Reading Notes Week 3

VSI ch.7 & Feeding Desire prologue, ch. 1-2 and Online Readings

VSI ch.7

- Bimanese share land with Dou Donggo, speak the same language, followers of Islam and a majority on Sumbawa Island, belonged to the lower lands - usually wet and dry climates, drought took place both groups used own methods of prayers to pray for rain to grow crops - Bimanese prayed to Allah, fasted in the Grand Mosque - Donggo cleaned mouth of a mountain spring and the debris, then offered rice wine, rice, betel, tobacco and sacrifice a chicken, indicating the killing of spirits blocking water flow/rain - A few days later there was eventually rainfall, more than unusual - Bimanese had a semi-feudal society where the “Sultan” owned the land and everyone in it - Donggo society is more egalitarian, kin and neighbors are help and problems in ones society - Emile Durkheim – people are socially categorized by their religion, impacting the social aspect of life - Rites of passage – leaving behind one status to acquire a new one, conducted by performing rituals sometimes referred to as “life crisis rituals”

Belief Systems

- Religion helps us deal with problems in human life that are significant, intolerable - Religion puts together ideas of how and why the world is put in this way - Characterized as a belief in witchcraft/magic

Religious Movements

- “Millenary Movements” Led by prophet to explain and fix problems society may face

Charisma and Routinization

- Creating a group of supporters to institutionalize movement (even removing prophet from authority)  Process known as “routinization”

Religious Belief and Economic Behavior

- Geertz saw the relation between religion and economic behavior in Java where he witnessed “shared poverty” - people distributed their wealth among neighbors and family - People travelled by steamship to Mecca , a holy place for Javanese Muslims, where haji’s built schools, used students to work in their lands, which increased land and capital - Mixtec Christians used their passion about Jesus and combined It to their own beliefs of the the Sun, creating a new belief system to emerge (known as “syncretistic” by anthropologists but not any more)

Feeding Desire: Prologue

- Moors live in Sahara Desert, where the ideal women is considered to be fat, fatten on porridge and milk (cultural and economics values?) men and women in western societies both to take on similar roles in society and be lean and trim while men and women differ in Azawagh Arabs where both sexes differ

Beauty universals and cultural particulars

- artistic ideals and modifying the human body = human social universal part of society throughout history  “all cultures are beauty cultures” – G. Sander, people are judged on the way they appear in society - Hairstyles, adornment, body size, body parts found attractive vary widely in different societies - Being attractive is then seen as a competition ex. One women in thing you being thinner gives u the competitive edge same goes with long necks, small feet or fatness - More attractive adults are assumed to be more intelligent and get their ways with people

Fatness and fattening cross-culturally

- 81 percent of societies find plumpness attractive, but Moors do not fit in because of extreme obesity - Among Fijians being “fat” Indicates one lives in a well connected caring community and is well fed - Among the Jamaicans it indicates happiness vitality and health, - Among the Moors it indicates happiness, beauty and sexual appeal - Women are fattened in some societies before marriage because this shows there ready or if the marriage is successful based on if she gets fatter or not after the marriage (showing adequate food supply by husband) - hard to find out why women are fattened, because it has to do with hot is sexy, and sex is not openly spoken about by the Azawagh Arabs, therefore women are covered by veils and layers of clothing

Ch.1

The Azawagh

- reside in Niger, where wind is a metaphor, for evil spirits that must be controlled by prayers - different ethnic groups in Niger but they all believe in Islam

Who are the Azawagh Arabs?

- Arabs of Niger do not see themselves as non-Arabs while their language and culture align them with Arabs of Northern Africa (belong to Arabs from western Sahara known as Moors) - Economy based on herding and trade, 1970’s and 80’s drought forced them into villages (access to water) - Preferred to be called “Yemen/Saudi Arabs” because of their origins in Yemen and Saudi Arabia - Caste was determined by skin color, the lighter the higher, 3 main castes among the Arabs, 1.) White or free Arabs, 2.) Former slave caste, 3.) small artisan caste (blacksmiths) - Different castes lived in geographically different areas and there was a master-slave relationship - If slaves were to leave or quit, women did not fatten because without slaves they have to work

Peace Corps prelude: Tchin Tabaraden

- In this town the Azawagh Arabs were least visible - Arabs considered themselves superior to dark skinned Hausa, therefore did not speak Hausa - Girls taken to doctor to check weight, Fattening began early in a girls childhood

Fieldwork: Tassara

- Small village, Drilling of deep water hole , made it attractive for settlers during drought “white and slaves” - Tight government control enforced because of nomads who are hard to control - Spoke to many people, women were not tape-recorded because they were afraid another man would hear it and it is somewhat related to sexual safety, Spoke Hausa because many men knew it, yet could not talk to women because they spoke Arab

Stasis and Change

- Obedience to Allah, m en and women are formed by god - Men are becoming more modernized than the women, travelled to modern cities where there are paved roads, T.V.’s and radio

Ch.2

Travelers and explorers 1352-1936

- First resemblance of fattening when Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta witnessed earlier incarnation of the aesthetic among a Berber group (1352) - Bardama women were white/plump (most attractive) diet consisted of milk and sorghum which shifted in to the Sahara today - Forced young girls to drink milk in excess to become plump - 1860’s Tuareg women used plants to fatten and also excess milk

