ANTH101 Final Essay
The second essay assignment topic:
“Discuss the quandary confronted by young people in many of the cultures that we studied this semester -- whether and how to maintain their distinctive cultural identities in a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized world”
I think I should start by stating why I picked this topic despite the fact there’s has been no lecture dedicated for it unlike the first two, in fact this specific topic interests me because in a way it’s a problem that I’ve been struggling with for 5 years now since I came here to the USA from Egypt. Originally I am part of the Coptic nation and the word “Coptic” is used to refer to the Christians of Egypt, it’s relatively a big group compared to all the groups that we studied this semester (Almost 15 million which represents 20% of the total population in Egypt). They are very unique in many aspects and have a very rich culture that was formed over thousands of years in Egypt so I relocated from a totally different atmosphere, which can be described as “conservative” so we share some values with the southern part of the US specially on the social issues but I guess I was very lucky to live in Delaware which is a very liberal state so I had my share of the initial culture shock specially at the beginning even little things like seeing a girl smoking was highly odd for me because for 19 years I never saw a girl smoking in public, so I fell into Ethnocentrism for very long time and unfortunately I was applying my rules into a totally different environment.
I think that the Gitxsan and the O’odham are very culturally challenged more than any other group specially when it comes to the young people because they are surrounded by well-developed communities from a technological and economical stand point in both Canada and the United States of America respectively, unlike the Tongans or the Trojans or the Tiv which can all be considered small closed communities and only
“Discuss the quandary confronted by young people in many of the cultures that we studied this semester -- whether and how to maintain their distinctive cultural identities in a rapidly changing, increasingly globalized world”
I think I should start by stating why I picked this topic despite the fact there’s has been no lecture dedicated for it unlike the first two, in fact this specific topic interests me because in a way it’s a problem that I’ve been struggling with for 5 years now since I came here to the USA from Egypt. Originally I am part of the Coptic nation and the word “Coptic” is used to refer to the Christians of Egypt, it’s relatively a big group compared to all the groups that we studied this semester (Almost 15 million which represents 20% of the total population in Egypt). They are very unique in many aspects and have a very rich culture that was formed over thousands of years in Egypt so I relocated from a totally different atmosphere, which can be described as “conservative” so we share some values with the southern part of the US specially on the social issues but I guess I was very lucky to live in Delaware which is a very liberal state so I had my share of the initial culture shock specially at the beginning even little things like seeing a girl smoking was highly odd for me because for 19 years I never saw a girl smoking in public, so I fell into Ethnocentrism for very long time and unfortunately I was applying my rules into a totally different environment.
I think that the Gitxsan and the O’odham are very culturally challenged more than any other group specially when it comes to the young people because they are surrounded by well-developed communities from a technological and economical stand point in both Canada and the United States of America respectively, unlike the Tongans or the Trojans or the Tiv which can all be considered small closed communities and only