Week 1 Blog post
Magical
Miner talks about the culture being filled with magic as they fill their charm box with potions and charms. The more they charms they fill in the box, the more wealth is brought to them. The rituals that are made are protected by the magic of the charm box and provide protection to the worshipper.
Shrine
The shrines displayed wealth for many of the worshippers and depended on the material that was being used. Stones were deemed as wealthy and showed that they could hold more rituals. Poor families try to imitate the rich by adding pottery plaques.
Medicine
Medicine men were people that were rewarded for their practices such as being able to use potions on worshippers. They were not given potions but knew how to make potions with the ingredients they learned about. They were considered a high status due to them serving others.
Hierarchy
The hierarchy was ranked as the medicine men being the highest prestige and the holy mouth men following next. They had a high power on social relationships and could help children with moral fiber during their childhood. They would work on peoples teeth and provide supernatural substance to help their life.
Practices
Their practices were very interesting as they would rip out peoples teeth due to decay and provide paraphernalia to adventure further. Magic potions to their daily ceremonies to protect them from evil. Medicine men to provide potions for the children and elder to drink for longer life.
Part B
I feel like the choices I made were a little broad but some of the words did describe what the culture was bringing. My culture is surrounded by the Central American culture and things are behaved differently. When I went to my home country, Honduras, the people were very caring but also the way they talked can be deemed as aggressive. The words that I used such as Magical, were brought to bring medicine to most the worshippers and were acted as a supernatural substance.
My words don't go towards a cultural bias because they are what the cultures practice and not how I look at them. Magic is one of the words to truly describe what many of the followers were brought up on. The words that I mentioned were of schooling to these children and didn't know of anything else.
One of the words that I used as bias was Medicine because we take medicine from many areas of the world and don't pick and choose where they belong. Medicine is something that can make or break a society. I could have used supplements as a alternative word since they provide instead of medically.
It's hard to learn about the actual culture when people may input their two senses in. It's good to explain what the culture goes through but it's never good to judge on what is right and wrong. Anthropologists shouldn't be describing but more as explaining the culture.
Part A Review:
ReplyDeleteI am only scoring this part of the assignment for completion. I will post another comment on Friday after you submit Part B with feedback.
Five descriptive words recorded. (20/20)
Note that most of the words you have chosen here is not *adjectives*, i.e., descriptive words. "Magical" is the only descriptive word. The rest are nouns and name things instead of describing them. This will be difficult to work with in Part B. Don't change it... just be aware of this issue.
Part B Review:
ReplyDeleteAs I noted in my first comment, most of the words you have chosen here are nouns (i.e., "names" of things described in Miner's article) and not adjectives. It is easier to avoid bias when you are naming things instead of describing them. Some of those words can be converted into adjectives, such as "shrine-like" or "hierarchical" or "medically based".
Note that what Miner was actually describing in the article were healthcare practices by Americans, such as brushing our teeth, going to the dentist and seeking out care from a doctor in the hospital. So the issue here is whether the words you chose accurately describe what Miner was describing... i.e., our healthcare practices. Does "magical" or "shrine-like" describe how we brush our teeth or get our cavities filled or get a check-up from the doctor? Bias doesn't have to be negative... Remember that you chose these words based upon MInor's intentionally biased and rather judgmental article about the "Nacerima". If your choice is based upon biased information, should we be surprised that our descriptions are also biased?
"My words don't go towards a cultural bias because they are what the cultures practice"
Correct, but that's because you are naming them (nouns) not describing them (adjectives).
"Medicine" is actually accurately naming what this article is about and isn't really demonstrating bias. "Magical" is the only word that might show bias... does that word accurately describe the healthcare practices Miner discusses?
I agree with your last section. But can we avoid bias completely? Is that possible?