Kottak

Laura Agnelli

An ethnographer is a person who gathers and records data about human culture and societies. One of the things that he did was he went to Madagascar and focused on the social implications of an economic change, the expansion of irrigated agriculture. Another thing that ethnographers do is they learn a language to study in another county. He wanted to work again in Brazil, so he studied Portuguese because he knew he could only get so far in talking about race relations. They also study the different kinds of foods. In Bahia, he noticed the different concoctions of rice, beans, different meat and floating pieces of skin.

The control mechanism that governs behavior among the !Kung Bushmen was the fact that they thought they didn’t have any food to eat for Christmas dinner so therefore they would have a miserable Christmas. The realized they wouldn’t have any strength to dance if they didn’t have enough food. It shows that in other cultures people are more concerned with having food to eat than what presents they will get on Christmas.

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One Response to Kottak

  1. I agree, Mr Kottak did exactly that. However, what sticks out to me and personally would be the hardest part of being an anthropologist, is the first step. By wich I mean letting go of your current cultural values. As discussed in the first chapter an anthropoligist is simply an observer; so when people die from drinking the same water that they relieve themselves in, I feel morally obligated to say someething and passionately explain why it’s right or wrong. You can also see that he let go of those cultural values we have by Kottaks descriptions of everthing from his own living conditions to his description of Arembepioros daily life. There was a great deal of possible derrogitory explinations availible for each, but he wrote them in the most neutral way possible. Secondly, after his reaserch, he physically went to Brazil. It is very important to anthropological reaserch 1st hand, and he did exactly that.The third thing that stuck out to me was his obvious respect to their culture despite his living conditions. He wrote as if it would be a fantastic place to visit and not once used the term 3rd world. Personally, you would have to force me into an area without electricity, internet, tv etc. Moreover, I would have a negative feeling from that and he showed the opposite.

    The control Mechanism on the other hand I almost completely disagree with. The Bushman did care about having enough to eat, a thought much more contriversial to them than the people of the USA. Moreover, they loved meat, more specifacally, the fat of meat. They spoke of it almost pervertidly. They ridiculled Mr Lee because they thought the large black Ox he offered for Christmas wasn’t going to have any fat. Then again it could have been a joke at Mr Lee’s expence, but he wasn’t sure.

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