Jerry Budiman
Anthropology 1010
November 18th 2010
Ethnographic Project
Studying about other cultures is a great experience for us to realize a
variety of complex sophisticated cultures existing all over the world. Moreover,
each and every single culture has distinct unique ways of thinking, norms, and
rules of conduct. Living and continuously interacting with a Russian family made
me realize that culture encompasses beliefs and rules shared by a group of
people. One culture is not the same as another. This paper is a symbol of my
curiosity about their culture. I tried to do a one by one investigation about their
culture and adaptation. I organized it in a way that most people would
understand it better as a part of cultural variety.
In my fieldnotes, there are some patterns that you could see about the
culture that is shared and learned. “We, Russians are like to do the gardening”
(Fieldnotes 1). They tend
to keep their tradition alive.
It is because the culture is
shared and learned. They
share their culture with all
members of their family
and community or even all
of Russia. It is also learned
from their family instead of
Figure 1: The Garden as a symbol of comfort
being just inherited. They
choose
to
keep
the
tradition alive and it is their own choice to do the gardening. If it’s inherited, they
have to do it regardless of what they feel about it.
As you can see in the picture above, the garden looks really nice. This
garden is one of their symbols in their house that represent the comfort in their
house. They believe that a great garden is a symbol that your house is
comfortable and beautiful. This is also part of the culture based on symbols.
Clearly, a garden is an important symbol for Russian culture as it represents the
beauty and elegance of one’s house
The values, beliefs, and norms are significant parts of a culture. It is also a
part of this family. After preparing and conducting interviews with Russians, I
realized that most of the Russians
are Christian. They have their own
community and special church. They
meet at the church every Sunday as
their gratitude to God. They pray and
sing together as a gift to God. They
Figure 2: The writing behind it means Believe
have a strong faith in God and think
that God is the source of all
happiness. Olga, one of my interviewees said, “He always helps us to solve our
problem.” This belief among the Russians affects Olga (the person that I asked to
interview) to think the same as all of the Russians. Another characteristic of
Russians is family oriented. They like
to gather and share some stories.
I also realized that Olga is not
a technology addict. She said that
technology brings a lot of problems
in this world. Most of the people lost
Figure 3: Family Dinner (Russians are family
oriented)
their job because of the technology.
Nowadays,
you
only
need
one
person to operate a machine instead of using 10 people to do it manually. This is
why she is avoiding the technology except computer and TV. For Olga, the
computer is one of her work tools because “now, you have to use computer to do
everything”(Olga).
It has been 19 years since she came to the United States. In order to
survive in her new society, a lot of adaptations should be made in addition to the
computer adaptation. Olga told me her story about when she first came to United
States. She couldn’t eat any American food. For her, the fast food tasted really
weird. She didn’t like fast food; she tried to eat at home every time instead of
eating out every Saturday or Sunday.
Now, everything has changed. She is getting used to fast food. I got a
chance to eat her Russian food. In my opinion, the tastes of her foods are not fully
Russian anymore. They have a slight taste of American food. The most difficult
adaptation Olga made was learning how to operate high-tech equipment. When
she
first
came
to
United States in 1991,
she didn’t know how
to operate a computer.
She was an accountant,
and in order to get a
job in her field, she
had to study about
computers. It was not
easy for her to adapt
Figure 4: Whole Family
and learn about the
computer.
She
was
also surprised about the washing machine and the dryer. In Russia, she had to
wash her clothes with her hands and dry them using sunlight. These patterns
show me that the standard of living in Russia was not as good as the United
States. The effort that she made to adapt in her surrounding was a part of
transformation in her life. Her culture is not static; it is adapting to her
surroundings. This is why one of the characteristics of culture is adaptive.
“People must adapt to their environment and culture is their chief mechanism of
adaptation. Because of their capacity of adaptation, humans can survive in nearly
any environment” (Bonvillain 26).
The next thing that I wanted to ask them was about the kinship system. I
was having a great idea about this kinship system. I was so sure that this would
be pretty easy. It turned out that their kinship system is a little bit weird. I asked
her a lot of questions about the kinship system to find out what might be her
type of descent. When I heard her answer, I was hundred percent sure that her
descent type is patrilineal.
This is because that her
father owned everything,
and the mother’s job was
to serve the father like the
other housewives. After
her
father
died,
the
mother became “the ruler
Figure 5: The Whole Family
of the house”. It was
interesting and confusing
at the same time. As the father died, their kinship system changed to matrilineal
and the kids have to support their mother.
I was confused and had no clue which one is the right descent for them.
There might be some conditions for that change because it is possible that their
type of descent is not that important anymore. In other words, the type of
descent in their family depends on the family itself. Therefore, I conclude that
because of their father’s death, their descent changed to matrilineal. If it were the
mother, their descent would stay the same. I was thinking through this analysis
for the whole week but I still remained unsure about it. I decided to read some
books about the descent system and finally, I found out that their type of descent
is the bilateral descent. They treated the father and the mother equally. I felt that
it was ambiguous at the time because when the father was alive, the father side is
more important. I went to Olga’s house again to ask her about it and it turned out
that they also treated the mother’s side equally. This is why after long
discussions with Olga, I figured out that the bilateral descent is the right type for
their descent.
References
Bonvillain, Nancy. "2/Culture Is Adaptive." Cultural Anthropology. Upper
Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2010. 26+. Print.
Budiman, Jerry. “Fieldnote 1.” 2010.
Budiman, Jerry. “Fieldnote 5.” 2010.