Social capital is a new term to me but it basically means the networks and relationships of people and groups of people that give order to a particular society and enabling the society to function. We can relate this to almost any society or group where everyone has there place in a given society. For example, the relationships between staff, faculty, and students at Davidson help to form some sort of cultural capital. I feel like having a degree of reciprocity is essential for social capital to give structure to a culture. The idea that if you do something for me, I will do something for you is generally what builds social networks and social capital.

I find this venn diagram really convincing. Three overlapping knowledge systems give us our conceptual idea of what it means to practice a religion. I wonder though with a world filled with science, how much of a place magic has today. Does anyone have any opinions on this? I feel like the diagram today would only overlap religion and science since we know so much about how things work. Maybe the magic part would contain only the things that humans have still not theorized or tried to understand. Evans-Pritchard even moves withcraft over to the realm of religion (as noted in the ntoes). What do you think "magic" means in the 21st century?

I believe the ritual part of the religion may be the most important. Rituals make religions unique in my opinion. For the most part, most religions believe in the same sacred stories or myths. They beleive in a higher power/or afterlife to some degree. I think what makes religions uniqe is how they are practiced. For example, Muslim believe in a sacred pilgrimage and Catholics believe in the practice of the eucharist. The thing that holds these religions togther/makes distinct boundaires between them are the way they are practices. I believe this can also explain many of the different sects within each religion.

This is especially important in terms of religion. Religion gains structure through its practice and most of the time these practices are passed down through time and space. Religous ceremonies and practices are crucially important for establishing what it means to be part of a certain religion. For example catholicism is made unique by its practice of the eucharist. I think rituals establish continuity, but they also establish what makes a religion unique and different from other religions.

I think it is very interesting that we are now seeing the government step in to regulate unhealthy food consumption. There are lows against selling sodas that are too large. There are also laws about posting calories information on menus in certain cities. When I was in New York City over spring break, most of the restaurants that I went to had caloires information posted on the menus. I wonder what this means for the future of food in America. I beleive having a healthy diet is very important but I don't know if its necessary for the government to impose laws on how we eat. This may be a little overkill.

Eriksen writes about the imporatance of ethnicity comes operational only when ethnic groups have relationships with other ethnic groups; "this does not mean that the emotions and cultural heritage attaching individuals to ethnic groups are in some sense not ‘real’, but that they become operational only in relationships with others" (Eriksen 336). Eriksen gives an example of the Sami people and how they believe themselves fundamentally different from non-sami or Norwegians.These two groups will also make direct comparisons with one another which is only made possible through interactions with one another which goes back to Eriksen's point that ethnicity is about relationships with other groups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOHbn8Q1fBM here is a YouTube video (Ted Talk) about some of the ethics of my above post.

This makes me think about a recent article I read about "designer babies" which are babies that are genetically modified for certain beauty traits, or to be free from certain diseases. Although it sounds like science fiction, many believe that this practice will one day be as popular as IVF. Scientists use "Crispr Technology" to genetically modify certain DNA to produce traits in babies. Obviously there is much debate over the ethics surrounding this research. A lot of debate has already begun for what this could mean for the future of IVF and for the future of having a child in general. The idea of designer babies brings reminds me of what we talked about in class: that nature and technology could be substitutes for one another. It could be possible that in the future all births are "technological."

The concept of clans was interesting to me so I google searched to see if the idea of pledging allegiance/stipulating you come from a common ancestor still existed. I found that there were still popular clans in Scotland. There is a really interesting article about how people today still follow these chieftains in Scotland. Here the link to the article. Its an interesting read: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/all-hail-the-chiefs-the-unlikely-leaders-of-scotlands-modern-clans-1749291.html

I understand the ethical reason behind informed consent, but I wonder if informed consent changes the behavior of the participants in the research study to a degree. In other classes, I have learned about studies in which people change their behavior just because they are being observed. One of the studies that I learned about in psychology was the Hawthorne Study. In this study any novel observation changed how people acted. I assume it is different because the fieldworker spends a longer period of time with the people they are observing, but some changes in behavior probably do occur after you tell a person that you are going to observe them. I wonder if there are ways to limit this from happening.

I'm a psychology major at Davidson and the fieldwork of anthropology reminds me a lot of a data collection technique used by psychologists called a case study. In a case study, a psychologist will extensively observe a particular person or group of people/organization. Psychologists also use similar data collection techniques such as interviews, questionnaires and inventories. I feel that the main difference between a case study and fieldwork is that psychologists rarely become an active member oft he community. Instead they tend to observe from a distance either making themselves known or not.