#MichalisPolygiannis

[gwanth1002]

According to Miller sign language is a form of communication that uses mainly hand movements to convey messages. Most sign languages are used by people who are hearing impaired as their primary form of communication. As Miller states, sign language provides a fully competent communication for its users, just as spoken language does [(Miller, Barbara. Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World (Page 177, Chapter 9)]. Furthermore, sign language is not a universal language — each country has its sign language, and regions have dialects, much like the many languages spoken all over the world. In different parts of the world, many varieties of sign language exist, including American Sign Language (ASL). Like any spoken language, ASL is mostly practiced in the US and Canada, and it is a language with its own unique rules of grammar and syntax. According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDOCD) the exact beginnings of ASL are not clear, but some suggest that it arose more than 200 years ago from the intermixing of local sign languages from Native American tribes and French Sign Language that have melded and changed into a rich, complex, and a mature language. On Thursday, October the 25th, I visited my close friend Austin Rutland, a student at the Gallaudet University and a famous coffee blogger in DC. While we were walking from the University campus to his apartment, Austin asked me to wait for him until he would get his coffee. To my surprise, we have stopped at the first Starbucks coffee shop in the United States where every single employee is fluent in American Sign Language. As seen on the picture, the entrance says “Welcome to Starbucks Coffee” in ASL and has a board inside with different “signs of the day.” Starbucks chose the H Street block at the Northeast of DC for its inaugural ASL store because of its proximity to Gallaudet University, the world’s only liberal arts university for the deaf and hard of hearing people. From an anthropological perspective, I would like to know how the introduction of more stores/restaurants/theatres/cinema with personnel fluent in ASL would affect the DC society and people’s perception of the deaf.

 Another term Miller defines in Chapter 9 is language family, which is a group of languages that descend from a parent language. A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family [(Miller, Barbara. Cultural Anthropology in a Globalizing World (Page 185, Chapter 9)]. The term “family” reflects a tree-like model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree. According to Bruce Rowe a “living language” is simply one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also many dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified, or are even unknown outside their respective speech communities (Rowe, Bruce M. (2015). A Concise Introduction to Linguistics. pp. 340). Furthermore, one of the branches of the language family is Proto-Indo-European (PIE). It is the linguistic reconstruction of the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. The linguistic divergence throughout millennia led to the evolution of the current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. Today, the descendant languages of PIE with the most speakers are Spanish, English, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Persian, French, and Greek.  The picture above shows my best friend’s desk who is currently studying at the Georgetown University Law Center focusing on international litigation. As we can see there are books focusing on criminal law, property law, constitutional and administrative law. It is well known that the American legal system has a lot of Latin terminology in it. Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. All Romance languages are descendants of Latin dialects and the Latin alphabet itself is derived from the Greek and Phoenician alphabets. The expansion of the Roman Empire over continental Europe, England, Northern Africa and portions of the Middle East resulted in the development of dialects spoken in different parts of former Roman Empire that eventually evolved into dozens of distinct languages across the Indo-European continent. From an Anthropological perspective I would like to know more about how much the Indo-European languages have affected the development of countries not belonging to the “Old-World.”

[allaboutfoodgwu]

Fancy Jamsy at Dean & DeLuca by Mister M.

When the character Patrick Bateman in the movie American Psycho refers to buying Italian seasoning salt picked up from Dean & DeLucaor Doctor Hannibal Lecter is seen to eat from a Dean & DeLuca travel pack, containing foie-gras, Beluga caviar, and figs in the movie Hannibal,you know one thing for sure: this store is not for everyone. For this week’s foodie exploration I decided to visit Dean & DeLuca in Georgetown,  

Dean & DeLuca, which owns and operates a chain of markets for selling gifting, food, beverage, holiday and occasions products, is a unique place made for the ultimate American gastronome. Located on the fashionable and upscale M street of Georgetown, Dean & DeLuca sells some products that are luxury, rare, or exotic. Ithas been able to create value, which justifies high prices, not just by providing hard-to-find organic or all-natural products and labels. It has created a high-touch, overtly humanized experience that is designed to make you, the shopper, feel wealthier than you do in any other food shopping experience.

