IHSS C2021-22

Noor Qureshi  Mr. Roddy  IHSS 2 September 2021 Cultural Anthropology Blog            The article I chose is called "Firestorm: Critical Approaches to Forest Death and Life." This article talks about what a firestorm is and its impact on human life. A firestorm is a fire that's so big and powerful that it makes its own winds. From reading this, I found out that these firestorms are caused naturally and by humans. There has been a large increase in the number of wildfires and storms in Indonesia, Australia, parts of the U.S, and the Amazon. Why are wildfires occurring so often in some parts of the world? Well part of it has to do with us as a society, and how we are destroying these natural homes by deforestation, technology, and creating an urban life for a place that's not meant to be like that. It's not all our fault though; a lot of times fires are caused naturally. In Australia, many of the fires have been due to lightning, while in Calif...

  Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 31 August 2021 Cultural Anthropology     Cultural anthropology is the study of cultures and the people in those cultures from almost every country in the world. Cultural anthropology dates back to around the 19th century. Cultural anthropologists study almost everything that has to do with a culture. They study their languages, housing, art, politics, government, food, and almost anything else you can think of. They will study these things through fieldwork. Fieldwork is when an anthropologist will go and study the culture by living in it. They gather their information through firsthand information. However some anthropologists also use folklore to gather their information about a culture. These folklores can also be religious, which a lot of cultures are based around. Folklores also help to show the dynamics of that civilization. For example, in America some people believe in the folklore of BigFoot. BigFoot has shaped some people’s liv...

An adaptive mechanism is a strategy developed in order to survive in a particular environment. Examples : Humans adapted to their environment and developed culture, i.e. ways to connect with their people and establish legacies that will outlive them. Animals who have adapted to their environment and picked up new strategies to hunt will be favored by natural selection, having been able to adapt when their competitors did not.  A child adapts to survive isolation by learning therapeutic skills to stay connected with friends and keep from going insane. Socialization is the process by which a person learns about the culture and society they are growing up in and their role in both. By interacting with people in their community, they adopt skills and beliefs and are educated on the language, customs, and societal norms of their culture. Example : A child being raised in a religious household, socializing primarily with a religious community, will become accustomed to the values, expe...

  Aiden Cunningham Mr. Roddy IHSS 26 August 2021 IHSS Blog Anthropology Terms For this assignment, I chose two terms, Acculturation and Ethnocentrism. Here’s a little about them and some examples. Acculturation Acculturation is the process of when a culture or society adopts the traditions and customs of another culture or society, simply because the two interact with each other. The culture or society that is adopting traditions and customs from the other culture or society typically isn’t being forced to do this, they are just doing it on their own. A good example of this is cultures who consist of traditions that they have held for thousands of years and are now starting to adopt things around them. A real world example of this is the people of China, who are now starting to adopt western clothing, instead of the traditional Chinese and Japanese cultural clothing they have worn for thousands of years. Ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism is the practice of viewing other cultures through ...

 Syncretism: An example of syncretism is the Rastafarian Movement. This was started in 1930 by Marcus Garvey in Jamaica. He led an organization named the Universal Negro Improvement Association, whose intention was to unify blacks with their land of origin. Rastafari is a religion that believe God makes himself known through humanity. The movement combines Protestant Christianity, mysticism, and a pan-African political consciousness. The Rastas, the members of the movement, see their past, present, and future in a distinct way by drawing from Old Testament stories. They also believe that they are being tested by Jah (God) through slavery and the existence of economic injustice.  Acculturation:  An example of acculturation is the street fashion in Japan. Students in Japan are all required to wear uniforms and to behave following a specific code of conduct. However during the holidays the people of Japan attempt to show their sense of individuality through clothing and fash...

 Baker Croyle  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  25 August 2021  Terms  1. Syncretism -  syncretism is the mixing of two traditional or religious beliefs from two different cultures that then blend together to make something new. An example of syncretism is the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica which is a combination of Christianity and Caribbean freed slave culture. Syncretism however is often viewed negatively by strong members of a religious group because it is abandoning ones true culture.  2. Acculturation - acculturation is the adoption of a different culture into ones own. One example of acculturation would be a traditional African tribe that wears western clothing instead of their own clothes. People tend to assimilate the dominant culture or the more popular culture.  

