#tonyyang

[wudangcenter]

Enduring pain, suffering and sacrifice in order to be great...

[nknd3100]

[nknd3100]

Sometimes, when I write, I feel like I hit a dead end, where my train of thought just halts or my ideas get too complex. One way to overcome this, I have found, is to take a short break to do some physical exercise or do some other work to let an idea resonate in my head. This helps me focus on my writing and allows for the possibility to find inspiration from my surroundings. This technique helped me in my final project. I was a bit stuck on the concept of time for a while and finding a narrow focus, but one day, I happened to pass a construction site. Normally, construction on roads happen on night to avoid traffic, but the construction at Hopkins all occurs during the day. This made me think more deeply about what shapes people’s work schedules and ultimately the effects of industrialization on time. Attached is a photo I took of the construction site. If I am still at a roadblock, I always backtrack a bit and try getting rid of some sentences or paragraphs. A piece of advice a teacher once told me was to be ruthless about what is vital to your purpose. Over time, I have learned to not get too attached to what I am writing, because it holds you back from being critical of yourself and prevents you from seeing a place where your logic veers in the wrong direction. When I write, I keep two documents open at once, one for what I end up turning in, and one where I can jot down ideas, “throw away” some writing, and keep things for later. This helps me streamline the path of my thoughts and remove clutter.

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

Discussion on Better be Hot than Caught and American Yards

De Leon describes migrants’ use of certain objects as “logical” because migrants choose what they bring on their trip across the border. For example, they choose black, nonreflective water bottles and darker clothing over clear, reflective bottles. They wear sneakers rather than hiking boots. Through word of mouth, they select these items over others. The socio-technical system, which includes all of the players involved in the preparation, execution, and obstacles, all influence what people bring on their trip and how they behave. Even though border patrol might actually find people wearing black more easily because of their technology, many choose black because it seems logical and someone else was caught because their bottle reflected light. Although sneakers break down easily and are not suitable for the harsh desert, they wear them because they do not know about hiking boots or they think that it will help them blend in more once they get to America.

I found it really interesting how the essay approached my final project’s topic from a very angle. It described symbols of nature in the yard as feminine and thus representative of cyclical time, while male symbols represent progress and linear time. This directly relates to my project and opens my eyes to another way in which material objects represent cyclical and linear time. While my project focuses more on time’s effect on the material world and how we perceive the concept of time, the article provides a unique perspective that focuses more on the historical meanings of objects and what they mean for a family.

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

Discussion on Suffering Bodies and Ladhaki Nomads

Structural violence is how the system oppresses certain people unnecessarily and the reasoning behind this inequality. The article gives the example of someone dying of AIDS because of unaffordable healthcare. The author critiques the use of suffering bodies in photography and video by saying that it hides the people causing the mechanisms of violence, that they reinforce dominant stereotypes, and leave little room for solutions. In order to make impactful documentaries, she suggests using pictures of video that confront the viewer and challenges their expectations. People are used to seeing suffering, so you need to show more than the victim. Symbols that are rich in cultural connotation are also helpful and an example would be children and elderly holding machetes.

We tend to think of photos as gifts and good memories, but Ladhaki nomads challenge this idea. When shown pictures of their tribe’s past, they are not excited by them. This is partly due to the fact that some photos had dead relatives in them, so it was difficult to look at at first. However, the article gave an example of someone who adjusted to it and came to realize that it was valuable to have. The process that was involved in looking at the Ladhaki photos involved talking to the natives and bridging the 30-year gap since the photos were taken. They provoked emotions of love, excitement, and anxiety. We learn that although one would expect photographs to represent facts, there is actually some ambiguity, which the researcher realized through this discussion. By following a few people, the author captured really unique and individual experiences that were not necessarily representative of everyone.

[nknd3100]

My topic is more abstract and doesn't fit with the prompt as much, so I just continued my project.

1) This picture of a tree stump in front of the president’s house serves as a good metaphor for time. A unique characteristic of tree trunks is that they have rings, one for each year that the plant is alive. The distance between each concentric circle represents a separation from the past, and with each subsequent one, the edge gets more and more complex. Although the rings are cyclical, this tree trunk shows a linear version of time, one that is constantly moving forwards and expanding outwards. At the same time, however, it also supports the idea that time consists of merely moments, slices, of time. In a way, it also alludes to the greater picture of time. The big bang marked the creation of cosmic time and was followed by the expansion of time and space.

2) The routine of construction sites, just like any sort of long term project, demonstrate the dichotomy of time. Daily routine is juxtaposed with slow progress. This picture somewhat goes against what I had originally said in my proposal, when I claimed that we “hacked” time with the invention and spread of lights. Before electronic lights, people’s work was dictated more strongly by daylight, but walking around, I realized that this was accurate for different types of jobs, such as office jobs. While industrialization has caused people to be more effective, have a more structured schedule, and have the concept of a weekend, most people’s day are still vaguely ruled by the rise and set of the sun. As a culture, we have more authority over time today, but we do not utilize this full control.

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

Pueblo housing and privacy, US-Mexico Border Discussion

Karen Dohm uses various techniques and lenses to analyze public versus private space in Pueblo housing. Most prominently, she uses maps and photographs to guide her through her research project. She uses direct comparison of different locations or objects, such as the privacy of interior versus exterior spaces, and where high and low value objects are stored. She looks at different dimensions and regions of each location and ranks them according to privacy. In her piece, she addresses some complexities with this system. Even though one room might be considered one space, she also subdivides it to smaller regions. The center of a room or terrace might be ranked as less private as the wall next to the door. This is also true for terraces and rooftops, where walls protruding up would provide some privacy.

Mass media tends to depict the US-Mexico border from the view of border patrol mixed with barren wild west, as a place with desolate illegal border towns and border patrol surveillance, but Dorsey and Diaz-Barriga critique this by showing the border as more of a verdant space where people create a binational community and celebrate family. They show the locals’ festivities and opinions in addition to the vibrant green scenery of someone’s backyard and a park. They show a small sample of the people that live there, such as federal park rangers. Dorsey and Diaz-Barriga veer from the traditional view of the border to a unique built environment based on nature and community.

[craftinganthropologicaltext]

Balinese character discussion

The photographer uses high contrast in addition to leading lines created by people’s bodies to highlight the subjects. In plate 23, for example, the man’s arms tend to lead the viewer’s eyes towards the subject. Leading lines are seen in photo 2, where the hands and arms create two triangles, and in photos 4, 5, and 6, where the hands lead into the statue. Since the paper and statue are fairly light-colored compared to the background and the human subjects for this plate, the photographs tend to place an equal emphasis on individuals and the material objects of their culture. The arrangement of pictures supports this relationship between subject and object. On plate 23, the photographs are arranged so that they start out with the man fully in the frame, looking at his paper, but as you go down, the camera zooms in on what he is making. The object is as important as the artist. This arrangement technique also emphasizes hand postures, which the author finds to be unique to the culture.

Something unique about the photo sets are the focus on individuals, as opposed to Malinowski’s emphasis on groups of people and the community as a whole. At most, the pictures tend to have parent and child, with the exception of plate 24 number 3, which features a picture of women lousing each other. Something else that is unique about the anthropological text is that the photographer juxtaposes the culture’s drawings with the same situation in real life, and this shows a sense of cultural self-awareness and connects the folk art to their traditions. This technique is not used in plate 23, but is seen in plates 22 and 24.

The captions, as they should, provide more detail about the photographs. However, they are different in that they analyze the subject’s hand positions and describe motions instead of always showing them. In plates 1 to 3, for example, the author says that the subject’s “right hand is inactive while his left is in an apparently sensory position.”