Short answer Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Short answer - Assignment Example very important to study cultural variations in the prevalent pressures of globalization and how the changing dynamics of the world are impacting culture. I have a Chinese friend, whose mother scolds him frequently and he listens quietly, that lies in contrast with the way I am and I feel it is the cultural difference between the two of us that makes him revere elders comparatively more. Generalized reciprocity refers to giving something such as a gift to someone without expecting a gift in return. Balanced reciprocity on the other hand refers to giving someone a gift while having the expectation of a return gift which may not necessarily be of the same value. While the first two forms of reciprocity have relationship building as a goal, negative reciprocity is largely motivated by self-interest. It refers to exchange of things with the expectation of gaining personally by the exchange (Uhl-Bien & Maslyn, 2003). Since anthropology deals with studying human interactions, studying reciprocity becomes an imperative. When I was a child I used to give my friends gifts on their birthdays with the expectation of getting return gifts on my birthday, which can be an example of balanced reciprocity. Over the years the family structures have evolved from extended to nuclear families, particularly in the Asian countries. In an extended family system property and income is joint in a family comprising of brothers, sisters, parents who may choose to live together under a roof or separately. In the nuclear family structure a man lives alone with his wife and children with no shared income and property with the rest of his family (Bahadur & Dhawan, 2008). Since the study of anthropology entails studying the changing social and cultural landscape, thus studying the family structures is but a part of anthropology. My Chinese friend told me that in China there exists an extended family system where all members of a family live together which seems so different than how families in