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Seeing the relevance of Anthropology in Everyday Life

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Wizards, Vampires, Klingons, and Other Alternative Cultures

August 16, 2018 by Carie Little Hersh 1 Comment

Wizards, Vampires, Klingons, and Other Alternative Cultures

On the last day of my introduction to anthropology class, we watch scenes from the documentary Trekkies. Students grin at the sincere folks dressed as Starfleet officers and Borg members, raise their eyebrows at Klingon language camp, and outright laugh at the backyard celebration of Captain Kirk’s birthday, in which a member brags that “this year a girl came”. But they always sober up when people begin discussing why Star Trek is so important to them. One group of women talks about how different they are in their lives and politics, yet they feel most at home and accepted when they are spending time together at the Star Trek conventions. Others talk about how Star Trek inspired careers in astrophysics or medicine. Most powerfully, perhaps, one woman describes how her father was raised … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Culture, Fiction Tagged With: All Souls Trilogy, Anthropology, art, Culture, Deb Harkness, diversity, ethics, fiction, Gail Carriger, gender, Harry Potter, Hogwarts, J.K. Rowling, Klingons, Language, legal anthropology, LGBTQ, mudbloods, muggles, nature, Outlander, Parasol Protectorate, power, race, racism, sex, Star Trek, Steampunk, Trekkies, Vampires, Wizards

For the Love of Us All, No More Deplorables, Snowflakes, or Nasty Women

June 8, 2017 by Carie Little Hersh Leave a Comment

For the Love of Us All, No More Deplorables, Snowflakes, or Nasty Women

8 Labels I Never Want to Hear Again There are several words that have gained in popularity over the last few years that I don’t ever want to hear again: Deplorables, snowflakes, libtards, nasty women, fly-over states, urban elite, hillbilly, and liberal bubble, to name a few. These are not words we use to describe ourselves, they are words we stab at others like weapons. These are not words that explain our differences, they are words that reduce us to our differences. It is not difference that divides us, it is our contempt for difference. We can be connected to one another, despite (or because of) our differences, but the minute you start curling your lip at who someone is, the connection is over. Words like snowflakes and deplorables are labels that signal that we aren’t … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Cross-cultural Interaction, Culture, Identity, Language Tagged With: access, communication, contempt for difference, Culture, decolonizing, Deplorables, evangelical Christian, fly-over states, hillbilly, labels, liberal bubble, libtards, linguistic anthropology, nasty women, New Age, power, Representation, snowflakes, social problems, sociolinguistics, subculture, urban elite, voice, Waldorf School

Casual Racism and the Problem of White Identity

November 29, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh Leave a Comment

Casual Racism and the Problem of White Identity

My family is super white. We love brunch at IKEA, we have varying relationships with rhythm, and we feel slightly guilty about everything. Aside from our penchant for recording artists like Taylor Swift and John Mayer, however, our whiteness is hard to define. It is the great unmarked ethnicity, looming large but vague over more discernible ethnic identities. It is the lurking nature of white identity that makes it so oblivious to the oppressions and discriminations faced by other races. It’s what makes it so easy for us to inadvertently perpetuate them. And it’s what often pushes us in dangerous directions when we seek to define and celebrate whiteness. Indeed, the greatest sign of our whiteness is perhaps the fact that we are perpetually surprised by racism, even when it’s our … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Cross-cultural Interaction, Culture, Ethnicity, Identity, Race Tagged With: casual racism, colonialism, discrimination, institutional racism, marked and unmarked categories, microaggression, overt racism, race, Rachel Dolezal, racism, Richard Spencer, Robin DiAngelo, segregation, Standing Rock, white identity, White Shamans Plastic Medicine Men

