Interesting translation. I wonder if this is accurate, and if it is, how they formed the concept of tying up fertility.

Haters gonna hate, I guess

I wonder what issues ammo supply pose in Wuyang'a

I can't even imagine how something like this would unfold here in the US.. at least in parts that are as politically divided as depicted on popular news.

What people don't?

Really interesting that he phrased it as imagination. It recalls memories for me of games that I used to play obsessively and daydreams (using the imagination the game provided) that I would have during school or during my parents' social parties.

This reminds me of those scenes like you might see in a Stephen Chow movie where even the baddest of the bad can be disarmed by a small woman's ridicule, and sometimes disarmed literally. Now I wonder if there's more to those scenes.

What? Geertz is a very strange writer. And, he uses, a lot, of these,,,,,,,

Seems like every big question I've encountered in college; is it nature or nurture?: mind or body?; langue or parole?; hard tacos or soft tacos? Here is the answer:

From a Yahoo Answers page:

" It's an Italian pun that means "translator traitor" literally, but can be interpreted as "the translator is the traitor." It can mean many things, but a common idea is that translators cannot explain puns like these in other languages because they just don't make sense to that language, so in a way they are betraying the people they are translating both to and from by not causing a miscommunication, but just losing some of the meaning and culture in translation."

The full paragraph from where the sentence was taken:

"Both factors dissemination and modification on account of social causes must tend to obscure the original significance of the myth The contents of mythology prove clearly that attempts at the explanation of nature are the primary source of myths But we must bear in mind that owing to the modifications they have undergone we cannot hope to gain an insight into their earliest form by comparisons and interpretations unless they are based on a thorough inquiry into the historical changes that have given to myths their present forms It would seem that mythological worlds have been built up only to be shattered again and that new worlds were built from the fragments."

1935-1955

village council

"The farmer keeps only the calves become oxen or dairy cows ; others are discarded ... and die of exhaustion"

I did not know buffalo milk was common, much less important in India. Especially over cow's milk. What does this say about chai tea as we know it?

Crude translation from Google:

"If must see clearly that the poor performance of the Indian cattle is not a waste : the cattle do not compete with the consumption of agricultural products ... they do not sacrifice their farmland , or with agricultural potential. .. they do not sacrifice their agricultural land or with agricultural potential."

The soft drink

In case anyone else couldn't picture it:

"Emic and etic, in anthropology, folkloristics, and the social and behavioral sciences, refer to two kinds of field research done and viewpoints obtained;[1] from within the social group (from the perspective of the subject) and from outside (from the perspective of the observer)."

From wiki

A castrated male bovine.. and depending on Wiki's credibility on the matter, also part of the etymology of the great phrase, "bollocks!"

Considering White finds this to be the best index and therefore something of a central point to his entire argument, I am pretty disappointed. I would have settled for some unreasonably complex system of indices across space and time than one about harvested energy.

I'm finding this article so far to be extremely challenging towards my own concepts of progress, evolution, and culture. It's also forcing me to see my brain's strange amalgamating of the ideas associated with each thanks to White's very easy to follow delineation of them.

What does this mean? Is it Lowie's and White's emphasis? Later they use "emphasis mine."

This makes me wonder why joking about body image is such a serious issue here then. Maybe because any serious reaction to body image jokes is confirmed by body images portrayed in popular media? I can only think of joking about body image right now, but I'm sure there are others..

This is starting to shed a lot of light on my own cultural background as a Pakistani (Karachi, specifically). I would characterize the form I'm familiar with as being asymmetrical, coming from the elder in the relationship, and being apparently ruthless in the joking.

So, in other words, translating from one culture into another is a kind of historiography? I'm not sure I see his connection here or necessarily agree with it.

Please just say what you mean.

What does Evans Pritchard mean by they "regard" these societies as being in their province?

It seems to me that psychology is less the issue in explaining anthropological investigations as is the fact that most of psychology has been created out of western demographics. I wonder what a theoretical psychologist would come up with in the field.

Haunted Origins

Damn.

I am thinking of college campuses like ours when I wonder if there is a time and place where a group of people's needle's eye is either non-existent or if that needle's eye is enlarged to accommodate the varying social understandings. In other words, how do you understand what flies and what doesn't in the melting pot? Maybe this speaks to why it seems like we are disagreeing more all the time.

Why did she bother to have Meled killed then?

This all reminds me of one of the major categories personality typing indicators sets out. I think it is the "caregiver" category which they estimate constitutes half of western populations.

