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Culture and Personality

(Psychological Anthropology)

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Wednesday 1 April 2009

Week 10 Day 19

nlt 02:40 video: "Alejandro Mamani: A Case study in Culture and Personality"
(ca. 30 min., 1994, VC 2466)



Announcements

   

Features of the Day

 

Guest Speaker:

The Psychological Worlds of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and America: Three Cups of Tea and More

Home schooling in Afghanistan.
BBCNews

Afghanistan

Pakistan

America

 

Postponed

overview of the handout
Culture-Bound Syndromes
<http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth4616/cpculture-bound_syndromes.html#title>

nlt 02:40 video:
"Alejandro Mamani: A Case study in Culture and Personality"
[From the Faces of Culture Series, Part 6]
(ca. 30 min., 1994, VC 2466)

Alejandro Mamani.

 

  • REM:

    • Disease is universal

      • compare: etic

    • Illness is culturally specific

      • compare: emic

 

  • Questions about papers/projects?

 

  • Continuation of the Question: How do different practices in different cultures produce "Culture-Bound Syndromes," which are unique psychological correlates, or psychological characteristics closely comparable to one another?

    • note that this question has been broadened from the last time to include "psychological characteristics comparable to one another"

      • latah, for example, appears only in Malaysia and Indonesia

        • latah is unique to that area

      • mal ojo (evil eye) is more broadspread, appearing in Mediterranean and Latin American Hispanic Latina populations

        • and elsewhere in its more general manifestation of "the evil eye"

      • mal ojo is not therefore unique, per se, but it does center in Latin/Latina cultures


    • spirit possession is not generally considered a culture-bound syndrome

      • spirit possession exists in many cultures, and in many belief systems, including Christianity

      • spirit possession is an etic category



  • Alterted States of Consciousness (ASC)

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Old Business

  • next week
  • in-class design project, and materials from Week 9 (s2009)

return to scheduled features of the day
   

Assignments

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman (NY: Farrar, Strauss and Biroux, 1977).
Anne Fadiman
NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1997.

Lia Lee is a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy,
whose family believes her seizure was caused by the slamming of a door by an older sister,
which caused Lia's soul to flee her body and the soul became lost to a dab.

dab, a spirit, is pronounced "da"
txiv neeb, a Hmong shaman, is pronounced "tsi neng"
(pp. 291-292)


next time

 

Notes

 

 

 

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Real People...Real Places...

Monday 6 April 2009

Week 10 Day 20

nlt 2:12 video: The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America
(58 min., 2001, DVD 538)


Announcements

In the news . . .

Maureen Dowd's OP-ED in
The New York Times
(4 April 2009)
purports President Obama as

"The First Shrink"

Could it also be . . .

"The First Anthropologist"?

Dowd reports, "Barack Obama grew up learning how to slip in and out of different worlds — black and white, foreign and American, rich and poor."

"The son of an anthropologist [Dr. Stanley Ann "Anna" Dunham Soetoro], he developed a lot of 'tricks,' as he put it, training himself to be a close observer of human nature, figuring out what others needed so he could get where he wanted to go."

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/02/opinion/dowd-ts-190.jpg
Barack Hussein Obama II

 


Maureen Dowd.
Maureen Dowd

And others have noted that "In an interview, Obama referred to his mother as 'the dominant figure in my formative years. . . . The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics." [President Obama's Mother, his primary anthropology teacher, did her Ph.D. Dissertation on "Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia" (University of Hawaii, 1992)].
Wikipedia

On his European tour President Obama will visit, London, Germany, Strasbourg (in France, and seat of many important European institutions), Prague, and Turkey.)

Have a look at Maureen Dowd's article:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/opinion/05dowd.html>

and have a look at the BBC News Barack Obama page:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/topics/barack_obama>

and the Telegraph (UK) Barack Obama page
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/>

 

   

Feature of the Day

nlt 2:12 video:
The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America

(58 min., 2001, DVD 538)

Hmong shaman.
Hmong shaman
Chengmengmai Village,
Northern Thailand

 

Read: Ch. 9 "The Sacrifice." From The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), pp. 278-288.
UM DULUTH Library Reserve Online Resource EL Online Resource
<https://login.libpdb.d.umn.edu:2443/login?url=http://lib.d.umn.edu/res/troufs/anth4616_spi_ca_yo_a.pdf>
(Requires University of Minnesota Duluth account validation)

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman (NY: Farrar, Strauss and Biroux, 1977).
Anne Fadiman
NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1997.

Lia Lee is a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy,
whose family believes her seizure was caused by the slamming of a door by an older sister,
which caused Lia's soul to flee her body and the soul became lost to a dab.

dab, a spirit, is pronounced "da"
txiv neeb, a Hmong shaman, is pronounced "tsi neng"
(pp. 291-292)

 

 

Old Business


return to scheduled features of the day
   

Assignments

  • Read: Ch. 9, "Culture and Aggression," pp. 259-272
 

Notes

  • Monday 23 March 2009: Briefly reviewed "Major Schools and Approaches of Psychological Anthropology" (Bock 1982), (handout), and viewed Magical Death (29 min., 1988, VC 1338) Children's Magical Death
  • Wednesday 25 March 2009: introduced and viewed N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman (26 of 59 min., 1980, VC 2371)
  • Monday 30 March 2009: Review/Preview of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hmong; viewed Latah: A Culture-specific Elaboration of the Startle Reflex (38 min., 1990, VC 4651)
  • Monday 30 March 2009: Review/Preview of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hmong; viewed Latah: A Culture-specific Elaboration of the Startle Reflex (38 min., 1990, VC 4651)
  • Wednesday 1 April 2009: Guest speaker on Afghanistan
  • Monday 6 April 2009: Finished Culture-bound syndroms and viewed video: "Alejandro Mamani: A Case study in Culture and Personality" (ca. 30 min., 1994, VC 2466)
  • ~

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