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Ethnic Studies (Period 4)

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MinnieJean DBQ (March 30 and 31)

March 30: Complete Table in Packet
March 31: Answer the question in the packet (WGAGA)

Unnatural Causes in Sickness and in Wealth

NB-25-26

What is the claim of the video?

  • What is the relationship between wealth and health?
  • What kind of evidence is presented?

 

What does comparing data maps of disease rates in the different Louisville council districts reveal? What could explain these differences?

 

Dr. David Williams says: “Stress helps motivate us. In our society today everybody experiences stress. The person who has no stress is a person who is dead.” Describe the body’s stress (fight- or- flight) response. How is chronic stress different? How might chronic stress increase the risk of illness and disease?

Professor Leonard Syme defines control of destiny as the “ability to influence the events that impinge on your life.” Why is this ability an important factor for health?

  • What stories from Corey Anderson’s life exemplify a high demand / low control job and stressful home situation?
  • What stories from Jim Taylor’s life illustrate how wealth, power and status translate into better health?

What did the Macaque monkey research teach primatologist Carol Shively about the connections between power, subordination and health? What parallels can we draw to human society?

 Describe examples from the lm that illustrate how racism imposes an additional health burden on people of color. Give examples of both “everyday” racism (being treated unfairly) and “structural” racism (access to resources, power, status and wealth) and describe how these might affect health in different ways.

What social changes were most responsible for the 30-year increase in American life expectancy over the 20th century? What policies does the lm point to that might account for our low rank in recent years compared to other countries (29th as of December 2007)? What characterizes the policies and priorities of countries that have better health outcomes than we do?

Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema

What is Culture?
What are the elements of culture?
What is culture based on this article?
 
Define:

Fascist

Xenophobic

Ethnocentric

cultural awareness

cultural literacy

cultural relativism

Material Culture

Cultural capital

Social capital

In-crowd

Main culture

Sub culture

Counter culture

Answer:

According to Miner, what functional beliefs underlie Nacirema body rituals?  (What are the purposes for them?)

Miner treats Nacirema behavior in caring for the body as “ritual.” Is it? What makes something “ritual” as opposed to “habit” or “custom”? What trappings of Miner’s “medicine men” or “Holy mouth-men” make them appear as ritual specialists?

Some would say that Miner’s analysis exoticizes the Nacirema and makes them seem mysterious and irrational. What in his writing dose this? Does presenting customs as “religion” rather that as “science” or “medicine” inevitably make them seem irrational to people in our own culture? Are our own customs with respect to care of the body irrational? In what ways is scientific medicine different from other (“religious”) belief systems? How much of what human beings do in everyday life is “rational” or “irrational”? Do you think that there are cultural differences in such rationality?

Who are the Nacirema? When did you discover the joke? What point do you think Miner is trying to make in this article?

Contemporary anthropologists are very concerned about what is often called “the problem of representation.” The question, in part, is: who gets to “represent” a group of people, by writing about them, interpreting their behavior, and in other ways speaking “for” (or about) them? How does somebody get that right? Does the social position of the speaker play a role in the process? What kind of social position do American anthropologists have?

What is “ethnocentrism”? What is “cultural relativism”?