Guardian Of The Flutes

After watching Guardian of The Flutes, many thoughts and feelings went through my head.  First why are they calling it Guardian of The Flute? When you realize that the flute is supposed to symbolize the penis, I thought that the penis is sacred.  But it does not appear to be.

I went home and finished the documentary on my own. I thought that it was very interesting how valuable semen is to the Sambia people.  They view semen as something that will make the boys stronger before they are able to produce their own.  But the women also view the semen as something that will help prepare their bodies for carrying a child.  When a husband and wife get married the wife continues to give oral sex to her husband until she menstruates and is able to carry a baby.  Once the wife delivers the baby she does not have sex with her husband for two years.  Therefore, the husband takes on a second wife.   The men take on a second wife because they need someone to have sex with when they have urges.  I wondered why the men do not masturbate in order to get rid of the urges.  I cannot imagine marrying a man just to be there to serve his sexual needs.

The men view the menstrual blood of women as a pollutant but they stick reeds up their nose to make it bleed.  The blood is supposed to make them stronger and a better warrior.  I first thought that the Sambia men thought that all blood was a pollutant but after watching them make themselves bleed it appears that only menstrual blood is a pollutant.  I wonder what the men and women do when the women go through menopause. I cannot imagine having to live in a menopause hut for years because menopause is not something that is done within seven days.

The older Sambia people complained that the traditions and rituals that they went through, the younger generation is no longer doing.  A sixteen year old raped a six year old at school because he had sexual urges and there was not a younger boy that could satisfy him sexually.  I have to think, are the traditions really something to be carried on? Being seven years old and taken from your mother, having no food or water, beaten with plants, forced to perform oral sex on men daily, rub stinging plants to your skin are all of these traditions that should really be continued?  Last but not least I am still having a hard time grasping how semen will make young boys stronger. The flute symbolizes the penis, but as one classmate said in class, “it’s not a suck job, it’s a blow job.”  Which is very true, that is why I am having a hard time understanding the symbolism.  Yes, the flute is long and hard which can represent a penis but it all just seems strange to me. 

Research Methods

This is my first anthropology class that I have taken but the research methods are very similar to other classes I have taken. The four different ways that researchers can collect data is through questionnaires, interviews, observation and participant observation.  Although each of the different methods have their pros and cons I find observation and participant-observation the most interesting.  In my senior year of high school I took a psychology class and we were required to come up with questionnaires and distribute them to students around our school.  The topic that my group was interested in was The Sexual History of High School Students, which is an interesting topic while in high school.  Looking back on the assignment, it probably was not the best choice because in high school boys want to seem "cool, hip, popular" by having sexual partners therefore they could have lied when the question asked how many sexual partners had they had.  While the girls did not want to seem "slutty" by having more than one sexual partner.  Although the students answers were anonymous I still feel that by answering such intimate questions, the boys wanted to be perceived as cool while they girls were more worried about other would think.  With the topic of sexual history, I think it is hard to collect accurate data because during interviews people are not probably not willing to open up about such a personal and intimate parts of their life and it is not appropriate to collect data by observation or participant- observation.

The reason I find observation so interesting is because you get to see whatever subjects you are observing in their natural environment.  Although your subjects may be a little nervous or hesitant because they are being watched I think that the data that you are collecting is more accurate than questionnaires.  I still feel that with questionnaires people may not always be truthful such as "are you home every night to read a story and tuck your child into bed?" People want to seem better on paper, than they may be in real life.  With participant-observation, I think it would be fascinating to emerge yourself in someone’s culture and environment and see what it is like to live like they do.  It can be hard to put all preconceived notions aside but I think it is one of the most interesting ways to collect data.

Folk Groups In High Schools

When I think of the phrase “folk group” the first thing that pops into my head is the nineteen seventies.  I think of free spirited musicians singing and dancing around.  Dancing and singing as if there is not a care in the world.  However after class discussions, lectures and readings I have learned that folk groups are much more than that.  According to George Schoemaker, the term folk, “can refer to any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor” (p 4).  Therefore it should be no surprise to find folk groups in high schools.  However I still associated the stereotypical groups, as groups not folk groups.  However, after doing the reading I can see that any group of people, such as the cheerleaders, can be a folk group. When I was in high school there were clicks such as the jocks, the cheerleaders, the popular students, the band geeks but instead of calling them clicks, the different groups could be called folk groups. The high school that I went to had over four thousand students.  My graduating class was over nine hundred students.  The majority of the students I couldn’t place into a folk group but there were of course your stereotypical “perfect couple.”  The superstar football player who dated the cheerleader.  Although I participated on the swim team, I would not consider myself to be part of the athletes.  I honestly can’t put myself in one of the stereotypical groups.  However looking at the clicks in high school and not viewing them as clicks but as folk groups it is hard to say stereotypical folk groups.  To me the term folk group still isn’t what Schoemaker defines it to be.  However, after further readings, class discussions or movies I am sure I will understand his term a bit better.