Analysis Of The Measure Of America By Frank Boas
Recommended: Anthropology cultural diversity
Anthropologist Edward Hall introduced the concept of the iceberg analogy regarding culture. The iceberg analogy is simple to understand, there are aspects of culture, such as cuisine, language, and clothing, which are easy to identify; these characteristics are the “tip of the iceberg”. However, many aspects of the culture cannot be seen or identified quickly at a surface level. These facets are below the waterline on the iceberg analogy. Essentially, Hall’s hypothesis is that cultures mainly clash below the water line.
The underlying principle of The Interpretation of Cultures is that anthropology is a descriptive science
A People’s History of the United States and A Patriot’s History of the United States explain the history of colonial and revolutionary-era America extremely different. In A People’s History of the United States, it explains history from almost everybody’s point of view. It describes what African-American slaves, white servants, women, children, Native Americans, and white men went through. In A Patriot’s History of the United States, it essentially does the exact opposite. It only explains history through white property owning men’s point of view; it completely ignores everybody else involved.
In Adam Gopnik 's piece “Caging of America,” he discusses one of the United States biggest moral conflicts: prison. Gopniks central thesis states that prison itself is a cruel and unjust punishment. He states that the life of a prisoner is as bad as it gets- they wake up in a cell and only go outside for an hour to exercise. They live out their sentences in a solid and confined box, where their only interaction is with themselves. Gopnik implies that the general populace is hypocritical to the fact that prison is a cruelty in itself.
He believed in objectivity, and was a strong advocate of fieldwork and participant observation. Boas gained an emic perspective by immersing himself in the culture of these people, and became interested in the Potlatch and how it differed from our culture. Our culture is very different from the culture of the American Indians. We live in a society obsessed with conspicuous consumption - the spending of money on luxury goods to publicly display economic power as a means of gaining and maintaining social status. An example of this is the popularity of brands such as Hollister and Jack Wills, and how people will pay excessive sums of money just to wear the logo.
Jane Elliot, one of America’s most respected speakers on prejudice and discrimination, is well known by her quote speaking of American identity, “We don 't need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables - the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers - to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences” (Elliot).
In “A Quilt of a Country”, Anna Quindlen’s claim is America is like a quilt. Anna Quindlen states, “America is an improbable idea, a mongrel nation built of ever-changing disparate parts”(paragraph 1). America is like a quilt because a quilt is made up of a lot of different pieces that are put together into one. Just like a quilt, America is made up of different races, ethnicity, and cultures. We’re all made up the same but we claim that we’re all different.
Prosperity is the state of flourishing, thriving, good fortune or successful social status. One of the defining characteristics of the prosperity stage is low level of unemployment. Additionally, a prosperous economy experiences relatively high levels of consumer demand and production, paired with increased buying power for much of the population. Dr. Michael Porter states in the video American prosperity in the world that United States is accounted for almost one third of economic growth throughout the world. Being at the top makes us the driver for others to be great, people increase spending and start producing more.
“The Men Who Built America DVD” begins immediately after the American Civil War. The United States was in a rebuilding stage and the future of the country seemed uncertain. During the next 35 years, there would be a group of men who would change the country and the world forever. These men would have power and wealth never before seen in the world and would direct the United States into the 20th century. The first man is Cornelius Vanderbilt who was a successful business man his entire life.
“American Progress” is a painting painted by John Gast in 1872. This painting is for the Americans people who believed if they could not succeed in where they were, they could always move to the West to start over and get rich. After Civil War, during 1870s United States economy start growing up, people start looking for jobs, opportunity to get rich. However, on the East there is few major wealthy people that made other lower class people very hard to get the opportunity to get rich.
Due to the constant contact between various people of the nation, there is some kind adaptation of one kind of culture from other. The impact of such contribution of culture is known as the culture legacies. Each national history and culture unfolds in its own particular way. Sometimes it could be the explanation for people’s previously inexplicable behaviors. In Chapter six of Outliers, Gladwell claims that cultural legacies “play such a role in directing attitudes and behaviors that we cannot make sense of our world without them”(175).
Although, Boas’ theory would be considered Linguistics Anthropology, his analysis and tests were able to connect the issue of “sound blindness” to the larger picture of groups or individuals having “alternating apperceptions” (Boas 1889, 53). Boas’ work shows how anthropologists take things apart to study and understand them before piecing them back together in order to see the final picture. It is a very unique perspective to have because it would allow for anthropologists and budding anthropologists to recognize trends and understand why groups interact with each other a certain way and how do people make decisions. Therefore, Anthropology is unique as a discipline because students are taught to look at information through a holistic mindset that would allow them to do cross cultural comparisons and connect information from various fields in order to paint a bigger image of humanity. It really gives you a more fulfilling view and understanding of the world.
“Tale From the Jungle: Margaret Mead”, youtube videos, which was introduced by Professor Ana, humanities professor, are a six long clip video documentaries of the first anthropology’s discoveries ever brought to public, the Samoan civilization. This ‘Samoan civilization’ anthropology discovery was discovered by Mead Margaret, an American female anthropologist, and later by Derek Freeman, an Australian anthologist. According to Mead Margaret, an American female anthropologist, she believes that humans are influenced by nurture. On the other side, Derek Freeman, an Australian anthologist, opposes Mead Margaret’s idea. He believes that humans are influenced by nature.
A view of Americans as a special, exceptional people because Americans had progressively taken over the West and conquered primitive societies was firmly established in the minds of Americans by frontier myth. One of problems is that the frontier myth is a story, and “all stories are partial; that is, in creating narrative coherence, they leave things out, and emphasize other things”. They are not necessarily false, but neither are they history. As the society evolved, the concept of the frontier is consequently redefined as a space of social and cultural interaction and replaced by the terms “contact zone” by Mary Louise Pratt in her 1992 book Imperial Eyes. Contact zones are “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other.”
He accepts the insights in the well-known book The “invention of tradition,” but he adds that when ethnic consciousness is
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