Cultural Corner: I saw a little article about recent goings-on in the field of cultural anthropology. Actually, they’re doing some fairly interesting research these days. Well sure, anthropology was always sort of interesting, with Margaret Mead and her cronies searching out the last of the painted tribesmen and hunter-gatherers in central Africa or some far-away Pacific island, with their colorful feathered costumes and crazy dances.
But today, the anthropology professors and grad students are focusing on a topic that hits home, right here in post-industrial America. They are now doing “ethnography” research and writing papers about “commodity chains”. Consider this: in America today, it seems like we don’t make anything. Just about everything we eat, use, drive, burn, entertain ourselves with, etc. comes from somewhere else. The place could be Mexico, could be Brazil, could be China — who knows. Actually, there are people who DO know – they are the trans-national businesses that get rich off of all this international trade. And then there are the people in far off lands who dig up or make the stuff for those big importers. Interestingly enough, the anthropologists have recently gotten interested in all of this, and how it’s changing the world.
I hope that some of this research will be tapped by the popular article writers and TV news shows, to enlighten the public on just what the effect of modern trade arrangements are, and who wins and who loses. (No surprise that the losers are mostly the poor countries who gather the raw materials and process it for us; although maybe there are some good effects in some places). For the time being, I’m going to give links to a few commodity studies that I found in a quick Google search.
3.) Imitation Crab (a.k.a. “surimi seafood”)
All of this stuff is probably exists right there in your home town, if not in your house; it’s available at your local supermarket and pet store, probably at the Wal-Mart. Maybe you might want to know a little about what the stuff is, who makes it, who brings it over and sells it, and whether things are better or worse off because of it.
Well, just thought you might want to know what’s going on.