Kabyle House/ Habitus

While reading the two different chapters this week, “The Kabyle House or the World Reversed” and “Structures and Habitus,” I discovered many new details I have never came across before. When relating these readings to snowboarding though, it was somewhat difficult and I decided to focus on two different details taken from these readings. 

One idea that I learned from the first chapter, “The Kabyle House..” was how Algerian men and women have different duties within the household and how each of them represent something different. Throughout the reading, the author explains the different roles men and women have in life, and in and around the home. In the reading, it states that “a house prospers through woman; its outside is beautiful through man,” seeming to explain that women have a less important role than men in Algeria. I can relate these beliefs to the sport of snowboarding in the simple way that it is believed, as well as in almost all other sports, that men/boys are always better than girls/women at snowboarding. Typically, in the sport of snowboarding, women are made out to be horrible snowboarders because they are girly, prissy, etc, but I have found this to be untrue. As a girl snowboarder myself, I also have a few other friends that are girl riders as well, and I must say that we are far more advanced in snowboarding than plenty of people. In this reading, it is also stated how in Algeria they believe that, “man trusts in God, woman looks to man for everything,” expressing how men think that without them women would never survive. I also find this to be absurd because women are perfectly capable of surviving without the help of any man. In snowboarding, men often feel the need to instruct women on how to ride and they believe that their way is always the right way, and that women cannot be successful in learning to snowboard without them. This is certainly not the case though for I, yet again, have seen quite a few women, as well as myself, become very successful in snowboarding without the help of any male. All it takes is hard work and dedication in order to be great at something, or in Algerians’ case, just being able to survive; there is no requirement of a man in order to be successful. 

The above video displays numerous professional snowboarding women, without the help of any men they have achieved many great things.

The idea that I took from “Structures and Habitus” and decided to relate to snowboarding, is the idea of ‘habitus’ in general. Habitus, in my understanding, is the set of socially learnt skills and behaviors that people acquire, that they do not even consciously think about at most times. In the reading, the author is emphasizing on habitus within the context of social structure as well as societies and individuals, but it can also be related to snowboarding in ways. Once a person knows how to snowboard and it quite skilled at it, everything typically comes natural to them from then on. Many people describe snowboarding as “it’s like riding a bike,” which I strongly believe as well. For example, I can not snowboard for the whole off-season, and then as soon as winter comes back around and the season starts again, I can just strap in my snowboard with no worries about how I am going to remember how to do it again or if I need to relearn the sport. I find this to be similar to ‘habitus,’ because to me, snowboarding is now something that just comes naturally. I started at a young age, so now at the age of 19, when I am snowboarding I do not even really need to think about  how I am going to get down the slope because I know I will be able to do it with ease. I cannot even specifically remember when I learned certain skills in snowboarding, which also seems to relate to habitus, for when speaking about habitus and its relation to the structure of society, one would say that there are certain values or beliefs in a society, such as the Algerians beliefs about men and women, that are just embedded into that society’s minds. This is how it has always been in Algeria, and that is how it will for the most part always be.

Although this week’s readings were quite difficult to comprehend, I found both chapters very interesting. It was challenging, yet enjoyable when trying to relate the ideas I took away from the readings to snowboarding. 

Twilight at Easter and The Last People Alive

While reading the chapters, “Twilight at Easter” and “The Last People Alive,” I learned a ton of information about Easter Island as well as the Pitcairn and Henderson Islands. I honestly had never really even heard much of anything about any of these islands before this reading, but it was very interesting to find out about them and their histories, while still trying to incorporate it with my topic of snowboarding. 

One thing that I learned in chapter 2, “Twilight at Easter,” was that those who first inhabited the island seemed to have almost been competing against one another when building the great Rano Raruku statues that they were known to build and what Easter Island is most known for. Those who study the history of Easter Islanders believe that “the increase in statue size with time suggests competition between rival chiefs commissioning the statues to outdo each other,” which I believe is true as well for in life, there is always some form of competition. When discussing snowboarding in particular, it is definitely safe to say that competing plays a huge role in the sports, just like any other sport. The Easter Islanders are like snowboarders in the sense that they are doing something that they love to do, but a little competition can never hurt. I can only imagine the Easter Islanders putting in all the effort to build those gigantic statues for simple pleasure, or enjoyment. Yes, it must have taken a ton of hard work to accomplish building even just one of those statues, but in the end, when the final project is completed, all the hard work certainly had to have paid off. Snowboarding is the same way in the sense that yes, snowboarders who partake in competitions, races, etc. do have to work very hard in order to actually beat fellow competitors, but in the end, when they have done good in the competition, all the hard work definitely paid off, for the snowboarder feels like they have accomplished something, while still doing something they enjoy doing. I find that this is how the Easter Islanders thought of their statue building as well. Yes, it would take them a great amount of labor to create a statue even bigger and better than possible competitors, but once they finally completed the statue, they had to have felt a sense of joyfulness. 

