Kenneth S. Kang
March 10, 1999
Anthropology 9
This course studies the effects of encounters between two cultures. Lectures were given by Amy Burce and discussions were led by Margaret Dubin. Texts included The Broken Spears by Leon-Portilla, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Takaki's A Different Mirror, Kingston's Woman Warrior, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, More's Utopia, and the course reader.
Cultures are shaped by stories and myths. More importantly, cultures arise and are modified by conflict. The ideas of self, one's identity, and one's place in history can all be changed. Culture is more of a process that continually rewrites itself. People in this case are social actors and writers which play out the culture and rewrite it. With everyone constantly rewriting the stories of their culture, the accuracy of the narrative becomes less important to its personal importance.
In the U. S., we consume products created by people in other cultures, yet we do not see these people. However, by the nature of trade, we have had an impact and an encounter with other peoples.
The identity of the worker are fundamental to the functioning of society. The common man is influenced by those in power who in turn are products of the dominant political ideology. Ideology is the ideas and ideals of that society. Through politics and the economy, an identity is formed in the individual through their experience. This may lead to an identity that is not exactly mirroring the ideology.
Tributary socities have a small elite which control politics and the economy. The majority of people are commoners who need elits to govern and ensure water, land, and transportation. They produce the goods and give some tribute to the elites for their services. They believe that they owe the elites tribute.
Elite power comes from coersion, religion, and redistribution of tribute. They can build larger tributary societies through conquest. Both the Aztecs and the Spainish were tributary societies that conquered others. They preserved the newly conquered's government structure so they could extract tribute. But it should be noted that the larger the empire, the harder it is to control.
In Europe, the community was considered a body. Each person had his own job. The king was the head. The nobles were the arms or heart, and the commoners were the guts. Each person had rights and duties. Nobles had the right to have a coat of arms, a horse, bear arms. They had to govern fairly, protect the community, and preserve peace. The status of noble or commoner was fixed for life and determined many choices like marriage. This affected cosmology with concentric circles around common man. The king was closer to God.
This caste system also affected sex. Women were considered deficient males. Males were the ones with the intellect and sperm gave that intellect to the offspring. Men were superior because they could penetrate and invade. This male-female dichotomy more often explained the feminine nature of those men who were conquered than the relationships between men and women.
The caste system also had to deal with the natives. Should they be enslaved? The encomienda system had been used in Spain to govern conquered land that was given to soldiers who had fought for it. However, it was getting over exploited in the New World. The crown thought they were too hard to control too. The enslavement of natives was justified because they had devolved from Adam and Eve and had less human reasoning. By enslaving them, they would impart Christianity. The other argument said they were more like the Garden of Eden and very impressionable. Thus only evangelism would work.
Funte Ovejuna was written in 1611 and set in the 1470s. It is the tale of the bad overlord but in this case, the hero is the whole town.
Fuente Ovejuna was published in 1619-100 years after the conquest of Mexico. Don Fernan is an encomendero who is a subordinate of Don Rodrigo who is a subject of the crown. There is a conflict over who will succeed the crown. The plot deals with a bad overlord and has the whole town as the hero. Don Fernan charges too much tax and rapes the women. Raping also insults the honor of the kinsmen. Just the insult is serious enough and the men also feel threatened because they won't have an honest heir who isn't considered a bastard. The play has a lot of reversals where the women act more as the men and the sheperd is the philosopher.
The film was taken in the early 1900's. The film was produced during the 1980's by Australian researchers. By then, the natives had completely Westernized. The movie is more of a hero narrative.
With gold discovered in the mountains, people went into the interior of the island which never had been explored by white men. The natives were puzzled and though the white men were non-living lightning bolts. They were though to have been searching for the remains of the ancestors. The bags they carried were supposedly their wives and their clothing was puzzling because they wondered how white men excreted. They encountered the huge bird (plane) and the box of ghosts (phonograph). They were unused to the idea of a boss. The white men gave shells (a sign of wealth) as pay for helping them dig gold. The natives laughed when they saw the video of themselves.
Short term impact results from knives and guns left behind.
The Aztecs placed the sun as most important. Kinship was supreme and animals were linked with humans. The hierarchy of animals was used to place people. Nobles were birds or serpents.
They thought their plane of existence had lower underworld leves. Spainish were first gods, then beasts, then underworld "demons." The devolution of the Spainish was because they broke the rules of the Aztecs. In America, the Aztecs were quickly conquered.