 This is a story of my journey to Morgantown, West Virginia during the 2018 college football season. A lot of places in the United States have great culture, but nothing compares to this little college town in northern West Virginia. On my first day there I went to Milan Puskar Stadium, or the Mountaineer field. Since this was three hours before their game against Kansas State, there were people every in these tents doing something they like to call tailgating which is a very popular college tradition before any sports game. The tents were all the same blue and yellow color and most of them had a large tv, a grill, and a lot of peperoni rolls, which is a delicacy in the state of West Virginia. This seemed to be a way to get everybody together. Later on I went into the stadium to watch the game and immediately I noticed how electrifying the atmosphere was. When the team came out of the tunnel the crowd roared in excitement and a mountaineer shot his musket in the air. After the game...

 Noor Qureshi  Mr. Rody  IHSS 24 August 2021 Anthropology Terms Diffusion - Diffusion is the process of sharing cultural ideas and aspects, from one group to another. An example of this could be when someone immigrates; they bring parts of their culture and share it with a new group of people. Another example relates to Chinatowns in the US. You can experience a lot of Chinese culture by visiting these places, even though you're not in China. Acculturation - Acculturation is when an entire culture adapts or changes a lot of its customs to fit another cultural norm. A big example of this is clothing. In places like Japan, instead of wearing their traditional clothing, people have adapted to wear clothes that are similar to what we wear in the U.S or in the U.K.

            It's been 3 days since I ventured into the culture of the Melomanic people. Originating from Melomania, a small island located right in the center of the Bermuda Triangle, the Melomanic tribe consists of about a hundred members (homo-sapiens ranging from early teen years to mid-twenties) who can't remember what they had for breakfast, much less how they ended up on Melomania. When I, a seasoned anthropologist, heard of their unique situation, I set out to help these poor adolescents and misguided millenials become a functional society. However, when I arrived to meet the Melomanics, I was surprised to see that they had an effective system in place for pretty much every area of life.  Their shelters are built from the remains of crashed planes and boats that wash up on the southern shore. The Savants, a group of teens showing exceptional skills in engineering and architecture, are in charge of collecting the scraps and assembling them i...

Noor Qureshi  Mr. Rody  IHSS 24 August 2021 Ethnographer in the 1700's 3 years ago we had successfully cracked time travel and we, ethnographers, have been observing the cultural and social life of people back in time ever since then.       I landed at an English tea house in 1734. People stared at me, mouth agape, watching me stand in pants and a t-shirt. The ladies all gasped but kept their gloved hands crossed on their laps. They were all dressed in big dresses, some a shade of delicate pink, others in baby blue, or sage green. The waiters, all men, stood with perfect posture in their black tuxedos, holding silver domed dishes. One of them, so shocked, dropped a dish seeing me as if I had violated the law. I learned then that it was basically a violation of law, for a "lady" to wear anything other than a dress. I apologized immediately and made up an excuse for why I walked in like that, because they can't know I'm from the future. Nonetheless, I sat at ...

Today is the first day of my study, after 2 months of space travel. we finally reached our destination, Mars. Since this is the first time anyone has ever been to Mars, we are oblivious to what we will find. We arrive on Mars in search of nothing in particular, but when we step out of our ship we are greeted by a friendly-American looking neighborhood, almost as one would look on earth. The only thing "foreign" about this is the last full dusty sky. We start to search for the creatures that might've built this neighborhood since there is no one in sight. As we walk around we start to get more and more familiar with the homes, some of my men even claimed that they were seeing their childhood homes mixed with the others. I was skeptical until I saw my own, the home I had lived in for 18 years, the home the hosted every Christmas, Easter, and New Years' celebration. The only explanation was whoever built this modeled it off our exact neighborhoods, almost as if they alw...

  Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 24 August 2021 Anthropology Terms Cultural Anthropology- Cultural anthropology is a field of study in anthropology that studies cultures and creates an analysis of that culture using ethnography, folklore, and ethnology. Many cultures have gone through this, A cultural anthropologist will go take the information gathered by the ethnography and other anthropologists. This has happened to many cultures and countries including New Guinea. Ethnography- Ethnography is when a person will go into a country to observe and research the culture of these communities that we don't know much about. This happens in many different civilizations, an example is the reading we read, “Not a Real Fish”. This man goes into these civilizations and learns their language and how their civilization works.

