CuLtUrAL Anthopology

The summer between my sophomore and Junior year of college I was given the sentence of acquiring 6 credits by my councilor.  That is only IF I cared about being eligible to compete the upcoming season...Well duh I was going to compete soooo off to the dreary class room for many a precious, beautiful sunny day to carry out my sentence ;)
 
I honestly thought I was going to HATE every minute I was stuck behind a desk that summer that IS until I actually sat down for my first lecture...

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY turns out is right up my alley!  Professor "SoAndSo" (not that he was a horrible teacher but, it also wasn't that he was ultra charismatic that I fell in love with the subject) you know how that goes sometimes.  It was the substance of the subject itself that intrigued me.  I mean the first discussion we got into was about this tribe whose people believed they didn't truly know their gender until they reached the age of 12!  Whaat? And then if the boys at the time had come to the conclusion that they were in fact female they would from then on carry out the feminine roll even to the point of faking pregnancies by ingesting some herb that would cause first nausea then bloating and eventually they they would go into the woods to "give birth".  Which clearly was only ever feces BUT(as if it couldn't get anymore crazier) they would bury it as if it was a still birth and all the tribe would morn with "her" over the loss.
Okay, so I know I may sound like a bad anthropologist coming off like "these tribes are crazy" but I LOVE THEIR CRAZY.  Isn't it just mind blowing that we are here in the U.S. living out our suburban lives and there is another society out there that is celebrating a coming of gender age? 

Different is Beautiful 

"Culture is not genetically hardwired, we do not inherit it biologically.  Despite the power culture gives us it's a remarkably fragile phenomenon...  It is consistently changing and easily lost because it exists almost entirely in our minds." 

 

We have so much to learn about ourselves through the study of not only other cultures but our own.  "The idea of looking at others is to be able to look at one self with new eyes". 




Soooo What????  Well, I have decided it would be fun to take some time each month to research different societies/cultures throughout the world and learn from their lifestyles by embracing their different behaviors into my own life.  MY hope is that you would be interested enough to take on the "monthly challenge" with me from which we could share our own personal experiences on what it was like to practice these new habits within our own society....

TO BE CONTINUED :)