Moka: A huge gift made up of pigs, money, and other items. Technically, the moka is the extra, the “interest” that you pay back. The moka sequence that Ongka is now involved in began with pigs given as payment for intertribal violence and death. 10 years ago, Ongka received 400 pigs from the neighboring people, now he hopes to give them 600 or more.…
In today’s society, the norm has become to contradict the norm. American culture focuses on the acceptance of the individual and acts of rebellion against the hierarchy. Yet when analyzing literature that takes place in another era, the audience cannot deny that there is a sense of conformity. People are never distinguished from being an outsider or insider, but instead they grow into a certain role. In the PBS documentary, “Minik: The Lost Eskimo”, explorer Robert Peary introduced the protagonist, Minik, to western culture which led to the American citizens to exclude him. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Europeans arrive to Africa and colonize several tribes including the one that belongs to Okonkwo, the protagonist. The tribe ends up excluding Okonkwo, although he was trying to enforce similar ideals. Additionally, there is Meursault, from…
In the novel, “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe a Nigerian author, tells the history of a small village in Nigeria. The history is focused on the daily life of a man named Okonkwo. Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was a man known for his laziness, and cowardice. He was unoccupied, poor, libertine, gentle, interested in conversation and in music more than anything else. Unoka died in disrepute, leaving many village debts unsettled. In response, Okonkwo consciously adopted opposite ideals and becomes productive, wealthy, thrifty, brave, violent, and adamantly rejects everything for which he believes his father stood. Okonkwo always leaded in his own way, a way which made his wives and children afraid of him. With the arrival of white missionaries,…
Ira Bashkow brilliantly captures what it means to be an Orakaiva from Papa New Guinea in his book, The Meaning of Whitemen: Race & Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World. As a response to the influences of post-colonialism, globalization, and modernity, the Orakaiva have constructed…
Moka is referred to as the gifts that they give to other tribes. The purpose of Moka is not just the giving and receiving, it is repaying what someone has given you but with interest, almost like taking out a loan at the bank and having to pay it back with interest or paying taxes. It runs deeper than that, Moka is also a way of getting status, by Ongka giving the Moka and outdoing his fellow men by the quantity of Moka he gives will earn him fame and higher status not only for himself but for his tribe. The most valuable thing that Ongka has got to give is pigs. Pigs are not just pigs; Ongka said that if money looks after the white people, pigs look after them. Pigs are their strong thing; if you don’t have pigs then you are nobody.…
Colson, Elizabeth, 1953. The Makah Indians: A Study of an Indian Tribe in Modern American Society. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press.…
The !Kung are hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa and the women play an essential role in the production of subsistence for their families. The woman actually contribute a greater proportion of the subsistence to their families directly than do the men who are the game hunters in the family. As Friedl describes in “Society and Sex Roles” (page 101) regardless of who produces food, the person who gives it to others creates the obligations and alliances that are at the center of all political relations.” The woman from birth are the gathers within the !Kung and Friedl believes that it is due to four inter-related factors as to why the woman are the foragers; the variability in the supply of game, the different skills required for hunting and gathering; the incompatibility between carrying burdens and hunting; and the small size of semi-nomadic foraging populations (page 102). !Kung women play a very vital role in the survival of their families through their gathering of subsistence and they are not simply laborers but they are owners and/or distributors of what they bring home. However, they remain to be the less powerful of the genders within their culture. The !Kung woman’s role is critical to the survival of their villages because when unsuccessful hunters come home without protein (game) it is the woman who will feed the men, children and the elderly within their village and because they strictly provide for their family as the foragers they are not, based on Friedl’s’ theories, the one who disperses food to others. Thus, !Kung women are not considered to be the person with seniority…