They knew that Spain was also a tributary society. Spain used the subservient towns around the Aztecs to help them over throw the empire. The Aztecs were confused by the Spainish who at first seemed to be gods.
In 1519 Cortez landed and in 1521 Tenochitlan falls.
In the short term, a lot of people died and the Aztec power base is wrecked. Epidemics and technology is brought in. Over the long term, Christianity, their world view, and mestizos must be reckoned with.
Broken Spears refuses to acknowledge their king. The nobles are writing after the fact so that there may be some biases. We don't know what the people really feel. The warrior is a honorable person who is willing to die. The Aztec had taken over the region very recently thus the society wasn't integrated. The two tributary societies are not interfacable. Spanish probably would have attacked the Aztecs under any circumstances because of the allies it offers.
Indians are not silent. The Spanish attested to the accuracy of the statements. They try to explain their failure. Their voice still endures. There was no escape for the impending disasters. This is a hero epic. The Spanish were thought to be Quetzacotal who was part of the creation myths. The capital was divided into four sectors. The culture was militaristc and kept oppressed races for sacrifices. However, they had significant protocols for war that differed from the Spainish.
Before the Spanish came, several omens were noticed. A burning ear of corn, fire in the temple, lightning strike on the temple, boiling water, weeping women, weird birds, and two headed people, comets, fire as rain, and whirlwinds marked the Spanish's arrival. The king killed the magicians because they couldn't do anything. He also prepared gifts and sent them to the captain. The spanish tried to test how good fighters the messangers were. The Spanish killed all of Tlaxcala. The Aztecs though of the spanish as pigs for gold. At Texcoco, people get baptised immediately after hearing the news. At Tenochitlan they imprison the king. The Spanish also kill indians during a fiesta. The women said to the men that they are wimps. The spanish flee during the night. Intervening, a plague strikes and the indians think the spanish will not return. However the spanish return and take the city with ships.
In the reader, the Proclaimation is notable for its statements which support the corporal imagery of the community while exclaiming that we are equal under God. In the Tears of Indians, the writer is extremely prejudice against the Spainish. He tries to exonerate the indians and said it was no fault of their own. The Struggle for Souls justifies the war and says that the indians are ignorant of the true faith and the devotion to conversion creates tension between the friars and lay colonists. Collier mentions that the Spanish view does not imply determinism.
Utopia has 54 towns spread out on an island. People get to change jobs regularly. You merely fetch stuff without barter. There is a hierarchy which is elected succesively. There is voluntary suicide/death. People should marry at 18 for women and 22 for men. Slavery is okay and people should marry naked so that they may inspect the goods. Everyone has a right to everything.
The witchcraft trials focused on women 80% of the time. Women were classified as good or evil. Because of the status of women, it was impossible for a widow to defend herself when she was accused of witchcraft.
New identies formed in New Spain. Indians, Mestizos, other castas, Criollos and Peninsulares were all new classifications. New Utopian projects used standard town plans and laws governing the communities. The newer leadership tried to restore native nobility. Evanglization used native languages, culture and the native writing system. Syncretism was a form a resistence where the indians used the new Spanish ceremonies and reinterpreted them to represent native traditions. Some examples included the Cakchiquel Fiesta del Volcan, Zinacantecos flower and cross rituals. Here symbols are multivocal and have alternate meanings.
The Spanish lumped nativefs together as "Indians." However, the natiesf had divided themselves differently. New races were created like Mestizo, Levo, Mulatto, coyote, criollio, and peninsulares. These fell into a hierarchy. "Every system of power engenders its own form or resistence" -Michael Foucault. There was a debate among the Spanish over how to treat the indians. Should they be slaves or subjects of the crown. The crown took a more protective role as time went on. The church also got to test some of the utopian theories. Just as men controlled women with respect to sexuality, the crown and the clergy used the idea of control to assert power over indians and tried to make indians willing subjects to the Spanish king. Now other people, the mixed races, threatened the Spanish.
Zinacanteco use slash and burn agriculture. They had to remain mobile. The Spanish felt that this threatened control. They made a standard plan for town communities. Indians settled and slowly left to resume their slash and burn agriculture. The Spanish also created the ide of communal lands where only members of the group could use the land. This aws to keep indigenous people centralized. Spanish were homogenizing the region. Spanish created a new indian nobility. People wanted to claim nobility and made long geneological trees. Native and nobels got coat of arms and staff of office and European nobel symbols.
