Remote Culture

Remote Culture

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Remote Culture

There are almost 195 countries in our world and every country has it’s own culture. Culture is a term that we get to hear a lot as we grow up but we come to understand its meaning a lot later. Culture is actually the term used to denominate a collection of values and norms prevailing in a specific society or region. Culture consists of the customs, traditions, values, ideas, art, and other manifestations of the human intellectual achievement related to collectivity. Groups of people living together in a geogrpahical area have their own unique culture. A lot of work has been done by researchers, scholars, experts, philosophers, and even psychologists in the area of culture. I recently came across a brilliantly written article in which the author discussed various aspects of the culture of a remote area.

The article, published in a well-known webinar, BBC future, has been penned down by a wildlife researcher and geologist, Rachel Nuwer, who has been to many global destinations and discovered a number of unique types of flora and fauna. The article, “Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes” is about the members of a remote tribe or an uncontacted community that recently showed up in a village near the Amazon Forest in Acre, Brazil.

It was an out of the ordinary situation as any such contact was last made in 1996, 24 years ago ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"YWLUYlZm","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Nuwer, n.d.)","plainCitation":"(Nuwer, n.d.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":14,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/97DHKB9E"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/97DHKB9E"],"itemData":{"id":14,"type":"webpage","abstract":"One of the world’s last isolated tribes has ‘emerged’ from the forest. Is it to make contact, or have darker reasons forced them out? Rachel Nuwer investigates.","language":"en","title":"Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes","title-short":"Anthropology","URL":"https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes","author":[{"family":"Nuwer","given":"Rachel"}],"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2020",1,28]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Nuwer, n.d.). That is a pretty big gap but the situation has not always been the same. The people of Brazil, especially the villagers living near the Amazon forest have reported occasional occurrences or sightings of such people near the forest. The members of such tribes or clans usually remain hidden and do not like to make with humans, but this time, it was inevitable. The communication details with the seven members that came out tell us that these tribes do not follow any specific religion ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"RNQgR8Ie","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Gendron et al., 2014a)","plainCitation":"(Gendron et al., 2014a)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":16,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/SH8L6PYL"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/SH8L6PYL"],"itemData":{"id":16,"type":"article-journal","abstract":"It is widely believed that certain emotions are universally recognized in facial expressions. Recent evidence indicates that Western perceptions (e.g., scowls as anger) depend on cues to U.S. emotion concepts embedded in experiments. Because such cues are standard features in methods used in cross-cultural experiments, we hypothesized that evidence of universality depends on this conceptual context. In our study, participants from the United States and the Himba ethnic group from the Keunene region of northwestern Namibia sorted images of posed facial expressions into piles by emotion type. Without cues to emotion concepts, Himba participants did not show the presumed “universal” pattern, whereas U.S. participants produced a pattern with presumed universal features. With cues to emotion concepts, participants in both cultures produced sorts that were closer to the presumed “universal” pattern, although substantial cultural variation persisted. Our findings indicate that perceptions of emotion are not universal, but depend on cultural and conceptual contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)","container-title":"Emotion","DOI":"10.1037/a0036052","ISSN":"1931-1516(Electronic),1528-3542(Print)","issue":"2","page":"251-262","source":"APA PsycNET","title":"Perceptions of emotion from facial expressions are not culturally universal: Evidence from a remote culture","title-short":"Perceptions of emotion from facial expressions are not culturally universal","volume":"14","author":[{"family":"Gendron","given":"Maria"},{"family":"Roberson","given":"Debi"},{"family":"Vyver","given":"Jacoba Marietta","non-dropping-particle":"van der"},{"family":"Barrett","given":"Lisa Feldman"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2014"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Gendron et al., 2014a). They have various religious beliefs and different concepts regarding the existence of God. The governmental system followed by this tribe is simple and non-complex. They select a person from the tribe who is considered to be more wise and courageous among them all and choose him as their leader.

The article also told a lot about the management of affairs within these tribes and how these tribes manage their economy. It is surprising to see that even in today’s modern world, some people still follow the practices of barter trade system. One of the saddest aspects of this article is the revelation that these tribes are being hugely affected as a result of globalization. As we all know that globalization is the process through which businesses, companies, organizations, and even people grow and flourish, and interact with each other. It has been an extremely beneficial process for almost all humanity. However, this process has not proven to be of much worth for these tribes as the ever-growing and expanding population is robbing them of their space ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"E7Gv6dRx","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Gendron et al., 2014b)","plainCitation":"(Gendron et al., 2014b)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":19,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/MDPA2J8B"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/aDSOzgCJ/items/MDPA2J8B"],"itemData":{"id":19,"type":"article-journal","abstract":"A central question in the study of human behavior is whether certain emotions, such as anger, fear, and sadness, are recognized in nonverbal cues across cultures. We predicted and found that in a concept-free experimental task, participants from an isolated cultural context (the Himba ethnic group from northwestern Namibia) did not freely label Western vocalizations with expected emotion terms. Responses indicate that Himba participants perceived more basic affective properties of valence (positivity or negativity) and to some extent arousal (high or low activation). In a second, concept-embedded task, we manipulated whether the target and foil on a given trial matched in both valence and arousal, neither valence nor arousal, valence only, or arousal only. Himba participants achieved above-chance accuracy only when foils differed from targets in valence only. Our results indicate that the voice can reliably convey affective meaning across cultures, but that perceptions of emotion from the voice are culturally variable.","container-title":"Psychological Science","DOI":"10.1177/0956797613517239","ISSN":"0956-7976","issue":"4","journalAbbreviation":"Psychol Sci","language":"en","page":"911-920","source":"SAGE Journals","title":"Cultural Relativity in Perceiving Emotion From Vocalizations","volume":"25","author":[{"family":"Gendron","given":"Maria"},{"family":"Roberson","given":"Debi"},{"family":"Vyver","given":"Jacoba Marieta","non-dropping-particle":"van der"},{"family":"Barrett","given":"Lisa Feldman"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2014",4,1]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Gendron et al., 2014b). The members of such tribes who come in contact with the human civilization report that their houses have been burnt and their people have been massacred badly as the surrounding villagers wanted land for various purposes.

Hence, this article revealed many new facts and information about not only the remote tribe that was recently sighted but many other aspects of the tribes or people living in remote cultures. Some of these facts were very shocking and required immediate action from the authorities and from humanity as a whole. The police department and government need to take action against drug traffickers on an immediate basis. Another step that we need to take is to make sure that we, as humans, do not attack the people of these tribes so that they can live in peace and tranquility.

References

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Gendron, M., Roberson, D., van der Vyver, J. M., & Barrett, L. F. (2014a). Perceptions of emotion from facial expressions are not culturally universal: Evidence from a remote culture. Emotion, 14(2), 251–262. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036052

Gendron, M., Roberson, D., van der Vyver, J. M., & Barrett, L. F. (2014b). Cultural Relativity in Perceiving Emotion From Vocalizations. Psychological Science, 25(4), 911–920. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613517239

Nuwer, R. (n.d.). Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes. Retrieved January 28, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes