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What is the difference between sex and gender?
- – Sex is biological
- – Gender is a social/cultural construct.
- • Feminine traits?
- • Masculine traits?
- • Is biology destiny?
- • Biologically female = feminine
- • Biologically male = masculine– Not necessarily
- • All cultures recognize two genders and two sexes
- • But some recognize more than two genders.
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Who is Margaret Mead?
- – Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies 1935
- – New Guinea
- • Arapesh…mts
- • Mundugumor…by river
- • Tchambuli…by lake
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Arapesh
- – Gentle
- – Basic h/g division of labor
- – Patrilineal and patrilocal
- – Growing food and their children is considered a great adventure in their lives
- – Both feminine
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Mundugumor
- – Violent…cannibalistic
- – Independent
- – Lustful of power and position
- – Fight and compete for women
- – Polygynous
- – Men make the yam gardens …women do everything else
- – Both…masculine, virile….no softness or conception femininity
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Tchambuli
- – Graceful headhunters
- – Food is abundant and easily obtained
- – Love art…live mainly to produce art
- – Patrilineal and polygynous
- – Both are artistic…produce theatrical spectacles
- – Men
- • Are the head hunters
- • Lazy
- • May hunt occasionally
- • Their daily activities
- • Called together in the am by flute
- • They gather to crochet, string shells for necklaces, or work on their art project
- – Women
- • Fish
- • Garden
- • Conduct the work and organization of the tribe
- • Cook
- • Mend fishing gear
- • Have the position of power and the money
- • Supply the food
- • Attitude toward husband is kindly tolerance and appreciation
- – Men
- • Are interested in their own beauty, dressing to look pretty,
- • Petty
- • Soft spoken
- • Hair is carefully arranged in curls
- • Mincing steps
- • Self conscious
- • Allowed to shop and given money to do so
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• Gender is assumed to be constant throughout a person’s life.
– But not everywhere.
• Hua, Berdache
- • Hua
- – Anna Meigs
- – Hort
- – Villages of 100to 300
- – 1 or more large men’s houses that is occupied by initiated men and post- menopausal women who have had 2 or more children and have been initiated
- – Why can these women live in the men’s house?
- – It has to do with how Hua construct gender.
- – Nu...a life giving substance thought of as a real physical substance
- – Can be transferred between people
- – Can be gained of lost
- – Female bodies have a excess of Nu and it allows them to grow faster and age slower than men
- – Males have much less Nu than women
- – Nu is in
- • Breath as a gas
- • Liquid….blood, sweat, semen and women’s sexual secretions
- • NU can be transferred by
- • Eating food someone as prepared
- • Sexual encounters
- • Is bad…it polluter and debilitates the man
- • He gives his scarce nu to the woman thru breath and semen
- • Indirect of indirect contact
- • After decades of this contact elderly men become immune to further contamination by the transfer of nu
- • Women lose nu thru child birth, menstruation, handling food. When the women have lost most of their nu they become like men and are no longer a threat to the men.
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•Berdache
- – Men whose spirit is female.
- – They are biologically male but take on the female role
- – Dress as women
- – Are usually creative and in touch with the supernatural
- – They mediate between
- – Male and female
- – Natural/physical world and supernatural/spiritual world
- – How does this person realize that their spirit is different?
- – 9- 12 it becomes apparent to their parents…and often to him that the boy that his spirit is different
- – Tests
- – Led into circle…music...if he dances
- – Led into brush enclosure…basket….bow & arrows…set on fire…what he grabs
- – Ceremony
- – Dressed in woman’s clothes
- – Renames self with a feminine name
- – Rather than reject …they accept as special person who has a role and place in the society
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– Plaines Indians have:
- • Manly Hearted Woman
- – Typical female …passive…docile
- – Manly Hearted women are aggressive and outspoken in public affairs…wives and mothers
- – Usually wealthy …hard worker
- – Tans more hides...prod better quality bead work
- – Many were medicine women
- • More independent
- • Had equal say in family matters
- • Took over husband property and controlled it …
- • Were desirable as wives because of their wealth and high status
- • Women Chiefs
- – Took on men’s role
- – Rode horses
- – Hunted with bow and gun
- – Went to fight in wars
- – Lead raiding parties
- – Head of family
- • Council
- • Chief
- • Paid bride wealth for a woman to do the woman’s labor
- • Biology is not destiny
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What are economic systems?