People catalogued culture and enviroment, arts, crafts, and codex formats and used it to evangelize with indigenous symbols. Indigenous people used the clergy as a way out of encomienda.
Cachiquel were initial allies of the Spanish but later tribute was exacted and they were oppressed. They revolted and were put down. The Spanish made the Fiesta del Volcan which was modified by the Cachiquel to subvert the Spanish interpretation of the ceremony. Zinacanteco made flower alters which seem Christian but is actually worshipping ancestral deities. They also used crosses to mark places of their ancetral spirits.
These are examples of syncretism where ideas are blended. Normally the oppressed group does the syncretic processes. They have two meanings then condense into one symbol. This is called multivocality. They recenter aspects like the Bible and the Christian ceremonies.
El Tio mans uncle and he is the spirit associated with the mines. He contracts with Huari who is the owner of the earth. He is the supermale. Miners use rituals to calm El Tio. They give gifts in the hopes that he will help them mine and won't attack them.
Nobility is based on the title and the indian nolibyt existed separately and were more harsh than the Spanish nobility. Women have little faith and worse than a wizard. This may because monks feared women as sexual objects. Spanish were accused of being creul because the raped women. The festival of the volcano was supposed to be an overthrow of the local tribe. However, the ceremony does not assert full control in the native interpretations. It leaves room for the king to return to power. The zinacanteco village believes that all important things have inner souls. There are animal spirits. Liquor has to be used to contact the gods. Nash talks about the mines where there is sexual impotency from the explosions and there is the set of mine gods and sprits and people tend to die in mine accidents.
Humans are different than animals because we stopped having a evolutionary niche. We have the ability to determine our environment. The threat to humans is microbes and not megafauna. Tributary society is a pyramid of financial transations. The elite extract tribute and the dictatorship has social obligations from overlords to the commoners. The corporate image with the king as the head has a definate structure. The institution outlives the members. Encomienda allowed the soldiers to extract wealth. The children needed education according to Las Casas while others thought indians needed to be enslaved. The crown sided with the church because they wanted direct control and more tribute. It would be easier to govern. Thus the crown fostered native nobility.
Gender was mapped on to race. Witchcraft portrayed women as evil and weak. Native women were raped and there was divsion between them and the spanish women. In Tears of the Indians, the spanish were racialist over human nature. The state needed wives and pure-blood while the church wanted souls. Thus adultery with indians was permitted. Class was ascribed to the child and it could not be earned or achieved. Gender and class related by blood determined how close you were to god and your intelligence and tributary relationships.
Intermarriage caused problems because it was unclear where the mixed breeds fit into the hierarchy. Syncretism is where there was a resistence to the invading force by reinterpreting elements of their forced assimilation.
Spanish started global trad motivated by wealth. Other European powers entered the market. Spanish lost wealth and the protestants challenged the Catholic church. The Spanish born in Mexico were discrimnated against by the crown. The Hapsburg line was replaced by the Bourbon line. The body politic was changed in reaction to the Englightement and the protestantism . There was more idea of meritocracy and a "calling." All humans were supposed to be rational. Analyticalism took hold. Indivdiauls were stressed and the Bourbons broke down European trade and removed criolos from adminstration. Everything was done in self-interest including a pattern of debilitating trade with the Apache. Gender imagery was used to place other races lower than the Peninsulares.
Joe Leahy's Neighbors was a interesting film where Joe, the mixed breed from the initial Leahy expedition. He became the head of the tribe on whose land he has his coffee plantation. This obligates him to do stuff. Joe says he can't mix tradition with the new world. People are jealous of his wealth and try to get added benefits from the wealth. The tribe is illterate so they have to use a password to access a bank account.
Prior to industry, slaves and sugar were the staples of international trade. The middle man earned money. global trade expanded on a global scale and didn't restrict ports to the colony's power. The invention of the spinning jenny created an improvement in quality and volume. The use of fertilizer also increased food production. The key fuel to the revolution involved the ability to sell overseas. The idea of the core and perhipery were key. This eroded the precapitalist way of life. They started to need supplies from the industrial nations. The production spiral killed the land. The advent of the individualism created the Keynesian economic culture and the lack of safety nets.
