Visitors

When visitors come to your house, what do you? What is your visitor ritual?

Growing up, we had monthly visits from the home teachers. As I Christian/caring human being, we all need to take care of each other. My faith implements this by trying to have each home in a congregation visited once a month by "home teachers" (men visiting families) and "visiting teachers" (women visiting women). As a child, we all gathered in the living room with the less comfortable couch as my dad and my mom talked to these men who came to visit. I love home teaching visits now that I'm the parent and the visitor is more my peer. But yeah, he comes in, we talk, he leaves.

I'm coming to realize, though, that my personal culture and perhaps my area of LDS culture's visitor rituals are not standard, American visitor rituals. On my mission for the Church in Europe, we were often offered something to drink or eat when we visited homes and as a hungry and thirsty missionary, I always appreciated such kind offers. I never compared their hospitality to my own, until...

A lady I visit as a visiting teacher, who recently joined our LDS faith (and culture, by consequence), always has bottled water and treats for us when we visit her. Always. Even after I explained to her that the other girl who visits with me has dietary restrictions.  I never offer water/treats to visiting teachers nor home teachers, and they don't seem to expect it. I think I need to work on my hospitality rituals.

What are your hospitality rituals?

Trash

Anthropologists for years asked questions about other tribes/cultures/peoples, but I love reading the contemporary anthropologists that study themselves. One of the more memorable projects (way to go Professor Bartlett!) in my Intro to Archaeology class was to go through my garbage to learn about myself, or if I knew nothing about me, what my trash would infer about my habits. My professor was mimicking this study (or one like it)

 "We are what we throw away"

These anthropologists have been cataloging and analyzing trash for 30 years to learn about OUR society. Sounds fun, right?

When I googled it, look at these fun things I found about anthropologists studying trash:

Have you heard of Discard Studies? Studying our discard culture

The Anthropology of Garbage
 This story is about a professor at University of Washington who is using his archaeological skills to study the trash left behind at resting places in the desert as illegal immigrants are crossing from Mexico to the United States.

What would your trash say about you?

My recycling today would reveal that we drink lots and lots of milk and use lots of butter.

Stereotypes

**Author's note: more about categories. I wrote this a while ago and found it after I published the "Categories" post. Can you tell I think about it a lot? This one is more serious/less sleep deprived.

As an anthropologist, I observe people and their material culture. I try to decipher what their material culture says about them. (Read in normal speak: I judge people based on their things.)

In my neighborhood, there is a house that has a huge five wheel RV, a big ol' truck to pull it, a four wheeler, and a sign with the family name accompanied by a deer/mountain scene. Last fall (the first fall we were in the neighborhood) someone mentioned that they would be gone for the hunt. I noted, I don't know if it was to myself or my husband, "Oh that brown house should be going too." I kid you not, a very short time later, the camper and RV disappeared. I've never met the people that live there, but I made assumptions about the people that lived there based on their belongings. That, my friends, is stereotyping. In this case, the stereotype fit and was accurate.

Another example, in my ward (or church congregation defined by a geographical area) there are residential agricultural lots. A couple weeks in a row the same family sat behind me. Their son wore cowboy boots; the dad had cowboy style shirts and a mustache; and the mom had big bangs. I noted to myself, "I bet they live on 600 South (the street where most of the agricultural lots are)." Again, I was right.

I'm sure no one likes to admit that they stereotype, but we all do it. I think we do it because there are truths behind the stereotypes (for good and bad). I'd like to believe that if they were always wrong, we'd stop doing it (maybe I'm being optimistic there). The stereotypes have roots somewhere. In a way, it is a way to develop categories.

In one of my anthropology classes, Professor Richard Buonforte talked about how our brains need categories so we do not get overwhelmed processing information. If every time we walked into a classroom, we had to process every thing we saw, we would take much longer to process everything. If, however, our "stereotype" of the classroom said that we could expect to see a clock, desks, a teacher, a whiteboard, students, learning implements, then our brain doesn't have to spend too much time/energy processing. We already know what we will find so we can start thinking about something else. It'd be like we had to relearn and relearn constantly. I'm still working on how categories help us understand people.

 Even if the stereotypes are accurate, though, they can still be dangerous. I think the danger of stereotypes comes from seeing a person as a flat, one-dimensional character, seeing them as nothing more than the stereotype and not allowing the stereotyped person to become more than the stereotype, an individual.

Categories

Do you categorize people as you see them?

I saw a man with red/purple pants and brown loafer shoes and I thought, "hipster," "trendy." And from there spawns a conversation in my head about how I'm not trendy and all the reasons for it. (If you wear colored pants--awesome! I would wear them if someone gave them to me.)

I see all sorts of people and spontaneously categorize them. Its not something I do consciously. I do it before I realize I'm doing it. I learned in one of my anthro classes that we categorize/stereotype so our brain won't explode with new information as we go about life. I'm not sure how this applies to people. Maybe its a knuckle dragging brain reflex that deserves extinction.

