flâneur

The Peoples of America

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One of the things I’ve heard Americans say again and again is that “we don’t have an accent”—a statement which suggests that our culture is homogeneous and nondescript. This is a profoundly annoying and difficult thing for an anthropologist to parcel given that with each culture you have to figure out its underlying logical structure. This is something that cultures overtly share through a variety of things such as their religion, media, childrearing, literature, philosophy, art, fashion, military, and everything else. Cultures operate through a series of statements about how the world works and who their people are that unconsciously permeate the entire nature of that society. A culture simply cannot help but exist. There must always be an underlying operating system which relates to the lived experience of the people in a given area and its geography, living conditions, ethnic breakdown, and history. It is truly remarkable that people, even very educated Americans, know almost nothin

Nik Shuliahin/Monument valley’s scenery One of the things I’ve heard Americans say again and again is that “we don’t have an accent”—a statement which suggests that our culture is homogeneous and nondescript. This is a profoundly annoying and difficult thing for an anthropologist to parcel given that with each culture you have to figure out its underlying logical structure. This is something that cultures overtly share through a variety of things such as their religion, media, childrearing, literature, philosophy, art, fashion, military, and everything else. Cultures operate through a series o

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