POST5

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 Over the course of the semester, I have looked at three cultures. I chose the Igbo, the Sherpa, and the Rwala Bedouin cultures. As a reminder I chose the broad category of food consumption. The subcategories I chose were gratification and control of hunger OR eating. I have learned a lot about different cultures and their eating habits and traditions. There were a lot of similarities and differences between these cultures and my own.

The Igbo culture uses subsistence and horticulture as a means of life. The Sherpa are agriculturalists and the Rwala Bedouins are Pastoralists. These are all very different ways of supporting the lives of their people. The Igbo culture eats mainly grains and bread, the Sherpa culture eats potatoes and vegetables, and the Rwala Bedouin eat mainly yams and bread. Although this seems like a major difference between cultures it actually has huge similarities. All of these cultures rely heavily on potatoes, wheat, rice, and bread. They all have different but also similar eating traditions. The Rwala Bedouins fear hunger so they will eat large meals but only once or twice a day. Although they have been faced with famine, they usually eat a large number of leftovers and cherish every bite they have. The Sherpa eat solely to survive and to keep their energy up. They have a plant that can grow year-round so that they won't go hungry. The Sherpa find foods like meat and beer to be dirty and similarly the Rwala Bedouin only eat foods that were not previously living things. The most different culture when it comes to how often they eat is the Igbo. The Igbo culture held crops and food to a very high standard. They ate often and made money off of their cash crops and items. 

Unlike any others the Igbo culture associates women's weight with success in marriage. They also have a large number of guidelines as to who can serve the food, who can drink what drink, and who can prepare the food. For the Sherpa they only eat large amounts when there is an event. An event with a large amount of food show power in their culture. The Rwala Bedouins also use food in a tradition way like the Sherpa do. They prepare a larger amount and more fresh foods when they are hosting guests. The Sherpa and Rwala Bedouins share a similarity with using food in a traditional way because they prepare more food for their guests to show their standing and to show respect to the guest. The Igbo was surprisingly the only culture I found that held more strict guidelines on how food could be prepared and when it could be eaten. 

Now that I have compared and contrasted the similarities and differences between the three cultures, I can now do the same with my culture. I would also like to believe that the culture I live in uses a large amount of bread and potatoes as well. Although we use them in a different way and in different recipes it is still a large basis of foods we eat. There is also a large percentage of people in my culture that are vegetarians which is similar to the Sherpa and the Rwala Bedouins. Although there may be different meanings behind why people are vegetarians, they all share the same foods. My culture is also similar to the Sherpa and Rwala Bedouin in the fact that we always prepare good food and larger amounts of food when we have guests present. My culture is also somewhat similar to the Igbo culture when comparing the standards for women and their food intake. I just pointed out a lot of similarities between my culture and the others. Although there were a few main similarities the cultures differ drastically in the details of these similarities and other aspects.




Worked Cited:

Amadiume, Ifi. 2003. “Culture Summary: Igbo.” New Haven, Conn.: HRAF. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=ff26-000. 

Basden, George Thomas. 1966. Among the Ibos of Nigeria: An Account of the Curious and Interesting Habits, Customs and Beliefs of a Little Known African People by One Who Has for Many Years Lived amongst Them on Close and Intimate Terms. London: Cass. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=ff26-006. 

Amadiume, Ifi. 1987. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society. London: Zed Books. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=ff26-040

KORIEH, CHIMA J. “Yam Is King! But Cassava Is the Mother of All Crops: Farming, Culture, and Identity in Igbo Agrarian Economy.” Dialectical Anthropology 31, no. 1/3 (2007): 221–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29790779. 

Paul, Robert A. 2004. “Culture Summary: Sherpa.” New Haven, Conn.: HRAF. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=ak06-000. 

Ortner, Sherry B. 1973. “Sherpa Purity.” American Anthropologist Vol. 75: 49–63. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=ak06-010. 

Ortner, Sherry B. 1978. “Sherpas through Their Rituals.” In Cambridge Studies in Cultural Systems, 12, 195. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=ak06-008. 

Ding, XY., Zhang, Y., Wang, L. et al. Collection calendar: the diversity and local knowledge of wild edible plants used by Chenthang Sherpa people to treat seasonal food shortages in Tibet, China. J Ethnobiology Ethnomedicine 17, 40 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-021-00464-x


Young, William. 2009. “Culture Summary: Rwala Bedouin.” New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=md04-000. 

Musil, Alois. 1928. “The Manners and Customs of the Rwala Bedouins.” In Oriental Explorations and Studies, xiv, 712. New York: The American Geographical Society. https://ehrafworldcultures-yale-edu.northernkentuckyuniversity.idm.oclc.org/document?id=md04-002.

Emily Pitek. Rwala Bedouin. Database of Religious History, Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia.

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