Example Of Essay On Reading Response To “Queer Customs” By Clyde Kluckhohn
Clyde Kluckhohn book, Queer Customs points out that since culture is an abstraction. It is of paramount importance, not to confuse it with society for society refers to a group of people who share and interact more with each other for the purposes of attaining certain ends. The social rules always reproduce acceptable conduct in any situation. The book further defines culture as a store or warehouse of learning of the group because of that. He states it categorically that culture is not an instinct or an inborn occurrence rather it manifests in individual’s life as he interacts with other members of the society (Clyde 32). Many aspects of culture are explicit and explicit culture consists in those regularities in word and deed that may be recognized straight from the evidence of the ear and the eye. But he notes that they do not manifest solely in observable customs and artifacts.
The striking differences in the way different groups of the society treasure some practices like the Chinese dislike for milk its products. Tracing some nations trace descent from the father while others trace it from the mother are just an example of the contrasting identities to groups of society by culture
He further notes that culture grows and when it becomes institutionalized it becomes a stereotype and will face great resistance to change. Culture is learned as a result of an individual’s association with a given group, and it influences our mode of conduct in a given society. It regulates all our live right from the way we dress, diet, the way biological changes like menstruation and adolescence are perceived in any group. Although no individual in the whole world knows all the culture map of his group and heritage, culture will always influence the way we perceive things and our general way of life.
However, Clyde Kluckhohn portrayal of the culture as queer customs with striking defies the odds. The book portrays culture as a bad precedence that dissects societies into groups that are identified by their cultural practices. It does not give an explanation of what would happen when if an individual shifts from one group to another one having different culture.
A separate recount of culture by Horace Miner in the book Body Ritual among the Nacirema; Miner writes that the Nacirema culture is portrayed by a highly exotic kind of life that has over the years evolved in a well endowed and well to do natural environment. He explains that as so many as most of the time of these people is given to pursuits of economic activities, a great deal of their time is spent on various cultural rituals and activities. The general outward appearance as recounted by this anthropologist and the health that looms as dominant concerns in these people (Clyde 56).
The fundamental belief that underlines this argument appears to be that the human body of these peoples is ugly and that its natural likely tendency is to weakness and attack a number of diseases. With the onset of these, this group’s only hope sought was to reverse these characteristics by using powerful and strong practices of ritual and cultural driven ceremonies. Each house thus has come to possess one or more shrines specifically devoted to this purpose. In fact, the most powerful people in this society are reported to have a number of shrines in their homes all this geared at reversing the status quo (Miner, 15)
Works cited
Clyde Kluckhohn “Queer customs” from Mirror for man, Harvard University press, United States of America. 1949. Print.
Miner, Horace. Body Ritual among the Nacirema, American Anthropologist, New York. 1926. Print
Rescorla, Michael convention, Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy. 2007
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