Anthropology Essay : Practicing Anthropology

Before I turned four years old, my mother and I moved to join my father in Berwyn, Illinois. My sister ended having to stay back a couple of months so that she could finish her school year. We arrived to a nice apartment in the suburbs, it was a complete scenery change than what I was use to. Everyone seemed to have giant yards, bright green grass, large fences, and freshly painted houses. Back in Fresnillo, we had our large home, but it was rare for houses to have such large yards, so close to the heart of the town. From the time of the move until my first year in kindergarten, I had a bit of time to adjust, watching cartoons in English, I am not quite sure how I picked it up but I did. At that time my mother only spoke Spanish, my father is bilingual, but he would speak to us in Spanish.

My entire family was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. After three and a half years of living there my family decided to seek a better future in The United States. My father would go to the United States back and forth to work and earn money to send to us in Mexico. Eventually my mother was able to get a visa and my brother along with my little sister had an alternate way into the United States. We lived in Dallas Texas and Atlanta Georgia before settling in Howard county Maryland in a very small apartment. Luckily we were doing pretty well with my dad being the only one knowing English at the time. My father was working two jobs and I was getting ready to start kindergarten. I was very excited because the education we would have received in Mexico was nothing compared to the education in Howard County. I was excited for what was to come, but there were disadvantages of knowing only Spanish. Being bullied because of my poor English had an impact on me. I was in completely separate classes learning things that were simple compared to the regular course. I was excluded from certain activities, field trips and assemblies. I was clueless at first though as I slowly learned the language I understood things a lot more.

Living in the U.S has opened the doors of opportunities in my favor, but it has also exposed me to stereotypes of how I should be or act. I’ve seen how people in the streets look at me and my family. Sometimes, I don’t know if they look at us with fear or disapproval. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised either way. After all, it is what they have been taught by the media. Personally, the game that I’ve had to play has been facing this fake perspective of my culture in a foreign country and around the world. It’s a mold in which we are all supposed to fit. It makes me mad to see how students in the school halls make fun other Hispanic students. I do acknowledge that Latin American countries are sometimes dangerous, but, what country isn’t? So, because of the world’s focus on our badness, my generation is the one to pay the consequences. This is our every-day fight. Thinking about it, maybe that’s why I’ve seen many students who are Hispanic descendants hide who they really are and don’t have any interest

Anthropologist are known to play devil's advocate, to accumulate knowledge on a global scale and to ultimately make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Their whole purpose is to study the language, traditions and customs of societies so knowledge on how humanity has developed over time may be advanced. Cultural anthropologists use a wide range of techniques in order to reach an insightful understanding of human behavior in a specific culture. Cultural Anthropologists play a vital role in spreading what knowledge is accumulated from other regions of the world.

Cold Water, directed by Noriko Ogami is a documentary from 1986 about cross-cultural adaptation and culture shock. It is about diving into a new culture and having it feel, as one foreign student puts it, like a “plunge into cold water.” Twelve Boston University foreign students express their perceptions of their experiences in the U.S. as each of them (plus one American student and three specialists) is interviewed about living and studying in a new culture. Initial focus is on the arrival and immediate post-arrival period and the culture shock which, for most of the interviewees, follows on its heels. It becomes clear that central to the problems encountered

To start, since I come from a heavily Hispanic culture and family I have grown to be accustomed to Mexican culture. However, there is still the slightest bit of ignorance on my part due to the fact that I was born in America and live in a well-off family. Whenever my dad mentions his childhood back in Central America I feel genuine curiosity towards the conditions he grew up in. He tells me of his life as a poor child with his family living in the streets of El Salvador. Listening to these stories make me wonder how it could have felt living in those same conditions when I was his age.

My first language was Spanish. English was my second language, which I learned in school. My parents always taught me the importance of being connected to God and to the Catholic church, because our faith in God is what keeps us alive. Our house was located on a nice avenue. We had a school in front of our house, and the streets were always calm.We are five members in my family and lived in a modest, but beautiful, house. My parents are loving and have always been there in the most unfavorable moments that I have faced through my life thus far. I could not be more grateful with the life that I have thanks to them. When I graduated from middle school, everything shifted. Matamoros looked abhorrent; it was nothing comparable to what it was when I was younger. The aspiration of living and forming a family there slowly dissipated.

My Mother and Father relocated from Costa Rica to New York City where they met got married and where I was born. When I was just two years old, always wanting the best for us, my father moved our family from New York City to Jacksonville, FL in search of a better paying job and the American dream so he could provide us with a better quality of life. To ensure we were always clothed and feed, my father sacrificed everything for us and worked long hours to do so. Though I did have a pronounced, safe and active upbringing the North Florida school system didn’t expect much from the Hispanics that were starting to move to the then small town; unfortunately since my parents worked so much they expected the school system

Initially, I was an Ecuadorian girl that had a Christian family, I grew up surrounded by my family and loved ones. My cognitive development was in progress, and I had created fundamental bonds in Ecuador. Provided that my dad is an American citizen and due to his work in America, he could not spend too much time with us in Ecuador, so, my mom, my little brother, and I immigrated to America. After three years of my life, our family reunited, and I became an Ecuadorian-American. Since I was very young, assimilating the changes came to be unnoticed, if it weren’t for the fact that during the next years I spoke Spanish at home and English at school. As a result, my translations of these languages affected my communication, creating slow comprehensive

children as a form of religion. Parents at times try to accomplish goals thru their children; that

Anthropology encompasses all of the major fields that America focuses on such as Biology, Medicine, Computer Science, and so much more. Anthropology studies the processes of these major fields, their development, and the involvement of humans in these fields. I have concluded that Anthropology is the five W’s of human existence, it is the, “Who, What, When, Where, and Why.” It explains every aspect of human life, yet the field is still on the backburner. As my mother and I continued our conversation, I realized that if society paid more attention to Anthropology we could use the research to explain many of the issues that plague society

In society today, the discipline of anthropology has made a tremendous shift from the practices it employed years ago. Anthropologists of today have a very different focus from their predecessors, who would focus on relating problems of distant peoples to the Western world. In more modern times, their goal has become much more local, in focusing on human problems and issues within the societies they live.

There are many specific tools available to help understand evolutionary theory in a biology context, but not for an archaeological context “Applications of evolutionary tools outside biology raise methodological problems which have been largely ignored by philosophers of science.” (Houkes 2010: 3) This has recently changed as archaeologists have started to manipulate these applications for the use in an archaeological context “archaeologists and anthropologists have recently started using phylogenetic analysis to reconstruct tool traditions.” (Houkes 2010: 2) Through phylogenetics anthropologists have been able to take data sets and use them to understand the evolution of certain cultural phenomena “To date, the use of cladistics has centered almost exclusively on organisms, but there is no logical reason that phylogenetic systematics

What Is Anthropology? How Is It Done? People enter the field of anthropology for a variety of reasons. Some people enter the field by accident.

Anthropology, as a discipline in the field of human sciences, is based on certain ethical principles to guide its practitioners through their research. This creates a stable framework on which to start any research project. Avoiding deviation, however, can be complicated. Anthropologists have a responsibility to their field,