Reviews for To Open Minds

The average rating for To Open Minds based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-09-04 00:00:00 Milo Milic On the plus side, this was very readable for a generalist as well as a specialist. Stambach studies the intersections of gender, tradition and views of modernity among the Chagga people who live on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. She clearly developed close relationships with many women during her time both studying the culture and teaching at a local high school. I feel a little bit like Stambach draws large conclusions from pretty limited information but I also feel like that's pretty much par for the course with anthropologists. She does a fair job of trying to point out her own biases, but sometimes I felt like her stance as a participant observer, working as a colleague with some of her subjects and assuming a particular role in the society conflicts with her goal of understanding exactly what is happening from an outside perspective. As an example, at one point Stambach observes her friend and male colleague teaching a class in which his verbal harassment of female students seems to me to verge on sexual intimidation. While Stambach alludes to this, she seems to me to be either being somewhat guarded in her observations or surprisingly obtuse about the level of physical intimidation happening in front of her. In general, this book makes me wonder to what extent the Western gaze any longer has a useful role to play in discussing and describing other cultures That said, Stambach certainly is conscientious and serious in her work and the book contains many interesting insights. I was fascinated by her discussion of the stated goals and actual outcomes of the home economics curriculum, for example.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-03 00:00:00 Garrett Stauffer This book does a very good job painting a clear picture of this tension between the traditional ways of the Chagga people and the modern, Western culture that formal secondary schooling has introduced. The social shift that is the most difficult for the people of Mount Kilimanjaro to accept is the way that schooling has challenged the traditional patriarchal gender roles of their society. This book is a fairly strong ethnography that seems to give a complete and varied look at a complex set of issues. I do wish that the author had spoken more with school-aged boys to gain their insights into the emergence of educated women as an empowered social group. However, I think that her analysis of the culture surrounding school before the description of the school itself put the educational system in context in a way that made it more wholly understandable and useful to the reader.