Culture photovoice Project #4

My Culture

 

My nationality is American, but my ethnicity and where my family is from is the Dominican Republic. All of my aunt's and uncle's, and my mom, were born and raised in the Dominican Republic. One of our most important values is the relationship between family. We get together for every little thing, including birthdays, dog's birthdays, every single holiday, celebrating deaths or even sometimes- just because. It is important to us and it is a deeply held standard because there are a lot of family's who do not have that closeness, that unity. I have a lot of friend's that when they tell me they aren't doing anything for their birthday or they aren't getting together with their family for Christmas, I look at them like they're crazy! Not getting together for these two occasion's, to me, is  completely out of the norm. It's something that is considered to me to be "appropiate" behavior for those types of occasions and if you are not doing it then you aren't behaving as normal family. And that idea and belief that I have is an example of enthocentrism. I look at my friend's that don't get together with their family's like they're crazy because to me that is what is right and what you are suppose to do.

 

 

Graduation is a value that both my American culture and my Dominican culture deeply believe is important. In this picture I was graduating from High School and my cap and gown is a symbol of it's own. It symbolizes success, I was ready for the next step and I will continue to succeed and propser. It symbolizes knowledge, without it I wouldn't have learned how to speak , read and write and understand both languages of both my cultures and I wouldn't have learned the basic norms of being within them. It symbolizes growth. It symbolizes me entering the real world. In this case, my cap and gown can be an example of both, material culture and nonmaterial culture.It can be material culture because the cap and gown are clothing that symbolizes something and it can be nonmaterial culture because of the ideas, beliefs and knowledge that are assiociated with graduation.

 

 

 

This is a picture of a church called St. Augustine, in Brooklyn, New York. My religion is Catholic and can correspond to both my American culture and my Dominican culture. Going to sunday mass at 10:30am on every Sunday is an example of a folkway, this is something that is common in my both cultures and has been molded into a habit; something that is just a part of every Sunday. You wake up early, get dressed for church, go to church, enjoy your Sunday mass and then go out to brunch after. This is yet again, another norm.

 

This picture is of me getting my first tattoo. I got my mother and my two sister's favorite flowers; a tuberose, a purple rose and a sunflower; tied together by a ruffled bow. In my American culture, tattoo's are acceptable and it some how became a norm because of how many people have one. However, in my Dominican culture it was a HUGE problem. This day started my own personal culture war. My family intensely diagreed with my act to get a tattoo and in fact, my mother stopped talking to me for about a month! She saw it like I did not value my body and I did not care about it. She saw the ink and automatically thought I was upset about something and that is what made me "act" out and try to ruin it. It went against all the morals she and my family ever taught me about self-respect and how young girls are suppose to be considered "pure" and "innocent". Getting inked went against all that. My body was no longer pure or innocent and it went against my morals because I did not respect myself enough to NOT get it. But to me, this tattoo WAS INDEED a way to express my love for my mother and my sisters. They will forever officially be a part of me, they're inbedded in me, literally. To me, this goes along with the morals my family taught me, that family needs to be unified and close at all times and that you should love your family forever. My tattoo was embraced by my American culture. All of my friends all loved it. Some of them were even there watching while I got it done. However, I can now understand that my two cultures clashed because I got the tattoo with my American culture values and norms in mind.



I use to be a manager at a McDonald's in Brooklyn, and one time while I was closing I was taking the order a man and i got all of his food and i told him his total, which was around $8. He handed me a $20 dollar bill and he put the money in my hand. The way he handed it to me was weird as well. Usually people place money into your hand, but this guy held one end of the 20 while I grabbed the other. I did not think anything of it and I proceeded to count out his change. As I closed the register and was getting ready to pass his change to him, he said, "Can you do me a favor?". I said, "Umm sure?". He said, "Can you put the change down on the counter?" I must have looked very confused because after that he said, "It's just my culture. I cannot touch any body part of a woman that is not my wife." I said, "Sure no problem", put his change down on the counter, gave him his food and wished him a good day. I had jus experienced a culture shock. I stood thinking about that man for a long while and until that point I had no clue that handling money and change can be considered part of your culture! I thought every one had to hand you money and change into your hands because that was what I considered to be respectable in my American culture. Now, I no longer work at McDonald's but I am a cashier at a Sephora, and a lot of people from overseas put their money on the counter top, and I hand them back their change on the counter top because I do not want to disrespect their culture. That man taught me a valuable lesson.  




The Toyota Prius Hybrid (or whatever it is called, I'm far from a car expert) is an example of cultural lag. People in American culture want to create a car that runs off solar energy and not gas so that we conserve the earth's natural gases. Now all though I agree with this idea, we aren't thinking about the bad effects that a hybrid itself can have on the earth. We invent things and then we aren't ready for their consequences because we don't anticipate them, we don't expect them. Driving a hybrid car that uses the sun for energy still won't stop texting and driving, or drinking and driving.