This sentence reads so much like functionalism that if Benedict hadn't only a few sentences above dismissed it, that is how I would have taken it.

Hard to imagine that there is one or even a few mechanisms by which this takes place.. and I think the name diffusion in some ways suggests that.

There must be countless great explorers and travelers whose names and stories we will never know.

"a set of written characters representing syllables and (in some languages or stages of writing) serving the purpose of an alphabet."

Kroeber gives some examples below.

Interesting side commentary on the economic factors between Europe and China at the time and how dramatically they've shifted since for probably many reasons.

I was waiting for Malinowski to mention something like this. After seeing a video in Dr. Hoops's class this morning about where Malinowski stayed for this ethnography, I couldn't help but think, the people who make this journey must love doing it. It's a beautiful place with clear water. I wish I could have jumped into the screen to join them.

Maybe a silly question, but would these be moved alive?

I can understand how, "according to their own ideas," that "the exchange of utilities is a subsidiary trade," but how can it also be, "with them?" Wouldn't this suggest that they would sooner trade only items involved in the Kula than other important items, like food? And maybe this could take place temporarily, but they would need to eat eventually..

Does anyone have an idea of what Mauss means here? What he says immediately after could easily apply to Neanderthals, so maybe he's using a funny definition of fixed species.

This seems to reflect his statements in the last paragraph. Unlike Durkheim, who wanted to explain wide-spanning phenomena, Mauss wanted to explain almost isolated ones. I wonder if this is a result of his close contact with Durkheim or having to tie some loose ends on his work.

Is Mauss talking about himself in third person here?

"In France, the agrégation (French pronunciation: ​[aɡʁeɡasjɔ̃]) is a civil service competitive examination for some positions in the public education system. The laureates are known as agrégés. A similar system exists in other countries."

"The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England."

"Peking Man, Homo erectus pekinensis, is an example of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923–27 during excavations at Zhoukoudian near Beijing, China."

Does it seem like Boas might be making this conclusion as a result of having only witnessed the "primitive mythology" that he had until this point? Surely there are other primitive mythologies (probably in Africa) that pull heavily from contemplating nature.

Is Boas using the word hero with the same connotations we would assign to it today? ie. having positive traits. I suppose greed, amorous propensities, and vaingloriousness could have been viewed positively sometimes in the past.. Probably not commonly today, depending on who you're talking to.

It seems to me like the supernatural beings play a similar role in these stories as we assign to karma in our stories.

"of its (his, her, or their) own kind; in a class by itself; unique"

Why are they of a psychical order?

What does Durkheim mean here? Maybe he's using societies with a unit as small as a family?

My brain is replacing 'human nature' with 'mother nature' and replacing 'psychology' with 'biology'.

Can someone else share their thoughts?

Durkheim on the Rules for the Constitution of Social Types (or Species): http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/rules.html#pgfId=2878

The father is he whom the marriage points out.

The only direction I see is around.. as in this sounds like it's going in the direction of circular reasoning.

This paragraph seems to really highlight the objective good people at the time (I suspect) received things like population growth, cities, organized government, etc. He probably would have benefited in the long term by stating his case for these objective goods rather than expecting people would either always agree or understand.

"In ancient Rome, a gens (/ˈɡɛns/ or /ˈdʒɛnz/), plural gentes, was a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor."

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gens

of civililization.. and agriculture (or because of agriculture).

If we see it Marx's way!

This is some pretty shaky biology, even for the day. The next quotes appear to get a little better, but it makes me wonder about the author's specific understanding of evolution since he quotes people back-to-back who I think would disagree about those specifics.

To add to Madison's above point, and explained by Charles Darwin several years after Marx wrote this, peacocks (and many other species) absolutely have a sense of beauty as evidenced by their appearances that don't serve any direct physical needs.

I understand if he does, but does he mean this literally here?

I don't doubt that Frazer is making sense in this paragraph, but it sounds like he's contradicting himself about the value of literature for this purpose. Does he only mean recent literature?

This seems odd, that the Californian Indians would come to this neutral or positive conception about the winds. It seems others came to the opposite conception because it affected them negatively, so I wonder how the Californian Indians were living differently.

"The Arician Tradition was founded in 1998 by author Raven Grimassi... [and] is an offshoot of the Aridian System, which is a modern Tradition for Americans interested in the Old Religion of Italy."

From: http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usca&c=trads&id=3644