Sorry everyone, I have been having some troubles here, getting access to the blog, deleting my post, twice. Hope no one was too inconvenienced.still couldn't get the jump break to work. sorry.
Who, when they first discovered that burping was a sign of respect in Polynesia did not try it, only to be disappointed that this mere cultural knowledge did not make it polite to Mom?
Social etiquette is something we learn, not from a book, usually, but from our parents and by
trial and error in society. The customs that persist are significantly tied to our history and help us to connect with this history and our predecessors. Unfortunately, as the world becomes more and more globalized and westernized many cultures are losing their individuality that allows them to maintain their identity.
Kenya, while highly westernized, has maintained some of it's distinctive cultural etiquette practices. One simple example i,s that when men eat roasted goat, they do not wash their hands afterwards. Susan explains that this practice is preserved from a time when men hunted the goats. There was no lotion or skin care so they would rub the hot fat on their faces and arms, helping their skin. Now the practice is connected to honoring ancestors who had to hunt the goats.
Another example that is a bit trickier is that all adult women are referred to as mama and children refer to all adults as uncle or aunt. Kenyan greeting etiquette
A friend of mine from Kenya named John, was telling me about his family. He is the second to youngest of twelve. It is common there for families to be large and often aunts or uncles are younger than their nieces and nephews. Extended families maintain a sense of connection and families tend to be fluid. John told me stories about his nieces and nephews, cousins, and second cousins who would come and live with his mother for several years. He himself lived with an adult sister for three years. A cultural heritage of family connectedness in which, to a child, everyone appears to be some sort of relative is preserved in the practice of using family titles even among strangers. I quote Susan who wrote: "This is just the tip of iceburg that is Kenyan social etiquette. It is as rich and diverse as our tapestry of tribal groups. There are no books and instruction manuals on these customs; rather they are deeply engrained into our psyche. Men and women who observe them, do so with a definite sense of pride. " Etiquette and social custom connect individuals to their cultural heritage
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This is something I always observe when I spend much time with another family. Every family has their own taboos and etiquette rules. In my family we dont chew with our mouth open or talk while eating. It's something that drives me crazy when i'm around people who do. This is just 1 example, but there are so many differences between people and their ideas, not to mention when we cross cultures we can feel just utterly lost until we get an idea of what the customs are. This is something that makes it hard for us to coexist in the world until we get past our ignorance and embarassment and can figure it out.
ReplyDeleteI totally can relate to this subject. Especially with Mikey's comment. I think a lot of people especially nowadays just develop habits by watching parents or other family members eat. I don't know if it is something that is necessary taught to them, but rather just something people observe and learn to do. (That's why I think some people don't realize they are chewing with their mouth open or talking with food in their mouth.)
ReplyDeleteI think this type of knowledge is interesting, because I feel like it is transmitted in a variety of ways. Misa was talking about how you develop a lot of these habits by just watching parents or others, but at the same time, parents do engage in some active teaching about table manners, etc. The whole stereotypical chew-with-your-mouth-closed, don't-put-your-elbows-on-the-table thing wouldn't be a mom stereotype if it wasn't rooted in some kind of truth. My mom is South African and eats with a knife in her right hand and fork in her left, and piles food on the back of her fork before lifting it into her mouth. I probably did that as a young child just by observing the way my family ate, but it was also something that my mom taught me. She taught me how to hold my silverware, and I ate like her (and like my brothers). When I started to see that people outside my family didn't eat like us--they would just hold their fork, no knife, and eat with it like a scoop--my mom still taught me that that was not how we ate.
ReplyDeleteWow this seems to be one of the best examples of folk knowledge! It is so ingrained in a culture or a specific family and even a specific person, but we definitely do not learn it from a book! I really liked your comment on globalization... I feel like our western table manners or at least how we eat food have spread across the world. For one I know that our companies like McDonalds are in many countries around the world and I wonder if Japanese people eat Big Macs with chopsticks! Or maybe they preserve their own eating methods/folk knowledge better than I think they do....
ReplyDeleteI agree with William, This is a really good example. I think it was interesting how Lauren's Mom taught her to use her silverware differently despite the cultural pressures of America to eat differently. In a different way, my Mom was taught to completely clear her plate, with no scraps of food left at all or even juices. She did not pass on this tradition or social norm from her family to ours, partly because of how my father was taught, and because it wasn't as important to her as it was to her father (a Great Depression baby). In both these cases of mothers, we can see how folk knowledge can be transformed or sustained by the traditions of the rising generation and their decisions on what's important.
ReplyDeleteMorgan makes a good point about folk knowledge being transformed or sustained by the rising generation. It makes you wonder how general certain practices really are, and for how long. What kinds of folk knowledge endure? And isn't etiquette extremely relative and subject to change?
ReplyDeleteAlicia - I think your title was misleading. The bulk of your post was about Kenya, not burping. Great to bring in the personal connection to a foreign culture. I wonder, would these practices be historical in Africa, or just current?
I think maybe the idea of change overtime and evolution of knowledge is one thing that could identify it as folk knowledge. Written, oral, and printed knowledge are stagnant in a way: preserved forever as they were first penned or published. Folk knowledge lives with the folk it is dynamic.
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