At first glance, some of these posted topics may not seem like they are related to social change, or to each other for that matter. Along the lines of using a holistic perspective, one needs to look at all aspects of a society in order to understand its structure. Only through the creation of a comprehensive map can we start to understand how the different beliefs, which support a society and its culture, relate to and affect each other. Identifying the process and potential consequences of how specific cultural beliefs interact with each other is critical for understanding a desired social change. One of the most basic theoretical themes of anthropology is to - make the familiar seems strange and the strange seem familiar. Throughout my studies I try to keep this perspective of challenging what is taken for granted, in mind. I believe that there are many cultural beliefs within the structure of this society that many of us confuse with representing "the" reality. Only through the realization of the existence of separate realities, can we start to observe our own beliefs and respect those of others.
The cultural beliefs that support a society can be visualized as a giant web, much like a spider's web. It is the entire spider's web that is holding the trapped fly; all the threads working together contribute to the strength and form of the web. If we use this analogy to look at our cultural beliefs and how they all contribute to form the society that we all experience, we start to truly appreciate how complex social change really can be.
I am attempting to use topics that are related to each other, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, and that also helps to reveal the interconnectedness of the social web of relations. We all live within a closed system that is the planet Earth, and at some level everything is connected to everything within this system.
