Customs union

Although cremation may negatively affect the environment, it is cost-effective; therefore, more individuals should consider this an alternative to the traditional method of burial. Cremation also is considered simpler and provides more flexibility in a memorial service according to the Cremation Association of North America. Cremation allows you to locate your body wherever you chose. Here there are more details provided about all the benefits of cremation. According to the Cremation…

Everyone comes from a cultural background carrying a different set of beliefs. Much of your identity is influenced by the environment in which you grew up in and by how you were brought up and raised. Since birth, you were taught by your parents and community a standard in which ways to behave, in which ways to interact with others respectively, in which is right from wrong, the list goes on. These are just a few that are ingrained in someone unknowingly. If one were to immerse himself fully…

The underlying theory of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is cognitive and behavioral theories. Cognitive theory deals with schemas or core beliefs that every person possesses. Core beliefs come from the way a person is raised by their family members and include culture, values, and morals. It is the way they have been raised to view the world since birth. These beliefs are ingrained into each family member. Behaviors are believed to be taught through the environment (Chilcott, 2013). There are…

Ethnocentrism is the attitude of considering one’s own culture as superior and as the right one, and looking down on other cultures. Ethnocentrism leads to valuing certain beliefs and behaviors that people share in a community and ethnocentric people believe that their way of living and behavior is the natural and normal way. Hmong people migrated to the United States from Laos to escape the ongoing war, and their culture and beliefs collided with American cultural in several ways. Hmong’s and…

In the story about Lia Lee, her American Doctors, and her Hmong parents. American Doctors and nurses at that time thought that their methods for evaluating and resolving medical problems was the only way and they refused to see how other people from different parts of the world practice medicine and healing. The Hmong had healing methods that varied from shamanism, dermal treatments, and herbs. Each method used depended on the problem the patient was having. The American doctors had healing…

Western culture’s fascination with the thinking rationally stems back to the seventeenth and eighteenth century intellectual movement: The Enlightenment. The term rational is defined as “based on or derived from reason or reasoning, esp. as opposed to emotion, intuition, instinct, etc” (Oxford). Rationality was heralded as the answer to all problems and the path to a perfect society; while these views are considered extreme in today’s culture, reason is still viewed as mostly infallible. In The…

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is the tragic story of a young Hmong girl named Lia who suffers from epilepsy and who was the victim of a cultural collision and misunderstanding between her Hmong parents and her American doctors in Merced, California. The story follows Lia’s family, the Lees, as they navigate the American culture and system while maintaining strong ties with their traditions, practices, and rituals. The author, Anne Fadiman, uses the battle between the doctors of Merced…

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the relationship between the Hmong culture and the American culture; in particular the differences in medicine. Medicine has been a difficult subject to understand and master; moreover it becomes almost impossible if the person was raised in an entirely different culture than that of western medicine. This book discusses what it was like from both sides; the Hmong and those of the western doctors what it is like to deal with each other when it…

The roles of gender have long shaped the society as a whole. Commonly, women recognized as dependent, weak and passive. On the other hand, men perceived as independent, strong and dominant. These traits define the roles of gender, but it impacts one culture more than others. The majority of the Hmong populations are people who lived in the hills of Laos. Large groups of Hmong people lived in poverty, had no or little education, and survived on farming. They are independent people who cared most…

Stepheny Saavedra Anthropology 340 Dec. 1, 2016 “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” is one of the many cases that exemplify the barriers and obstacles people from distinct cultures encounter due to their ethnocentrism and lack of cultural relativism. After escaping to the U.S., a place completely different from what they called home, the Lees had to adapt and place their trust on strangers (to save their daughter) who viewed a condition with spiritual origin to the Hmong as a…