Ethnographic Essay
Ethnography Reaction Paper
The ethnography I chose to do my reaction paper was called ‘Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People’ written by Thomas Gregor. This ethnography is about Thomas Gregor and his wife’s visit to the Mehinaku Village in 1967. Gregor was a graduate student of anthropology and decided to take a field trip there to further his studies and better understand the Amazonian people. I could only read a select few pages from this ethnography so it was a little tricky to put down my reaction of it in writing. Becoming aware of how other people around the world think about or view sexual activity was very interesting, although there were definitely a few things that surprised me about their culture and how they view sex. Thomas Gregor did not initially go there to study the sexuality of the Mehinaku but he thought in order to get the full understanding of their culture it was pretty vital to do. The Mehinaku are very open about sex. They have little embarrassment of their sexual desire and even their children will recall the names of their parents’ many lovers. In my opinion I found that a little too much for a child to know, even though it is how they have been brought up their whole lives and that is the way their culture is. At same time I would like to try not to be so ethnocentric and judge them by how they do certain things, but some of the things they do are honestly quite shocking and makes it harder to understand. I found it interesting when I learned that a new father is put under certain restrictions for his son and if he eats forbidden foods or participates in sexual relations it will violate the prohibition and his child will become sick. They have the village shaman come in and help cure the child by sucking out the disease that has somehow made its way into the child all caused by the father’s carelessness. This was fascinating to me because we Americans would not think that eating a “forbidden food” or having
The ethnography I chose to do my reaction paper was called ‘Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People’ written by Thomas Gregor. This ethnography is about Thomas Gregor and his wife’s visit to the Mehinaku Village in 1967. Gregor was a graduate student of anthropology and decided to take a field trip there to further his studies and better understand the Amazonian people. I could only read a select few pages from this ethnography so it was a little tricky to put down my reaction of it in writing. Becoming aware of how other people around the world think about or view sexual activity was very interesting, although there were definitely a few things that surprised me about their culture and how they view sex. Thomas Gregor did not initially go there to study the sexuality of the Mehinaku but he thought in order to get the full understanding of their culture it was pretty vital to do. The Mehinaku are very open about sex. They have little embarrassment of their sexual desire and even their children will recall the names of their parents’ many lovers. In my opinion I found that a little too much for a child to know, even though it is how they have been brought up their whole lives and that is the way their culture is. At same time I would like to try not to be so ethnocentric and judge them by how they do certain things, but some of the things they do are honestly quite shocking and makes it harder to understand. I found it interesting when I learned that a new father is put under certain restrictions for his son and if he eats forbidden foods or participates in sexual relations it will violate the prohibition and his child will become sick. They have the village shaman come in and help cure the child by sucking out the disease that has somehow made its way into the child all caused by the father’s carelessness. This was fascinating to me because we Americans would not think that eating a “forbidden food” or having