cultural anthropology | Southern Fried Science

Vignette from the Anthropology of Knowledge: Cree Hunting

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Amy Freitag

Scientific knowledge comes in many forms, some not explicitly science. Social scientists call this “ways of knowing” – you can think of it as a framework on which you hang the specifics as you learn them. The framework is set up early in life and historically, scientific knowledge was held within a religious ‘way of knowing’. Even one of the founding fathers of genetics, Mendel, was a monk observing peas in the monastic garden.

No matter what form it comes in, language is the common means of transferring knowledge to others and new generations, passing on ethics and lessons for appropriate behavior. In the Cree culture, there are defined roles for humans and animals that are linked in very specific instances such as providing food, especially for pregnant women. From Colin Scott’s chapter in the edited volume “Naked Science” (1996, Routledge):

“The metaphoric juxtaposition/separation of humans and animals is the occasion for much humorous discourse linking the pursuit of sexual partners to the pursuit of game. Hunting and sexuality share a vocabulary: mitwaaschaau can mean both ‘he shoots’ and ‘he ejaculates’; paaschikan can refer to both ‘shotgun’ and ‘penis; pukw to both ‘gunpowder’ and ‘sperm’; and spichinaakin to both ‘gun sheath’ and ‘condom’. But analogy, along with humor is as much about separation as about similarity. The atuush, or ‘cannibal’ figure subverts this separation of human from animal, of sex from food. In one bawdy myth, a cannibal copulates with a woman hunted by his son, before roasting and eating her reproductive organs. In consequence, he consumes his own sperm. He and his son, greatly weakened, are nearly overcome by the superior spiritual power of true human beings” (75).

It sounds like something from another world, but take a minute to examine the English language and what an outside anthropologist might say about us.

~Bluegrass Blue Crab

The Gentle Tasaday: An anthropological hoax

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Amy Freitag

In 1971, a group of people known as the Tasaday were discovered on a remote island of the Phillipines known as Mindanao. They wore leafy loincloths and subsisted off what the forest could provide, possessing no knowledge of tobacco, corn, rice, or domesticated animals. They spoke a new dialect of Malay-Philipino language that included no word for outsiders, war, weapon, or enemy, giving them the title ‘The Gentle Tasaday’. The family unit was nuclear and the community has no formal organization or government outside of some loose food-sharing networks.

Today, Tasaday life is way different and matches more modern tribal life in the Phillipines, as documented on their website. The question is, however, whether this modernization was normal development post-contact or whether there was a hoax involved.

Chemistry of the Great Big Blue: Plastics

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Amy Freitag

thanks surfrider.org

From the microscopic to the gigantic, plastic debris has plagued our oceans since its invention. Much of the problem originated initially because we didn’t realize that plastics don’t degrade until after we had dumped tons into the ocean, largely off of ships as trash. WHOI offers a good summary of the history of plastic pollution. Many things changed since that first realization and the nature of plastics in the marine environment has a very different face nowadays.

The plastic is smaller and more widely distributed. There are fairly well-known areas that collect the plastics such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There are also other areas affected that are closer to shore and where people use marine resources. Plastic often settles in seagrass beds that serve as important nursery habitat and on beaches where turtles and shorebirds mistake them for food and nesting material. Need more details on plastic?