The Gebusi : An Interesting Culture

As anthropologist Bruce Knauft described, the Gebusi clan had words that described many different aspects, examples included oil the Gebusi word for tomorrow and yesterday and owa for grandparents and grandchildren, but the most defining one was kogwayay, a catchfall marker to describe all of their cultural distinction. Because of kogwayay’s branching terminology, kogwayay is also the Gebusi’s word for ethnicity, the identification with a cultural group because of shared values customs and beliefs, while inversely excluded from different groups. One aspect that contributes to the Gebusi’s sense of kogwayay is religion. Through Knauft’s book we see their religious ways introduced and watch them change and adapt with the dynamics of cultural change over time.

In our society today, culture is not what it used to be hundreds of years ago. There is no more “pure” culture. Our culture today is enriched with many different traditions and customs that are being shared and adopted. Due to emigration and immigration, a variety of diverse customs, beliefs, and knowledge moved with every exiting and entering human being. Thus, changing and shaping the culture of many. Throughout the world, the beliefs and religious views of culture are dissimilar around the world. By taking the time to read, listen and learn about certain people’s culture, there will be knowledge and understanding that will be gained.

These types of beliefs and strong traditions have been good examples for western civilization absorbing their rules and respect. This has been ideal to help restoring their family values.

In the past, Chinese and Japanese cultures rely on arranged marriages to ensure the continuation of families and assure the culture would survive. This was the norm decades ago. In the short stories “The Good Deed” and “Tears of Autumn,” written by Pearl S. Buck and Yoshiko Uchida, respectively, there are two Asian women in their twenties, but not yet married. In the Asian culture during this time, the family would arrange the wedding. Lili Yang in Buck’s story does not have the family to organize the wedding, while Hana Omiya in Uchida’s tale does. There are many similarities with the women, but also many differences.

Marriage is a fundamental practice that influences village dynamics and political processes in many societies in past and present human cultures. Not only is marriage a process that supports human kinship systems, it allows for alliances and reciprocity systems between groups that create variation in human social organization (Walker et al. 2011). This paper explores the sources of variation in marriage and mating systems in two very different societies, the !Kung San and the Yanomamo, in terms of the vastly different environments each of them inhabit. The !Kung San, a traditional nomadic hunter-gatherer society, reside in the Dobe area on the edge of the Kalahari desert of Botswana (Shostak 1981, p.7). Due to the demanding environment of

Many cultures have certain traditions that are very important to them. For example, the Hmong culture has a tradition about marriage. When a Hmong man wants to get married and start a family, he has to ask two specific men called “Mekoob”, to go with him to his women’s house and formally ask the parents for their daughter’s hand in marriage. They later talk about the wedding plan and the price for everything. The husband and his family have to pay for all the expenses.

The indigenous people that used to call the Noosa Shire home were part of the Gubbi Gubbi or Kabi Kabi people. The exact number of indigenous population is unknown but from accounts from explorers and journalists in the 1860s say there were several hundred aboriginals living on the Noosa waterways. The Gubbi Gubbi tribe visited the Noosa area for 40 000 years before the first Europeans arrived in the 1800s. The Aborigines lived as far north as Fraser Island, south to Pumicestone Passage and west to Conondale and Blackall Ranges. This region is a sacred retreat used for celebrations like the annual Bunya Nut Festival.

In Millennium: Strange Relations, presented by David Maybury Lewis examines the concept of marriage by focusing on three different groups the Nyimba of Nepal, Wodaabe of Niger, finally a Canada (Western European viewpoint). Lewis also examines the concepts of monogamy, fraternal polyandry, and polygyny with the respective case studies.

The Ipiutak culture relied heavily on chipped stone technology and carved bone, wood and ivory, for their technological needs. They still relied heavily on chipped stone, for knives, blades, arrow points, insert blades, knife side blades and harpoon blades. Chipped stone was heavily utilized in the making of harpoons as they were inserted into a good amount of harpoon heads. The Ipiutak culture had large artifact assemblages that were excavated from the sites. These assemblages had everything from needles, harpoon heads, shovels, snow knives, adzes, spear tips, snow goggles, elaborate animal carvings, carved chains, bands, lance heads, arrow heads, and engraving tools to name a few. The wide variety of hunting that was done at the Ipiutak

    The essay “Stone Soup” highlights many topics related to the common “issue” of families who are binuclear. Throughout the years, divorce has become a recurring event in couple’s marriages. In the essay, Kingslover writes, “.. a culture in which serial monogamy and the consequent reshaping is families are the norm— gets diagnosed as ‘failing’.” By saying this, the author basically expresses her disapproval of our society's views of “broken” families.  People too often judge what they see on the outside, and do not pay enough attention to what truly occurs in the lives of these families. Being a complete family—a father, mother, and children— is what defines normalcy to society, but how often does this work? The author of “Stone Soup” wrote, “To judge a family’s value by its tidy symmetry is to purchase a book for its cover.” To rephrase it simply, just as it is unfair to judge a book by its cover, it is evenly unfair to determine a family's successfulness by simply looking at how together or not together they present themselves. The idea of the nuclear family is not necessarily the ultimate way to achieve happiness, and throughout “Stone Soup,” the author intends on explaining that to us. A family containing step siblings, step parents, half-brothers and half-sisters, and multiple grandparents, could possibly be the happiest family, or maybe even the unhappiest, but it is not us who determines that. Nor is it the standard society has set for

The Basseri, a pastoral nomadic tribe from southern Iran, practice the custom of arranged marriage. Marriages are arranged by the heads of the households, usually the fathers of the prospective bride and groom. To the Basseri, a marriage is not primarily seen as a bond between man and woman, but rather as a transaction between tents. An arranged marriage brings many benefits for the involved Basseri families. In case of a marriage, the family of the bride will get a bride-price, which serves as a compensation for the bride that has to leave her family. After a marriage, the families have no ongoing obligations for each other, but they normally stay in contact. The motivation for this is that the families desire to interact and arrange more

Kinship becomes important to the Mbuti when selecting a spouse. Kinship recognition is only important when choosing a wife or husband. No person is allowed to marry kin on their mother's or father's side of the family. Unlike, western societies, there are no formal ritual for marriage or divorce. People are considered married once the couple moves in together. They believe marrying outside their age

The Mbuti people are known as foragers because their main source of survival lies on hunting and gathering as they move from one place to another. They originated from a region in Africa called Congo. The Mbuti people even with their fairly decent population prefer to be grouped into smaller groups or bands which are mostly made up of close relatives. They live in the rainforests of central Africa, where they have lived popularly for more than 6000 years now.

there is a great amount of variability in kinship rules and patterns around the world (O 'neil,2015).

The way every being experiences the world around us is mostly constructed by the culture we are exposed to and brought up in. The world makes sense to us because of the ways culture influences our perception. We experience the world around us in a time, space, and mentality that are built solely by culture. The Kaluli are a tribal clan from Highland New Guinea who experience their lives through reciprocity. The way the Kaluli form relationships amongst one another, communicate, and practice their everyday lives is based through gift-giving and reciprocity. The Kaluli are socially dependent beings who have constructed a social mechanism in which everyone participates in the art of reciprocity to maintain and build these social relations