard Borshay. “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari.”
Conformity and Conflict: Reading to Accompany
Miller, Cultural Anthropology, 4 ed., ed. Spradley and
McCurdy. Pearson, 2008, Chapter 2.

introduction

My name is Ana. I am currently a freshman at Baruch. A lot of people think I am Middle Eastern or South-East Asian, but I am actually Ecuadorian and from South America. I aspire to become a doctor (although I don't know why I'm at Baruch). Perhaps I'll change my mind and study business. I created this blog for Professor Gaunt's anthropology class. I will be blogging about topics relating to culture and humanity.