Transcript How do we study culture?

How do we study
culture?
The mystery of the Fore.
Researchers are biased
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Psychologists (events, activities, customs)
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Sociologists (relationships, interactions)
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Anthropologists (artifacts, rituals,
behaviours)
Physicians (biological processes, survival)
Papua New Guinea
Goroka, Eastern Highlands
Papua New Guinea
The Fore tribe of Goroka
New Guinea, was, and is, a land of 700 tribes, a
refuge of stone age cultures in mysterious, clouddraped mountain rain forest.
cannibalism: act of a human feeding on human flesh
Village traditions honored close relatives -- even kuru
victims -- by eating them -- after death.
The Fore
The Sad Tale of Kuru:
the mystery disease
•The Fore lived undisturbed until 1930
•In 1930 Australian gold miners trekked the
region
•In 1940, a mysterious disease afflicted the
Fore called the “Kuru” or “trembling disease”
Nervous system: trembling, paralysis of facial muscles, brain damage
Your task as a cultural detective
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It’s 1950, your task is to solve the mystery
of the kuru and how the spread of the
disease could have been stopped
Cultural perceptions of the Fore, doctors,
anthropologists and others are described
as you read
Develop an organizer outlining the
assumptions make by each of these
groups
Doctors assumptions
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Convinced that kuru was a virus transmitted
to the village women during the preparation of
bodies for the funeral ritual
This involved symbolic gestures of eating
imaginary bodies
Doctors assumed that the women were
actually eating the bodies at this time and
would contract the disease
Concluded that contaminated water supply
and cannibalism cause the outbreak of kuru
Anthropologists assumptions
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observed that Fore men did not interact a lot
with the women and children
Link between the disease and the funeral
rituals performed on the bodies
Agreed with doctors that kuru was a virus
affecting the brain
Disagreed with doctors about the origin; they
concluded that it was carried in by the
Australian gold miners, that were immune to it
Disease had spread to epidemic proportions
through cannibalism
The Fore’s cultural perceptions
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Fore males told Anthropologists that the
women were to blame, and the women refused
to talk
The Fore felt insulted because doctors and
Anthropologists told them that their village
water was dirty, and that their customs and
behaviours were unhealthy
The Fore stopped co-operating and became
suspicious when they saw doctors performing
autopsies, eating and laughing around the
same table were the dead bodies lay.
Searching for invisible viruses.
The Fore’s assumptions
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The Fore suspected that the doctors were
using some magic on the women and children
to make them sick.
The Fore concluded that the Australians gold
miners had brought the disease via evil spirits
They also concluded that it was spread by the
mysterious rituals of the doctors and the
anthropologists
Cultural misunderstandings
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Doctors assumed the Fore were cannibalizing
the dead kuru victims and contracting the
disease
Fact: the Fore were not stupid, they did not
eat infected bodies and had stopped the
practise in order to stem the sickness
Anthropologists believed the male stories
that women were to blame “they are
maneaters”
Fact: the Fore often told lies about each
other and were also suspicious about the
foreigners
Cultural misunderstandings
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The Fore suspected that the doctors were
cannibals because they observed them eating
and laughing in the same hut where the dead
bodies lay.
Fact: the doctors were performing autopsies
The doctors and anthropologists thought that
cannibalism was a primitive and unhealthy
practise
Fact: the Fore believed that an autopsie was
just as horrific as cannibalism was to the
doctors and anthropologists
The solution to the kuru mystery
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Not cannibalism as a practise (ended in 1970)
Not dirty water
Not what it suggests in your textbook
because your book was published in 1994, and
I have found a more recent revised report
published in 2004
Solution: the silent women were actually
eating the brains of the infected dead and
feeding them to their children passing on the
virus. Transmitted by genetic mutations.
Remember? (Solution)
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Remember? The women were reluctant
to talk about their customs, and they
pretended that they were not eating
the dead bodies with the
anthropologists observing the sacred
ritual
The tribal women thought they had to
protect their customs, and that the
foreigners were to blame for the arrival
of the disease.
Modern Science
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The effects on the Fore were devastating,
wiping out whole villages at the height of the
disease. Kuru is caused by a prion and serves
as a prototype for a group of prion diseases
(scrapie in sheep, transmissible mink
spongiform encephalopathy, bovine
spongiform encephalopathy [BSE] or mad cow
disease). It reached epidemic proportions by
entering the Fore food chain. In humans,
other prion diseases, including familial
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), GerstmannSträussler-Scheinker syndrome, and fatal
familial insomnia, are transmitted by genetic
mutations.
Follow-up
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In what ways does the kuru mystery change
your perception about the attitudes and
behaviours of people who have cultures
different from your own?
To be ethnocentric is to believe in the
superiority of one’s culture over other
culture’s. Explain how both the foreigners and
the Fore were being ethnocentric.
Have you observed ethnocentric attitudes in
Canadian society? Explain.