Assignment: Field Notes 2

During Week 2, you identified an indigenous group and shared the reasons for your selection. This week, you take a closer look at the group that you have identified by examining its culture. What is culture? Culture is the learned, shared understandings among a group of people. Culture helps to explain how people live, behave, and act and how to interact with others. In this week’s Field Notes, you examine elements of the culture of an indigenous group.

To prepare for this Assignment:

• Review the assigned chapters in the Omohundro course text.
• Review the indigenous group that you selected in Week 2.
• Choose two elements of culture from your selected indigenous group. (Note: Elements of culture might include rituals, religious beliefs and practices, marriage customs, gender roles, celebrations, birthdays, holidays, economic, government or social systems.)

By Day 7

Submit a 2- to 3-page paper in which you do the following:

• Reflect on the indigenous group that you identified in Week 2.
• Describe the two elements of culture that you researched about the group.
• Identify any key symbols, stories, myths, and origins (history) about the indigenous group.

By Day 7

Submit a 2- to 3-page paper in which you do the following:

• Reflect on the indigenous group that you identified in Week 2.
• Describe the two elements of culture that you researched about the group.
• Identify any key symbols, stories, myths, and origins (history) about the indigenous group.

Learning Resources

Required Readings

Welsch, R.L. & Vivanco, L.A. (2017). Anthropology: Asking questions about humanity (2nd ed.). Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 2, “What is Culture?” (pp. 33-45)
• “Thinking Like an Anthropologist: Understanding Holism” (pp. 48-49)

This chapter describes anthropological approaches towards understanding culture, including elements of culture.

Peters-Golden, H. P. (2012). Culture sketches: Case studies in anthropology (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

• Chapter 3, “The Basseri: Pastoral Nomads on the il-Rah” (pp. 40-59)
• Chapter 8, “The Minangkabau: Matriliny and Merantau” (pp. 142-157)
• Chapter 10, “The Ojibwa: ‘The People’ Endure” (pp. 177-193)

The chapters from this text provide case study analyses of individual groups around the globe.

Reyes-García, V., Guêze, M., Díaz-Reviriego, I., Duda, R., Fernández-Hamzares, A., Gallois, S., Napitupulu, L., Orta-Martínez, M., & Pyhälä, A. (2016). The adaptive nature of culture: A cross-cultural analysis of the returns of local environmental knowledge in three indigenous societies. Current Anthropology, 57(6), 761-784. Retrieved from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/78566475.pdf
Reading Focus: Pages 761-763. In “The Adaptive Nature of Culture,” Dr. Reyes-García shares fieldwork findings relative to three key hunter-gatherer societies: The Tsimane of the Amazon region; the Baka of the Congo Basin; and the Punan of Borneo.