Writing Assignment 2 "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari"

805 Words4 Pages
Writing Assignment 2 Sociology “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” Eating Christmas in the Kalahari "by Richard Lee took a unique approach in describing the lifestyle of the Bushman. Richard Lee explains that the Bushman slaughters an ox in celebration for Christmas and he decided to thank them for their cooperation in his ethnography by slaughtering a huge ox. After finding a huge ox, he is ridiculed with remarks such as "Do you expect us to eat that bag of bones?" And "Do you honestly think you can serve that meat like that and avoid a fight?" Mr. Lee later learns it is their custom to criticize the kill. He learns an important lesson from this experience about his culture. That a great hunter is a hunter that doesn’t boost and walk around like he is the best. So the custom belittles the hunter to ensure that he knows his place. When you get down to the core concepts humans are selfish in that they only care for themselves. Thus we do not engage in act of generosity without intentions of self-gain. We help the disabled to raise our self-image. We help tutor a fellow student not just to help them improve, but as we’ll make ourselves feel superior. Although we might not show our selfish intentions we become arrogant and full of ourselves. The Bushman’s custom of bad mouthing is an attempt of enforcing humility that was successful on Mr. Lee. "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari" was a learning experience in the differences in our culture, but also vividly describing the way the Bushman think. They are a society that strongly holds onto humility. Even though they are thankful for Mr. Lee’s generosity they strive to hide their appreciation in order to keep him from feeling superior. They believe boasting leads to pride that lead to killing thus their badmouthing can "cool his heart and make him gentle" (Lee 17). In this great article, “Eating

More about Writing Assignment 2 "Eating Christmas in the Kalahari"

Open Document