I wonder as I'm making my snap judgments (I call them "categories" when I want to be nice to myself) about what people's snap judgments are of me. And I realize that those snap judgments someone may make about me may really apply to me. No matter how much I don't like falling into the stereotypical "Mom" look--well yeah, I did care more about getting breakfast ready, nursing my baby, and folding that laundry that has been haunting me since yesterday than standing and blow drying my hair for 20 minutes. Hopefully no one classifies me as "non-hygienic" but I could see that happening because sometimes I really hate showers (because, heck, I'm just gonna get dirty again).

Besides "mom," I don't think anyone would categorize me as I would categorize me. Mom--wanna be garden hippy--loves outdoors to the point of loving pulling weeds to be outdoors--likes organization but is anything but (but that's what I'm obsessing about today. Maybe tomorrow I'll be categorizing myself differently).

Will you join me in stopping our snap judgments? People are much more complex than their appearances may suggest (or perhaps more bland than their appearances may suggest).

I was given a cupcake with a cupcake topper many years ago that I had thought so profound that I put it on my wall ( I know, a cupcake topper on my wall. Label me--"tacky teenager" :) ). It said, "She is a child of God."  Morals from cupcakes: "She is a child of God." Not just "I'm a child of God" but everyone around us.

Compliments

Beauty Redefined (http://www.beautyredefined.net/blog/ or on Facebook "Beauty Redefined), two University of Utah PhD students on a mission to change how American/modern/western culture focuses on women's bodies, has made me aware of how many of the small things we've been acculturated to do and say that focus on our bodies, how we look, and those messages we send with these comments. Over Christmas, they urged us not to fall prey to awkwardness and just compliment that person/friend/family member you haven't seen in awhile's weight loss/shirt/party dress and encouraged us to find something else to talk about beyond physical appearance.

Man it's hard.

But I agree. Its nice to be noticed physically, but its also awkward. When a friend who just had  a baby says something about my waistline (that also recently had a baby in it), I can fill the comparisons coming and its awkward. Nothing I can say will make it better, probably worsen what I'm feeling inside, because honestly, I really hadn't thought about me vs. her until she brought it up. And now that I'm married, its always awkward when a man says anything about how I look.

A while back, I also read an article by Lisa Bloom on Huffington Post about how to talk to little girls (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-little-gir_b_882510.html?ref=fb&src=sp). The author suggests that we ask little girls what are they reading or what their favorite books are instead of commenting on their cute hair/dress/etc.  I myself have two little girls, a toddler and a newborn, neither of who are particularly receptive to talking about favorite books. BUT I have tried to come up with more original compliments.

I'm really stuck with a newborn. Have you noticed how much you dwell on physical appearances with babies? "You're so cute." "Hello, Beautiful." "Look at that cute tongue of yours." "I love your eyes." "Big smile!" "Such a chubby baby!"  I walk into my baby girls' (at least when they were babies) rooms when they wake up in the morning and say, "Hello Beautiful." I delighted in my first daughter's chubbiness. I was proud that I made such a happy, healthy chubby baby with the chubbiest legs. We called her "Chubbles" and "Chubbas" and "Chubbs." Many people worried we were going to give her a weight complex--she was not even talking! The name has faded as she's gotten older. Do you think this will give her a complex about her weight? On the flipside, I have a friend with the cutest, chubbiest son (about four months and 20ish pounds. I'm not the mom so I don't remember the exact weight.) that was telling him the other day, as if he was concerned, that his weight would go away. Which extreme is worse?

What do you think? Does how we talk to the less than 12 month crowd impact them? Or is it merely good practice for the parents to talk to them positively about body appearance?

Houses

Our environment, natural or built by man, influences the culture. I'll leave a discussion of the natural environment to another post, but today I have been thinking about how our culture and our environment shapes what we build for housing and then how what we build, shapes our culture. For example, in areas where land is scarce, apartments are built high. In Utah, we build a lot more houses, but even apartment buildings are never as high as they are in Hong Kong or New York. So who is deciding what it important in our built spatial culture--the builders, the buyers, the sellers--who?

Culture of Houses

In my area of the world in Utah, it is the culture to own a single family house. My father has asked me repeatedly, "When are you going to buy a house?" For a Utah Mormon family (maybe for other cultural groups as well, but I can only speak for my own), buying a house is social rite, maybe even a "spatial" rite that shows we have arrived at a certain point in our lives. What that certain point is is open to discussion: maturity, perhaps the next stage after marriage, perhaps not, perhaps a mark of stability, mark of financial success, a sign that your family is or will be increasing (I can think of example to support and contradict each of these examples). Many of my close friends and family in a similar time and place in their lives to my own have recently bought houses, and have created in me a pull to have my own house as well. I have spent the past couple of months thinking, dreaming, creating, shopping for my very own house.

In other areas of the United States, a house is not necessary to show that you are a "grown-up."  Two friends who have lived in New York City and desire to live there once more told me that in New York, the size of your apartment doesn't really change as ypu advance on the payscale; rather the only change is in the location. It might not even get that much nicer. And the rent is always a huge part of your paycheck. Living in New York, you rent.

