(Part 2) Best customs & traditions books according to redditors
We found 85 Reddit comments discussing the best customs & traditions books. We ranked the 38 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
I actually attended a class last semester titled "The Anthropology of Death", and it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life. Let me provide you with a little insight from our discussions.
To understand modern burial practices, we must first look at our closest known ancestors: Neanderthals. They were the first group of hominids known to practice burial. It is still under debate whether this began as something pragmatic, or if they were a species that cared more closely for their living and sought to care for the body after death. My speculation is that it began out of necessity. Large mammals in northern Europe would pose a threat to hominids, even if they were simply scavenging for the remains of the deceased. Burying the dead was a way to eliminate the odor associated with decay, deterring scavengers and possible predators. However, a burial discovered in France in 1908 has shown that not only was the individual buried, but that they were cared for in life. The remains were intact and biologically progressed in age past the point of most average lifespans of Neanderthals. They had suffered some previous injuries that would have made it nearly impossible to survive without the aid of others, so anthropologists who have studied the site believe this person was well cared for in life, as well as death.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/12/131216-la-chapelle-neanderthal-burials-graves/
People historically have buried the dead for religious reasons. Ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, had specific and elaborate rituals that needed to take place in order for their "psyche" (soul) to pass to the Underworld. This was typically a three-step process that included viewing of the body, funeral procession, and burial or in some cases, cremation. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/hd_dbag.htm
A coin or token was placed in the mouth of the deceased to allow the soul to pay the way of passage to the Underworld via ferry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon's_obol
Some historical evidence shows that burial was also necessary to prevent the spread of disease. The Black Death is a perfect example of this. Mass graves have been discovered that indicate the apparent disposal of human corpses for health reasons, as funerary practices were not being performed out of fear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_pit
However, a dead body poses few health risks to the public, unless there is a known disease associated with the deceased. It is a common misconception that decay is a public health hazard, as our minds naturally associate the putrefaction of a corpse with disease (i.e. foul smells). http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/hygiene/emergencies/em2002chap14.pdf?ua=1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_risks_from_dead_bodies
If you are interested in further research, I implore you to read the following books, as I have found them to be personally insightful on the topics of death, dying, and burial practices.
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Mourning-Burial-Cross-Cultural-Reader/dp/1405114711
https://www.amazon.com/Celebrations-Death-Anthropology-Mortuary-Ritual/dp/0521423759/
Can I say that only in some cultures is/was suicide seen as a way to preserve honour (e.g. seppuku) even in other cultures during this time it could still be seen as a negative act.
Alexander Murray looks at suicide in the middle ages in his eponymous book series. /u/sunagainstgold tackles that topic here
Academically though it could be said that French sociologist Émile Durkheim's 1897 work Fr: "Lé Suicide" Eng: "Suicide: A Study in Sociology" helped to shift this current view into the mainstream as it really got to the nitty gritty of why certain people experience suicidal ideation and commit the act itself.
"Smoke is often exhaled before most of the THC from the smoke in the lungs can be absorbed by the bloodstream. The smoker might not hold the hit for 20 to 30 seconds, exhaling too soon or coughing. Smokers rarely absorb a majority of the THC that is in a toke"
-Robert Conell Clarke, "Hashish". Pg. 270 under the heading "Smoking Efficiency"
People are weary about having smoke in their lungs for a long period of time due to the byproducts of burning plant matter and resins. The science still doesn't make people totally comfortable with it, especially with the hysteria centered around the tobacco - lung cancer links.
Don't take anyone's word for it. Not mine. Not Clarke's.
Do a test for yourself:
Fast from Ganja for a week to clear your head. Wake up and have a good healthy breakfast. Get baked. Smoke a fixed amount in one sitting (however much you like to smoke in a sitting), holding in your tokes for 5 seconds before exhaling. Note the effects. Be sure to save that amount of the same herb for the second part of the experiment.
Fast from Ganja for a week. Wake up and have the same healthy breakfast. Smoke that same fixed amount of the same strain, holding for >20 seconds. Note the effects.
