Anthropologists Rites Of Passage Analysis

Everyone strives to be understood. I want to be seen from my point of view so that others will understand what I go through and why that relates to what I do as an individual. Zooming out from the tiny frame that is my life, entire cultures strive to be understood from their point of view. This is cultural relativism, the notion that the members of a culture and their actions should be looked at from their own perspective as a culture. To make this more relatable, I look at how I live my everyday life as a non-religious white woman in the United States, if I were to be judged off the standards of a religious Muslim woman I would miss the mark by far and be looked at negatively. This is where the difficulty in anthropology comes in. Anthropologists
These can be wide spread throughout a nation or small and confined within family tradition. Anthropologist, Van Gennep categorizes a rite of passage into three main stages; separation, liminal, and integration. I think it is more clearly explained in Davis-Floyd’s Birth as a rite of passage where she restates these stages as separation from former social identity, state of becoming, transition, and integration back into everyday life. She uses these three stages to describe how birth and becoming a mother can be considered a rite of passage. These stages can be used to describe even the simplest rites of passage. Take for example obtaining a driver’s license, in most states in the US you must pass a test in order to get your drivers permit. This is the separation stage because you go from being someone who isn’t allowed to drive legally to someone allowed to drive. Once you get your permit you go through either a driver’s education class or take a driver’s test. This is the stage of becoming because you are becoming a proficient driver. The transition stage is after you have passed either the test or the class and obtain a restricted license of which you become a legal driver but have some restrictions for the next six months. This is the transition stage because you are on the right path to becoming a fully licensed driver, but you have not fully integrated into
We started by watching a clip from Star Trek in where once the person has passed they release the sprit though a brief ritual leaving the body and empty shell. They could care less what happens to the body after death because that is not the persons sprit. On the other had we watched as the deceased were donated to science. This is different from Star Trek because in this case the body is the most important piece. Because they have not taken the time to learn the meaning behind why the other group does what it does, if these one of these groups of people were to look on how the other deals with the dead they would probably be confused and