Steinbeck has a new POV on capitalism and critiques the transition from Feudalism to capitalism. This was sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as part of the New Deal. The relations changed between the commoners and overlords, proletariat and bourgeosie and commonors and proletariat. The race was constructed to support capitalism and segment the workforce. Positivism focused on the idea of science as a methodology. Compte had the idea of progress, Malinowski had the idea of functions. Positivsm divided history into theologic, metaphysic, and science. Compte wanted women as domestics because they could remain moral and society corrupts.
Industrial Capitalism was distinguished from other systems by Free Market, and Individualism. Labor is now a commodity and classes are the capitalists who buy labor and workers who have nothing but labor to sell. There is the idea of wage contracts where it seems as though they are free to enter, but market powers are different. The capitalists pays less that the profts that he reaps. This is based on the survival of the fittest. They try to reduce labor costs. There is no correlation between freedom and equality. The class struggle is all about a fair exchange. Capiltaists tried to divide and conquer the workers. Government now takes the role as a regulator. The history developed as a colonial merchantasit society. The englightenment changed it to liberal thought and the French and American Revolutions were drivent by it. Land was owned and eventually consolidated in large corporations. People went into the cities for work after they sold their land. The labor class was worse off than an tributary system because now there was no accountability on the part of the capitalist.
Positivism tried to see order in capitalism. They tried to apply science to humans. Freedom was curtailed by the economic liberalism. Capitalism was good because it provided wages and wealth. It needed intellectuals and labor. Women were considered moral and just because men were selfish. They promoted the two-sex model where women were in charge of child education.
Grapes of Wrath was a tradition of literary critiques of capitalism started by Dickens Marx and Conrad. The correlate the development of a working class conciousness. Federal government could promote greater senses of nationalsm. It fueled the military industrial compled through WWII. The federal government created many programs to boost the economy. Was the goverment acting out of its own interests or out of benevolence. Steinbeck correlated people with the land and the disintegration of the land dissolved the people. Machines replaced people. There was less traditions of accountability and inhertence. The system could now be blamed. Freedom was to move around yet you had to gurentees of resources to do so. There was a reversal of gender roles in Grapes of Wrath signalling a defunct society or a new societal trend. Racial segmentation allowed better labor access. There was a need to adapt to the situation.
They used science to justify that indians were feminine. They used the weather to try to explain why people were uncivilized. Natives tend to abadon their elders when they are infirm. The instructions for governing tended to try to feed on natural tendencies. The encyclopedia was analytic an structural. New labor was flexible. Urban concentrations gave better labor. Labor tended to move quite a bit especially the immigration of indivuduals. There is an extensive comparision of various studies in the reader. The labor was segmented so that they waste energy on each other. Positivism combines science with social science. Positivism separated women from men and thought they were more moral. It stopped fema job competition and stopped the suffrage movement.
English colonists though of disease as a cleanser which got rid of the witches in the indigenous population. The forced migration of indians always happened in winter. There was the masscre of unarmed women, men, and children at Wounded Knee and the defeat of Custer. Resistence included the Ghost Dance movement. The tribes were forced to assimlate by forcing children into boarding schools. Imperial nostalgia started as people tried to admire the good points of Native Americans. They were allowed to enter capitalism by producing elements of their own culture. Eventually, Collier allowed the indian new deal which allowed self-organization.
A documentary commented on this plastic shamanism where white americans popularize a religion closely patterned off the indian religions. They evangelize which is different from indian religions. They're mainly in for profit which pisses off the natives. It misrepresents indian religions and people don't understand the full meaning of what they are doing.
Toussait L'Ouverture was a learned free man who lead the black revolt of San Domingo. This created tension between slave owners, and free San Domingo and the French government. He wanted to resolve differences between the revolutionaries and the land owners and the French government. He wanted to make sure that the infrastructure of the island wasn't disrupted. He didn't explain his actions to his people and thus they revolted against him.
Slavery had started as indentured servitude and slowly the labor was fragmented between white and blacks. Frequently servents wouldn't outlive their commisssion. African slavery was different from American slavery. Indivudals were "pawned" out as collateral for debts between kins tribes. However, the slave was taken into the new kin group and frequently would become very attached to them. The structure of the tribes were highly patrilineal. There was the idea and transactionalization of the rights to sex, labor, and reproductive capability. Fines and judges were highly develoed. Often kings wouldn't trust their brothers and use slaves as high advisors.
Toussaint L'Ouvreture was full of himself and gave everyone weapons. He made a constitution, written by white landowners. He wanted to be with the French. He crushed the rebellions of his won people. Had he succeeded, he may have been equal to Abraham Lincoln.
