After gathering the countries of origin of some of the clothing and food in my home, I found that most of the clothing items came from outside the U.S. and most of the food was distributed from somewhere within the U.S.. Most of the clothing was made in China, but a majority of the t-shirts were made in Nicaragua. Honduras was another popular country that t-shirts came from. Basically all other clothing was made in China. Some shirts were also made in Cambodia and Vietnam. As for food, I couldn’t find where it came from, other than where it was distributed from. Most of it was distributed from somewhere in the U.S., like Michigan, Kansas, Florida, or South Carolina. I found out that our family’s minivan was assembled in Canada. Our tv was assembled in Taiwan. Out of the 104 items I looked at, only 14 were made in the U.S., which is only 13.5%. Each item I had to find the country of origin of was a part of the material culture of my family.
The Youtube video, If The World Were 100 People (Dr. Maura Cullen), creates a world like ours, but with smaller proportions. Instead of 7.1 billion people in the world, how about if there were only 100 people. It had lots of numbers and statistics about the smaller world’s population. It gave facts like, only one person would have HIV or there would only be eighteen cars in the smaller world (Cullen). I believe the video was trying to communicate that the world a person sees around them is not like the rest of the world. The rest of the world is in fact, much poorer than most people think. The world is full of subcultures. There are subcultures all around you, if you wish to find them. A subculture is kind of like a miniature culture within a culture or simply different cultural patterns than the majority of a society (Macionis, page 64). For me, the most memorable part of the video was the statistic that informed me that fifty three of the one hundred people would live on less than two dollars per day (Cullen). Because of all of the wealth around me, I guess I don’t really think as much about the poverty facing so many people around the world. The 50% men and 50% women statistic didn’t surprise me, but the statistic about the level of education did (Cullen). I didn’t realize that if the world were only one hundred people, only eighteen of them would be able to read and write (Cullen). This video reminded me that there is so much going on all around the world, I...
