Local Community Of An Old Beach Side Town

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

A famous writer for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has written an article, “The Science of Shopping”, which is based on Paco Underhill’s study of retail anthropology. The intention of a retail store is obvious- that is to attract customers and convince them to perchance as much as they can. There is so much knowledge that we can study, such that how the environment affects people’s thinking. These are tiny details that we don’t usually think about. The reason of how Paco Underhill success is because he notices these details. Details determine success or failure. Paco Undnerhill—a talent and passion environmental psychologist, provides us a new point of view of the science of displaying products,

Our society is a melange of different cultures. Each culture contributes to cultural diversity without losing its separate identity. Living in this society, we identify ourselves as a member of one group with the same culture or more than one group, and we have the desire to be accepted by other members and enjoy whatever benefits membership brings with it. Manuel Munoz, the author of “Leave Your Name at the Border”, recounted an experience about hearing his last name mispronounced and explored the Anglicization of Latina names in American culture. In “My Summer at an Indian Call Center”, Andrew Marantz narrated his experiences about working at a call center in Delhi and the insight he received from others about his own culture. Does Mexican Americans’ identity have to be lost in the process of assimilation? Do the customer service representatives in Delhi have to erase any trace of their Indian identity? When we join, or are assimilated into a group, we are changed regardless of retaining an original cultural identity or being part of the dominant culture. The level of change we are able to achieve is based on our willingness to compromise between blending in and standing out.

In this paper, I will examine the article, Speak My Language. Specifically, I am going to explain some of cultural components and influences such as cultural norms, expectation, and expressions of the local youth culture in Santa Fe community. Also, beside the graffiti wall, I will figure out some of good strategies for keeping connection and relationships with youth in this community.

The first category presents the Indians way of culture before the Spanish influence. The book goes into the mindset of the natives, letting the reader see the Indians in a different angle than what other presents them. Usually, the Indians are portrayed as unintelligent, uncivilized Indians without a structured society in biased books, however this book gives a more unbiased view. The beginning several pages of the first section reveals how their religion came about and how the Acoma Indians

Growing up in the small town of Pocahontas, Iowa gives appreciation to the simplicity of tight-knit communities. With a population of 1,800 people, there is single café where local farmers enjoy a morning cup of coffee while discussing the news. Rural communities are a place where children have birthday parties at the local pizza place and teenagers’ first jobs are as detasslers. As a child, your mother knows if you got in trouble at school before you return home and everyone’s name is well known throughout the area.

traditional people of that time. The store symbolized consumerism, which was a jewel in society’s mind

A person has always been able to choose to what extent their cultural experiences affect their perspective. Amy Tan’s, “Two Kinds,” Bharati Mukherjee’s, “Two Ways to Belong in America,” and Robert Lake’s, “An Indian Father’s Plea,” all show how the main characters have chosen to let their experiences have an effect on their cultural identity. A person’s cultural experiences shape perception based on their own identifications and they may chose to assimilate to different cultures.

Acclaimed author, Dale Maharidge, sets out to explore the transition of a small rural town that began as a homogenous community descended from Western European immigrants and how it transformed as immigrants from South and Central America moved in. The relationship between the growing Hispanic population and the established European citizens consisted of mixed feelings. However, through Maharidge’s work, he is advancing the suggestion that the future of this small Iowan town depends on its ability to welcome immigration. Using kairos, Mahridge seizes the historical significance of the strike at Farmland, a meatpacking plant, to show how immigration may as well be Denison’s only hope. The Latino immigrants were willing to perform grueling work

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

The trend of immigration brings out the issue of cultural identity. The controversy concerning tradition and cultural expectation is becoming increasingly fierce. Is it necessary to change one’s own cultural identity in order to fit the working environment and blend into the new society? How do people’s intrinsic cultural identities affect their new lives? Should the way of preserving cultural tradition be altered? How individuals’ cultural expectation influence their attitudes of redefining traditions? Will redefining tradition result in the loss of the value of the original culture? Andrew Marantz in his article, “My Summer at an Indian Call Center,” recounts his experience taking culture training that he was required to attend in order to work at one of the many call centers in India, discussing the reasons and the consequences of altering one’s own cultural identity. Meanwhile, Julia Alvarez uses the example of Quinceanera, a female coming-of-age tradition known among Hispanic communities, talks about the issue of redefining original tradition and cultural identity. In her article, “Selections from Once Upon a Quinceanera”, she touches on various aspects of Quinceanera, pointing out its pros and cons, extending the meaning of preserving cultures and redefining traditions. Changing cultural habits for certain purposes and redefining cultural traditions bring about the dilemma of cultural identifying. Although cultural assimilation is emerging in the trend of immigrants,

When entering a grocery store, most people don’t take the time to stop and observe their surroundings, for their soul purpose at that instant is to purchase what very food they may need for that day or maybe even for that week. However, through all the haste of wanting to go in and out of grocery stores as fast as one can, most are unaware of the very culture that they too are now apart of, the interactions, both verbal and through people’s body language that they are experiencing, how people look and dress, even what is considered appropriate behavior although not specifically written down. Culture is all around us, and we all contribute to it, whether it is through our norms, values, symbols, or mental maps of reality (Guest 2014, 38-43). That is why through this assignment, I took the time to observe the culture experienced in the American grocery store Stater Brothers, the ethnical Filipino grocery store Seafood City, while also taking the time to reflect on my own personal views of what I thought was “normal” through my experience working in Northgate Gonzalez Market, a Mexican grocery store for three years.

The dominant group sets out to create their ideal world, which also forces one to understand community as the “imagined world” of the powerful, how it was created, “and how it changed over time” (269). That leads one to see “the study of community as a socio-cultural process” of creation and interaction (267). Consequently, the social interaction between the powerful group and the weaker ones becomes just as important as the interaction within the dominant group. In this definition of community, Los Angeles becomes a case study for the creation of urban communities in the United States, a study that starts with the Anglo immigration near the turn of the 20th century.

This book can be a great source of knowledge for the anthropology readers to understand the civilization of Indian cultures and societies along with the Spanish policies and rules and colonization. The book satisfies and succeeds to describe the debate between Spanish Intellectuals over the nature of Indians. This book showed how Spanish educated the uncivilized Indians and development over cultures. Though padgens seems to have less knowledge about indian cultures and language, he was able to demonstrate debate between different anthropologists which makes reader clear about cultural change. It is unsatisfying when it discusses the nature of Mesoamerican and South American Indian societies. The relation between them about origins of comparative ethnology was also not satisfactory. Padgen didn’t discuss the issue like the connection between Las casa, Acosta and the scantily treated Lafitau connected to later ethnologists such as sir Henry Maine, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor or lewis Henry

Here is a typical scene from one such mall in Hyderabad. It has a 4-movie multiplex theatre, surrounded by 40-odd fast food kiosks and 20-odd shops that sell clothing, perfumes and jewellery, music and video CDs and DVDs. Not one of them sells traditional Indian meals or snacks. And the mall, like 20 others in the city, is filled with thousands of youngsters who obviously have enough to spend. We did not have such scenes in India twenty years ago, but this mall and fast food culture is expanding explosively across India. This too is part of the globalization of India, a part that causes great concern about the health of its citizens.