#luna thomas

[gwanth1002]

Market exchange is defined as the buying and selling of commodities under competitive conditions in which the forces of supply and demand determine value; a form of unbalanced exchange (Miller 62). This is a picture of my family eating together when they visited me on Sunday. This photo is an example of market exchange because my family participated in the marketplace where we traded money to enjoy yummy food. Food can be considered the commodity, and the food we ate at Pike Bolivian Restaurant is a great example of the competitive nature of a market. Because there is not a large supply of authentic Bolivian food anywhere in the US, a meal that would cost US $5 in Bolivia costs three times as much in the United States. If I could perform further study, I would want to see if cultural association with food causes a greater demand for that food (specifically in the US because of the wide variety of cuisine and “melting pot” status).

Pure gift is defined as something given with no expectation or thought of a return (Miller 60). This is a picture of my newly decorated and repaired laptop that my parents gave to me on Christmas my junior year of high school. My laptop can be considered a pure gift because my parents did not expect me to contribute financially to any portion of the purchase. The laptop also reflects some of the disagreement on whether truly pure gifts exist; since, my parents do have material and immaterial expectations of my behavior. Materially, my parents expect any further maintenance to be paid by me. Immaterially, my parents expect that owning a laptop will aid my studies. So, if my school performance were to drop, my parents might reconsider my need for a laptop. I chose this photo because a laptop is a significant financial investment that almost all members of the “college microculture” need to make.    

[gwanth1002]

Indigenous people (page 18) is defined in the textbook as groups that have a long-standing connection with their home territories, a connection predating colonial or other societies that prevail in that territory. This is a photo of a pen souvenir I brought back from my trip to Bolivia last year. It depicts a Quechua woman. The Quechua people are one of the many indigenous groups that live in Bolivia today. These groups have lived in Bolivia for thousands of years before Spain colonized the continent. The photo also demonstrates Linguistic anthropology because Quechua is an endangered language since Spanish is considered in Latin American culture to be the “higher” language. I chose this photo because indigenous groups in Bolivia are the majority, constituting 60% of the population and have been given legal land rights. This is a stark difference from other indigenous groups around the world. If I had the chance to study the Quechua people anthropologically I would want to study the stories and myths that have survived colonization.  

Holism (page 9) is defined in the textbook as the view that one must study all aspects of a culture in order to understand it. This is a photo of my poster promoting the second season of Attack on Titan, a popular Japanese anime. Holism is represented here, because it would be very shortsighted to judge Japanese culture solely based on its popular forms of media. While anime can definitely expose viewers to the Japanese language and social customs, it more often than not exaggerates reality. Also, there are countless genres of anime as it is just an animation style with varying levels in its reflection of Japanese culture. I chose this example because it just so happens that there are people who do judge Japanese culture only by the anime they watch and become very invested in this one-dimensional view of Japan (often called “weeaboos” online). Thankfully, their misconceptions are usually harmless albeit very comical.