Culture & Food

Food. We all eat it and we all enjoy it. But we don't all enjoy or eat t he same food from country to country. Why is Chinese food different from Mexican food? What is it that makes their food so different from ours and makes us wrinkle our noses when we come accross a foreign dish?

The answer to these questions is simple: most countries cuisines include the foods they do because of where they are in the world. An example of this would be how Japanese cuisine incorporates a lot of fish because they are an island and fish are easy for them to get. Sometimes the food that is eaten by a certain culture is not pallatable to other cultures because they are not accustomed to it, it might be too spicy or perhaps it is a type of fish or plant that would be poisonous to us but doesn't harm them.

Here is a photo essay that offers a wonderful look at how the food that we eat differs from country to country: What the World Eats, Part I

Let's Talk About Values...

We all know what they are; they help to make up our culture along with our beliefs, behavior and material objects. In America there are certain societal values that the majority of us have; personal control over the environment, change, time and its control, equality, individualism/privacy, self-help, competition, orientation, action/work orientation, informality, directiness/openness/honesty, practicality/efficiency, and materialism/acquisitiveness. There are also leisure time, religiosity, social interaction, and physical fitness.

It seems strange to be able to lump a group as large as the citizens of the United States into the same group with the same values, but the truth is, while there may be some variation here and there most of these values are held by a lot of people. And while all of these values may make sense in our day and age, they mightnot have made sense in another time. Values change and evolve with the other changes and evolutions in our society

Technology is an example of how our values change as our society does. With the introduction of the internet and social networks, people have come to value individualism and privacy more than physical social interaction. People talk more and are working more on the computer than face to face. This is just one example of the evolving values of our society, there are plenty more out there if you just take the time to look.

Lost Boys

When someone first mentioned the lost boys to me, I pictured in my head the lost boys from Disney's "Peter Pan"; a rag tag group of boys that never wanted to grow up and didn't want parents to tell them what to do. 

Now imagine, if you will, a different type of lost boy. This lost boy was driven out of his home, chased into the wilderness without his parents, any sort of food or shelter, and only kids his own age to count on. Unlike Peter Pan's lost boys, these boys didn't run and leave their parents by choice, they were driven out, "...when government troops and government-sponsored militias systematically attacked villages in southern Sudan, killing many of the inhabitants." Most of these boys became orphans.

We watched a video about some of these lost boys and their integration into American society to begin earning a living there and to establish themselves. It was culture shock to the max. One thing that I found particularly interesting about what I saw was how poorly they were desensitized to the fast paced, highly technilogical American life, and how quickly some of them picked up on everything. Another thing that was interesting was how after a few months living here, their families back home were pressuring them to send back money and to support their families that were still in Sudan, but what their families didn't understand was how the money they earned was just barely enough to support themselves.

The different values and norms of Sudanese society versus American society also played a role for the boys. In one scene we hear that one boy is paying the rent for his friends because they lost their jobs. He doesn't think twice about whether or not he is going to be repaid or how long he will have to pay for them, he just does it because helping your family and friends are highly valued by them. Unlike us who if faced with the same situation would have been more wary, making sure they would pay us back maybe even adding on soem interest, or even just flat out saying no because it is an opportunity to learn a lesson.

Over all I was incredibly inspired by the lost boys of Sudan. The fact that they lived through such an ordeal as what they did and then picking up their lives and taking them to a completely different country is amazing. That they had so much hope and so much perserverance moved me. I don't think I would have been able to go through what they went through and come out with my head held high.

To the lost boys, I wish you all the best of luck and much success in your futures :)

Freaks, Geeks, and the Homecoming Dance

This basically sums up the first episode of the 1999 television show "Freaks and Geeks." It's about a group of kids ranging from the nerdiest geek to the freakiest freak to the meanest bully and how they all interact with each other. I think this exemplifies the latent, and manifest, functions of school and what they mean to highschoolers. Obviously the manifest function of school is to learn. The latent function would then be learning to socialize and interact with people. In the show, for most people the most important thing was the latent function, socializing. Lindsay Weir, the main character, used to be one of the kids who was more interested in the manifest function, she was on the academic decathalon team and never skipped a class. But then she starts hanging out with "freaks" and starts skipping class and stops worrying about school as much.

I think that a lot of kids in this society have that sort of mentality, or at least a little bit. I think a big part of school is socializing and I believe that it is becoming more of a manifest function. The point of shcool is to educate us and prepare us for the future. Without learning how to interact with others, we wouldn't be able to function in society as well as someone who has learned how to socialize.

The big thing here is that while there are manifest functions and latent functions, the line between those can blur from time to time and overlap or maybe even switch and it's up to us to figure out what is most important.