anthropology - my submitted questions

for the "Pop Culture Watch" page:
I was just thinking about the different ways we perceive time and thought it might be interesting to post a little of my research here. I find it intriguing that time perception can vary across cultures, and that just by seeing this facet of our daily lives differently, we can begin to lead a different life. Especially when time tends to be something that is seen as static and resistant to subjective criteria [Olympic records, fastest this or that in the world...], but when we really think about time - it is malleable. We perceive time and space differently when we are rushed versus when we are bored, sometimes spaces may seem more cramped or too bright when we are in a hurry. I wonder if this phenomena is the same across cultures [maybe it's an adaptive thing, for protection]? Or do some people really have a more consistent view of time [and is this in relation to their lifestyle/ stresses]? I think being in architecture school has given me a unique perspective on time... in a video I found it talks about how annoyed Americans get when their computer starts slow, how we are a people with very little patience, we can't handle waiting. But being in Architecture and being rushed on a daily basis, I've come to cherish the time it takes my computer to boot-up, or the time it takes to make dinner - these are the activities that define my day and make me remember the things outside of school work that I still belong to. So I thought I'd include that interesting video - it touches on some of these topics [and is pretty graphically captivating] and a Wikipedia article about the perception of time Chronemics.

- Christianna 

Phil Zimbardo (speaker in that video above) is perhaps most famous for having conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment; see http://www.prisonexp.org/
The anthropology of time is a huge and fascinating literature, well reviewed by Nancy Munn (one of its most interesting practitioners here: http: www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.an.21.100192.000521




week 2:

"Globalization does not spread evenly, and its interactions with, and effects 
on, local cultures vary substantially." [p 19 - Ch1 Cultural Anthropology] 

I have a few questions out of curiosity and possibly a misunderstanding of 
what goes on in fieldwork, inspired by the above quote taken from Barbara 
Miller's book. First, are there "rules" or regulations about what types of 
technology can be brought and used in front of the people one is studying? 
Cameras and/or video must be shocking to some remote civilizations?

Another question I have is: what happens when anthropologists who go to a 
place where there is a very little-known language, and how do they learn to 
communicate? 

Also, are there certain communities that are protected from being studied? 
And what happens to anthropologists if they get sick on the job? Are they 
obliged to follow the practices of the community in which they reside? And 
how do anthropologists maintain communication with the outside world while 
visiting a community? 

week 3:

Taken from American Anthropologist by Annette B. Weiner, "Ethnographic 
Determinism: Samoa and the Margaret Mead Controversy":

"Both Malowinski and Mead saw that behavior and values surrounding the most 
fundamental human relationships they studied in the field differed 
dramatically from the morals and values of their own societies." [p. 917]

It is apparent that different cultures have a variety of ways of adapting to 
situations, and that traditions also vary widely across the world. But how 
about emotions? Are there any known societies that do not express, or seem to 
express certain emotions? Or, even stranger, is there or could there be 
additional emotions/ feelings that we do not have access to in our daily 
lives, but that other people have naturally learned to understand? 

week 4:

In "The Muslim Woman" article, there is an idea on page 3, "... when these 
forms of dress had become so conventional that most women gave little thought 
to their meaning".

There is a great quote in the Architecture building that says "Seeing is 
forgetting the name of the thing one sees". I feel that this quote could have 
great potency in the field of anthropology as a whole, but I am curious as to 
whether anyone has studied this concept? Or maybe I'm interested in ideas 
about convention? What makes a group of people forget meaning? And how can 
they lose a meaning, for something that is so present in their lives [for 
instance: clothing, architecture, even words/language today have origins that 
we are now oblivious to]? Are there things that we have forgotten globally? 
Across many or all cultures?
week 5:
Why has the Western world forgone the idea of community healing when its 
affects are recognized by our society as a whole? Often in medical miracle 
documentaries there is a comment about the ill person surviving because 
someone was "there for them". Why haven't we changed our practices from 
healing in private if it is in fact detrimental to the healing process? This 
is especially interesting since we consider ourselves an "advanced" culture - 
even though we are clearly holding ourselves back.
week 6:
Does the gender flip-flop in the Minangkabau make a difference in the way 
these people learn, visualize, construct things, and organize? I have always 
been taught females don't have as keen a three-dimensional visual sense as 
boys, so does this reverberate in different ways in the things the 
Minangkabau produce? Is their aesthetic different - as guided by the females? 

An article I found on my own, delves into the cultural values these people 
have - most of the mythology revolving around the mother - her struggles, 
woes, her importance. I wonder how all of this translates into their material 
culture? Does the eye of a female chance the necessities of a given people? 
Does it change the way they build? Their techniques and spatial 
understanding?