As the book says in the opening pages, while it is pertinent to avoid using the lives of individuals as metaphors for larger historical movements, it is hard to ignore the obvious parallels in the life of political activist José Angel Icó and the struggle of natives against the elites, neoliberalism, and oppression in the 20th century. Icó was a Q’eqchi man who became well known by serving as a legal advisor to the Q’eqchi against exploitation by the German coffee plantation owners. It was during this period of Neoliberalism that the German immigrants brought “progress” to Guatemala, as seen by the electricity, telephones, movies, and streetcars brought to Alta Verapaz in rural Guatemala. Despite this “progress” that Neoliberalism brought, Icó’s fight for Q’echi rights highlights it’s failures,…
Main Argument and Thesis The main point of the article is that while many groups of Indians might have assimilated to the modern world, there are still Indians who have been living the way that their ancestors have for thousands of years, desperately avoiding assimilation. Supporting Evidence The author, Joshua Hummer, supports the main idea through providing details of an expedition to find suspected isolated tribes within the Amazon, and then offering more background to the reader.…
Capitalism is the most productive economic system that ever exists. Its emergence and development have brought an amazingly rapid increase in productivity. However, the fact that cyclical capitalist economic crisis arises proves that capitalism does not make sense because it has contradictions in it. In this article, I am going to provide explanations about what Engels means by historical materialism, the fundamental contradiction in capitalism and two other contradictions that arise from this contradiction. And I will conclude by explaining Engels’ s anticipation of the eventual outcome of the historical development of capitalism. My main argument is that the fundamental contradiction in capitalism is the contradiction between social production and individual appropriation which leads to the contradiction between the systematic organization of production inside factories and the disorganization of production in society as a whole and the contradiction between the mode of production and the mode of exchange, and the contradiction between market and production (Frederick 295; Frederick 299; Frederick 302).…
Prologue: The author presents a question by a politician named Yali from a trip to New Guinea in 1972 of how whites were able to bring a great amount of cargo than the natives already living in their land. Yali argues of why it was because of the environment advantage for the Europeans to claim land from the Native Americans to go against racial differences that were made. He also argues of how modern Stone Age people were capable of accomplishing more productions for their societies than those industrialized and how New Guineans are more luxurious in living compared to the Americans and Europeans because humans must have history with evidence.…
Michael Taussig also believed that that people living in the periphery of the world capitalist economy have a critical vantage point on capitalism, and articulate their critiques of capitalism in terms of their own cultural idioms. Taussig concludes that anthropologists should study peoples living on the periphery of the world capitalist economy as a way of gaining critical insight into the anthropologists' own culture. This will have the anthropologists' object of study from that of other cultures to that of their own, and repositions the former…
Globalization is a rather controvertial topic and the supporters and opponents are both numerous. The essay of “The Fourth World War Has Begun” by Marcos focuses on the negative sides of globalization on a global perspective. First, the greedy and warlike logic of contemporary capitalism and markets, which has prospered since the end of the Cold War, is described. A comprehension of globalization as “world war” has been provided, and this war is fought between the candidates of ruling power of world economy, and the victims are the poor and the humanity, as well as the independence of states and national culture. What the war seeks is a redistribution of the world, and in the process more serious inequality has been caused. The national states have been subordinated to the logic of transnational financial power and commercial free trade, and are reduced to play the sole role of securing markets. Then…
The global north, as an advanced, “superior” power, is able to swoop into the territories of the global south and extract materials for its use. Due the matchup of power versus poverty, power always wins. Just as Harvey Rosenthal observed, “the American right to buy always superseded the Indian right not to sell” (Wolfe 391). The global north, like European powers, ignores native sovereignty because the they had “discovered” the new territory (Wolfe 391). “Consummated by possession” proclaimed the right to occupancy for European colonizers through the doctrine of discovery (Wolfe 393).…
