Communication within a society is imperative for a society’s long-lasting existence. Communication helps generate a durable foundation for a structured and organized society. The most robust and advanced societies have intricate communications systems in which people within are able to cooperate with one another and intercommunicate. Each society and culture has their own way of domestic communication. In Charles Siebert’s article, An Elephant Crackup?, he discusses about the elephant culture and how it functions and communicates within their society, and the emotional aspects which surround the culture. However, more advanced cultures will inevitably expand their influence and seep into others. Ethan Watters’, The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan, reveals this to us by showing how pharmaceutical companies exploited their power to influence more susceptible cultures, such as Japan at that time. From past to present day cultures have always been in contact and interacting with each other. Examples of how these cultures interact or communicate come through by expressing empathy, marketing, and through economic gain, or trading. These interactions between cultures allow for cultures to be understood better and form an accord. The main measure to communicate ideas is across cultures is through emotions, especially empathy. In Siebert’s article, An Elephant Crackup?, he examines elephant culture and how it is strikingly similar to human culture. He compares how elephants
The perception of foreign cultures can at times be quite peculiar. The article “Eating Christmas in Kalahari” by Richard Borshay Lee, foretells a classic example of cross culture misunderstanding when people from different cultures operate in a culturally unfamiliar environment. Richard Lee, a social anthropologist, explains what he learned living with the !Kung Bushmen, a South African tribe, for three years. This Gemeinschaft community of hunters-gatherers worked together to teach the anthropologist something important to their people, even though he was unaware of their intentions in the beginning.
Thesis: (Nature is the driving force of the world, with a part of this the animal kingdom; in particular; the elephant a majestic gentle giant with intellect, emotions, and so many amazing things that people should know.)( Elephants are beautiful, intelligent, and important animals that have so many fun things to learn about.)
Human beings have full control over their identities after they have received knowledge and have become shaped from external stimuli. These stimuli include the teaching process of humans which comes through tradition, schooling, and the actions of other humans and the influence of the organisms around them. Andrew Solomon, through “Son,” was able to use his experience of growing up and labeling himself as a gay dyslexic to show how his environment and knowledge had shaped his identity and how it was viewed by others with different identities. In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert was able to explain how the other organisms or humans are able to form new identities for elephants over time by shaping them a new environment and having the elephants process it. In “Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks had different case studies of blindness from different people and was able to show how each one experienced their blindness help shape and express their individual identities. The stimuli that becomes processed by a person in the situations, accounts, and studies of these works assist in the role of explaining the formulation of an identity.
and disrupting the little bit of peace that they have. So in that instant he
All communication is cultural. It draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages. We do not always communicate the same way from day to day, since factors like individual personality, mood, and the context of the situation interact with the variety of cultural influences we have internalized that influence our choices. Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others. Do they hear and understand what we are trying to say? Are they listening well? Are we listening well in response? Do their responses show that they understand the words and the meanings behind the words we have chosen? Is the mood positive and receptive? Is there trust between them and us? Are there differences that relate to ineffective communication, divergent goals or interests, or fundamentally different ways of seeing the world? The answers to these questions will give us some clues about the effectiveness of our communication and the ease with which we may be able to move through conflict. The challenge is that even with all the good will in the world, miscommunication is likely to happen, especially when there are significant cultural differences between communicators. Miscommunication may lead to conflict, or aggravate conflict that already exists, or in the sad of case of girl developing epilepsy and both her parent’s Hmong culturally clashing with her Western medicine
Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.
During this cultural observation, the anthropological concepts that will be examined will be: culture, society, language and communication and finally kinship. For the purpose of the observation, the concepts are defined as: culture is ideas and behaviors that are learned and transmitted and are not a genetic means of adaptation. Along with the understanding that society is the learned behavior patterns and thought that help a group adapt to its surroundings (Park 2015, p.G2). Language and communication being defined as the human communication by means of shared symbols in the form of sounds or representations of sounds (Park 2015, p.271). Last of the
When analyzing social patterns and behaviors, is there a significant difference between the psychology of an individual and groups? Collective and individual behavior is surprisingly similar, and depending on the circumstances, identical. In Charles Siebert essay “An Elephant Crackup,” he validates to readers, through social elephant narratives and herd mentality theory, that similarly to an individual elephant all elephants behave in similar ways. Furthermore, Sherry Turkle in selections from her work Alone Together accounts
If you’re not paying attention, the mind can be a tricky labyrinth. The less you know about it, the more inexplicable and frightening it becomes. For example, why do seemingly benign elephants wreak havoc upon villages? In “An Elephant Crackup,” Charles Siebert explores the aberrant nature of these elephants and correlates them to their traumatizing upbringing, deprived of community and kinship. The biochemistry of the human mind, analyzed in “Love2.0” by Barbara Frederickson, serves as a worthy addendum to Siebert’s conjecture. “Love2.0” explains that the brain, hormones, and nerves work in unison to build emotional fortitude, stimulate oneself, and express positivity resonance. Siebert’s ideas of elephant culture and trans-species psyche can put Frederickson’s theory of emotions into practice. The absence of certain hormones within elephants, provided their fragmented community, can explain their volatile outbreaks. Alternatively, the reinstitution of human parental roles into elephant culture can help reconstruct their broken emotional states of elephants and rebuild their resilience; this healing process can also extend to humans.