Be sure you do the same things in both sessions. Eat the same foods. Smoke the same strain. Use the same apparatus to smoke from. Your high is greatly influenced by your overall well being, mentally and physically. If you put some nasty ass food in your stomach and then smoke, you can often trigger a not-so-pleasant high.
IME with this experiment the longer I held the hit, the higher i got.
There are also a lot of other ways to get more out of a toke if you're freaked out about lung damage:
PROTIP: Exhaling through the nose is a fantastic way to incorporate the olfactory bulb into the equation. This will also give you different effects and can often induce a lot of non-cannabinoid related, positive psychological effects.
TIPTWO: Don't torch the fuck out of your bowl. Heat destroys THC. Corner it lightly. A light, airy, lungful of smoke will go much farther than a thick, milky, dense hit will. The latter will give you more of an effect due to lack of oxygen than it will from the THC. The lower the temperature that you can heat the herb at, the more effectively you will transfer the THC without destroying it.
> Frankly I think calling our era "post truth" or declaring truth to be dead is really really really simplistic base-level type analysis... it kind of means almost nothing really.
Tell it to the zeitgeist:
The second link is a good article that talks about the same scene. There was a rally held today in Idaho, brimming with surrealistic lies about basic facts. It's hard to watch and say this isn't a completely different treatment about truth from a decade ago. I would agree that the saying "truth is dead" goes too far. But it is facing serious opposition in every area of life.
Like shoblime said - indigenous peoples of the Americas did not practice land ownership of surveyed parcels with a single entity as owner. Our current understanding evolved from medieval arrangements under European feudalism, in which those who worked the land were forbidden from owning it.
The best brief explanation I ever read of how native peoples and how the white settlers saw land ownership differently was thus:
>For instance, the Cayuse believed that to plow the ground was to desecrate the spirit of the Earth. The settlers, as agriculturalists, naturally did not accept this. The Cayuse expected payment from wagon trains passing through their territory and eating the wild food on which the tribes depended; the settlers did not understand this and instead drove away the men sent to exact payment, in the belief that they were merely "beggars".
And, indeed, breaking ground in that area (deserty eastern Washington) could result in unhealthy erosion and runoff during flash floods. It's this sort of thing that made a desert out of the Fertile Crescent, the cradle of civilization.
If you're into anthropology at all, the book The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig explains how religious beliefs grow up around what is the best environmental practices for human in a given locale.
The settlers of the prairie would find out about the harmful effects of cutting the sod a few decades later during the Dust Bowl, when it turned out plowing up ground held firmly in place all that time would result in 850 million tons of topsoil blowing away (most of it ended up in the Atlantic Ocean) in 1935 alone.
Meanwhile, back at the Willamette, pioneers showed up and thought everything was just naturally fabulous, not realizing it was the stewardship of the Native peoples who'd made it that way.
> https://www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/article/231478
>When the first settlers arrived in the Willamette Valley in the mid 1800s, they found a broad valley covered with clusters of oaks, tall fir, and grassy prairies. It looked like an untouched wilderness, but it was actually a well-managed system, the result of thousands of years of planned burning by the native inhabitants...
>It is all about preventing women from being individuals and just making them property.
That is not completely true. There are different groups that do it for different reasons. For example, there is a cultural group where the clitoris is removed as it is perceived to be a male attribute, and the foreskin is removed as it is considered to be a female attribute.
Source: somewhere in this books.
Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:
Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
The more you know, the more confident you will be.
I am currently reading/read:
And a million and one others, just the ones I've come into contact with in the past few days.
Nice ad hominem, dude. Great analytical skills too. Good job.
Also, seeing as you've not had the guts or the class to say what I actually posted, I thought I'd do that myself:
"I somewhat had the same experience when I started my MA in sociology. I was considering dropping out in my first year. Luckily, one of my (Left) professors recommended I read "The Sociological Tradition" by Robert Nisbet. It provided a complete summary of the overall sociological tradition and the three main streams of sociology: radical, liberal, and (yes) conservative written by a strongly conservative sociologist. That book made me remain in the discipline. And, I have to say, that while there much that I disagreed with, there was also a lot of joy to be found in the learning of a discipline that draws on so many disparate areas and looks at so many different things.
https://www.amazon.com/Sociological-Tradition-Robert-Nisbet/dp/1560006676
I do agree with the fact that the teaching can be quite ideological. (There can be few things worse than some first year Sociology students who think they "know stuff".) Some of the faculty were appalling. I often tried to adopt a different approach when I taught my classes as a TA, pushing my students to critique and question not just orthodoxy but the critical tools they were using; and to enjoy the reading and the discussion and the learning for its own sake."
