Michael Shi Essays (536 words) - Narratology, Rhetoric, Reason

Michael Shi Reading Response 2 I chose to read "Animals Are Goo d to Think and Good to Prohibit " written by S. J. Tambiah . This is an ethnographic study published in 1969 that focuses on dietary rules regarding animals in a village in northeastern Thailand. He investigates the relationship between dietary restrictions and the animal classification scheme as well as the connection between dietary restrictions and sex and marriage. Tambiah does this by analyzing language, rules of sexual conduct and house arrangement and connecting specific marriage and sex rules to housing space rules and to eating rules. "The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions" is a more contemporary piece and was written in 2001 by Banu Subramaniam . Subramaniam analyzes the way we describe and think about invasive species and draws parallels to xenophobic attitudes towards immigrants. Subramaniam examines the language we use to speak about invasive species, looking at a variety of sources, including newspaper headlines and academic studies. For example, she argues that our use of the words "native" and "alien" are used as it suits our purposes. The "re-invention of the native' as the white settlers and not Native Americans'" ( Subramaniam , 36) appears again when it comes to exotic species that benefit us, such as crops that we find easy to grow. These two readings both focused on attitudes towards animals that came about from human societies. They look closely at human attitudes and find that they are consistent whether they are dealing with each other or animals. The piece by Tambiah deals with just one village in Thailand, whereas Subramaniam's essay focuses on the United States in modern time. As a result, Tambiah was able to be much more detailed and specific and draw complex relationships between animal classification systems, house arrangement, and eating rules. Subramaniam , on the other hand, drew from a larger variety of sources but didn't go as i n-depth. Both pieces made me think about how our views in human society translate to our attitudes towards animals and about how we view plants and animals similarly to ourselves. However, t he essay by Subramaniam was especially interesting to me as a result of recent events in the United States . Whenever I read things that uncover something unexpected or shocking about the world using select pieces of evidence or case studies such as in this essay , I'm always skeptical and question where the author gets their evidence. For example, I wonder how many articles and pieces of writing that describe invasive species don't speak about them in language similar to immigrants. I also wonder if Subramaniam is overanalyzing and creating something where there is nothing and I'm just going along with it because she has good logical reasoning in her thought process. I generally end up just accepting the author's conclusions, since I'm not sure how to verify their conclusions myself. Subramaniam , Banu . 2001. "The Aliens Have Landed! Reflections on the Rhetoric of Biological Invasions." Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 2 (1): 26-40. Tambiah , S. J. 1969. "Animals Are Good to Think and Good to Prohibit." Ethnology 8 (4): 423-59.