Anthropology

A wonderful revelation: we can “undo” destructive gender roles!

Posted onTuesday 10 September 2013

Ecofeminism is a powerful means to accomplish the goal of a more peaceful, prosperous, and socially just world. Unsurprisingly, entrenched blocks to its implementation exist within the modern social order due to its excesses of hierarchical capitalism and masculinism. Thus one of the most methodologically exciting works of this subsection is an analysis of how…

"Other" review | Anthropology | Family | Random

Wandering Thoughts on Santa Cruz

Posted onFriday 6 September 2013Thursday 5 September 2013

Just finished a lovely “stay-cation” style weekend in Santa Cruz! Lots of fun bits to comment on, but here are some cute, quick ones: Santa Cruz is so very relaxing and beautiful! We’re such geeks, though. Here we are in the town of sun, surf, and the famous Boardwalk… and we get seduced by the…

Wandering Thoughts on Feminism

Posted onThursday 5 September 2013

Because of the field of study I’m in, the definition of the word feminism is of powerful personal importance. I’m always faintly surprised at the astonishingly ridiculous I sometimes hear regarding feminism, too: things like the movement is full of sexually frustrated lesbians, or it’s embarrassing to be associated with such a (supposedly) retrograde social…

Talking (incessant!) religion

Posted onWednesday 31 July 2013Tuesday 30 July 2013

Well! I had an amusingly funny first happen to me the other day: I cheerfully out-talked a Jehovah’s Witness! ;) I was at a small local Le Boulanger to eat lunch and read one of my textbooks in a nice, relaxed atmosphere — one with no tempting internet to distract me! :) While there I…

Wangari Maathai & Replenishing the Earth

Posted onMonday 29 July 2013Sunday 28 July 2013

In 2010 Wangari Maathai wrote Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World. Not only is this book more recent than her 2003 volume regarding the Green Belt Movement, but in this one she also specifically addresses her thoughts on spirituality within the Movement. She lists the four core values of the…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 5

Posted onThursday 4 July 2013Wednesday 3 July 2013

So, a quick concluding bit, since I wrote part 4 yesterday while struggling with my brain overheating, in the last hour before the blog was supposed to update — and I’m not sure I was as clear as I could have been… and also because this is the 4th of July, and I feel the…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 4

Posted onWednesday 3 July 2013Thursday 4 July 2013

Okay, so now we know who doesn’t fit into Scandinavian society: those (usually) men who are heavily invested in patriarchal hierarchies. However, we also know similar types of men did very poorly when Eastern Europe broke away from the Communist bloc — yet Europe as a whole is certainly not dispensing with patriarchy. So obviously…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 3

Posted onTuesday 2 July 2013Monday 1 July 2013

What Is Patriarchy? In yesterday’s post I stated that the growing lack of interest in organized, patriarchal religion in Scandinavia is not some simple, casual social cause-and-effect, but rather the unplanned byproduct of the social elimination of patriarchy. This may sound startling, but I have a number of excellent reasons for this statement. First, though,…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 2

Posted onMonday 1 July 2013Sunday 30 June 2013

Zuckerman writes a fascinating book with a great deal of startling information in it, and I greatly enjoyed reading it. However, after pondering the book for some time, I believe the author has missed the true revelation which his data offers. He considers himself a nonbeliever/agnostic (7-8), and so this Scandinavian lack of religiosity appears…

Societies without God: immoral hell or egalitarian health? pt. 1

Posted onFriday 28 June 2013Saturday 29 June 2013

(all the numbers in brackets within this posting are citations which reference the stated page numbers within the book Society Without God by Phil Zuckerman) A common trope amongst the devout is that morality is derived from religion, and therefore a society lacking strong religious beliefs would be an utterly immoral, un-free, irrational society which…