The Reaction of Ethnography

This week has been a total look into the lives of another woman, and a completely different lifestyle. When reading from the book, “Nisa”, it was amazing how open she was to sharing her culture with a complete stranger and how detailed she was when describing her home life. I could actually picture, word for word, what was happening whether it was her describing herself gathering nuts or the telling of how she gave birth. One thing that truly blew my mind was the fact that she gave birth by herself every time. If I ever tried to do that today, my mother would be furious and probably would force herself to be there. It reminded me of something that was discussed in my Women and Gender class last semester. We were talking about women giving birth and how that in the American society, a woman gives birth when it’s convenient for the doctor, or the doctor makes it convenient by inducing labor. The fact that the chairs or tables I suppose you can call them that women sit on is placed so that whoever the Doctor is, they have control of the woman giving birth. I understand that they are there in order to deal with any complications that might arise, but in many places, women give birth in many different ways; one way is by standing up and using gravity to do the work! Our culture has placed so much reliance (and money) to the idea that a woman must give birth in a hospital surrounding by medical strangers there to assist her, but to some extent, we don’t need all that in order for a woman to have a successful birth.


One thing that I’ve continuously thought though throughout this whole process is realizing how equal, or at least as equal as one could describe, the sexes are and how little of a gap there is between the roles of a female and male. Sure, the male is hunter, but the woman is there also to gather berries and take care of the children. They work together to raise a family and try to have a successful family life. Shostak’s work has also shown how close the women are in each tribe. Although they may bicker about food or accuse people of affairs, they are generally open to each other and share everything with each other. In order to survive you need to have a close connection with someone else or another group of people who will always be there to listen and try to understand what you’re going through.

Shostak’s work is a big leap into understanding different cultures and shows what can be accomplished with the effort to getting to know another human being in a different setting. In considering the question “what can ethnography tell us about others and about ourselves?”, well, I think a huge consideration is realizing how different we all are yet how important it is to understand our differences. When watching the video, it was clear to see the differences from what their tribe was like before ‘the white people came’ and how they were affected afterwards. They were nomadic and foraged for food and were able to travel at any point in time, but then they were suddenly placed in one spot with a limiting amount of space to travel and to hunt; their whole world had changed. In watching that video, I learned how fascinating it can be to watch another group of people live. Today we try to do that with reality shows such as “the Real World”, but they are hardly a view into what a completely different tribe of people are like. I don't understand completely what everyone in different parts of the world go through, but after this week, I have some idea that if I took time to understand and learn from them than that would teach me so much more about myself and my culture.