Compare and Contrast Dobe/Ju'Hoansi

Ethnography is the systematic study of people and cultures, it is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. It is the best qualitative method for collecting data often used in the social and behavioral sciences. Data are collected through observations and interviews, which are then used to draw conclusions about how societies and individuals function

It is believed that trial marriages reduces numbers of divorces, but looking at the recent researches we can find, that a couple who cohabit before marriage is twice as likely to divorce, than those who do not cohabit. There are also people who do not believe in marriage and think that it is an old fashioned in a modern world. Those who think like that, see no reason ever to get married, and rather just live together. There is also a financial side. Today to have a nice, traditional wedding is very expensive and not every couple can afford it, so to live without being married is much easier way. In the other cultures, like in Asia or Middle East, cohabitation is still a taboo and it still means shame and social disapproval and in some places it is illegal to live together before marriage. In this case differences between developed countries and less developed countries are also very clear, but there is one side which should make all cultures believe in same things, it is religion. There is no religion, which allows us to have sexual intercourse before marriage, and Eastern cultures strongly comply with these beliefs. But then it looks like Western cultures, where cohabitation cases are much higher, are no longer religious.

The Dobe Ju/’hoansi possess a way of life that is very different to the culture from which I am from. This book took me step by

Also, this type of marriage is chosen because of social status. A rich family will want their heir to marry into a family that is worth their status. And lastly, very religious and cultural son and daughters will just agree to an arranged marriage because of the way they have been brought up since childhood and they know that they will not have to worry about their parents of not approving or rejecting of their choice of spouse.

There are many reason whys people get married; for love, money, status or because it is the ‘right’ thing

culture, they only serve to be wed and bear children. When women are growing up one of the

Commonly referred to as Bushmen by the general public and thought of as being harsh wild people that live in the “unlivable” Kalahari Desert. The Ju /’hoansi tribe native to the southern African desert, located along the border of Namibia and Botswana, have been misunderstood and stereotyped for a long time. This is until a man by the name of Richard B. Lee came along and wrote an ethnography about the local systems of the Ju and completely changed how an outsider might view this rural tribe, along with being a fine example of proper long-term field research in social anthropology. This highly regarded book on the Ju /’hoansi is titled “The Dobe Ju /’hoansi.” Although Lee states in the

o     Decade later isolation disappeared and knowledge about the outside world grew. Disagreements as to the progress

As we begin to go on an excursion through literature, it is important to understand the concept of what an ethnography is. Ethnography is known to be a descriptive type of work that analyzes culture and customs of individual people. James Clifford has implemented this work into his studies and has influenced many others to do the same. I saw through the books I have read, ethnography makes these books become vivacious for a reader.

The family issue I will be analyzing is interfaith marriage. Interfaith marriage is simply marriage between two people who belong to or identify with different religious groups. However simple the definition may seem, the reality of interfaith marriage can be far more complex. For most of human history it has been a social taboo to marry outside of one 's faith. However, in recent years it has become much more acceptable, even to the point of seeming to essentially be a non-factor as far as society is concerned. Nevertheless, with the inevitable differences in customs and beliefs, and despite social acceptance, interfaith marriages can still cause major conflict in the household. This paper will explore seven different sociological theories, and attempt to explain how they can decipher the effects of interfaith marriage upon the family.

The purpose of this reading was to introduce what ethnography is and what exactly do anthropologists do. Ethnography is based on the fact that in order to fully understand a culture, it is best to observe the culture itself and to interact with them over a long period of time. The authors, Monaghan and Just, do fieldwork. Fieldwork is commonly done in small communities with very simplistic lifestyles so to say. In the first chapter, Peter Just did his fieldwork in the Village of Dorro Ntika. In order to be successful with this research, Peter had to build trust and create a good relationship with the people of the native tribe. Meaning Peter was able to learn well beyond the superficial facts. To be an ethnographer one must commit to years

Richard B. Lee’s book, The Dobe Ju/’hoansi, showed multiple differences between the Dobe Ju/’hoansi society and our current American society we live in. The cultural ethnographically book takes place in the Kalahari Desert, located in South Africa, in the 1960s. Lee a Canadian anthropologist, traveled to South Africa to do ethnographic research of modern day foraging societies of San tribes. Foreigners saw the Ju/’hoansi as having a primitive and un-sophisticated culture, but little did they know surviving foragers had much to teach us. The book gave detailed descriptions on San people society’s aspects of life which

a suitor. Sexuality is not nearly as taboo for the Dobe Ju/’hoansi as it is in western

The Ju/’hoansi was unknown to the outside world up until Richard Lee’s case study, which began in the 1960s. Many of which lived in the northwestern area of the Kalahari Desert, on the border of Botswana and Namibia. A society is the aggregate of people within a community, bound together by some common ties. For the Ju/’hoansi, their living groups were generally structured based upon kinship and was greatly revolved around redistribution. Redistribution is the flow of goods and/or services to central authority but could be returned in different forms. The Ju/’hoansi lived on this exchange.

from a single soul and from it created its mate, and from the two of