By going to the store on a quiet Sunday afternoon and spending an hour to explore I have realized who the client of Dean & DeLuca is. I have recognized that the quiet, exclusive, and socially pedigreed extravagance is, in fact, giving way to the new generation of affluent consumers who have grown up with a new definition of luxury that will forever change the way we market upscale goods. Young or old, the customer of Dean & DeLuca is extremely wealthy and affluent.

Dean & DeLucain Georgetown is a large open space giving you the freedom to walk around and try samples of the expensive artisanal cheeses and prosciutto crudo. The jam section in the store was surprisingly very easy to find. As you walk inside the jams are located at the first aisle opposite the cheese and packaged chocolate sections. As seen on the pictures below the section is relatively small and occupies five of the six shelves of the section, with the top shelf being exclusively for honey. To the left of the jam section we can see the high-end tea and coffee section and to its right chocolate sets and cakes for Valentine’s day.

No shelf has any prices or descriptions, which in my opinion makes the shopping experience inconvenient and at times uncomfortable. The jars of jam are definitely bigger compared to the jars in other stores I have visited and all of them have very simple coloring; most having just the name of the brand and type of jam on the front. What I noticed, however, is that they have very exotic types of jam like: guava, black and red currant, pepper, passion fruit, South African figs, and grapefruit. It is definitely not your traditional jam section.

Finally, I have only noticed young college-aged girls and older well-dressed women stopping at the Jam section.

For me the trip to Dean & DeLucawas an experience in and of itself. I enjoyed walking in the store and seeing how different people shop in this high-end supermarket and how they interact with each other. I also decided to buy and try the “Sicilian Red Grapefruit Marmalade” and compare it with my all-time favorite strawberry jelly by St. Dalfour. See you all at CVS in Foggy Bottom next week!

[gwanth1002]

According to Miller’s Cultural Anthropology In a Globalizing World, “personality” is an individual’s patterned and characteristic way of behaving, thinking, and feeling (Chapter 4, page 77). Many cultural anthropologists argue that character and personality are largely formed through enculturation and socialization. In this sense, anthropologists study how various cultures enculture their members into having different personalities and identities through both informal and formal processes. One way this can be achieved is through people’s exposure and enculturation in museums, where they can learn, interact, and explore different cultures. The picture above was taken at the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, DC I visited. In my case, museums have given me the opportunity to develop my artistic and at the same time reserved personality. Museums, like the National Gallery, provide memorable, immersive learning experiences, provoke imagination, introduce new subject matter, and offer unique environments for cultural and intellectual development. In some other cases, the implementation of information technology allows museums to successfully use interactive boards, educational tablets and use various technical innovations to make the learning process more social which contributes towards the development of more social and friendly behavior. Therefore, museums and the various techniques they implement to attract visitors lead to the formation of creative thinking in people, introduce cultural values in the sphere of people’s vital interests, and cultivate a particular attitude towards different cultural and social heritages. Most importantly, however, museums develop different types of personality traits that lead to the formation of artistic personalities and the appreciation of the high arts and reservedness. From an anthropological perspective I would like to know to what extend museums are affecting people’s personality across the United States compared to the European countries.

Another term Miller defines in Cultural Anthropology In a Globalizing World is Historical Trauma (Chapter 5, page 99). Historical trauma is described as the intergenerational transfer of the detrimental effects of colonialism from parents to children. Specifically, it underlines the cumulative emotional and psychological wounding caused by a traumatic experience or event in the past. The picture on the right shows some of the books I am using in writing my honors thesis. Specifically, I am writing on how the policies and strategies implemented by the British colonial government during the British imperial rule in Cyprus from 1878-1959 have resulted in the ethnic division of the island that eventually led to the political conflict of 1974. In the post-colonial era, the intensification of the ethnic division, the civil war between the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities, and the coup d’état against the Cypriot president that led to the occupation of the north part of the island by the Turkish government since 1974 have profoundly affected the historical path of these two communities. Even though it is a frozen conflict, and the active armed conflict has been brought to an end the historical trauma is still present and is passed from generation to generation in both the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities. From the perspective of an anthropologist I would like to know after how many generations the historical trauma stops passing from generation to generation.

