These three passages are main stays in American culture. When a person is married, the first thing that happens is that they move out of their parent's house and move in with their spouse and establish a home of their own. The third passage is to establish a family with their new spouse.
The second concept is acculturation which is defined as "major culture changes that people are forced to make as consequence of intensive, firsthand contact between societies" (Haviland, 487). The concept of acculturation was most evident in the presentation made by the tourism group. I learned that when an American travels to another country they must abide by that country's laws, adapt to their language, and the do's and don'ts of life in that country.
I chose Dowry as the third concept of anthropology I learned about from listening to the Hindu Marriages group presentation. Dowry is defined as "payment of a woman's inheritance at the time of her marriage, either to her or her husband" (Haviland, 488). I found it interesting that in the Hindu culture the brides family presents gifts to the grooms family as a symbol of thanks for allowing their son to marry the bride. This tradition is similar to the American tradition of the bride's parents paying for the wedding.
After observing the presentation on pets I found the concept of Hierarchy to be the one concept that stuck out the most. Hierarchy is defined as " an authoritative body or group of things or persons arranged in successive order; a ranked series of persons or things" (Webster's dictionary, 170). I chose this concept after hearing one of the presenters talk about the way her three pets have formed a hierarchy amongst themselves. She talked about having a cat and two dogs. She said that the larger of the two dogs took on the role of alpha dog, which formed a hierarchy between the three pets.
The fifth concept I learned about was cultural relativism.