On the Backs of Other Mothers

November 3, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh 1 Comment

On the Backs of Other Mothers

I had no idea I was singing the saddest song about motherhood of all time. It all started when I became curious about a lullaby my grandmother used to sing to me. It turns out that “Go to Sleepy Little Baby”, which I now sing to my babies, was from a radio show in the 1940s – The Judy Canova Show. Canova ended each episode with the lullaby, which she remembered hearing from her own mother. But the original song is much more disturbing. Although some connect Canova’s version to a Swedish lullaby, the most likely source is an African-American song, All the Pretty Little Horses, which dates to the time of slavery. Hidden in the sweet lyrics about cake and promises of horses and carriages is an often-omitted verse that is shockingly grim. As the enslaved nanny sings to the white baby … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Children, Cross-cultural Interaction, Culture, Family, Globalization, Kinship, Parenting, Social Class, Social Systems Tagged With: “All the Pretty Little Horses”, “Miss Housekeeping”, allomothers, babysitter, domestic labor, fathers, feminism, globalization, housekeeper, international domestic worker, Judy Canova Show, lullaby, migrant labor, mothers, nanny, neocolonialism, parenting, slavery

There was “no racism before Obama”. Wait, what now?

September 29, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh Leave a Comment

There was “no racism before Obama”. Wait, what now?

Welcome to the (sur)reality that is the American election of 2016. The latest in a series of Perplexing Statements that People Believe Despite Immeasurable Evidence to the Contrary was uttered by an Ohio Trump campaign chair, Kathy Miller: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this.”  Miller, who has since resigned, went on to paint a picture of a nation whose streets were paved with gold, and whose history was as accurate and factual as that of the land of Oz: “If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said. “You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Culture, Race Tagged With: #blacklivesmatter, Anthropology, Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, discrimination, history deniers, institutional racism, Kathy Miller, Peggy McIntosh, race, racism, social justice, Trump campaign chair, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege, white privilege

When Nature Has to Conform to Culture: Highly Sensitive People in a Nonsensitive Culture

August 19, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh 3 Comments

When Nature Has to Conform to Culture: Highly Sensitive People in a Nonsensitive Culture

Elaine Aron’s book The Highly Sensitive Person was like my own personal Da Vinci Code—riveting, compelling, and totally solved a mystery about myself I didn’t know existed. My whole life I felt more worn out than others, more overwhelmed and overstimulated. But being raised in a Catholic family with a Protestant work ethic and an American intolerance for anything perceived as weak, I saw my sensitivity and heightened perceptivity as personal failings to overcome. Why do I notice the tension in a couple’s conversation across the room when their immediate neighbors are chatting happily unaware? Or the fact that a child is about to fall off a chair fifteen feet away from me when his babysitter is oblivious next to him? <Just mind your own business.> Why do sore muscles, or tight … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Culture, Enculturation / Learning Culture, Gender, Sex, & Sexuality, Parenting Tagged With: Canada, China, cultural context, Culture and Personality, Elaine Aron, gender, gender roles, introversion, introvert, Japan, Margaret Mead, mental health, overstimulation, sensitive, sensitivity, shy, shyness, temperament, The Highly Sensitive Child, The Highly Sensitive Person, United States

5 Homophobic Myths Destroyed by Anthropology

July 15, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh 3 Comments

5 Homophobic Myths Destroyed by Anthropology

After the horrific mass murder in June focusing on the LGBTQ community at an Orlando club, the only thing worse than the massacre has been the thread of homophobic comments following it. The folks who have been loudest about their disdain for LGBTQ members continue to rely on outdated, subjective, and outright false suppositions about sexuality to justify discrimination against LGBTQ members. It turns out that when you look globally at issues of sex, gender, sexuality, and marriage, it is extremely difficult to summarize human practices as universal or natural. They’re just too damn diverse. So, fighting “truthiness” with anthropological “factiness”, I present the top five homophobic myths that anthropology (and a little social psychology) completely demolish. Myth 1: I know … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Culture, Enculturation / Learning Culture, Gender, Sex, & Sexuality, Social Systems Tagged With: American Indian, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Berdache, biological anthropology, bisexual, Brazil, Cultural Anthropology, disgust, Etoro, evolution, gay, gay sex on the down low, gender identity, Hijra, homophobia, homosexuality, India, intersex, intersexual, Iraq, Jon Haidt, lesbian, LGBTQ, Ma’dan clan, moral disgust, Mustergil, Native American, Ninmah, Orlando, polygamy, Pulse, queer, Raymond Kelly, same-sex marriage, same-sex parenting, Scalia, sexuality as spectrum, Shiva, third gender, transgender, Travesti, Two Spirit