[gwanth1002]

According to Miller in Chapter 9 “Expressive Culture,” theater is a type of enactment that seeks to entertain through movement and through words related to dance, music, parades, competitive games and sports, and verbal art. Cross culturally a strong connection exists among myth, ritual, and performance (Miller, Barbara. Cultural Anthropology in The Globalizing World, p. 224). Theater is also a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers, typically actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Furthermore, the more widespread definition of theater includes performances of plays and musical theatre. The art forms of ballet and opera are also considered theater and use many conventions such as acting, costumes and staging. Theater, whether we intended it or not, will always have something to say because the maker has chosen to use the medium to showcase their work. Theatre, therefore is for an audience to co-exist in a space shared between the maker and audience. The picture above was taken at the Kennedy in early November, 2018 from a theatre performance “Silent Night” by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell. It is based on the true story of a wartime ceasefire and a night of peace between the sworn enemies during Christmas Eve Day, and as depicted by the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, Silent Night makes its premiere at the Kennedy Center in the centennial month of World War I’s end. In terms of anthropological knowledge I would like to know more about the impact modern theatre has on the younger generation in the US.

 Another term Miller defines in Chapter 11 is ethnomusicology. According to Miller, the performance arts include music, dance, theater, rhetoric (speechmaking), and narrative (storytelling). But one important area has developed its own name: ethnomusicology, the cross-cultural study of music. It encompasses distinct theoretical and methodical approaches that emphasize cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts of musical behavior, instead of only its isolated sound component.Furthermore, ethnomusicologists study a range of topics, including the form of the music itself, the social positions of musicians, how music interacts with other domains of culture such as religions or healing, and change in musical traditions. Scholars argue that ethnomusicology is combining aspects of folklore, psychology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, comparative musicology, music theory, and history, and that it has adopted perspectives from a multitude of disciplines.In the picture above, which was taken at my Greek friend’s apartment we can see a bouzouki, whichis a musical instrument popular in Greece, Cyprus that was brought the regions in the 1900s by Greek immigrants from Turkey, and quickly became the central instrument to the traditional “rebetiko” music genre. It is in the same instrumental family as the mandolin and the lute. Bouzouki is an important part of the development and later transformation of the Greek and Cypriot societies. Bouzouki is also usually associated with gender specific entertainment, and is usually related to masculinity. This, however, has been changing throughout the years as the position of women in the Greek and Cypriot societies becomes more present and dominant. From the perspective of an anthropologist I would like to know whether ethnomusicology could become a study in schools as part of understanding different cultures and become more acceptive of the diversity among people. Cyprus has historically been very conservative and in my opinion the study of diversity would greatly benefit the youth’s stances such as women’s rights, LGBT rights, acceptance of immigrants etc.

[gwanth1002]

According to Miller, religion consists of beliefs and behavior related to supernatural beings and forces. This definition, however, avoids linking religion with belief in a supreme deity, because some religions have no concept of a supreme deity, whereas others have multiple deities (Miller, Cultural Anthropology of the Globalizing World, Page 195). Miller also states that religion reflects people’s worldview and in a certain way the understanding how the world came to be, its design, and humanity’s place in it. Furthermore, there are different types of religions; there are monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that put religious writings front and center of their believes and polytheistic religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, which believe in multiple gods, and also have a large body of texts that are central to their beliefs. A representative example of religion and religious practicing is the church (building), which is a building used for Christian religious activities, particularly for worship services. Even though the term “church” is mostly used by Christians to refer to the physical buildings where they worship it is sometimes used by analogy to refer to buildings of other religions too. As a Greek-Cypriot, who was born, raised, and baptized in a Greek-Ukrainian Christian Orthodox environment I still practice my religious believes. The picture above was taken at the Saint Sophia Greek-Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, DC, which belongs to the strict Eastern Christian-Orthodox branch of Christianity. The church is not named for the Saint Sophia the martyr, but rather the Holy Wisdom of God in the tradition of Hagia Sophia of Constantinople (Istanbul). It is worth mentioning that the Eastern Christian Orthodox Church, as one of the oldest religious institutions in the world, has played a prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern Europe and the Near East and has, thus, a very high percentage of followers within various diasporas across the world. As an anthropologist and student I would like to research and know more about the extend religious affiliations affect nation’s development nowadays.