For native americans, there are too many people in the cities. The Imperial nostagia occurs because we see tranquility in their beliefs. Yet these cultures adapt too. The future of the tribes depended on their ability to accept responisibility and govern themselves. Now the ethnic tourism offers native americans a way to express their identity instead of having it suppressed. The culture is being sold and the artifacts are being mass produced and given less meaning. The stereotypes are continuing
The slave import increased over the years. They were initially indentured servents. American Indians were too close to their own support base to be used as slaves. Their music and culture would eventually become American. There was extensive performer audience interaction and the rhythm ruled above the melody. Blacks from a white community were not considered black enough. Quilts and other arts were important forms of expressions for the illiterate. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass covers his journeys as a slave to a free man and how he is indebted to those who taught him how to read and write. It compares his masters and examines how the slave felt.
The many cultures in America are surprising. American history is lacking in these groups. There is always the comparision between the Jewish rise and the Blacks lack of rise in the socioeconomic strata. Slavery was de facto because of the treatment of indentured servents. There was the constant threat of the "giddy multitude." Jefferson wanted to deport newly born slaves.
Even though the indians were civilized, they formed a foreign state which was unacceptable to the union. Americans used divide and conquer to take indian lands. Buffalo and other manners of subsistence were eliminated. Irish were compared to blacks. They did not want the blacks free. Domestic servents felt like prisoners because of the constant demands and living in the same house. The Irish got political machines and education and joined the white collars.
Slavery in America had its own form of resistence and developed new socities. This is particular of the African slaves. Race becamse defined because of the instution of American slavery. Europe did not have racism until slavery. Until then, Kings of different races were equal nobles. The peak of slavery in the 1700s ironically was the period of the height of the Enlightenment. Earlier, slaves would work with white indentured laborers. Slaves were treated like non-humans. They were supposed to have all the labor skills of humans.
One form of resistence was the maroon societies comprised of run away slaves. The first generations of early slaves were prominent in the Caribbean, middle and south Americans. These maroon socities occured where there were high males population in relation to women and whites. These groups lasted from a year to generations and numbered into the thousands. They developed their own culture and an ethnic pride. They followed the westerward movement of the Indians. Ironically, slaves were considered lazy, yet they did most of the plantation work. Plantation owners tended to relax. Communities of slaves would form upriver and in the jungle areas. They had to be in remote and inaccessible environments to escape the white scorn. Traps were set and guerilla warware was practiced and employed spies and scouts. Planters used slaves, indians, and dogs to try to find the maroons. Communities were always at war and new members would have a probation period where they had curtailed privileges. Deserters and traitors were executed and the leaders of the societies took on noble symbols of both Africa and Europe. Maroon men tended to get women from the local indian populations. Later the societies would elect leaders based on their relationships with the whites.
Frederick Douglass has his own forms of resistence and raises interesting issues over gender. He supported women's suffrage. He had his first fight at 15 and escaped at 20. His two sons fought in the civil war. He supported aboltion. Liberal White Americans approprated the black American history and fought for it. Black Abolitionists were sometimes seen as competitors.
Slave owners include Captain Lloyd who owned a large plantation. Captain Anthony was Frederick's first master and the overseer of overseers. Mr. Plumber was drunk and obsessive. Mr. Severe was creul. Mr. Hopkins was a good overseer. Mr. Gore was also creul. Mr. Hugh Auld (Anthony's son-in-law) had a mistress, Sophia Auld whoou had treated him like her own son and taught him to read. Captain Thomas Auld, Anthony's son was mean and hired Mr Covey wou beat slaves.
Frederick asks why are some people slaves and some masters. How did it start and why is it based on skin color. Race after all is socially constructed. How does Douglass describe the world view of a plantation slave. Especially the non-slave world like Captain Auld. How is slavery different from a tributary society?
Reading expanded one's world view. Blacks were not innately inferior. White people verified that Frederick Douglass to write about himself. He could now see and read about the shift outside of his world. He had access to information and could lead a rebellion. Illiteracy meant control and writing meant publicity and travel passes.
The Good and the Bad overseer has much effect on the slave. The good overseer breed s discontent about being a slave. He hates to whip the slave but does it anyway. Field and house slaves were very different. House slaves were constantly watched and punished more often. There was animosity between the house and the field slaves. Even the Irish were asked if they were slaves or slaves for life meaning that indentured servitude was still happening. There are African legacies in Frederick's experience. There is the root given by Sandy Jenkins which protects him from the owners. There is signing and speechmaking. There is no knowledge about Africa.
