Barbara Myerhoff's Contribution to Methodological and Epistemological Trends - Essay Example

Anthropology In her career, Barbara Myerhoff has immensely contributed to methodological and epistemological trends that have become cultural anthropological social norms. These methods include reflexivity, storytelling and social activism. In this essay, I discuss these contributions as well as her influence and legacy. In the year 1968, Myerhoff holds a PhD. In anthropology at UCLA University for her thesis on the ritual form on Huichol. She performed a reconstruction of the State of origin of the Huichol people on cooperation as well as one example among many locals of utopia. Myerhoff has been an intermediary between the Huichol people. They describe exhaustively her account of the hunt for Peyote, deer and corn ritual culture, religious Cosmology or the rite of peyote, but rather their interpretation Ramon. Myerhoff work in the 1970s and 1980s invented the anthropological study of ritual and life stories. It defines academic and public elderly perception and has been a pioneer in her scholarship on women and religion. Her research turned personal with her latest documentary film numbers our days and fight against cancer. Myerhoff was a master in research after the Saints in every detail of everyday experience. She brought a clear intensity and the importance for all that she has done. Her focus also remains on the Ethnography as with Peyote Hunt. According to Myerhoff, the first Huichol people never knew a Peyote vision or attend an event hunting Peyote or pilgrimage. Myerhoff emphasizes the participation and the life of her most important informant of Ramon Medina Silvas work, a shaman priests or mara and his wife Guadalupe Ríos De La Cruz. As a result, only a participant observer could plunge Myerhoff completely in the rituals and symbolism associated with this hunt. She tried not to relate Huichol and explain Cosmology in their entire religion, but focuses on their understanding of the complex Peyote deer corn and recognizes no doubt. Many of its meanings are intact here. (Myerhoff 1974:16) The Huizhou means that the hunt for Peyote back to the birth of the gods and the gods, a place where all members of the unit are combined. Although other researchers, the story behind the ritual return of sacred Huichol have stretched a concrete explanation of possible forced immigration, Myerhoff seems much more value placed on the mythical return contrary to the historic declaration. Barbara Myerhoffs study of anthropologists culture support Huichol in their writings of the year; it has been published so far. It is important, that rich content because search and anthropologists studying various aspects of Meso America and Huichol Culture provided the anthropological community and aspects of life. Linda Brown, an archaeologist who has studied in Mesoamerica oriented hunting rituals in the Guatemala Highlands. In this article Brown work refers to Myerhoffs several times and used a cultural background for the artifacts provided, they discovered during the work on this study. Although Brown, even in a distant country, gave insight into a culture that can help to identify and retrieve the rituals from other people’s works like Myerhoffs. Influenced by Peter Furst, who has also worked with the Huichol Indians and Barbara Myerhoff, wrote this Ethnography while, Myerhoff examined many facets of Huichol Culture. In their Ethnography describes the hunt for Peyote, religious rituals and shamanistic art influenced all were discussed, and references to other anthropologists are studying in this field. In addition, this factor in the Huichol Culture goes into detail about the other religions and myths by Myerhoff. This ethnographic, others have referenced, despite the strengths weaknesses there. Such a weakness is its publication. This Ethnography appeared in 1976, it is a possibility/probability that has adapted to the culture as time progressed. Although there are newer articles, talk less liquid pieces of ethnography by Myerhoffs. As the archaeological study of Linda Brown, inevitably there are parts of culture that have changed over the years. This Ethnography can have its strengths and weaknesses, but it is still a major investigation in the anthropological community, which has been cited and recognized by anthropologists as such to the present day. The people Huichol have cultural history full of ritual, drug use and spiritual worship. These traditions have molded and shaped by culture. During the stay with the Huichol people, she realized the meaning of the ritual of the hunt for Peyote. Whereas most people, only the visions of Maraakme have profound meaning that others are first for the beauty (Meyerhoff, 1974:164). In religion, the Bible insists on four symbols: deer, corn, peyote and Eagle. Each of these symbols comes from Tayaupa, the God-Sun-Huichol. As an ethnographer, Silva has learned Myerhoff the