Peter Winch And The Primitive Culture

Principles of Marxism are seen in this piece of literature through the portrayal of the Bourgeoisie, the Proletariat and characters of wealth. A negative view of the affluent is demonstrated in the text by the elder

Another relationship Pratt says exists between cultures is the concept of transculturation. Transculturation, she states, is a process in which “members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture” and transform it to fir their own principles by giving it a cultural makeover (Pratt, 505). But why is it necessary for transculturation to be performed by secondary, inferior cultures? It can be argued that different types of people can learn and adapt things from each other even if the distribution of power between them is unequal. Larger

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.

In this article, Miner takes the role of an outsider and judges the Nacirema just as we judge other cultures. Miner does an exceptional job of wording things in such a way that we don’t even recognize our own culture. Miner wants us to realize that when someone, such as an anthropologist describes another culture, we can interpret that into being abnormal but in actuality, it is, by all means, very normal.

No individual can arrive at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element that the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual. Where else could any trait come from except from the behaviour of a man or a woman or a child? (253)

"Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" is significant as it establishes the issue of representation in ethnography. The purpose of the article is to raise the question of how can we study a different culture from the outside and how can we understand our own culture from within. Culture can be defined in many ways, Tylor (1871) stated that culture is; “…that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” Therefore, the article presents the topic of cultural relativism, arguing that there is no impartial viewpoint from which to assess cultures, that every culture should be interpreted and understood from the

When a larger culture meets a smaller culture, the larger culture decides how to react to the smaller culture. The larger culture can leave the smaller culture alone, it can co-exist, or it can force the assimilation of the smaller culture trying to destroy it. The leader of a culture whether the smaller or larger, can abuse their power even though they mean to strengthen or simply maintain their people and culture. A smaller culture’s leader can misuse their power accidentally by trying to maintain the survival of their people, at the expense of their culture. In addition, a larger culture’s leaders can abuse their power over the smaller culture by forcing assimilation, and justifying their abuse of power. The article “From Rez Life” authored

Attaching great importance to individuality is the third characteristic of market society. For people living in market society, economic advantages are superior to other advantages; the first thing to protect is their individual wealth. This ideological change results from the material condition in market society that people all become single individuals in the factories producing goods for making more money for themselves. In this case, the economic relations rule the social relations (Rinehart 71). Under the structure of the previous social organization, however, “man’s economy... is submerged in his social relationships” (Polanyi 46). People were always concerned about their social relations within their communities (Polanyi 46). They acted so as to maintain their social values (Polanyi 46). The reason for this when it comes to the case of tribal society is that there is no need for people to care much about “individual’s economic interest” because working for the communities enables

The author’s purpose in writing this article was not to show the “Nacirema” as an example of how extreme human behavior can become, but how an outside perspective can affect your perception of an alien culture. If one were to look at the “Nacirema’s” cultural behaviors regarding physical appearance and health without any insight or knowledge of the specific beliefs or values of that culture, they might seem bizarre and even incomprehensible. By showing behaviors and “rituals” performed by this unknown tribe, Miner allowed others to see that the way studies were representing distinctive cultures was narrowminded and defective. Without the proper comprehension of the basis of any society, huge cultural misunderstandings could occur. Of

Crichton, through the the affects the different cultures have on each other, shows that having and applying knowledge preserves the existence of one’s culture.

For us to properly learn about culture, we must understand the meaning of cultural relativism and ethnocentrism. The two concepts challenge one another. Reading the article, we must pull away from our ethnocentric views and think critically about the Nacirema people's. However, the description of the culture creates an ideology that is hard to agree with. For example, the Nacirema peoples take part in a rite that involves hog hairs and magical powders. The Nacirema rituals do sound strange and displeasing but, we have to learn to recognize our ethnocentric judgments.

In “Primitive,” Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten argue that in various topics, “primitive” can either have positive or negative connotations. They also specify that the term is not a classification but rather a comparison to its inverse: “civilized.” Antliff and Leighten explicitly discuss its use in the fields of time and space, gender, race and class to support their argument.

In Body Ritual among the Nacirema, Horace Miner challenged what his audience on what makes a civilized or savage. He demonstrates that all cultures seem strange from an outsider’s perspective, and that with this in mind no one culture can truly be more civilized than any other. When it comes to cultures, normality is a matter of

Cultures have a tendency to regard their values and practices as superior to others. Ethnocentrism is universally found, from the Asian nations of Japan and China to the European nations of Poland and France. Of particular interest currently is the prevalence of Eurocentrism and combatting ethnocentrism as a whole. The idea of ethnocentrism is incorrect as the value of a civilization cannot be measured and compared to other nations as there is no quantitative measurement of significant worth. It is not possible to quantify the value of a great musician or the worth of national comradery, nor is it possible to assess the significance of café culture in Western Europe or the importance of karaoke in South Korea. Every culture has great merit and its value cannot be understated. Ethnocentrism at its core is a flawed idea because it assumes absolute truth where there is none. Differences in cultures are not due to the shortcomings, but rather variances in experience. Both the memoir Lost in Translation by Eva Hoffman and the novel Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones contribute to addressing this issue in an attempt to bridge the gap between cultures. Mones and Hoffman confront ethnocentrism by presenting the audience with an alternative philosophy on life, offering the cultures of China and Poland to the audience. Both authors present cultural specific elements to universal attributes of being human. In both readings one can observe the value that cultures place on art and the

The need for translation has always existed since the appearance of the human being on the Earth. Translation is not only a way to explain what a language said to another, it is also a way to present one culture to another. As to the notion of culture, Edward Burnett Tylor considers that , “culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and many other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. This definition covers almost every aspect of human’s life and lays at the basis of most modern anthropological conceptions of culture. Putting it simply, culture is rooted in history, it represents all the main peculiarities of a certain group of people, it is defined by language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. In the process of translation culture cannot be ignored.