This is very relevant to American culture today. It manifests itself through food, fashion, facial hair, etc. For example, it has only recently become "cool" to have outrageous mustaches and big scruffy beards. Am I jealous because the only impressive facial hair I can grow is a neck beard? Yes. But that is beside the point. The hipster movement is sweeping across America and across many parts of the world. However, this doesn't mean this movement is totally authentic. A lot of new coffee shops that appear gourmet and use french presses are really just Starbucks that make you wait longer for coffee that doesn't taste appreciably better.

this term definitely has a negative connotation. People think of industrialized food, or fast food, as unhealthy and harmful to consumers. There is no doubt that a McDonald's happy meal is not the best dinner for a kid, but these quick options do have merit. We touched on it in class, but think of all the extra-curricular activities that kids can engage in now because meals don't have to be an hour and half engagement every day. You can get a lot of food for five bucks and then make it to practice or whatever activities the kid is interested in. This is not to say that they should eat McDonald's every night, but I don't think it is fair to say the the industrialization of food has been entirely negative.

It's is important to note exactly what "development" and "underdevelopment" mean in today's world. A country is developed only if it has a large industrial sector, stresses education, and utilizes a lot of technology. This terminology does not take into account other ways in which a country may be developed. Spiritual, religious, and social development are just as important as economic development in many ways. So, while the United States may be a leader of what we think of as the developed world, we still have major struggles in terms of social justice issues and religious freedom. We might need to rethink our conceptions of development, and include social and religious issues in our assessment of development.

This definition of globalization casts in a very positive light. Globalization in this sense promotes the flow of ideas to different parts of the world, both cultural and technological. This allows people all over the planet to be interconnected, sharing ideas and learning from each other, hopefully challenging the other groups to be better and more understanding than before. However, globalization has a somewhat negative connotation today. The drawbacks that people cite are that when the whole world is so connected, seemingly small acts can have repercussions felt across the world.

I think this is very relevant to what we discussed in class today, especially when thinking about pregame rituals in the context of sports. Every player has something unique to them that they do before a game to feel prepared and be able to perform well. I can remember before every at-bat when I played baseball in high school, going through some silly warm up ritual (picking up dirt, swinging a certain number of times, making sure my glove and hat were in a specific spot of my choosing, etc.). Did this have an actual impact on my performance? Not directly, but feeling like I had good luck gave me a sort of comfort and freedom to do my best. This is just a real world example of how rituals are present in our lives outside of religious settings, but still play an important role.

I think Jared's point was very interesting and relevant to today's culture. One thing I wanted to mention is how often things can change, and what was once acceptable is no longer acceptable, and vice versa. Today, people are extremely dependent on coffee in the workplace. In every job environment I have been in, it is always accepted that people want/need to take ten minutes here and there to have a cup of coffee. This calls to mind smoking breaks in the work place. Smoking in America was extremely popular in the mid-19th century, and I'm sure a smoking break would have been no different than a coffee break. Now, smoking is increasingly looked down upon, and this just shows how fickle our culture can be in terms of what is acceptable and what is not.

I think it is hard for white people, especially white males, to relate to Native Americans opposing team names like the Redskins. I am guilty of this too. I have grown up and thought nothing of that name; to me and to most people, this is just a harmless nickname. We tell ourselves that if there was a team called the "California Crackers", we might not think its a big deal. The difference is two-fold. First, Cracker does not have the historical significance of a term like "Redskin" or the N-word. Second, something like this would never happen and has never happened, so white people cannot relate to how this would feel at all.

This is a tough pill to swallow. We want to think and believe that when we read some scholarly paper, the author is being perfectly objective about their findings, and comes to their conclusion dictated by their numerical findings. Even if the author is unaware, they are predisposed to certain conclusions, and they will interpret data in the way most congruent with their own set of beliefs. This why we tend to see such varying views on the same topics. It's important to keep this in mind as we read and research things, and take everything with a grain of salt.

I thought that this was a very interesting point that we discussed in class. People continue to use IVF treatments although there is a very high failure rate. It is irrational in the sense that people continue to engage in a treatment that probably won't work. However, it just shows the value people place on having offspring of their own bloodline, rather than adopting. So, maybe this is not irrational if it is the only way you can have a child you can truly call your own.

When I initially read this definition, I thought that this is the best way to describe my family's descent, as well as most Americans. However, in class Fuji brought up the point that women tend to take the man's name, which is the case with my parents. So in this way American culture is Patrilineal. I do feel that our country is moving more towards a Cognatic society as we are seeing more and more women keep their family names when they get married.

To me, this is an interesting way of thinking about an anthropologist's fieldwork. During their field work, anthropologists are dealing with real people everyday, and I imagine they become quite attached to these groups they are studying. I am an economics major, which tends to deal with much more abstract concepts, as opposed to actual human beings. When I think of formal data collection, I picture finding datasets online about school district test scores or something along those lines. It is harder for me to imagine "formal data collection" from a living human being, not just a set of numbers online. I think that is an interesting concept and I could see that being very difficult from the anthropologists point of view as they form real relationships with their "dataset".