Another factor directly associated with practicing religion is the presence of priests usually during religious ceremonies. According to Miller, a priest or priestess is a male of female full-time religious specialist whose position is based mainly on abilities gained through formal training (Miller, Cultural Anthropology of the Globalizing World, Page 203). A priest may receive a divine call, but more often the role is hereditary passed on through priestly lineages. Priests usually perform a wide range of rituals, including period state rituals. Within Christian Orthodox religion Orthodox priests consist only of males that can be either married clergymen or celibate clergymen. In the Orthodox Church a married man may be ordained to the priesthood. His marriage, however, must be the first for both him and his wife. He may not remarry and continue in his ministry even if his wife should die. If a single, or unmarried, or celibate, man is ordained, he must remain celibate to retain his service. The three major priestly orders in Orthodoxy: Deacon, Presbyter, Bishop. The picture above was taken at the Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Washington, DC and in it we can see the conclusion of the divine liturgy of the Sunday service exercised by the Most Blessed Archbishop Tikhon of Washington surrounded by priests of lesser ranks. From an anthropological perspective I would like to know to what extend priests are able to influence the younger generation nowadays in the US. 

[gwanth1002]

According to Miller, marriage is defined as a union between two people who are likely to be but are not necessarily, coresident, sexually involved with each other, and procreative (Miller, Chapter 6, Page 119). Miller also talked about how anthropologists recognize that some concepts of marriage exist in all cultures, though it may take different forms and serve different functions. Miller also notes that same-gender marriages are increasingly recognized as legitimate around the world.  Marriage is usually celebrated through a wedding ceremony when two people exchange vows before their close family members and friends. The picture on the next page was taken at my close friends’ same-sex (Gay) wedding ceremony two weeks ago in Virginia. On the picture, we can see the banquet table decorations and the wooden engravings each guest was given. Wedding ceremonies usually serve several purposes, and they are often a cherished moment in the couple’s history. A wedding ceremony is often utilized as a public display of marriage vows and the couple entering into the marital contract. In the United States, the public stance towards same-sex marriages has dramatically shifted towards a gradual support of them throughout the years. Thus, the wooden engraving, which every guest was given at the beginning of the celebration, plays an allegorical role and represents everyone’s willingness to become a witnesses of a gay ceremony given that many members of the LGBT community have lived isolated and judged lives. From an anthropological perspective I would like to know more about how much American’s opinion has shifted towards the acceptance of gay marriages since 2014 when gay marriage was legalized.

Another term Miller defines is family, which is a group of people who consider themselves related through kinship (Miller, Chapter 6, Page 123). Miller also states that in North American English, the term may include both “close” and “distant” relatives with family members not necessarily living together or have strong bonds with one another but are still considered a family.  Typically, but not always, the adults in a nuclear family are married. There are many different kinds of families, and some of them are: nuclear, extended, joint, blended, and family by choice. My type of family is considered a nuclear family also known as the conjugal family or family of procreation. Nuclear families are comprised of married partners and their offspring. This is common in industrial societies, but it is not the most common type of family in the world, although the practice is spreading through modern development. In the picture on the right, the most immediate members of my nuclear family are depicted. This picture was taken over fall-break at Rock Creek Trail when my visited from New York City with her kids, and my brother in law and my parents flew to DC from Cyprus. I consider my nuclear family to be my parents, my sister, her husband, her kids; all members whom I have a stable relationship with. After reading the CC article about polyandry, I believe that an interesting question an anthropologist may ask is what do members of polyandrous and polyamorous marriages consider to be a nuclear family