Cultural Anthropology: Can there be any universal human rights?
SOCA102 Midterm Your midterm consists of five questions, each worth 20 points. They are broad critical thinking questions that ask you to really use your head and justify your responses. Each question response needs to be at least 250 words long and chock full of as many specific examples you can pack in. DO NOT plagiarize any portion of this test from the book or a website. If you do, I will find you and you will receive a zero for the test. Period. If you need to learn more about plagiarism and how not to do it, go to this website: www(dot)plagiarism(dot)org • Things you need to know. (The book we use is: Culture Counts: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition) And I am a 45 year old grandmother with 2 Bachelor’s degrees, who lives in Philadelphia. Please make sure that this is written from my prospective. It’s not that this assignment is difficult, it’s just too time consuming for me right now. Questions: 1. Can there be any universal human rights? What issues can be raised when trying to assert universal human rights? Who should decide what the universal human rights should be, and what about those who disagree with them? 2. Give examples of how ethnocentrism functions in a culture. Do you think that ethnocentrism can ever be a good thing? 3. What are some examples of ethical considerations with which an anthropologist must be concerned? Make up an example of an ethical problem an anthropologist might face in the field. 4. Imagine you are designing a training course for business people who will be working and securing deals in another country. What are some aspects of culture in general that you may wish to cover? What are some of the cultural differences that can make people uncomfortable when meeting or doing business (this is a general question, and I am looking for general categories here, such as you may find in Chapter 4. If you have specific cultural examples,great!) 5. Consider the climate in which you live. What technological adaptations help you to function? Are there any biological features you possess which have helped you to adapt? Hi. I just an email from my professor. Please forward this helpful info to the writer of this assignment. For a few midterm tips: 1. Outside research is a good thing to do for this. Look up issues like Human Rights and see what is being done around the world to address this important idea. Also, use the AAA website for the ethics question. 2. DO also use your text book. Don’t just riff on the answers. Yes, I ask for opinions, but the best opinions come out of research and carefully formulated responses. Not all opinions are equal. 3. Give good examples, and make them plausible. Anthropologists coming across a tribe of baby eaters…well, we just don’t see a lot of that sort of thing out there. 4. Make sure you are responding to all parts of the question and flesh out your responses. APA format Thank you- nancy
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
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QUESTION ONE
To deny people their human rights is to confront their very humanity. Former South African leader Nelson Mandela notably remarked. Human rights are understood to be fundamental rights to which a person is entitled by virtue of being a human being. Therefore are conceived as universal and the same for everyone (egalitarian). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a document that was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly to respond to the atrocities that emanated from World war II, it represented the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are intrinsically entitled.
Critics from different parts of the world have opposed the notion that human rights can be universal. They maintain it poses many questions than it answers, an example is whether human rights is a western concept because it ignores cultural, economic, and political realities of the other parts of the world. They have also described universal rights indicating that the wealthy and the underprivileged have the same right to fly first class and to beg in the streets as well. Developing countries have continued to argue that some human rights are simply not applicable to their societies. It is therefore clear that nothing can be universal since all rights and values are limited by our cultural perception. Since we do not have a universal culture, there can be no universal human rights (Nanda & Warms, 2012). As the universality of human rights is viewed to belong the westernized minority in some cultures, human rights in those cultures is for the few who have the concerns of the westerners and they are to determine what human rights are and what is to be done with those who disagree with the concept.
QUESTION TWO
Everyone learns ethnocentrism while growing up; it is considered a universal reaction found in all societies and sensibly all individuals. It is the practice of comparing other cultural practices with your own mainly considering other cultures substandard. Ethnocentrism is key in encouraging harmony in a society. When an individual believes that his ways are the best, it brings out oneness with his acquaintances and encourages loyalty and preserves their bases for superiority, it therefore promotes the continuance of the status quo in that particular society. Ethnocentrism has been a major cause of strife and division amongst major religious groups, race, and ethnicities. Europeans overtook lands in Africa and America as they believed them to be backward societies and they needed to bring them up to speed with the new technology. They colonized some of these countries for more than ten years trying to instill in them their ‘superior’ way of life (Nanda & Warms, 2012).
In the book The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare, there is intense disagreement depicted between Shylock a Jew and Antonio a Christian. Antonio keeps ridiculing Shylock over his religion until one day when Shylock had enough and asks ‘If you tickle us (Jews), do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"It is evident from this that ethnocentrism hinders understanding and cooperation with other groups and extreme ethnocentrism is likely to cause conflict as it has been recorded in the past, religious and racial wars (Shakespeare, 2000).
Oppressed groups, i.e. women, blacks have made ethnocentrism a way to strengthen and encourage themselves by creating different slogans such as ‘Black Supremacy’. Scholars have viewed ethnocentrism as a very powerful force that weakens human relations. It is important to note that despite our diversity we are all still human.
QUESTION THREE
Most Anthropologists perceive ethics as a concept...