Alternative medicine includes such non-conventional therapies as herbal supplements, acupuncture, chiropractic therapy, homeopathy, osteopathy, and therapeutic touch. unproven Websites for alternative cancer treatment centers offer treatments to patients that cost tens of thousands of dollars and are not covered by insurance. One website claims that 80% of cancer therapies are blocked by the patient’s emotions […]
SCENARIO C Building on previous research that shows people of different genders often communicate differently, an anthropologist has been studying how gendered communication affects family interactions. The anthropologist uses recorded conversations from participant families’ homes. The anthropologist also uses documentary footage of family interactions. The interactions are analyzed for information about gendered communication, power relationships, […]
Horace Miner’s 1956 piece on the Nacirema has become a classic in anthropology for a number of reasons. Miner’s piece was at once intended to illustrate the pitfalls of ethnocentrism and cultural romanticism while emphasizing the need for cultural relativism and the role of the etic perspective as a descriptive tool. While illustrating the etic […]
How is the study of your ancestors biopolitical, not just biological? Does that make it less scientific or differently scientific? What was gained by reducing organisms to genotypes and species to gene pools? What is gained by reintroducing bodies and species into evolutionary studies? The molecular biologist François Jacob argued that evolution is more like […]
Examine the words and phrasing that Lyell and Hooker used in their letter to the Linnean Society when describing Darwin’s and Wallace’s theory and its discovery. How were they conveying to society the importance of this theory? 2. In your analysis, who did Lyell and Hooker think should receive credit for the theory of natural […]
Based on your study of oriental medicine, what are the two most important cultural concepts of the worldview of patients of this system that would need to be understood by biomedical doctors if they are also treating the same patients in US hospitals? For example, some cultures do not recognize the same symptoms as treatable […]
How can the concept of ’emergent authenticity” be used, or how is it used, to understand the significance of the production of local cultural forms for tourist consumption as discussed in the Cohodas and Medina readings? In your response, you should consider: 1) Cohodas’ discussion of the local significance of Elizabeth Hickox’s production of curio […]
Drawing from the readings of this assignment. What will be the future implications for attempting to advance and modernize cultures that don’t need or benefit from our development, and will this have an impact on the global economy? Will other societies come up with a better solution, and will there be new evolutionary adaptions that […]
This week, we’ve learned about anthropological and historical perspectives on the cultural construction of gender and sexuality, as well as changing frameworks for understanding the complexities of sex itself. As described in the lecture, anthropologists talk about gender as a performance, rather than simply identity. We do gender according to norms, roles, and ideologies that […]
Students can comment on especially the social, behavioral, ideological (e.g. beliefs), and very personal aspects of the material culture around them, which they are of course noticing more because of the emphasis in an archaeology class. You might consider these questions about the material of your everyday life: Questions: 1. what different artifacts did […]