How Karl Marx Ruined My Dinner Party

June 2, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh 4 Comments

How Karl Marx Ruined My Dinner Party

At dinner one night, I made two fatal social errors in rapid succession. First, during casual conversation with two good friends, I began talking about American culture. Not just culture, but how culture is linked to power and the broader social structure. If your eyes are glazing over at this point, you are beginning to understand how my dinner guests felt. Now imagine you are only half-way through dinner and I am seated between you and the door. My second social gaffe was that I invoked the name of the infamous social critic, Karl Marx. And I had the audacity to state my opinion that part of what he observed about culture is correct. The conversation went a little like this: Me: You know, I was thinking lately about Marx’s observation that modern society is divided between the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Culture, Law and Politics, Social Class, Uncategorized Tagged With: advertisements, advertising, American culture, bootstraps, Bourgeois, Bourgeoisie, capitalism, class structure, Communism, Communist Manifesto, consumer culture, Cultural Anthropology, elections, labor, Marx, Marxism, poor, possessions, Proletariat, social class, sociology, superdelegates, voting, wealth gap, wealthy

Stop Blaming Parents for Our Society’s Failures

April 23, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh 1 Comment

Stop Blaming Parents for Our Society’s Failures

Yet another parenting article popped up in my Facebook feed this week. Not a How-To parenting article, which is annoying enough, but a You’re-Doing-Everything-Wrong parenting article. Generation X’s Parenting Problem, published in 2015 but making the rounds again now, is a diatribe about how today’s parents are doing everything wrong. Life was so great when we were kids. Parents today are stressed-out maniacs who need to relax. We turned out fine. Kids these days have it too easy. If only parents today followed their parents’ and grandparents’ choices, everything would be great. The problem is, we don’t live in our parents’ or grandparents’ world. Just like the insipid and ubiquitous memes about how "My childhood was awesome: I was beaten with a belt and I learned respect", these … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Culture, Ecology, Food and Foodways, Kinship, Parenting, Social Systems Tagged With: “Generation X’s Parenting Problem”, Anthropology, blame, capitalism, carcinogens, child development, criminalizing parents, ecology, economy, food toxicity, Generation X, housing, industrialism, kinship, parental leave, parenting, plastics, social institutions, social welfare, socialism, stress, support structures, toxic, toys

The Hidden Cultural Values of Massholes and Y’all Qaeda

February 4, 2016 by Carie Little Hersh Leave a Comment

The Hidden Cultural Values of Massholes and Y’all Qaeda

Y’all Qaeda may be the newest sarcastic term for the Oregon militiamen, but embedded in the critique of militiamen as terrorists akin to Al Qaeda and ISIS (another favored term being Vanilla ISIS) is a regional slam. The use of “y’all” in the term is a signifier that these are country folk, with all the negative stereotypes that follow the category. And I’ll bet my daughter’s current college fund (don’t get excited, there’s like 3 dollars in there) that the term will spread well beyond the current militia-tastrophe. As a current resident of New England, I can tell you that the image behind the term is precisely how many northerners perceive almost all of the rest of the United States, from the South to the mountainous West: insincerely polite, “Y’all” and “ma’am” talking, racist, fascist, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: American Culture, Cross-cultural Interaction, Culture Tagged With: American North, American Regional Difference, American South, Boston, community values, cultural values, Culture, driving etiquette, interacting with strangers, Massholes, New England, North Carolina, politeness, Y’all Qaeda

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Dr. Carie Little Hersh

Dr. Carie Little Hersh is an American cultural anthropologist, former attorney, and teaching professor in Anthropology at Northeastern University. This is her personal blog about anthropology and its relevance to everyday life.

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As someone who was an attorney for between 3-7 minutes, I feel compelled to state that the views on this blog are mine and don’t reflect those of my employer.

 

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