Thirst Response

Thirst Response

                I found “Thirst” to be a very educational and inspiring documentary. Privatization of water is something I have never thought about before, but now that I know it exists, it saddens me. In countries like our own, we are able to combat things such as this, but less developed do not have the ability to voice their opinions to their governments’ as strongly as we can. The movie started off with a discussion of how privatization of water can happen and showed a world meeting of how to address the situation. Then, it introduced some of the characters that the documentary followed. It showed the water situation in less developed countries and how much worse it can get. It also introduced a community in California that was appealing the privatization of water in their city. In doing this, the filmmakers were able to display the problem on a domestic and international scale. The film captures the subject of globalization perfectly. In class, we discussed how the spread of Western influence is strongly affecting the rest of the world, positively and negatively. The commodity chain discusses the battle for the share of wealth, and countries that are developed such as the US, and also Europe, are infiltrating other countries and taking advantage of their resources. This is terrible, and hopefully documentaries like this can make people aware, ultimately making a difference.

interesting article #3

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701193203.htm

This article blew my mind. I'm not sure if I believe it 100% but the fact that such a bold conclusion can be drawn from this research is awesome. The article basically says that native americans came from Europe instead of Asia. If this is true, everything we previously thought about native americans' origins has been false. It would open up tons of research to how they got over here instead of the boring ice bridge story that I feel like has very few details.

interesting article #2

http://www.livescience.com/2647-cave-men-loved-sing.html

This articles discusses the fact that some cave drawings were not drawn at random. Anthropologists and scientists have figured out that drawings were made where the acoustics of the cave sounded best. This was so that cavemen had a location to go to when doing their humming or singing or instrument playing. I've always thought cave drawings were fascinating since you are basically seeing writing that a fellow human drew  thousands of years ago. However, I never would have guessed that they could serve as a marker for something.

interesting link #1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jul/13/medicalresearch.health?gusrc=rss&\1feed=science

I found this article extremely interesting. Anthropologists are digging up bodies from Jericho and discovering what really happened to this ancient city. After analyzing the bones, they have discovered traces of tuberculosis that may have wiped the population out. What's cooler is that they are using the specimens of TB to analyze the growth of TB over the years to discover more about this disease. This combination of medical and applied anthropology shows why and how important anthropologists really are to our society. We have TB under control in the US but this could lead to an entire extinction of this disease. This article also makes me think about all the other diseases that anthropologists have helped eradicate or hinder.

Life History Project Follow-Up

                                                                          Life History Project Follow-Up

                Writing this report was a very rewarding experience for me. I was able to put my interviewing and anthropology skills to the test while learning about my grandfather at the same time. As soon as we were told that we were doing a life history assignment on someone other than ourselves, I immediately knew I was going to use my granddad as my subject. I knew that he would confide in me and give details that would really help me write the assignment. I wanted to make sure I talked to someone that would be comfortable telling me a little bit of everything about them. The process of getting the information wasn’t as quick. Since he lives in Arkansas and doesn’t know how to use Skype, we performed our interviews via telephone twice for close to an hour each time. I would simply ask a question and he would go off about his past and told me many little stories that applied to the topic of discussion. This part of the interviewing I enjoyed very much. While there were moments of back-and-forth discussion, it was mostly him talking and me listening and writing. I could see where performing an interview in person would be much better since you can have that physical connection with the person and feel more involved in the interview rather than more of a scribe. Other than this, I enjoyed the project very much and feel closer to my grandfather than ever before.