Here are especially strong answers from the second exam.


1) RECIPROCITY
Reciprocity is when you give someone the same that you have taken. It is important, especially in gift giving because while not all gifts have manipulative intentions, all gifts have social value. People notice when they are given less than they give. This is especially apparent amongst the Gebusi, especially in regards to the sister-sister exchange. In this exchange, a family that marries their daughter to another family expects in return to receive a daughter from that family. If the other family does not reciprocate, the elder women in that family are likely to be considered witches.

Reciprocity is a part of cultural exchanges (and gifts) which dictates that is someone gives you something, you owe them something back in return. Reciprocity helps create and maintain social ties through the feeling of indebtedness to the other person. Society wouldn’t exist without these social ties, and so therefore our society is built on reciprocity. An example is the sister-exchange marriage from The Gebusi. In this exchange, a boy marries a girl and, ideally, this boy’s sister then marries the girl’s brother to reciprocate for the loss of a child to another family. There can possibly be consequences if the sister exchange is not fulfilled.

2) LOCALIZATION
This is the adoption of a globalized impulse to the society into which it is being absorbed. This shows that globalization isn’t necessarily an invasive force and natives can pick and choose what parts of the new influence fits their society best, like the vastly changed game of English cricket amongst the Trobriand Islands’ groups. The game was now more of a ceremony and dance to show off dancers and face paint, than about competitive scoring.

Localization is the process where a country, culture, or group of people take a foreign idea or practice and make it their own. Europeans brought cricket to Papua New Guinea, and the Trobriand Islanders caught on and starting playing it regularly. However, after a few years, the Trobriand Islanders had completely changed the game, evolving it to include as many players as they wanted and dances.

Localization is tied in with globalization. Globalization is the exchange or influence of different cultures and ideas around the world. Some people think this homogenizes people (makes everyone the same), but actually ideas are localized, or adapted or varied in some way to fit that country or part of the world. An example would be all the McDonalds that have sprung up all across the world. In different cities and countries, like Hong Kong or Seoul, anthropologists noticed lots of differences in each McDonalds. They are not all identical to the typical McDonalds you see here in America.

3) SOCIAL / CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
A social / cultural construction is the ideas attributed to a thing, practice, or group that are created and defined by humans, and are therefore not natural differences of definitions. This is significant because nothing is ever really naturally occurring. Several things in life, including race, are socially constructed. In Regis’ Fulbe chapter, she describes the incredible ideals that the Fulbe people hold about race. They strongly believe in the ideal of a ‘pure Fulbe” who is represented by very specific features, skin tones, and characteristics. However, this ideal is socially constructed. Race is often made to seem very different, despite the fact that there really is no biological markers of difference between “races.” Social and cultural constructions create difference in society and alter the way humans interact and perceive each other.

Social / cultural construction is when society creates an idea or belief that is not organic. A major social construction talked about in lecture is the concept of gender. In America and many other parts of the world, gender is treated as a binary: you must be either male or female and you cannot be both. In reality, gender and sexuality are sliding scales and this false binary causes problems for people who identify somewhere closer to the middle of the spectrum.

Social and cultural construction may be defined as institutions we have created that define and direct social behavior. A prime example is race. Although a biological reality (or not to the extent to which we make it out to be), race is certainly a social and cultural construction which dictates how we might move through and interact with our culture. In the Fulbe article, it was very clear that race was a social construction. People would choose freely to be Fulbe or Mundang, even though (like the story of the man who became a Fulbe priest) their skin might have indicated Mundang heritage. In that society, cultural perception defined the construction of race.

4) PRIMORDIAL MOMENT OF PURITY
Primordial moment of purity refers to the idea that at one moment human were “pure” and different and then the mixing of races began. I.e. long ago all Japanese lived in Japan, etc. This is not true. Rather humans were always “mixed” and difference began with labels and naming. For example, we know that race is biologically meaningless and thus a cultural construct. We must always ask who is benefitting by creating labels and difference, often (slave holders, etc.) creating labels of difference allows some people privilege over others.

The primordial moment of purity is a false belief that says there was a time before globalization where everyone was distinctly different and we have slowly become more similar. This is incorrect because people have always been mixing with each other. An example of this mixing we discussed in class was explorers and traders. People have always wanted to explore and trade with new people and places and by doing so have influenced and mixed with each other always.

The primordial moment of purity is a false concept that at one point everything in the world was “pure” before we started mixing (i.e. at one point all the Japanese lived in Japan). This idea, however, is false, because the differences between us as a human race have been constructed over time. So rather it is more feasible ot say that everything was once in “chaos” and we constructed these labels in order to make sense of and organize our world. Today this concept certainly not valid for there are people living all over the world that come from American and likewise there are people living in American that are from all over the world.

5) MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Medical anthropology is a field of anthropology that seeks to study how people live with and understand their bodies. It also shows us that though we think biology is limiting and restraining, and that culture is flexible, this is not the case. Culture greatly defines the way we see and feel about ourselves. An example is the book studying menopause in the U.S. and Japan. U.S. women complain of hot flashes - it’s something that everyone associates with menopause. But Japanese women never have hot flashes. Instead, menopause gives them sore shoulders. Culture has determined what people think they are going to experienced, and therefore, they experience that.

6) STRUCTURE
Shorthand for the concept that people are surrounded by social and cultural institutions over which they have little power, and that ultimately influence everything they do. Example: Arthur from “Hoop Dreams” is born into poverty (a social institution) and because of this, the only way he can go to college realistically is through a basketball scholarship. However he is too poor to afford private school tuition and not growing fast enough to get sponsored. So he has to make do with public schooling, even though it may not give him as good a chance at college ball. All of these choices seem to have been made for Arthur because of what he was born into.

Structure is the idea that large social institutions largely determine our decisions and the course of our lives. The role of structures is presented in Hoop Dreams and the Mardi Grad film. The bead makers in China had little control over their lives. Many were forced to work in the factory because of economic circumstances, and their wages were too low to save up and elevate to a better opportunity. They also had little within the factory, as they were restricted by many rules. In Hoop Dreams, Arthur and William’s economic status is an obstacle to their personal decisions to be in the NBA. Arthur is unable to attend a top basketball school because his mom cannot pay tuition.

Structure is the concept that people’s live are dictated according to social structures (gender, religion, race, etc.). People have little or no control over the choices they make. Instead these structures make the decisions for them. It might be considered opposite to agency. And example is that of the boys in the documentary Hoop Dreams. One might say that Arthur and William tried to have professional basketball careers because structures pushed them to - there were too economically poor to go to St. Joe’s (at least on their family’s own dime). Social perceptions of their race provided few other ways of making it out. They were persuaded by authority figures like Coach Pingatore to sacrifice everything else.