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In ANY society certain things are unacceptable. It's not as if something like that just stays in some isolated corner of the world. It effects us as well somehow. If you have large quanities of people living with abuse and neglect or with poverty and cruelty it WILL come to our neck of the woods. You can't just chalk certain things up to "It's their culture, they like it like that." It's really not showing enough knowledge of their culture or empathy.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Not this cultural relatism thing. It's really REALLY beginning to aggravate me.
It's not cultural relativism. I know (and am good friends with) cultural relativists who have explicitly stated that they have no issue with much of what we're discussing.
I'm more on the side of humanistic anthropology, and not relativistic anthropology.
quote:You can't just state, "Oh, this is their way of life, they are happy this way." When it's totally not the case.
I suppose I should point out that I didn't say that. I'm not generalizing all women or people in these examples into a "they." I'm pointing out that there is variation in how women or people under these practices see them. I didn't say they're all happy this way. I said some might be, or in the case of female circumcision techniques, are.
quote:When it comes to abuse, FGM, honour killings, accepting a lower place in society, it's so engrained into a person they don't consider questioning it.
Kinda like human rights.
quote:Perhaps religion can play a role in it, teaching people that it's god's will that they live like this, and that one day they will be rewarded in heaven for their suffering on Earth, especially in the case of Fundamentalist Islam.
Religion playing a role? Kinda like human rights.
quote:A handful of women at risk to their lives will try to defy the culture they came from. Does that mean that the rest are happy with their lives? With having husbands that are abusive, and sex that is anything but pleasant due to having a tiny hole instead of a functioning sex organ?
1. Infibulation only accounts for 15% of female circumcisions. And there are multiple testimonies that women undergoing female circumcisions have fine sexual lives and are content. Granted, I don't know which of those testimonies are from women who have undergone infibulation, and considering the nature of the practice, I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't any.
2. Once again, I'd like to point out that I am not over-generalizing, well, anything. It's actually making it hard for me to type my responses, since I'm trying to be as sensitive to the diversity of opinions as possible. I've never implied that all women save the most vocal are happy with their lives.
I have implied that people could care more about "their" opinions in this discussion, specifically the opinions of those individuals who disagree. I have implied that the situation is more complicated than ya'll are making it out to be. I have pointed out that no one has suggested actually surveying these individuals, or do ethnographic studies to see how these women view these practices.
quote:It's not like that for all women in the middle east, in parts of Africa, but quite a few of them endure this all the time. It's hard to tell them, "You don't have to put up with this, you can live a better life" if this is all they know, if the whole entire culture and religion supports this sort of thing.
Kinda like how hard it is to get people whose whole culture and religion supports one particular view of human rights to understand that there might be equally rational and acceptable and DIFFERENT views, for different individuals in different cultures.
All these mechanisms you've described for passing on these "abusive" cultural traits are the same damn mechanisms used to pass on, oh, every other damn cultural trait. Where the heck do you think people learned their ideas of rights, or freedoms, or science, or anything else? Rights are a cultural phenomena. They are passed down through the same means as all other culture. They are created and recreated and modified through society and individuals, just like the rest of culture.
quote:In ANY society certain things are unacceptable. It's not as if something like that just stays in some isolated corner of the world. It effects us as well somehow. If you have large quanities of people living with abuse and neglect or with poverty and cruelty it WILL come to our neck of the woods. You can't just chalk certain things up to "It's their culture, they like it like that." It's really not showing enough knowledge of their culture or empathy.
Change is inevitable in any culture. The question is, will it come because people in that culture desire it to come, or will it come because we force it upon them to satisfy our own moral quandraries?
And are you even reading what I'm writing? Seriously, are you? I never said "it's their culture, they think like that." I said that out of a set of people in a given culture that we think are being oppressed, some might not see it as oppression. Maybe most. It's not morally right of us to impose our beliefs on those people--it's both wrong and colonialist.
Granted, might the fact that some individuals of their culture are leaving it so they don't undergo what they see as oppression lead to the dissolution of that cultural practice? It's entirely possible. But I'm not about to force some individual to undergo a cultural practice they don't want to undergo for the sake of preserving a culture. I dislike that attitude, which unfortunately exists among some circles in anthropology. If a culture changes because people leave, it changes. These things happen.
I want to make sure the change happens because the individuals in the culture want it to happen, not simply because we who are not a part of that culture desire it.
Is anyone else confused about this? It's entirely possible (probably likely, given how tired I am) that I'm not making myself clear here.
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I don't think it's imposing our believes on another group of people, but stating that thye do not have to live with oppression and abuse. There are a lot of women who will stay in abusive situations for a number of reasons *thinks of Tina Turner* is it a bad th ing to provide and ear for these women and an alternative to fear? People can get used to the most negative of situations after all, children growing up in orphanages or war zones and the like. Pushing, say, Christianity on them against their will would be wrong, but helping them in a respectful way, no... I'm not sure if it's morally right to allow people to live in fear and in poverty. This in some ways can lead to terrorism, but it's harder to fight against the things that lead to terrorism than it is to fight a war. You are making some interesting points, but msot of it is bothering me. Prehaps because I don't totally understand cultural lines. (Then again most folks in these cultures would just say, leave us alone, you are interfering, folks make no real sense.)
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Is anyone else confused about this? It's entirely possible (probably likely, given how tired I am) that I'm not making myself clear here.
You seem to make sense to me, but I know I project somewhat. The bottom line is that, while this thread is absolutely fascinating, and very well laid out, I haven't a very deep background in such studies of culture, mass communication, society, etc.
I'm interested in your background in humanistic anthropology. Any book recommendations? I'd say after being raised Jewish, I'm leaning more towards an agnostic/humanistic stance on most issues, but how those are defined...well, I don't even know if I'm leaning in the right direction.
Not to derail this thread. Please continue
Synth: You raised an interesting thought about understanding cultural lines. I've had these questions like: At what point is a ritual/custom "bad"? I thought perhaps by looking at such things from a cause/effect basis, some agreement could be come to, as to which actions taken by a group/individual/society are "bad" (cause negative effects that extend beyond the culture/society they're based in. I suppose another word might be "dysfunction", but again, who decides what that means?).
I agree wholeheartedly with Ikemoot (sp?). It's not simple. This is the human equation.
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