- • How goods and services are produced, distributed and consumed
- • Is the dominate form of exchange in h/g societies…all band members share food and work
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What is redistribution?
- • Required by a third party…chief, sate, government
- • 2nd major mode of exchange
- • Goods and/or money collected from individuals or groups…taken to a central place and put into a common fund to be reallocated to others
- • Taxes
- – Social services
- – To other countries
- – Pork barrel
- – Infrastructure
- • Disaster relief…
- – Natural
- – Illness
- – War
- • Charities
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Conflicts that arise with redistribution
- • Often there is conflict
- – Who should provide the resources
- – To whom and how much should be given
- – How much should go to those that collect the goods/money
- • Conflict/differences between political parties about how public resources should be spent:
- Education
- Welfare
- Food
- Stamps
- Unemployment
- War/military
- Medicare
- Environment issues
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Potlach
- • Pacific Northwest...Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, Tlingit
- • Originally done to celebrate life cycle events
- • Is a feast with dancing, singing and a redistribution of many kinds of wealth by the chief to his people, chiefs of other villages and invited guests
- • Social status. .is very important and was inherited but had to be validated by a potlatch
- • Host traced his line of descent as proof of his status
- • If the good given away were not high quality and of sufficient quantity the chief
- would lose status.
- • Competitive potlatches...goods ( canoes, blankets and even slaves) were destroyed...burned
- Potlatch Today
- • Still done today
- • Commemorate a death of an important person
- • Celebrate pole raisings
- • Political activities
- • Community celebrations Other people who potlatch
- • Trobriand Islanders
- • Samoa
- • Ancient China
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Leveling mechanisms
- • Even out the distribution of wealth
- • Even out economic differences
- • Goods for prestige
- • The most prestigious may be the poorest
- • Amatenango, Mexico
- • Several leveling mechanisms
- • Org. production by household…limits economic
- growth so keeps all at the same
- • Estates are inherited by all children equally so it is very difficult for large estates to continue over generations
- • Accusations of witchcraft…anyone who manages to accumulate more wealth than other is accused of being a witch…esp. if they are wealthy and stingy….likely to be killed
- • Cargo System
- • Cargos are religious offices
- • Each man should hold 12 cargos (religious offices) during his lifetime after which he can retire from public life
- • Are expensive to hold involve his time and money…no time to work at a job…must make
- several different kinds of donations…big drain of family resources.
- • Rich stay rich and poor stay poor
- • In reality has little impact on individual status thus is a failed leveling mechanism
- • Those who can afford to do this gain status
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Market exchange
- • Goods and services bought with money
- • Cost of goods and services are set by supply and demand
- • Very impersonal and social position of those involved in the transaction not important
- • Is the most “purely” economic mode of exchange
- • Money must be
- – Durable
- – Controllable
- – Govt makes the money legal tender and stands behind its value
- • Standard value = how much is something worth
- • Portable wealth
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Capitalism
- • Most societies that rely on market exchange are capitalistic
- • Three Fundamental Attributes of Capitalism
- 1. Most productive resources and capital
- goods are owned by a small portion of the population
- 2. most people’s primary resource is their labor
- 3.Wage worker never receives in pay the full value of her/his work
- • Wal-Mart…$600
- • IBM…$2,000
- • Microsoft…$20,000
- • It is the most prominent economic system in the world
- • Transforms traditional economies worldwide and even members of traditional societies enter the market economy today as low-wage earners
- • When small number of people own or control basic resources the results in difference
- economic and social classes
- • Capitalism means there will always be the rich and the poor
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Resistance to Capitalism
- • Spanish Gypsies
- – Painters
- – Self-employed scrap dealers
- – Discount clothes merchant
- – Part-time farm worker
- – Avoid wage labor (working for others) whenever possible
- Putnam County, NY
- – 2 kind of residents
- Commuters
- • Travel to NYC to work union scale jobs such
- as police, fire fighters, teachers
- • In debt
- • Hope to move to a more prosperous location
- • Long time (generations) residents
- – Own farmland…supplies food for family
- – Have skills… plumber, electrician. Car mechanic...trade these skills between other residents and sell skills to the commuter families Are not involved very much in market and wage labor
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