Different Culture in Guest of the Sheik by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea

Nydell, Margaret K. (. K. Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times. Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, ME, 2006.

Elizabethan women dressed reasonably different than we do today. Women often wore many layers. The first layer would

Elizabeth Fernea entered El Nahra, Iraq as an innocent bystander. However, through her stay in the small Muslim village, she gained cultural insight to be passed on about not only El Nahra, but all foreign culture. As Fernea entered the village, she was viewed with a critical eye, ?It seemed to me that many times the women were talking about me, and not in a particularly friendly manner'; (70). The women of El Nahra could not understand why she was not with her entire family, and just her husband Bob. The women did not recognize her American lifestyle as proper. Conversely, BJ, as named by the village, and Bob did not view the El Nahra lifestyle as particularly proper either. They were viewing

Living in a culture that is unfamiliar to one’s own can be both overwhelming and a challenging process regardless of what country you are from. The Western traditions, values, and social norms can be quite different than those from back home. Oftentimes, when individuals relocate from their homeland to a new and more developed nation, they carry their own background, life experiences, and traditions with them. For this reason, these factors shape how they perceive and adapt to their new surroundings. To be precise, individuals commonly experience what is known as “cultural shock”, which describes the stress, disorientation, and the feelings of confusion that arise when entering a strange or foreign culture.Therefore staying committed to ancient family traditions can be difficult, which may then turn cultural transition into an ongoing battle for many. In particular, this paper will be analyzing the film, the Split Horn, through a social anthropologist's perspective and with the help of the Holistic model of health, including alternative understanding methods to further examine what certain families go through.

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.

The story of the Lost Boys of Sudan is one that provides the world with many examples of social interaction, some being violent and others being inspirational. Their journey from Sudan to Ethiopia and Kenya, then on to the United States for a better life for themselves and their families gives an insight into how certain cultures deal with and overcome adversity. Culture is the complex system of meaning and behavior that defines the way of life for a given group or society, in the case of the Lost Boys, the culture of the people of Sudan and the American society are analyzed. How the boys were able to continue on without their families to show them the way is almost a miracle. Over outstanding odds, the boys were able to prevail and

The chapter continued to discuss how people experience other cultures when they are removed from their area to a different place. This occurs in the form of culture shock people experience new traditions that are unfamiliar to them when the come to a place that is home to another culture. Human development may also include joining the ideas of various cultures and forming it into a new concept. It puts heavy emphasis on learning other cultures in an unbiased form in order to compare and make observations. This chapter also studies of culture have been able to advance over time and how change is an essential aspect of

Out of all the many countries in the world, each one is unique and individualistic with many exclusive qualities to each one. Many times, the countries get compared to the Western civilization of the United States. The book Guests of the Sheik is just that, but more. An American woman, (Elizabeth Fernea) travels to a completely foreign land, not known at all to her and experiences the culture first hand. She is at first willing, since her husband, Bob, had no choice and his job permitted him to do so (in moving to a completely new country). We learn in the book, that not only is where she staying, completely different than America, but surprisingly, the Iraqi people are not

Through its ethnocentric tales and family based beliefs, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s Guests of the Sheik suggests that to find the true representation of Islamic culture, one must leave ethnocentrism behind. Not only will we discuss ethnocentrism and the cultural differences between Western and Middle Eastern societies, we will also take a look at the women of El Nahra and family within the differing societies.

Nowadays, cross-cultural communication is one of the keys to survive in this society. It plays an important role in our society. The book, A long way gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier, describes several cross cultural issues. This book is based on the true story of Ishamel Beah, who was solder in Republic of Sierra Leone. During his life time, he face a number of cultural shocks and tried to adapt each situation. Through story of his life, we can recognize some cultural differences and similarities between his central culture, Sierra Leon, and other individuals/groups. Thus, in this essay, I would like to discuss how are cultural differences and similarities between Ishamel’s culture and other cultures revealed. There are three main points; cultural differences shows cultural conflict and cultural integration, and cultural similarities reflects the Americanization.

You are Fatima, a middle-aged, middle-class woman in El Nahra, Iraq in 1954. You have met an American woman for the first time in your life, and have come to know her pretty well. But you just cannot understand how she can be happy living according to the American customs she has described to you. Construct Fatima’s argument for why the customs of Iraq, especially as they relate to gender roles and gender relationships, are vastly superior to those of the United States.

The author begins the article by preparing the audience what is about to come. Telling the audience that cultures around the world have unusual customs and an anthropologist would even seek out a culture that has one when everyone seems to agree. He then talks about the Nacirema tribe and the extremities of their practices.

Some may ask what it means to be a part of a specific culture. It may be believed that it merely means to share the same qualities of race, language, and social beliefs. What is not really known are the rise of expectations to fill, repressed wants and needs, or even the binding religious beliefs. A person must begin to recognize the holdings a culture may have on them and how it affects their free will as an individual.

Through out Middle East the lives of women appear to have no influencing role in society. Elizabeth Fernea provides an survey of the traditions of an Iraqi village in her book Guests of the Sheik. Within this book, Fernea explores the element of gender and its impact on the roles of women in Iraq, directly in the village of El Nahra. She also encounters the expectations based on the gender-specific social constructs of polygamous families. Another woman author, Leila Abouzeid, explores similar elements in the work Return to Childhood, which is based in islamic Morocco. Fernea, who the women of the harem call Beeja, presents experiential information about the life of both women and men and her role within her husband 's life as it reflects

The book, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, by author and anthropologist, Lila Abu-Lughod, who is best known for her work on women's issues in the middle east, presents two years of fieldwork in Egypt among the Awlad' Ali Bedouin community who have gone from living a nomadic lifestyle , a farming system where animals are transported from one area to another in search for fresh grazing land, to living in villages where smuggling, raising animals, and doing odd jobs are ways of supporting themselves. In the book, Abu-Lughod brings together the concepts of structure, hierarchy, ideology, and discourse to illustrate the Bedouin culture, and how the