Impacts of Change
From the Yir Yoront and the Nuer of Sudan, I have drawn that culture means a lot more than Eric Lassiter defined in his book an Invitation to Anthropology. He explains culture as “a shared and negotiated system of belief among a group of people” . While this is a very correct definition of culture, I don’t think this explains culture as wide and as intricate as it is. Through the different cultural groups we have read about, we see that it is the way we eat, dress, talk, walk, live, it’s the way we interact within our groups and with groups we have not encountered before and so much more. It is made up of simple, complex, relevant and maybe “irrelevant” details. Lauriston Sharp explains culture as “an integrated whole, the …show more content…
The Nuer had run from their home as a result of the war that had been going on in their home country of Sudan for over a decade. Many of them had grown up during this time and had lost their relatives in the process. They spent their life trying to survive, moving across borders from one refugee camp to another. The change that occurred in the lives of the Nuer was as a result of their need to survive, get an education and make a living for themselves. The Nuer moved to America with dreams of getting an education and a job and of having a relatively easily life but what they were met with although exciting at first was different from what they were used to. For example in this new country wealth was defined by how much money one had whereas back in Sudan wealth was defined by how many cows you owned and how much property you had. The Nuer now in America began to define wealth in terms of the ability to buy a car. Buom, a Nuer who had migrated to America from a refugee camp in Kenya, showed the Nuer attraction to cars when he said, in an Interview with Holtzman that, he had been told before coming to America that “if he could get a good job, he should get a car” and he even co-related having cows in Africa to having a car in America . The problem among the with having a car was that they most often drove without a driver’s license which led to them being arrested, they …show more content…
The Yir Yoront were more open to the idea of steel axes because at first glance it seemed to serve equal purpose with the traditionally used stone axes. They accepted the idea to switch their stone axes for steel axes with little or no skepticism while the Nuer were a little to more skeptic about the life they were being made to adapt to. Their move to America was a matter of necessity and had very little to do with personal choice under the circumstances they were faced with. For example, the midwife who tried to explain the process of child delivery in America was met with very shocked faces when she showed the clip where the husband of the pregnant woman was in the room with her. This was not part of the Nuer culture where husbands stayed away from child birth and one pregnant woman not knowing she had a choice to let her husband stay or not, could not take it and left as quickly as possible . The Nuer especially the men, could not understand how divorce in America worked. They knew that they had paid for their wives back at Sudan by giving cows to their wives family as a type of bride wealth and separation could not occur without full return of the cows. Hence, many were against granting divorces to their
From the Yir Yoront and the Nuer of Sudan, I have drawn that culture means a lot more than Eric Lassiter defined in his book an Invitation to Anthropology. He explains culture as “a shared and negotiated system of belief among a group of people” . While this is a very correct definition of culture, I don’t think this explains culture as wide and as intricate as it is. Through the different cultural groups we have read about, we see that it is the way we eat, dress, talk, walk, live, it’s the way we interact within our groups and with groups we have not encountered before and so much more. It is made up of simple, complex, relevant and maybe “irrelevant” details. Lauriston Sharp explains culture as “an integrated whole, the …show more content…
The Nuer had run from their home as a result of the war that had been going on in their home country of Sudan for over a decade. Many of them had grown up during this time and had lost their relatives in the process. They spent their life trying to survive, moving across borders from one refugee camp to another. The change that occurred in the lives of the Nuer was as a result of their need to survive, get an education and make a living for themselves. The Nuer moved to America with dreams of getting an education and a job and of having a relatively easily life but what they were met with although exciting at first was different from what they were used to. For example in this new country wealth was defined by how much money one had whereas back in Sudan wealth was defined by how many cows you owned and how much property you had. The Nuer now in America began to define wealth in terms of the ability to buy a car. Buom, a Nuer who had migrated to America from a refugee camp in Kenya, showed the Nuer attraction to cars when he said, in an Interview with Holtzman that, he had been told before coming to America that “if he could get a good job, he should get a car” and he even co-related having cows in Africa to having a car in America . The problem among the with having a car was that they most often drove without a driver’s license which led to them being arrested, they …show more content…
The Yir Yoront were more open to the idea of steel axes because at first glance it seemed to serve equal purpose with the traditionally used stone axes. They accepted the idea to switch their stone axes for steel axes with little or no skepticism while the Nuer were a little to more skeptic about the life they were being made to adapt to. Their move to America was a matter of necessity and had very little to do with personal choice under the circumstances they were faced with. For example, the midwife who tried to explain the process of child delivery in America was met with very shocked faces when she showed the clip where the husband of the pregnant woman was in the room with her. This was not part of the Nuer culture where husbands stayed away from child birth and one pregnant woman not knowing she had a choice to let her husband stay or not, could not take it and left as quickly as possible . The Nuer especially the men, could not understand how divorce in America worked. They knew that they had paid for their wives back at Sudan by giving cows to their wives family as a type of bride wealth and separation could not occur without full return of the cows. Hence, many were against granting divorces to their