What is the population of Africa? Africa is the second largest continent in the world, with 54 countries and a population of one billion.
Which is larger: Canada or Africa? Africa, It has a bigger population then Canada.
Which is larger: North America or Africa? Africa, the North America continent fits into the continent of Africa.
In our small group disscusion today about the Nacirema. Our group found out that Nacirema is American spelled backwards. Also our group disscussed the diffrent rituals talked about in the story for example visitng the dentist, and grooming ourselves. Its the same rituals all of us do everyday, the author tried confuse the reader by his wordplay. Some of the members in our group had to read the article twice to get the full meaning and understanding it better.
In this video, “What Have My Cocoa Beans Got To Do with Canada” it discusses that people need to use their Global Sociological Imagination, and they need to see that even though you may never cross paths with people, their lives still affect you in one way or another. For example the cocoa beans that were planted in Ghana, are now being used as food in Canada, as well as supplying jobs for Canadians that work in the chocolate industry. The central premise of this movie is that we need to realize what we do affects everyone, and we need to use our Global Sociological Imagination and “make or global relations better.” Even though we might now trace back things and find out where they come from we should appreciate them. You never know what stories lay behind such objects for example cocoa beans to clothing there is a lot of time and sweat put into exporting these objects to different countries. I think that this video is a real eye opener, I had never really thought about where our chocolate came from. Because of Canadians and other countries wanting chocolate, it has opened up many jobs for not only Canadians in chocolate factories but Ghanaians when they plant the beans. I believe that it is important for people to see videos like this, because I do not think people really appreciate the hard work that goes into the things we take so easily for granted, such as the cocoa beans. I know now after watching this video, how much other people’s lives affect our own. And that if people in complete opposite ends of the world didn’t do what they were and have been doing, Canadians as well as other people may not have all the things we do have from foods to clothing imported into Canada.
The article “Body Rituals Among The Nacirema” by Horace Miner talks about the culture and body rituals of the Nacirema. The author talks about the Nacirema as they if they are disgusting and disturbing people but yet some of these rituals we practice every day. The fundamental belief of the Nacirema appears to be that the “human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease.”(Paragraph 4). The Nacirema people groom themselves to enhance their image, what I mean by this is to look more appealing. In paragraph four it talks about “households having one or more shrines devoted to this”. Basically this means is that every house hold should have one or more washrooms to groom ourselves. Now getting to paragraph nine “It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.” The “hog hairs” being bristles of a tooth brush and the “magical powders” being toothpaste, all that this is just demonstrating is that this ritual is simply a person brushing his or her teeth. In paragraph ten it talks about the “holy-mouth-man and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied.” In modern terms all this means is that the holy mouth man is the dentist and magic material being filling for a cavity or etc. Lastly as you can see we are no different from the Nacirmea, we do the same rituals everyday also. The author used clever wordplay to make the reader think that Nacirema culture is disturbing, but the Nacirmea culture and rituals are absolutely normal.
Hi my name is Harjit Marar; I am 18 born on November 25 1993. I graduated from Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School, and I am currently enrolled in my first year of post secondary studies pursuing criminology major. I decided to take criminology because ever since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to get into law and also because it runs in the family. I am also a huge sports fan, I enjoy sports like basketball and hockey and I also enjoy playing these sports whenever I have spare time. My favorite sports teams are the Vancouver Canucks, Detroit Red Wings and the Boston Celtics. To be honest when I was in elementary school I never expected to go to university because I was more focused in my sports. I started playing basketball/hockey in about grade 5 and ever since I’ve been in love with these sports. But it came to an end when I got into grade 10 or 11 and injured myself. I gave it up for a couple months and soon I had no time to get back at it. So basically a Criminology Major was my second choice. Now getting to my current understanding about Sociology, to be honest I don’t know much about it, all I know is the basics about it. Sociology is a study about society and the way it functions. Also how human groups interact with one another. So as you can see my knowledge about the topic is quite basic but hopefully by the end of this semester I will have a broad range of knowledge about Sociology.