From: https://www.reddit.com/r/sociology/comments/1y8bvz/dont_study_sociology_if_you_want_to_be_happy/?sort=top
Can I fully recommend reading The heretics, by Will Storr which gives you a fairly rational look at James Randi. My take on it: He's as much as fraud as everyone else... but do read it for yourself.
If you want to just get a taste of imperial Japan and some pretty interesting firsthand accounts, check out "inventing Japan" by Ian Buruma.
https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Japan-1853-1964-Library-Chronicles/dp/0812972864
If you want to get a bigger view of the condition japan was in before beginning their empire building, check out "Peasants, Rebels, Women, and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan" by Mikiso Hane
https://www.amazon.com/Peasants-Rebels-Women-Outcastes-Underside/dp/0742525252
If you want an even bigger view of how and why Japan was treated differently from Germany after the war check out, "the wages of guilt" by Ian Buruma
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Guilt-Memories-Germany-Japan-ebook/dp/B00YLQU0GS
I would recommend these three books if you want to get a better idea of the everyday life of what everyday life was like pre-war, mid-war, post-war.
If you want to get into the psychology of Japanese people, I would recommend "the Japanese self in cultural context" by Takie Sugiyama Lebra
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Self-Cultural-Logic/dp/0824828402/ref=mp_s_a_1_12?keywords=the+Japanese+self&qid=1571829682&sr=8-12
Another interesting book to add after reading these would be, "multiethnic Japan" by John Lie. It points out the ripples of what Japan's empire building brought.
https://www.amazon.com/Multiethnic-Japan-John-Lie/dp/0674013581/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=multiethnic+Japan&qid=1571829847&sr=8-1
Check em out!
If you're in China, a good place to start is to actually just ask friends, classmates or coworkers (depending on what you're doing) and see what customs they have or that their families used to have. Some may have peach cakes as a traditional birthday thing, while others might tell you about a tradition that their particular ethnic group or does that others don't (e.g. a Zhuang or Hakka tradition that Beijingers don't do).
If you're not in China, a Google search for "birthdays in China" will give you similar information.
Beyond that, if there's a particular tradition you're interested in you can probably find more about that either through more refined Google searches, or by looking at sites like Google Books.
Unfortunately I don't have a single book to recommend that isn't out of print. What I've read about it is almost entirely in other books on other topics which are making passing references to a birthday celebration.
Still, you might be able to find a copy of this book, but I just did a quick search for it (and the other title it's been published under) and didn't find any copies that weren't quite expensive.
I took a Food and Culture class in college (and a Children's culture class as well). We read a lot from: https://www.amazon.com/Food-Culture-Reader-Carole-Counihan/dp/0415521041
Uh oh, an Arens disciple? The "desperate" or "survivor situation" culture has repeatedly been recorded eating people for nourishment. Wikipedia calls it "during starvation".
Being one of the biggest taboos there is, and rapidly dying out after contact with literate people, it's no surprise records of cannibalism are rare. However if you'd like to learn more, check out The Anthropology of Cannibalism and Divine Hunger.
Go read Native Planters, from the Bishop Musem
https://www.amazon.com/Native-Planters-Old-Hawaii-Environment/dp/0910240116
This is the book that really got me interested in archaeology.
Found at a local thrift shop, I have a copy of the now out-of-print "The Pipe: A Serious Yet Diverting Treatise on the History of the Pipe and All Its Appurtenances, as Well as a Factual Withal Philosophical Discussion of the Pleasurable Art of Selecting Pipes, Smoking, and Caring for Them" by Georges Herment
A review of this book by Steve Laug.
To me, it is a very good book on the basics of pipes and pipe-culture and I recommend that every piper pick up a copy if they can.