Within every society, and every community or settlement across the globe, there is undoubtedly one thing that they have in common; we identify this as ‘culture’. “Culture is a design for living” (Clyde Kluckhohn, cited in Halambros et al, 2013: 5), it describes the norms, values, beliefs, and practises of a people. The economic base and division of labour, political structure, religion, and strata of the Nama Tribe are very different to that of modern English society. Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx established theories relating to different aspects of society and the way in which it operated, e.g. mechanical and organic solidarity (Durkheim, 1893), these can offer a platform for a new perspective on The Nama people and modern English society.…
References: Sercombe, H 2005, The survival of the indigenous economy: Theoretical approaches [online]. Ngoonjook, No. 27, 2005: 63-75.…
When the Great Plains were first taken over by Americans in the early twentieth century, people saw opportunity. This land consisted of miles and miles of fields, and farmers knew they could prosper. Worster believed “what brought them to this region was a social system, a set of values, an economic order. There is no word that so fully sums up those elements as ‘capitalism’”(Worster, 5). The families who moved into the area were not to blame for the eventual disaster because, as Worster states, “the culture was operating in precisely the way it was supposed to” (Worster, 4). Families migrated into Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and the surrounding areas and did what they do best. They farmed. Capitalist ideals made them believe it was acceptable to consider nature as capital (Worster, 6). While Americans in other part of the country were doing business selling clothing or cars or groceries, the people occupying the plains turned their farms into businesses in order to make more than enough money needed to simply survive. They farmed and farmed until the land was exploited beyond its means.…
The first chapter, “The Nineteenth Century: Progress and Cultural Conflict” describes the sociopolitical system of nineteenth century Latin America. It highlights the immense power held by elites at the expense of the folk populations. Burns explains how…
As far back as Rigoberta Manchu can remember, her life has been divided between the highlands of Guatemala and the low country plantations called the fincas. Routinely, Rigoberta and her family spent eight months working here under extremely poor conditions, for rich Guatemalans of Spanish descent. Starvation malnutrition and child death were common occurrence here; rape and murder were not unfamiliar too. Rigoberta and her family worked just as hard when they resided in their own village for a few months every year. However, when residing here, Rigoberta’s life was centered on the rituals and traditions of her community, many of which gave thanks to the natural world. When working in the fincas, she and her people struggled to survive, living at the mercy of wealthy landowners in an overcrowded, miserable environment. By the time Rigoberta was eight years old she was hard working and almost capable of picking enough pounds of coffee to earn the unfair daily wage supplied by the finca.…
As I sat down to write my compare and contrast essay, I thought it would be a simple task. Oh, how wrong I was! Coming up with two subjects to compare differences was easy, but finding ones with similarities also? Not so much. I have researched and googled every important issue that I thought would be interesting to debate, but did not have any luck of finding something inspiring. Finally, I decided that I was making this more difficult than it had to be. So, here we are at the purpose of this essay. I chose two popular fruits that actually have more in common than I originally thought. I am going to compare bananas and oranges based on a couple of factors that a person would use when deciding between the two: the nutrition that it provides and their physical characteristics.…
I have taken it upon myself to help improve the amount of fruit that the vineyard produces. One area I noticed that could use improvement was the type of bird netting that was being applied. I personally picked the fruit and saw how much fruit was pierced by birds. I collected data by interviewing managers of the winery, and researching online about which practices produced the best outcome.…
Dried fruit is fruit that has been dried, either naturally or through use of a machine, such as a dehydrator. Vine fruits make up over three-quarters of the total global dried fruit volume. Prunes (also referred to as plums) and dates are other examples of popular dried fruits in the EU. Dried fruit has a long shelf life and can therefore provide a good alternate to fresh fruit, allowing out of season fruits to be available. Drying is a good way to preserve fruit in the absence of refrigeration. Dried fruit and vegetables are whole, cut, sliced, broken or powdered, but not prepared further. In addition to drying, certain preservatives may be added to maintain the equality. For instance, sulphur dioxide is added to prevent fruit discolouring. The use and content of preservatives in food is regulated by the EU (see also paragraph 10 on legislative requirements in the CBI market survey ‘The preserved fruit and vegetable market in the EU’ and chapter 5 of this Survey). Organic dried fruit is produced without sulphur which results in dark fruit and the flavour is much more characteristic.…