A piano melody begins, the grand estate stands on the luscious, English grass, and Lord Grantham walks along with his canine companion by his side. He overlooks the grass and walks up the long, winding path that leads to the doors of the old estate. Inside, the call bells ring, and servants walk briskly to their tasks. The lavish, long curtains are opened, and the elaborate fireplace is set. The estate’s rigid structure embodies and personifies the social structure that resides within. Suddenly, the grand, elaborate estate doors open for the world to see.
The movement to get people to eat healthier and live healthier lives has been portrayed numerous times in today’s culture. Many magazines have promoted ways to “Get Healthy Now” and Michelle Obama has even started a program called Let’s Move! in hopes of ending childhood obesity. The manner in which health is constantly in the headlines displays that our health is of great significance. Being healthy can be defined in various ways, but the focus is on obtaining good health through your food choices. Food is eaten to satisfy hunger, but food has a much greater effect on the body – it can either help you or hurt you. By having a healthy diet, you are strengthening your health, but by eating an unhealthy diet, you are placing your health and life at risk. People today are driven in opposite directions when it comes to deciding what to eat. However with the ongoing production of unhealthy foods and the availability of cheap, junk food wherever you go, healthy eating doesn’t usually come to mind for many. Some people prefer unhealthy and junk foods while others prefer the cheap prices of these foods. Preference, cost and access all contribute to a person’s decision in whether or not they will eat healthy. But many people fail to look pass the cost of unhealthy food and don’t focus on the effects of these foods, the real cost of unhealthy eating. Because your health ultimately affects your life, the choice of maintaining a healthy diet or maintaining an unhealthy diet seems like a simple one. However, because of these contributing factors, people don’t always choose what seems like the obvious answer – improve your diet, improve your health.
Surfboard designs, and subsequent riding style, are not just the result of technological advances and economic prosperity, but are the result of psychological factors that originate in a person’s unconscious desires. These features of surfing, the board design and rider’s style, and the surrounding culture are significant to surfers all across the globe. Surfers often discuss the newest boards, and the latest tricks. Surfers will also talk about who is riding the biggest, most dangerous waves. These surfers never see the underlying causes of why they choose certain boards and why they ride a certain style. Surfers often do not even realize they are attempting to reach an unconscious goal when they surf. Some surfers will still stick to the old boards and the old tricks, while never venturing into larger more dangerous breaks, and understand that they need to surf but never realize just why they are surfing in the first place. What are the unconscious, and sometimes conscious desires that motivate surfers to choose a certain board, design boards a certain way, and use them in a particular fashion?
Culture is an aspect of our lives which we cannot ignore for the sole reason that it is a major component of our existence: we experience it every second. Although culture is typically described as the customs and traditions of a people, we can look deeper into what culture really is, going beyond the dictionary definition. I have chosen to examine the aspect of cultural identity: a means of labelling ourselves based on our upbringing; more specifically, I am very interested in delving into the Filipino identity. As a Filipino myself, I want to develop a more substantial yet fluid understanding of being Filipino; synthesizing a solid definition of the Filipino identity, but fluid in regards to being more open to what changes the entity itself.
Based in the College of Mount Saint Vincent, students of the honors course HNRS 371: Methods of Cultural Analysis survey the major methods of cultural analysis under the instruction of Drs. Kristin Lawler and Ronald Scapp. The students are encouraged to question and analyze the constructs of their society with the use of methods such as Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Poststructuralism, Semiotics, and Ethnography. The research projects are the products of the students’ individual analyses in conjunction with the literature and methods introduced by the curriculum.