:Core Terms to Know:
Ethnocentrism: the belief that one's own cultural beliefs and practices are the only proper ones

Cultural Relativism - The idea that one must suspend judgment on other peoples’ practices in order to understand them in their own cultural terms. Only through such an approach can one gain a meaningful view of the values and beliefs that underlie the behaviors and institutions of other peoples and societies as well as clearer insights into the underlying beliefs and practices of one’s own society. Avoid premature judgments until we have a full understanding of the culture in which we are interested. Then and only then, may the anthropologist adopt a critical stance and in an informed way consider the advantages and disadvantages particular beliefs and behaviors have for a society and its members. The most important step of cultural relativism is to look back on ourselves; this may lead to re-inventing yourself or self-discovery. Suspend judgment : understand others in their terms : look back on own culture.

Participant Observation: combination of social interaction and personal observation;
In ethnography, the technique of learning a people’s culture through social participation and personal observation within the community being studied, as well as interviews and discussion with individual members of the group over an extended period of time. Try as we might, we can't be entirely like them, so we use the toolkit to better understand them.


The Ethnographer's Toolkit
communication, empathy, thoughtfulness

Ethnography
a detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork.


Fieldwork "Barrel Model" of culture
Infrastructure
technology and economics

Structure (Social Structure)
social and political, kinship and power relations

Superstructure
ideas, concepts and values

Holism
bringing all levels of a culture together and examining it as a whole

Nations / States (How many of each?) 5,000 nations, 200 states
New Stuff to Know:

Cultural Change
According to Wikipedia:
Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period", driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human explosion explosion, among other factors.

Acculturation
massive culture change that occurs in a society when it experiences intense first hand contact with a more powerful society.

Diffusion
spread of certain ideas, customs or practices from one culture to another.

Colonization (Strategies and Consequences)

• Strategies:
  • Colonize to get an area to produce only one cash crop
  • Would take land through Physical force and/or Taxation
  • Also the "White Man's Burden" played a role where they believed that they were "fixing" these savages.
• Consequences:
  • Main Consequence: People who were colonized became dependent on the World system
  • Market value would trump nutritional value
  • Hunger and Malnutrition become more common
  • Most would become propertyless and would then be low-wage workers on a plantation.
    

White Man’s Burden
a poem by Rudyard Kipling; ethnocentric; an expression of the way colonists justified their activities. The belief that they were "fixing" savages and to make them more "cultured."

Huaonari (everything in notes)

• The Huaorani story represents the best and worst of humanity coming together. Many people with good intentions having unseen negative consequences – the world system sucking in previously disconnected people ... complexity beyond one lecture, but worth exploring ...

• Several books – Savages by Joe Kane --- End of the Spear by son of slain missionary, Steve Saint, Countless Mining Documents and Maps, 2 anthropologists, 2 psychologists, and only 600 people (now 2,000)

• Huaorani called the Auca – savages – kill virtually everybody who ever came into their territory. Rubber seekers, Oil seekers ... 1956 ...

• The first missionaries to visit the Huaorani were killed by the Huaorani. Story: young couple on beach – others angry – they lie and say foreigners trying to kill them. A sister of one of these missionaries went back the Huaorani, viewing her job as even more important because of their horrific act.
  

• She began working closely with oil companies in trying to control the protests of Huaorani so that oil could be extracted from their land. They were moved onto a reservation and are no longer allowed to hunt (their traditional mode of subsistence) because they are on a "nature reserve" The pollution to their land was devastating.
  

World System (Core / Semi-Periphery / Periphery)


Corporate Globalization
Rising technology has allowed our environment to be characterized as a global one. “The global economy" gave business the ability to market products and services all over the globe. It has also allowed them to develop partnerships and alliances throughout the world, which has become essential for success in today’s business.”[1] Prior to Globalization, the United States dominated the global economy. In past decades, however, the U.S. share of the global economy has shrunk to approximately 20%. This trend is expected to continue as the economies of many newly industrialized countries continue to grow at a faster rate, this is called the balancing of the equilibrium.

What is a corporation?

• Wikipedia Def: A corporation is a legal entity (technically, a juristic person) which has a legal personality distinct from those of its members
• Also the corporation is only concerned with making the most money for their shareholders and it does not care how this is done even if the larger population is hurt in the process.
  

Fetishism of the Commodity
Commodities "Magically" appear without any trace of the power relationships behind their production. This leads into the story of "My Suit" that is sold in NY but has traveled through several countries and low wage sweat shops, but we as consumers don't know that and thus don't care.

Structural Power
power and inequality embedded in economic, social, political and ideological structures
hard power+soft power=structural power
can lead to structural violence

Soft Power / Hard Power

• Hard Power: Economic & Physical Force(Ex. British controlling India)
  
• Soft Power: shaping minds (influence: Ex. Gandhi)

Structural Violence
Harm caused by structrual power

• Environmental "intergenerational tyranny"
• Financial/Material (inequality, poverty, hunger)
• Health
• Psychological (identity, self-worth)

My Suit
It starts in southern Australia, where wool is produced where Tasmanians once lived until the genocide that occurred there during the colonial era. Much of the current world system rests on a dark history of colonialism.

Then the wool goes to Amritsar, Punjab, India where it is spun into cloth. Amritsar is where there was the horrible massacre about 85 years ago when Britain ruled India. Indians have been forced off their land first by colonial regimes and later by economic pressures from corporate agriculture. Now many of them form a very cheap labor pool - which is why the material is made there for less than $3/day.

Buttons from Canda, shoulder pads from China, and lining from Korea all meet with the material at Hamburg Germany where it all goes to Russia to be assembled for $2/day.

The question posed by the CEO of the suit-making company is this:

"Are we exploiting this labor market, or helping them?"

Is the first world helping to develop the third world, or is the first world continuously UNDERDEVELOPING the third world in order to maintain a vast pool of cheap labor and raw materials?

We find that as a system, corporate globalization is very productive, BUT it creates tremendous inequality, environmental devastation, and is not likely to be sustainable in the long term.

So who is to blame?

It is difficult to point a finger because it is an ENTIRE SYSTEM. It is STRUCTURAL POWER.

We know it is STRUCTURAL because any time you point a finger at an individual, they might defend themselves by saying: "If not me, somebody else." Meaning that the structure creates the roles.

Amritsar
horrible massacre 85 years ago when Britain ruled India; extremely low wage labor

Underdeveloping
Is the "Third World" developing or underdeveloping?

• One argument is that it is in a constant process of being underdeveloped

“The Accountant”

South Park’s Wall-Mart

Kathy Lee & Child Labor

Intergenerational Tyranny
Failure to protect the environment.

Context Collapse (YouTube)
From Wesch's blog:
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=183
The problem is not lack of context. It is context collapse: an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording. The images, actions, and words captured by the lens at any moment can be transported to anywhere on the planet and preserved (the performer must assume) for all time. The little glass lens becomes the gateway to a blackhole sucking all of time and space – virtually all possible contexts – in upon itself.

You never know when a camera is going to be recording you and where it's going to be.

Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture
We can what's being thrown at us, remix it and throw it back out there.
Like the participatory Chevy Web site that allows consumers to get on and create their own commercial. But they got what they didn't expect - a commercial that made a social statement against all that they've destroyed and are trying to accomplish.