On the other side of the country in Oregon, I noticed that mobile homes were much more prevalent than in Utah.  In Utah, mobile homes are incredibly stigmatized, are clustered in mobile home parks, and I'm actually surprised when I see one that looks nice. Traveling through Oregon, the mobile homes were found on individual lots, not necessarily concentrated in parks. They were scattered in tall forests and close to beaches in small coastal towns. A friend I met after my travels who had just moved from a mobile home in Oregon agreed that Oregonian mobile homes did not have the stigma they had in Utah. Many families and individuals chose to live in them because of the Oregon's high property taxes--mobile homes are considered personal property rather than "real" property that is taxed under property taxes.

Our home, whether it be a house, an apartment, or mobile home, shapes who we are and how people perceive us. Perhaps that is why so many in people in my regional culture want a house, because that is what others expect of them.

Home Shaping Our Culture

I loved my house growing up. There were always houses that I thought were lovely, but my house was great. I never questioned my house or its design until I was married. My husband is a perceptive engineer and he questions objects and structures, demanding why they are they way they are. My husband has pointed out quirks about my childhood home that had never come up in my mind. To me, it was just my home and that hallway was the way it was, just because. Well actually, I had never thought about the placement of that hallway, or that window, or that closet. I think my childhood relationship to that house is the same as our relationship to our culture. Living in it, we just accept it and live with it, but an outsider can easily come in and point out its flaws and weaknesses (or perhaps its strengths that we never noticed). My husband is a house anthropologist, you could say.  Also, leaving my house, living elsewhere, then coming back to it, I see the house in a different light. The toilet that I had never considered (because who considers toilets?), now seems short and tiny, and I've nickname that bathroom the "hobbit bathroom."

Something my husband has helped me see about my childhood home is how the built structure of the house created traditions.  One of my family traditions that I'd like to perpetuate is eating in a dining room. Few of my friends ate at their separate, "formal" dining room, eating most often in their kitchens.  In looking for houses, I find separate dining rooms are going extinct, like fine china and silver. A dining room is an extra that people must pay extra for. I was trying to figure out why this was, when, I for one would love to eat away from the huge mess I usually create cooking in the kitchen. My husband once again pointed out that my family ate in the dining room because there was no where to eat in the kitchen. We had a long skinny kitchen with a great bar and a bit of space for a small table, but no where we could seat comfortably a family of 7. After this revelation, I felt slightly dismayed. There was not some huge, cosmological meaning behind our family tradition of eating in the dining room, but rather it was a decision of spatiality.

Funerals

My grandma died last week. Among other things, this got me to thinking about mourning rituals. Interestingly, Mormon culture doesn't have too many mourning rituals because according to our worldview, death is a release and a new beginning to a better life after this life of mortality and pain.  We are, however, not without some ritual. As my grandma began to fail from her two month, untreated battle with cancer, my family gathered and waited, supporting my grandpa and being with my grandma in her last moments on this earth. It was amazing to be there together as a family; yes there were teary eyes, but there was no sobbing and wailing.

After a death, there is always a viewing, often the day before and then right before the funeral. In the interim between the viewing and the funeral, the family is gathered together to close the casket and a family prayer is offered with the family. The funeral is a time of remembrance and hope for the future. After the funeral, the casket is born out to a waiting hearse and as many of the family as wants, travels to the gravesite, which is dedicated. After all of this, the family returns to the church building where usually the church congregation has prepared a meal for all the family.

Most of the funeral parts are fine with me, but the one I really don't like is the viewing. The idea of a reception to trade condolences and sympathies is fine, but I do not enjoy seeing the deceased person. To me, it is no longer the person. I hate looking at them and seeing their empty features and falsely colored skin. So much of the funeral is about celebration and rejoicing, but when you look at the person, all you can think about is death. DEATH in capital letters. I don't like it. Does anyone know why the tradition of open casket viewings persist? Please tell me what you think about them.

A Jewish psychiatrist agrees with my dislike of viewings and supplies some of his own suppositions why we do viewings, although I disagree with his scriptural backing of his dislike (seen later in the article--I didn't copy that bit). In the introduction of his article, he writes:

"It has become a common practice at American funerals, among all religious faiths, to display the body of the deceased as part of the funeral ritual or service. This custom is of recent American origin, having no roots in ancient culture or contemporary European usage, with the exception of the "lying-in-state" of kings and emperors....The viewing of the corpse is one of the fundamentals of the economy of the funeral industry. Before the body is offered for presentation to relatives and friends, it must be perfumed, restored to a look of perfect health, dressed in expensive garments, and placed in a respectable, "comfortable-looking" casket. These requirements of viewing usually constitute the bulk of the funeral costs.

The new, American, quasi-religious ceremony is justified to the public by two high-sounding phrases. One is that viewing the corpse is "paying your last respects." This form of farewell to the deceased is made to seem the minimal courtesy a man can pay his beloved; it has become the natural and logical thing for mourners to do. The second is that it is a necessary aspect of "grief therapy," helping the bereaved to remember a sweet, content, smiling face rather than the vacant, pain-ridden, drawn look of a cadaver.

To the layman, both these arguments seem quite plausible, requiring no further investigation--certainly not at the time of death. The practice of viewing the remains has, therefore, become standard, and a "traditional" part of the American funeral."