Prince Royce is a "latin pop" music singer who has a song called "Stand by me" and this song is sung in both English and Spanish. This is the perfect song that mixes both the languages of my two cultures and turns them into one. This is also an example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This can be considered a part of this hypothesis because there are lines of the song that when translated into english, mean something that doesn't mean the same in spanish and vise versa. For example, in the song he says "Stand by me". To say that in spanish you would say, "parate al lado de mi" or "apuyame". In this song though, he says "junto a mi", but when you translate "junto a mi" into english it means "together with me" or "along with or near me". So saying along or near me will change the behavior in which some one will actually either stand along you, or near you. And the same goes for spanish. The two ways of saying "stand by me" in spanish have two totally different meanings which will change the way one acts towards you and what you are asking them to do specifically.   

 

Body Rituals Among the Nacirema

     I have read this passage before in my Anthropology class 100, and it was very amusing to learn that this is actually describing us; Americans.

     "The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses..." is saying that the more wealthier people have a lot of bathrooms in their homes (which is true).
     "The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live." This is addressing the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.
     "Medicine men", are doctors and the "medicine men" don't see you without being rewarded with a "substancial gift", or money/insurance.
     "Herbalists", are the pharmacists and to receive your presciption you need to pay them too.
     "Holy-mouthed men", are dentists. "Listener" is a therapist. "Women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour", are women who go to the hair salon and sit under hair dryers to dry their hair. "The are rituals to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat", this is dieting.


I really like this piece because when put it into this perspective and these words, you actually think about how silly our culture, as Americans, is. When I first read it I ha to reread it a couple of times because I felt like I could relate too much to the the Nacirema people. Until I read again and I realized that it was us! It was me! I had sat and baked my head for about an hour before and I can't go to the "medican man" unless I have insurance or money to be seen and diagnosed. I think that the purpose of this passage to put into perspective how silly the things that we believe is so important really are. We believe in too much when in reality, things are really simple.

Teenage Wasteland, by Donna Gaines

My immediate feeling after reading this article was appreciation. I appreciated it because Donna Gaines decided to look further into why these four teenagers decided to end their lives. Her findings were that the four teens, and kids around the world that are considered outcasts and "burnouts", commit suicide because they have "bad lives" and at the time they felt that suicide was the only way "out" of their misery. Now I can't speak on how this must feel because I've never felt this way but I do think that people who commit suicide, whether a teenager or not, feel like they have no other choice and no one else can help them. I think a way to help stop this is to enforce that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. When people feel alone, like outcasts and they start feeling like they have nothing else to live for, that’s when they think suicide is the answer.

 The words "burnouts", "societal neglects", "f***-ups", "dropouts", "druggies" and "goth" all stood out to me because this is exactly what kids are called if they don't fit into what "society" thinks they should fit in to. For example, to society a "jock" is someone who is really good in all sports, is popular, is really cute or handsome, comes from a wealthy family and has the prettiest girlfriend and a "cheerleader" is someone who is really pretty, usually a blonde or a brunette, is super skinny, wears a lot of makeup, also comes from a wealthy family and is the most popular girl in school.

 Now the reason I can list these characteristics is because when I was in high school, these characteristics and “spot’s” were still around. I remember being popular in school and being popular was more important than doing really good in my classes. I worried about what I was going to eat for lunch and who I was going to sit with, rather than how long I was going to study for my next English test. And just like all the other kids of Bergenfield, New Jersey, I ignored the "outcasts" and the "druggies". I would see them and it was automatically a negative thought behind it. Not once did I stop to wonder about how they felt or about what they were going through. Which I know is how most kids in America, or around the world for that matter, do.

 We grow up to try to "fit in" to these categories and we have no idea who made them or why we even try to fit into them. I think one of the reasons that we try to fit into these categories is to be accepted by society, by our peers, by our teachers, by our parents, so that we aren't left as outcasts, so that we are comforted by idea that we BELONG somewhere. That we aren't alone because there are people "just like us", when indeed, there is no one who is just like you. And there is no such thing as “being you” because in some way, shape or form, everything you do is based on something or someone. Is there indeed such thing as individuality? We all follow each other. A new trend comes out and all of sudden everyone looks exactly the same. A famous singer gets a new haircut and all of sudden everyone has that same hair style.

  Which leads me to think that the “burnouts” who are ending their lives because they “don’t fit in”, are indeed the only ones with just a little bit of individuality because they are going against the “rules”. They’re fighting back against what is the “norm”. They don’t dress the same as everyone else or listen to the same music or have the same hair colors and hair styles. They indeed are the DIFFERENT ones, The INDIVIDUALS. And yet the price they pay for believing that categories shouldn’t be a way to classify themselves is their life.