If a man could not grow yams, he was looked down upon as a failure and a weak man. This standard contributed to the anger that Okonkwo felt for his father, Unoka, a gentle and kind man who did not wish to spend his days farming yams, but rather preferred to play his flute. Once, after visiting the Oracle, Agbala, Unoka was told he, “was known in all the clan for the weakness of [his] hoe,” and to, “go home and work like a man” (17-18). Unoka may not have been the strongest or toughest man, but he possessed a quality that Okonkwo lacked – humanity. The definition of what it meant to be “manly” was so rigidly defined in the Igbo culture and carried with it so many implications that when men failed, sometimes they were incapable of living with themselves. After a particularly terrible year of heavy rains that swept away the yams, “the harvest was sad, like a funeral…one man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself” (24). This drastic response demonstrates the narrow confines of society and the pressure that men faced to be tough and live up to preconceived ideals of masculinity. Okonkwo understood that, “Yam stood for manliness and he who could feed his family on yams…was a very great man indeed” (33). In Okonkwo’s limited understanding of what it took to be a man, it was inexcusable for his eldest son, Nwoye, not to be a talented and hardworking farmer. Nwoye’s sensitivity and inability to be tough were great failings in Okonkwo’s eyes, and contributed to their unhealthy father-son relationship. The power and symbolism of the yam in Igbo culture was the cause of great celebration, as well as great…
The book, “Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman,” written by Marjorie Shostak is a culturally shocking and touching book about a woman who had gone through many struggles and horrific tragedies in her life. This book also highlights the perspective of most of the women in the society. There are many issues in this book that the people of the !Kung tribe goes through. Out of all the women in the tribe Shostak had made close connections with a fifty-year-old woman named Nisa. According to Shostak, “None of the women had experiences as much tragedy as Nisa…” (Shostak, 1981, p. 351). The book is written in Nisa’s point of view of her life experiences while growing up in that type of society.…
The Maasai are one of the many southern-most tribes located in Kenya. They are physically related, and also in many other forms related to the Samburu and Turkana. The Maasai have a relatively complex culture and traditions but for many years they were unheard of. By the late 1800's we soon discovered more about the Maasai, mostly from their oral histories. In this paper we will look at their history and origin, social structure, religion, economy, and communication.…
Rules and boundaries exist in our daily practices. The rules and boundaries are communicated in many different forms within our social lives, governing our social relations. They persist despite the constant flow of personnel and the long-term maintenance of social relations across them (Barth, 1969). Social boundaries are not always obvious and spoken. Our society is made up of different cultures and social classes, however as individuals we all share one thing in common. “In our lives we will pass through many series of passages, from one state to another, usually marked through ‘special acts’ such as a ceremony “ (Gennep, 1960). These special acts are constrained with rules and boundaries that aren’t inevitably apparent. Examples of these special acts include the engaging of romantic relationships as well as celebrating a coming of age in the instance of a 21st birthday. In cultures, other than western, distinct social relations have been observed in anthropologists’ fieldwork. These social relations appear obscure however, for instance, in the case of Claire Smiths study of the complex Aboriginal kinship system which is a sole determinant through ‘skin groups’ in the Barunga-Wuglarr are the relationships occupied in their community. Another dissimilar paradigm is that of Christine Helliwell’s (1996) study into the space and sociality in a Dayak longhouse. Where rules and boundaries are unwritten but understood, governing the social relations of the community and their actions within the longhouse.…
In the southeastern portion of Nigeria lies one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, the Igbo. They have a patriarchal society which directly influences their system of government. In addition to this, the tribe is very tight-knit. They often come together as a village to discuss pressing issues, which can be seen in the book Things Fall Apart. However, the way in which they form opinions and make decisions is in direct relation to specific members of the tribe who hold authority; the men, women, and gods all serve a different purpose in the diplomacy of the Igbo tribe.…
Mosko, M.S., (1987). The symbols of “Forest”: a structural analysis of Mbuti culture and social organization. American Anthropologist. New series 89(4) pp.896-913. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/677863…
In my essay I want to emphasize on the importance of the African Talking drum to the people who were brought to the land of the Americas in chains, and that in those trying and horrible times,a feeling of trying to establish a level of order and dignity amongst themselves helped them establish a strong connection between the African people and their musical instruments most specifically their drums.…
The following essay will be focusing on how we can use izithakazelo as sources in historical research. When I researched about izithakazelo, concepts such as ‘praise names’, ‘clan praises’, and ‘family praises’ came up. The word ‘coward’ can absolutely not go together with the word izithakazelo, as izithakazelo has such high appraisal. Izithakazelo is connected to the Zulu culture, and when they are praised, they start with the surname and then clan name whereas amaXhosa start with the clan name then the surname (iziduko). This essay will be mostly based on the Zulu culture and izithakazelo.…