Cultural Anthropology Blog

 Niko Cantu

Mr.Roddy

Ihss

2 September 2021


Anthropology Blog

The focus of this article was about the increase in deforestation of the Amazon during COVID-19. While the deforestation rate was still rising when COVID-19 hit there was a massive spike during the heart of the pandemic. During the beginning of quarantine between March and June deforestation rates increased 827% in Trincheira-Bacajá, 420% in  Kayapó, and 238% in Mundurucu ILs in Pará. The reason for these massive increases in deforestation was due to the 35% increase in the value of gold because of the uncertainties of the pandemic. A big part of the deforestation that has happened has been illegal and was done by gold prospectors, and now 2,400 hectares(equal to 24 million square meters) of forest have been destroyed. As the prospectors have continued to tear through the Amazon it has had a deadly effect on the isolated peoples that still live in the Amazon. Covid-19 now being able to reach these tribes has greatly affected their elderly as they do not have the medication needed to treat their sickness. On top of this the ranchers and the land grabbers had been burning the deforested areas during the Amazon dry season. This, as you would expect, created large bodys of smoke that further impacted the region's healthcare system with respiratory disease. It also seems that the government has had connection towards this issue for some time. As the author talks about his time in 1970s during high school he says that they were taught that the Amazon was not a very populated place and that it was of recent occupation however this is not the case, as the author later finds out. As the author was studying anthropology in the 1990s he found out that the Amazon is actually a very sociopolitically complex region. Its Unique landscape allowed the flexibility of the native people to play a key role in making them more suitable for human endeavors. Considering that the government at this time had a large influence in the school system they most likely did not have any attention towards these ingdigonus people. Thus meaning they did not want the Amazon as a topic of focus in school. The author also mentioned that in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution established the Amazon as well as other biomes as national heritage , however it is said that the liberal representatives that wrote this did not intend for it to protect the Amazon. Now as things continue tribes and their organizations are trying to reason with the government to help increase the COVID-19 protective measures so that their people can continue to live a healthy life. 

I believe that this issue, while there's still a lot more to it, revolves around cultural anthropology as well as levels of political science. Both of these intertwined with one another as the government's role in this issue plays just as important of a role as the tribes do. While it is up to the government to change what is happening it is the reasoning of the native tribes that continues to create tension in this situation.   


https://culanth.org/fieldsights/a-tale-of-ruination-amazon-forest-peoples-and-the-deadly-synergistic-effects-of-the-pandemic

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cultural Anthropology blog

 India Riley Mr.Roddy IHSS September 2, 2021 Anthropology blog     My article was about wildfires. All across the Mediterranean fires are increasingly becoming larger, and more dangerous. This could be due to many different causes, the most likely is human inflicted. Because of climate change the chances of a fire have significantly increased. While farming is practical and beneficial for food, most farming strategies have become more harmful than good for our environment. The chemical pesticides and fertilizers are extremely flammable, with just one spark the entire field could burst into flame within minutes. When dedicating a large amount of land to farmland or cattle range, its safe to assume that at some point that will be engulfed in a fire. Rarely a field could emerge to flames even if a human hasn't touched it, because plants release so much oxygen, too much of any sort of plant could combust to flames during drought seasons or lightning storms significantly...
Read more

Prisoner of The Infidels

  Niko Cantu Mr. Rodey IHSS 21 October 2021 Prisoner of The Infidels 1）Osman’s writing is far more modern than other writings from his time. It has a very direct and straightforward structure and its translation to English is paractly identical to modern English writing. An example of this direct writing was when Osman said “From this, I understood God's will,namly, that my master had no intention of ever granting me freedom”. This sentence for one use I as he refers to himself in the first person, which was not very common during that time.   2) Osman is clearly very connected to his Muslim religon and repedidly mentions Allah throughou the story. A clear example of this use is when he says “I have no money, and no one is going to help me because of Allah''. This is a clear example of how SOman instinctively believes that Allah may not have an effect on his current situation, he thinks of Allah as a part of his daily life.  3) A discussion that Osman had to make was...
Read more

Linguistics Blog

  Max Barger Mr. Roddy IHSS 7 September 2021 Linguistics Blog This article goes over the study that the way you pronounce different words, can be predicted by your political view. It is shown that Democrats, pronounce words that are from different nationalities, closer to the actual pronunciation than Republicans might. When people like Donald Trump, for example, pronounce words like Tanzania as t an- zay -nee-uh instead of its correct pronunciation as tan- zuh -nee-uh . On the other hand, there is Barack Obama, who has been given thanks for pronouncing the word Pakistan as pock-ee-stahn rather than pak-iss-stan .       In the study, the researcher takes a group of people, without knowing their political views and asks them to read out a few sentences out loud that contain foreign words. After the sentences were read, they were asked to share their political standpoint. It turned out that Democrats did in fact pronounce words closer to the original pronunciati...
Read more