b. Group/ pg. 100: People who interact with one another and who believe that what they have in common is significant; also called a social group. The way the definition group is portrayed in The Real Slumdogs to me is the groups that work together to rag pick. They are groups of men and women that come together in the slum and go to the dumps to sort through trash and waste. All of the trash, they sort through everything, saying it all has a purpose. Especially all of the plastic. They break it down, clean it and ship it to the sellers to use.
Just in the slum of Dharavi there is one million people to one square mile. Think about how crammed they have to be. The groups live in filth with no running water or working sewage. All of the buildings are illegal. The rag picker groups go through human waste and garbage to find some things to repurpose or make a profit. A woman found a bottle of chemicals in it and smelled it. It made her whole face burn the entire day just from smelling the potent chemicals. The following day her face was swollen, so who knows what toxic thing was in the bottle.
The groups work ten plus hours a day and only are paid five dollars. With their common interests in mind they are adding value to their group. Even though they are poor and live in slums it is still a powerful force. By the rag pickers being in this group they are forming group values, interests, and norms. They are in these groups and can perform better to make more of production. They eat, sleep, work, and survive. Even living in these slums as a group they make the best out of it. They have schooling, jobs, places of Worship, and their homes.
One of the men Baboo went home every day to inhabitable living conditions he called home. We as Americans value hard work too but also get paid more working in groups or not. //319|| c. Language/ pg. 42: A system of symbols that can be combine in an infinite number of ways and can represent not only objects but also abstract thought. In the film language was represented many times. One that stuck out to me was the story of Laxmi. She worked so hard in order for her daughter to get an education. She would always help her to study school material. It was mostly in English too.
This will give her daughter a lot of advantages down the road. She will learn how to be fluent in English. When she speaks English it will be more common in the workforce areas, even in India. Many schools around the world are teaching multiple languages to open many more doors and opportunities. With a common language it allows us humans to communicate freely with one another. Also they share perspectives and socially interact with each other. Each word that we use is a symbol and they all have meaning. Even though they have meaning, in different cultures they don’t mean the same thing.
Language allows all cultures to exist around the world. Our language allows human experience to be cumulative. We pass knowledge, ideas, and attitudes to our next generation through language. It is one of the most powerful things we have in our lives. It allows our generations to build on experiences even when they weren’t there and didn’t participate. They can modify what they learn. Without language our culture would not be as advanced as it is now. If you are a small child or an elder adult you are using language in some way. If a baby is crying that is their way of language.
It gives us the ability to share the past and ways to develop the future. 1/300/1 d. Stereotypes/ pg. 110: Assumptions of what people are like, whether true or false. This term was represented in the film because we as a society stereotype poor people. Most people think they are uneducated, unemployed, and dumb. This is very untrue. The slums were very organized, and they consisted of places of worship, schools, and businesses. They all worked very hard every day to pick through trash just to recycle a lot of it for bigger businesses.
Most of the children in the slum were also educated and going to school or being home schooled. The parents would work extra hard to make a better life for their children so they could not be a stereotype. In the film Laxmi’s daughter Sheetal received an education with the help of her mother. Even though we stereotype more than eighty percent of the slums people were employed. They might have not had the best jobs in the world, like sorting through the trash as a rag picker, but they worked very hard at it and were proud. It shows to me you don’t have to be the stereotypical rich person to be happy.
In all different cultures in the world they don’t have it as good as us Americans yet they are still happy and grateful. The people of Dharavi certainly earn a living for their families. It shows how important it is not to judge people with your first impressions. They do set the tone for the interaction but like they say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. The way you act when you first meet someone o assume how they are will influence the way you act toward the person and the way they act towards you. //304// e. Cultural relativism/ pg. 37: Not judging a culture but trying to understand on it’s own terms.
This term really wasn’t represented by the people of Dharavi, but more by the man or the woman themselves explaining the culture and structure Dharavi was throughout the film. Many of the people didn’t understand the term slum by itself or the structure of the social system. It was spoken in the film about demolishing the Dharavi slum and building businesses there. I was also explained by the narrator of the film that if they did so they would lose millions of dollars in revenue that the slum produced with all the workers and the many businesses.
They said that they shouldn’t disrupt the activity in the slum and let them be. It functioned highly except for the living conditions. The narrator thought they should leave the slums alone and let them be studied and keep working hard like they do. We cannot judge this culture because it isn’t the same as our own. They still are working and producing income even though low for their family. We still need to not judge and take a step back and see how elements of their culture fit together. With our own culture embedded into us it is hard to see without judgement others own culture.
Some things they do might seem weird or unpractical to us. We need to step back and appreciate other cultures and maybe even embrace some of their activities. Different things that cultures do for example how they eat, how they treat animals, or the way they handle the dead are all different. These different cultural relativism points just enrich and enhance our lives. In some cultures gang rape and prostitution is acceptable, which seems crazy in our culture.
So many of the worlds cultures need examined to learn more of how they are alike or unlike eachother. 1/301// f. Slums/ pg. 05: A squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people. The slums were the main focus in the film The Real Slumdogs. The slum in Dharavi has at least one million people cramped into one square mile. We as Americans have a hard time grasping the depth of poverty that people live with in the slums. Most of their homes in the slums are 10 x 15 areas. They have no running water or toilets. With many families growing fast in Dharavi the population is growing higher. Near by wealthy business owners want to tear down the slums to make room for their booming businesses.
The people of the slums don’t have the luxury of facilities, roads, public transportation, water, sewers, or garbage pickup. We take advantage of these things in the United States. They have to build their slums and fix them up with old metal and scraps they find to fix the buildings they live in. These kind of slums are so heavily populated and they are called urban informal settlements. The Dharavi slum is one of the largest slums in the world. It was founded in 1882 during the British colonial era. Some call it an embarrassing eyesore that is in the middle of India’s financial capital.
Sometimes just in one home there is fifteen people living there. There are mice running all around and the threat of disease. Many of these families cannot afford an education so generations have been living in these slums for years. They become proud and used to living in these conditions. Although rare to have a water hookup some do. Others have to walk over a mile to a local spigot. Young and old they don’t have a choice but to walk and fill their bucket. This is how it is with informal housing. Seeing how this part of the world lives is very eye opening. //3071/