Huichol Culture, traditions and values through an informant important named Ramon Medina. A group of people, Barbara Myerhoff examined the Huichol Indians, to inhabit the central portion of West of the Mexico. This deeply religious people have a structure of belief that encompasses all aspects of life, and includes the worship of multiple gods through sacrifice and prayers. The Trinity divine pre-Columbian mythology is the deer, corn plant and plants from Peyote. The stag symbolizes the Huichol spirit guide channel and teacher of knowledge for the shaman. The unit of men and women in their spiritual journey is symbolized by male and female deer together. The physical survival of the Huichol depends on corn and symbolizes wisdom of the spirit. (Butzine and Jaurique, 2001) Peyote represents knowledge. People make small stone sculptures representing the gods Huichol in caves or cliffs and bring beads, feathers and food (Luz 2001). They also use it as a form of religious expression, but clothes. You believe that their clothing is very decorative and colorful. Barbara Myerhoff created a wonderful picture of the treatment of the elderly in our society. What she finds is in the middle of a group of people, who are still alive and still ignored their life to the maximum, but that and removed from their families and society as a whole. I went into this book for a class I had to read with awe. I found that one of the few things which mean the emotional side leads the elderly. I avoid the view in which our own future will look very old by fear. Yes, to see how our body and our spirit are operated with age is shocking and uncomfortable, but its even worse, the way our society treats the elderly. See what these people lived and how they were treated, makes me more determined to try to improve their situation. Famous anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff received a grant to explore the aging process; it decided some older Jews in Venice, California, studying, instead of a more exotic people report. We are led through the Myerhoffs of their subject’s experiences, meeting and their development of personal relationships with them. We get to know them, and it is his most successful: their Ethnography themes arise from the side as complex humans, with very complex personalities and histories. It revealed too much for us, about their process intellectual and emotional as an ethnographer of the reception of members of the community and the adoption of it (and how they are perceived on the space), but also on their personal actions, feelings and reactions to situations, which reveals his personal involvement in the lives of their subjects and their investment in the development of operation and the Centres policy. This isnt a study, which is checked with objectivity, but instead, it is a study, where he Myerhoff develops this work in the context of their own personal life story. I think it was possibly this intimate way their results, who has worked to preserve (and communicate) a sense of respect for the very difficult stories and experiences to share, older people were with her, and who was also with lots of affection that she has developed for them, as well as gives a glimpse into a world complexity. Myerhoff involves the history of her own grandmother in the last chapter (p. 237-240) - as she described the possibilities of survival with admiration, shows how growth before patriarchy and adversity and physical strength, emotional and mental of older women, they found alya-Senior Center - their connection with their personal and family history on the stories and people in the middle. Stories that (where one learns to know more on his private life at home, its policy and his death at the beginning of work - but then show his presence and opinions in the context of the later accounts) collected private by Shmuel, it also shows include her election as its first chapter how it emotional privilege this relationship through their process to make this work. Their own attitudes, as well as intellectuals and their class privileges and the personal political allies of their ideological Shmuel own positions and served in the foreground the basis of their friendship. So we see the rest of the focus in their point of view, of stories, as we are aware, as we have all the time, their political feelings must read many situations in the workplace. Works Cited: Gluckman, Max. Radcliffe-Brown lectures in social a thropology 1974. London: Publ. for the British Academy by Oxford Univ. Press, 1974. Print. Myerhoff, Barbara G., Marc Kaminsky, and Mark Weiss. Last tales and talks of Barbara Myerhoff. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007. Print. Myerhoff, Barbara G... Number our days. New York: Dutton, 1978. Print. Thomsen, Vilhelm, and Thomas anthropologic reproduction of the German transl. from Danish, publ. in Halle, 1870). Bloomington: Indiana University. The Hague: Mouton, 1967.Print. Read More