Elephant has long been known as one of man’s best friends, who have peacefully coexisted along with humanity for thousands of years. However, the relationship between the two is no longer in the equilibrium state. In “An Elephant Crackup?”, Charles Siebert discusses the downfall of the elephants. He gives a depiction of the recent raging and violent acts of the elephants among themselves and toward other species, including humans, and presents an educated and almost unexpected explanation to their behaviors. He says elephants are just like us; they have feelings and now are “suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma”(Siebert 354). The similarity that should be something fascinating is now slowly turning them into the immensely savage beasts before wiping them out of existence. Even when the appearance of the words “stress” and “trauma” looks like a serious case of “anthropocentric conjecture”, it provides a totally new vision, a fresh way of looking at the boiling issue of the disappearance and sadistic acts of elephants specifically and wild animals at large. With the help of two powerful essays: “Great to Watch” by Maggie Nelson and “The Power of Context” of Malcolm Gladwell, the issue of the unusual behaviors of the elephants is thoroughly illuminated and its solution no longer seems to be out of human’s reach.
“Power is not a means; it is an end” (George Orwell, 1984). Orwell’s writing has a recurring theme of power struggles, and “Shooting an Elephant” is no different. [He was a british police officer in Burma who sympathized with the natives, which caused a sense of internal conflict.] Orwell uses imagery, simile, and extended metaphor in his comparison of the elephant and British imperialism.
Emotion refers to physical sensations commonly expressed as feelings within different cultural contexts. There various kinds of emotions including biologically derived ones whose occurrence is not solely dependent upon social influences. Other feelings are culturally specific and are taught within given cultures. Yet other emotions such as feelings of guilt, shame and envy are mainly driven by an individuals mind. Indeed, emotion is an extremely unique quality among people that make them human. In majority of settings, emotions play a pivotal role in the determination of the quality of individual members’ relationship with each other. Emotions are mainly crucial when it comes to creating, monitoring and preserving social bonds. In many traditional communities, globalization comes with a myriad of surprises for many rural communities. This paper seeks to highlight pivotal aspects of an emotion that is considerably in its initial phase.
Humans have been communicating since four million years. On the other hand, the birth of culture is estimated to have taken place about 35,000 years ago. Today, both culture and communication have evolved considerably and have become interdependent of one another, to the point that communication is considered to be a product of culture. Thus, our own culture has a deep impact on our thoughts and behaviors. Since each culture has its distinct aspects, intercultural communication can be the cause of conflict and disorder. There are three main issues which are at the root of the problem of intercultural miscommunication : language as a barrier, cultural diversity and ethnocentrism. I will analyze
The movie The Gods Must Be Crazy allows the viewer to witness many differences between the Bushmen and the South African cultures. The Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck Model provides a way to compare and contrast the similarities and differences. It is amazing to see that these drastically different cultures are able to live in such close proximities and still lead such different lives. This movie helps see how people that so different from each other interact. One’s culture guides their intercultural communication. Being provided with a little knowledge on each culture it is possible to analyze how individuals are able to give and receive information from people different from themselves.
Normally, the unique and special culture of unknown tribes in the world stimulates people’s curiosity and attracts the attention and interest. The film “The Gods must be crazy” actually captivates the moviegoers’ attention by contrasting the distinctive differences between two societies in extraordinary and humorous perspectives and language uses: the Bushmen’s life in the Kalahari juxtaposed against the life in the civilized urbanites of post-colonial Africa. In particular, many cultural dimensions and issues related to cross-cultural communication are illustrated from the film. Subsequently, the audience can obtain some interesting and unique cultural understandings. Therefore, this essay will concentrate on analyzing individualism versus collectivism,