French Colonial officials in the Azawagh

- 1930’s , French colonial officer Thiellement wrote about how the women are pretty but so fat and have to be carried on donkeys with servants on either side - Women of the Tuareg and Hausa region were appealing to French officials

Anthropologists on fattening In the Sahara

- Tuareg believe fattening accelerates puberty and enhance marriage abilities of girls - Tuareg culture and Moor culture both believe Islam, herding, history of slave holding but Tuareg has more equality between sexes and freedom of women (less stress of fattening) - Fattening is also related to social, political and economic contrast (endogamy, patrilineal decent and male economic activity)

Aichatou

- little girl forced to eat by grandma Fatima, and lifestyle changed from happy/playful to serious along with a changed relation between her and grandma - Azawagh Arabs don’t watch age but watch body size, after baby looses first 2 teeth fattening begins - First menstruation cycle girl fasts on Ramadan and pubic hair indicate time to wear sari like dress (hawli) - Sat cross legged on the floor with plump bodies and hawlis taking on a pyramid type shape like dolls they played with (natural representation of human body) Talking About Getting Fat: lebluh and al-ghar

- Lebluh – to cut and dry a date in the sun to make it mature (related to women and fattening) - Al-Ghar- “deception”, making a young girl into a woman faster - Conversation and songs celebrate fatness, stretch marks and folds are beautiful

When does Fattening begin?

- Baby teeth for girl fall out, for boys they begin prayer (both attend Koranic school prior but girls drop out) - A girl is marriageable when she is sexually desirable (some pregnant even before their first period)

Who Fattens?

- If a girl wasn’t rich they might fatten because their mom is fat or because they might have trouble finding someone - 3 people take on the role of the “Fattener” 1.) Grandmother, 2.) Aunt/paternal-aunt, 3.) mother-in-law - Paternal aunts exerted more authority over girls than maternal ones and raised by other women other than their own mothers - Azawagh Arab culture causing bodily pain enhances learning and development (fattener must be fit)

What to eat?

- Milk and grain (millet and sorghum) + h20 to add bulk - Young girls bodies are cold and unsexualized so they feed them hotter foods that can swell bodies - Deghnu Porridge is stuffed in their cavities in the mouth and swallowed with large amounts of water - Getting an appetite = sexual appetite, sexual desire for women - Try and focus on liquid foods that soak into limbs better

Why Fatten?

- It’s Beautiful, Men like it and because it makes a girl into a women - More desirable (breasts and flesh), fat men teased & called women & skinny women teased & called men - Azawagh Arabs prefer to keep a “closedness” and marry between cousins, ethnicity and cover women with layers of veil and lastly fattening grounds women and increases their immobility

The rituals of American hospital birth (Online reading)

- Americans use technology when giving birth (c-section, pills etc…) while others use own techniques (squatting, sitting etc…) - Society effects the transition of the individual (rites of passage)

Rites of Passage

Ritual – patterned, repetitive, symbolic of cultural beliefs and values

Rite of Passage – marking a transition from one stage in life to another

 3 stages identified by Gennep, separation (from original stage) knows one is pregnant, transition(not in original or new) a few days after and integration (achieved social state) after a month of birth Characteristics of a Ritual

Symbolism

- Symbol – object, idea or action loaded with cultural meaning - Giving birth a women feels she is disabled and has no control over herself when wheeled in on a wheel chair and put on the bed for tests (interpreted by right hemisphere of brain)

A Cognitive Matrix

- A matrix is when one thing comes from another (rituals come from within a belief system of a group) - Technology is valued differently in every culture (body-as-machine) - compare the process of giving birth to an assembly line (better technology more productive)

Repetition and Redundancy

- repeating a process over and over again in different forms / making you dependant on the institution you are a part of

Cognitive Reduction

- Repetition – repeating a process over and over in different forms (dressed in hospital gown, id bracelet) - Hazing – making you strange to yourself somewhat like initiation (someone inserting fingers into vagina to see how far cervix dilated) - Strange-making – (anyone inserting fingers to check from nurses to someone in need of practice) - Symbolic Inversion - her private parts are now the institutions property

Cognitive Stabilization

- Performing a ritual in a case of chaos to restore order to the world (ex. breathing techniques during birth)

Order, Formality and a sense of Inevitability

- Hospital rituals of monitoring labor through technology gives a women a sense of that society is using the best it has to offer to have an inevitable successful birth - “Cascade of intervention” results in “necessitates” one after the next (women having a problem when giving birth, resulting in different forms of pain relievers)

Acting, Stylization, Staging

- Rituals are self-consciously acted, styled like in a play

Cognitive Transformation

- When the individuals cognitive structure reorganizes around the newly internalized symbolic complex

Affectivity and Intensification

- People absorb and learn lessons from events carrying emotional charge

Preservation of the Status Quo

- Rituals preserve and transmit culture

Effecting Social Change

- Rituals influence social change - Women prefer natural birth rather than using technological ways of giving birth - Home births because women prefer the environment rather than being at the hospital where their body feels tensed up (only account for 1% of American Births