Both the slave and the owner feared reebellion. People like Sophia Auld develop and learn creulty to slaves. The tributary society has the food-tribute exchange. There is inherited status. Slave societies include the food-labor exchange. It also has the inherited status. The capitalist system has the purchase of labor in hours or days. It has no exchange other than the monetary wages.
Noam Chomsky reacated to Skinner's lanuage development in kids-positive reinforcement-and said it was innate ability. He introduced linguistic competence-the grammar-and performace-use of language. He proved this by showing an grammatical structure in which new phrases can be generated without positive reinforcement. Thus we move on the idea of linugistic intelligence. This is shown by performance and does not mean talent. Bilingual should be distinguished from bidialectic. Dialects have different phonetics and morphology-suffixes. Social stratification may correlate with dialects and thus linguistic identity may be linked with economics-econolinguistics.
We start off as an English as a Second Language (ESL) to a dialect to a native standard English. Ebonics is the reclassification of the dialect to get ESL funding. Becuase dialects form identity, some people don't want to change to standard english. Why is there discrimination against the AfroAmerican dialect when German accents are fine?
Is there a concious effort to keep a dialect? What comprises identity? Masters and slaves had language interactions. White women had black nurses and picked up the dialect. White sons also did, but they went to New England schools to unlearn it. European slave traders stayed on the coast. They did not want disrupt the natural setting or spread disease. Ships had tons of slaves on it with 50% losses during the voyage. They rationed out food and slaves tried to throw themselves off the ship. Once sold, the new owners woudl try to break the slave and whip him to make him insecure, inferior, and dependent. The maroon socities formed to combat this. The socities were self sufficient. Pure African religions were rare because they had to fit in with the legislation and the slave owners. Voodoo, Shango, and many other religions developed. They disguised African deities as Christian saints. Rastafarians had griots and valued the negatives of whites. They had their own messiah.
Music expressed Resentment, anger and frustrtation. Drums were key. Capoera was a war dance and had music, chants from Africa. The Chitlan Circuit formed a network of African Americans. Since they were robbed of their identity to prevent solidarity, they tried to create their own history. They created the idea of home. Desegregation of schools actually decreased cohesion. There is no one black experience. Now racism opened up with the desegregation. Black women were normally confined to the house. They made quilts which expressed and traced their history.
Without papers, illegal immigrants must tolerate anything. Friends would tease new children about being illegal and lie to them about being legal. Illegal immigrants don't want to become a burden on the country. The major barrier is also a credit rating.
Light skinned people historically have been the rulers. The US penetrated the Mexican border, demonstrating manhoood. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo preserved Mexican property rights and made the people US Citizens, however, US courts were biased toward the incomming settlers.
Mexicans included cowboys-baceros. There is a parent child gap in Mexican immigrants because of the differences in education. There was the vacero program in WWII which brought immigrants over as laborers. Women as single moms face less stigma in the US thus move over the border.
The demand for labor brings migrant workers. Illegal immigrants tend to steal fruit and deficate in people's backyard. The migrant camps are designed to invisible. They live without water and cardboard. Migrant workers always are in poor conditions. The Green Valley camp has 70% documented resients. they do agriculture, construction and landscaping as well as domestic work. Babies get sick easily in the camp. Local homeowners use the INS and health department to get rid of them. Migrants feel shut in in the camp. They only entertainment is soccer, dominos, and chess. They stay in the camps because they don't want to pay rent.
During the 1800s Americans brought in Asians as laborers. Ethnic resistence included strikes, distinct ethnic communities. The population is quite diverse. First contact of asian was through islamic traders in the eighth century. Marco Polo journeyed to asia in 1291. European traders were frustrated and the large tributary states prohibited inland exploration. They went around Africa. British made plantations in India. China and Japan remained autonomous trade. Europeans were considered barbarians and tolerated their trade.
The British East Indian company culivated opium to addict the chinese. Chinese destroyed the Opium and the Opium War ensued causing China to open its ports and grant the extraterritoriality. The Japanese tried to adopt the European methods. Orientalism in European art saw orientals as exotic and seductive and at the same time dangerous. They were fascinated and frustrated about not being able to control. They thought that asians were more on whim than by laws. US Laws shaped the social composition. They took control to benefit the US. They also tried to prevent asians from entering politics. Interesting trends develop in the demographics with age and gener composition. Asians seem to be a "model minority" and have used upward mobility.