 Baker Croyle  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  24 August 2021  Ethnographer Story  A new island located off of the African coast was just recently discovered and explored by me. The island seemed to be uninhabited from the near coast and people had not been seen. I prepared by bag and set off on a small boat towards the island. The rough water made it difficult for me to steer and I began to turn towards the left side of the island to keep the waves from coming over the boat. As I arrived at the beach, I was greeted by the sound of drums and bells coming from the forest. I retrieved my things and set off towards the the sounds. As I approached the sound I began to see that I was walking on a path that seemed to have been used many years ago. I began to see small houses with leafy roofs and open windows that were up on stilts. I presumed that this was to prevent the houses from washing away in a hurricane. As I arrived at the area that the drums were coming from, I saw a g...

Wyatt Quillin Mr. Roddy IHSS 24 August 2021 Ethnographer Story     In the Sahara Desert, there is a tribe of people so isolated that they aren't acknowledged by world governments. They live a very nomadic lifestyle, walking the desert sands searching for water and food. The hardest part about trying to observe this obscure group was originally finding them. I'd spent months and months scouring the Sahara in search of any sign of them with little luck. But finally, after 11 months, I came across a little boy wandering the dunes with a sort of tent on his back to shield him from the sun. When he saw me he froze, turned, and started to run. I ran after him telling him I meant him no harm. He finally stopped and turned to me and gestured for me to follow him. I did, and he led me to the edge of a cliff that led down into a sort of canyon. Carefully, he started to climb down the side of the cliff, using the rocks to safely reach the bottom. I followed after him, though he was much ...

 Isa Pedersen Mr. Roddy IHSS 24 August 2021 Ethnographer Story     As I completed the two year long journey to Planet Pen, I was greeted by the friendly faces of the Pencil People. These strange creators had purple skin and were 10 feet tall. In hindsight they sound very intimidating and alien, but in actuality they are nicer than humans. The Pencil People and Planet Pen was only discovered 5 years ago, and each trip takes 2 years to make, so I was only on the second trip ever to get to Planet Pen. As I stepped off the spaceship, the Pencil People walked up to me and said in a series of clicks and tones, something that I understood as a welcome. They then motioned me to follow them back to their civilization. We walked for what seemed like 10 plus hours, however when looking back you could still see the spaceship, this was just the weird gravity of Planet Pen. As we walked up and I could start to see the tops of the Pencil People’s buildings, I started to understand ...

  Aiden Cunningham Mr. Roddy IHSS 24 August 2021 Ethnographer Blog - Life on Pluto After the recent discovery of life on Pluto, I had to see firsthand just how different this culture was. Who knows, maybe I would find something that would revolutionize the way I think about the world as I know it. I arrived on a spaceship docking station near the civilization, and stepped out into the low-gravity surface of the Dwarf planet, kept warm from the nearly -300 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures by my spacesuit. After driving around a while on the rover provided to me, I finally found them, a group shelters that seemed to be not unlike our own. The walls and ceilings were made from the material on Pluto’s surface, a smooth but rocky substance that was apparently perfect for their houses. The shape was similar to modern day adobe houses, and the whole town really didn't look that different from modern day towns, save for the massive synthetic clear dome surrounding the whole civilization, ...

     The first word I chose is culture, the definition of culture is a pattern of behaviour or traditions that a certain group of people practices. This could be seen through the arts; music, theatre, literature, architecture, this could also be seen in beliefs, forms of government, currency, certain skills, and ideas. An example of this would be seen in the Slovaks. The Slovaks are from Slovakia, and a part of their culture is folklore stories and folk traditions. The Kazakhs, from Kazakhstan, culture is very rich in old Turkish nomadic traditions. Culture could also be something that relates to just you or your family. This could be your family is carnivores, or cannibals, or vegetarians, or vegans, this is all a part of your culture. Culture can be anything from the school you go to to the neighborhood you live in.      The second word I chose was Adaptive Mechanism, the definition of adaptive mechanism is what one does when placed into another setting o...

Wyatt Quillin Mr. Roddy IHSS 23 August 2021 Anthropology Terms     Diffusion is when a cultural norm or idea migrates from one society to another. An example of diffusion is the migration of sushi from Japan to the USA. Even though it has stayed similar, sushi has been Americanized and is not the same as sushi in the country of Japan. Another example would be the religious diffusion of basically any religion to either its invaders or whoever they are invading.  Participant Observation is a form of research that usually involves living with a family of a different culture and experiencing everything in their day-to-day lives. An example of this would be an anthropologist immersing themselves in the culture of an obscure and isolated tribe in the wilderness, and observing their lives.