Anthropology terms

 Syncretism  


an amalgamation or incorporation of traditional and introduced alien culture traits.  In Southern Mexico and Guatemala, the Maya Indian combination of mutually exclusive indigenous religious and European Christian beliefs to create a new composite religion is an example.  Syncretism is often a psychologically more satisfying alternative to rapid acculturation that totally replaces indigenous cultural beliefs and customs since one's own cultural identity is maintained.


While syncretism is most recognized in religious terms, another great example that is more relevant to our current time is musical syncretism. When Europeans colonized America, taking along with them millions of West African slaves, their cultures, and more specifically their music, came with them. Indigenous Amerians also had their own instruments and styles of music that the colonizers incorporated into theirs. These three cultures created a combination that would become the root of modern music in the Americas.

A perfect example of musical syncretism is the genre Vallenato from North Colombia. It uses Guitars (Spanish Colonists), Maracas and Pipes (Native Americans), Drums (African Slaves), Accordions (German Immigrants). The melodic and heavy rhythm of the music was brought by Arab immigrants.


Linguistics  

the comparative study of the function, structure, and history of languages and the communication process in general.  Linguistics is also referred to as linguistic anthropology.



An example of this is the study of the English language in our ELA class. We learn about grammar, spelling, etc. It can also be the comparison of two languages, whether that be the format, pronunciation, grammar, structure, meanings of words, how accurate translations are, etc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cultural Anthropology blog

   Nate Savarese Mr. Roddy IHSS 31 August 2021 Cultural Anthropology Blog      I read cultural anthropology blog Vol. 36 No. 2 (2021). T his blog covers many different topics. One of these topics is about things such as rural places in the world that use the labor of inmates to produce value in their economy. An example of this is rural places in new jersey where the inequalities of the inmates challenge the work that they must do to make a living. This article also has an example of when people studied ethnography in Japan. In Japan there are Buddhists that sell pet robots such as robot dogs, to people to re-define the boundaries between  life, death, amusement, and play. I have been wondering if society would accept robot dogs or cats as replacements for real ones. I think that this would offer the trade between personality and functionality. In Bolivia Juliane muller offers the thought of large corporate companies attempting to bestow a ne...
Read more

What Did Medieval Peasants Know?

  Jayla Balderas  Mr. Roddy  IHSS  16 May 2022                                                   What Did Medieval Peasants Know? A comment often thrown around is how much easier life was in medieval times. What sparked this specific article was a tweet made by a woman named Azie Dungey she said, “We give a lot more labor to increase someone else’s wealth than in times past. We generally work much longer hours. We have far fewer holidays and times of community festivity,” (Dungey).  This sparked a controversy, and brought up the question, what were things really like during the medieval times? It was stated everyone has a different variety of what they believed this era looked like in their head because it's ...
Read more

John D Rockefeller - Eli

John Davison Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York. And In 1864, Rockefeller married Laura Celestia. Laura Celestia was an Ohio native and had a very successful father. Her father was active in helping the underground railroad and was an abolitionist. together Rockefeller and Celestia went on to have five children, 4 of them girls and one boy. however one of the girls, Alice Rockefeller died when she was only 13 months old. Later, In 1865 Rockefeller took out a loan to buy out his partner's oil refineries. He quickly formed more partners and expanded his oil business. he soon made the standard oil company of Ohio along with his younger brother and other young men. John Rockefeller became the president and biggest shareholder of the company. He began to make a monopoly in the Oil industry by buying out his competitors. he started selling his oil globally and eventually made up 90 percent of the nation's oil.  the gilded age is an era where we see a gr...
Read more