Angel Island was a detention cneter and there is the gender model on both sides. Citizenship was denied. They tended to be laborers in farms, own farms, and laundries. They were also railroad workers. The Japanese had strikes in Hawaii. When do you stop being an immigrant? The Second generation tried to assimilate, bridge, or join other ethnic groups for labor equality. There were gender differences. We must not overlook Asian hierarchies. People left their countries for different reasons. Mainly it was financial.
There is the idea of being a man-defending the country. Women were considered more hygienic. Maxine Hong Kingston had dreams and wrote stories. She was a girl so she didn't feel as accepted as the men. Men don't write because they haven't been deprived. Identity formed from the stories of her mother and the mysteries of her past. Her father was also a stoic figure. It was a matriachial familty. How do you separate childhood, family, chinese, parents, and US? Ethnic books don't get awards because readers don't believe in ghosts. Although they were discriminated against, they never felt inferior. Kingston got perspective on Northern California y moving to Hawaii.
New Asian Indian music combines the flavors of rock with the historic melodies. The parent's don't like it and want more control over their kids. The tradition element seems missing in the new melodies. It seems like gibberish.
The model minority does not exist. There are more workers in Asian families. Accents are a glass ceiling. There are stereotypes like techiness. College admissiosn are anti asian and Asians are considered passive-read polite. Young asians want to know about their history.
Kingston's father arrived in Angel Island. He built a business in New York. During WWII Maxine was born. They ran a laundry. Maxine realize they lied to the Ameircans and wanted to portray a good image. She didn't know about the past. The children, to the parents, were ghosts because they were born here and didn't fit in. Whites were ghosts too. This compares with the Spanish who thought that the Criollos were less Spanish.
Maxine didn't know how to fit in. Her mom had told her the no name woman story who was passive and accepting and killed herself in a well. She was constrained by her family and silent. Since she had neglected her duty, she was forgotten by the family. Fa Mu Lan was non-traditional and earned honor by serving her family. She kept the honor by serving in a war. Then she returns to her gender role. She has a voice and is chosen by her ancestors.
Moon orchid is Maxine's Aunt who comes over to find her newly remarried husband and to be neglected. She dies in the mental hostpital. Brave orchid is Maxine's mom who is educated and is a doctor. The US children are different from those in china and are not demure.
Maxine goes to Chinese school. She never has the power of warrior woman because she gets grades but that's not enough. She was discriminated against by her mom-made to beg for candy from the medicine man-and by the school where she didn't do well in english. Chinese school everyone did everything together. Maxine taunts a quiet girl becauase she hates the delicacy that she fears in herself.
Her parents don't want to talk about their history in China. The kids might not be able to understand. They want the kids to assimilate and their kids don't know about Chinese culture. They might have thought they would go back to China. There is always a return to the family by Brave orchid, Fa mulan, and Maxine.
How does one negotiate his identity? Americans have a Fordist worker identity where there is a drive for effeciency and mechanization. Towns are formed by companies with a certain family structure. They needed a massive consumption to drive the industrialization. The government used its own spending power to increase consumption and also implemented a safety net. Women didn't earn a family wage and were considered temporary office help. The extended families were destroyed as they went to work in the cities.
Workers are catagorized as hourly and unionized and temporary. There is a scale of job security too. The third world is stuck buying industrial goods while not being able to export profitably. There is the creation of peasantry and a small shop keeper group. We are moving to free trade zones and just-in-time techniques. Workers are now competiting internationally.
Intellectual property and individualism is catching on. Employers are trying to own you more and more with cell phones and pagers. Border Zones include the free trade zones and the borders between rich and poor neighborhoods. There is a definate difference in perspective and social and finacial support. There exist barriers in identity of gneder, technnlogy, family, corporate, and work versus home.
Globalization is driven by profit and manufacturing is mobed overseas. Americans are displaced and production happens in export zones which have no import tariff. these tie nations togehter. Mexico has a makila program where US companies move production to mexico. Women are more often hired. They are often shoved into small rooms and work overnight to reach quota. US plants shut down to move overseas. Workers are fired cyclically. They are like slaves because the government is against the worker. The work conditions are difficult. Companies leave and supress organization and strikes.
Americans had longed for land in the American take over of Mexico. Identities were constructed from a cosmic model and now dropped to family and finally to the individual.