Band Societies

March 16, 2010 Chapters 5 and 6. Substance Strategies Tribes Chiefdom States Band societies: (hunter/gathers) Small groups (40) Nomadic (mobile) Loose territory Circulation of kin/groups Advantages: Variety Resource Consumption exchange Egalitarian (equal) gender roles craft special p.o.p sustainability guns germs and steel… movie March 18, 2010 tribes: sociocultural system No centralized Authority diffused Kinship groups Subsistence Horticulture Cultivation Slash and burn Not intense Labor low Cyclical process Pastoral Past: Domestication Small herds Care for animals
Lia 's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia 's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural
Neil Ernst decided to call child protective services when Lia Lee’s parents Nou Kou and Foua were reluctant to give her her medicine. Dr. Neil Ernst said: “I felt it was important for these Hmongs to understand that there were certain elements of medicine that we understood better than they did and that there were certain rules they had to follow with their kids’ lives. I wanted the word to get out in the community that if they deviated from that, it was not acceptable behavior.”(pg. 79 Fadiman). Dr. Ernst could have also been arrested for not reporting it. There were some alternatives to calling Child Protective Services such as my favorite one; having a nurse visit the Lees’ three times daily to administer the medications, but this thought did not occur to Dr. Ernst and/or seemed unreasonable at the time. Although Fadiman does not mention what Dr. Ernst thought about this course of action, I can only suspect that it would have been too expensive to have a nurse visit three times a day. Also they shouldn’t be rewarded for their noncompliance by having someone else administer their daughter’s medication. It might have also provoked the Lees’ to anger because they didn’t like to give Lia the medicine because of how the medicine made her depressed and sullen. After Lia was taken away for a period of a few weeks, Nou Kou almost beat an interpreter named Sue Xiong who was interpreting for a