This video displays the Winter X Games 2012, which is a major competition for winter sports. Here you can see the hard work that is put into the X games, but you can also see that everyone is happy and having a great time. Especially at the end when Shaun White gets a score of 100 in the super pipe, which has never happened before in X Games history. 

In the next chapter, “The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands,” I learned that “many centuries ago, immigrants came to a fertile land blessed with apparently inexhaustible natural resources.” As time went on though, people began to overpopulate the land and use up all of the resources that the island had, so it soon became an island where no one could live and is only now visited by tourists sometimes. I can relate this information of the chapter to snowboarding in the sense that the overpopulation of the Earth as a whole right now can possibly in the future, lead to the end of the sport of snowboarding. It may seem pretty far-fetched, but I certainly believe it could be a possibility in the distant future. I believe that the world is becoming more and more overly populated as time goes on. More babies are being born and less people are dying at a young age. Due to this excessive amount of people on our planet, I believe that there is a highly significant amount of pollution in every country, but America in particular. Although I do not have very strong beliefs about global warming, I definitely think it is a possibility that all of this pollution could certainly cause global warming. The Earth as a whole will become warmer year round, leading to warmer winters where it is impossible to have a successful winter sport season. This year in particular has been warmer than most winters. I work at a ski resort in Pennsylvania, and the conditions of the mountain are just terrible, and there is most definitely a significant decrease of the amount of guests that come to the mountain to ski or snowboard than years prior. Although I do not think global warming will have that great of an impact on the winter seasons during any of our lifetimes, but if the weather continues to become warmer every winter, snowboarding may become an extinct sport in the very distant future, just like the civilizations of the Pitcairn and Henderson Islands. 

Synchronized Chaos and Small World Networks

While reading “Synchronized Chaos” and “Small-World Networks,” I learned two very interesting things, that I had never thought about into great detail before. One thing that I learned and had never thought about before in the chapter titled “Synchronized Chaos,” was that not all equations are linear and that everything in life is not based on linearity; and “in fact, life depends on nonlinearity.” Not everything in every aspect of life has exact parts that add up to an exact number, and therefore, it is important that we do not always think that everything in life has one single reason or equation as to why a certain thing works the way it does. Then, as I continued reading and got to chapter 9, “Small-World Networks,” I learned yet another concept which I had heard about previously, but fairly enjoyed reading more about and getting deeper into the idea of the “six degrees of separation.” Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that any one person is connected to another person anywhere in the world, just through six different people. For example,  I could know a person who knows a person who knows a person etcetera, that knew the President of the United States, or even a president of a country half way around the world.

When thinking about these two different concepts expressed in “Synchronized Chaos” and “Small-World Networks,” they both seem like concepts that would have no correlation to the sport of snowboarding. When looking deeper into it though, the concepts both do in certain ways, for these concepts can probably have a relationship between almost anything.

When looking into the topic of nonlinearity and chaos and trying to tie it into snowboarding, it is quite simple. Many people may believe that snowboarding is a sport that requires an exact technique to it in order to be “good” at it. But, as a snowboarder myself, throughout the year I have learned that snowboarding is a sport that is completely nonlinear and you do not have to do everything an exact way or the same way as any other person in order to progress in it. When it comes to snowboarding, every single person has their own style and technique at how they ride. Take Shaun White and Hannah Teeter for example, they are both olympic gold medalists, but it is not to say that they ride in the exact same fashion. They both learned to snowboard in completely different ways and in completely different places, but that does not mean they both cannot be excellent snowboarders, just with different styles.

 

Above is a picture of the 2012 USA Olympic snowboarding team. Although every person on the team has a different style and technique in which they ride, they have all managed to become part of the Olympic team; proving that not everyone has to ride in the same exact manner in order to be successful at snowboarding.

Then, there is this idea of “six degrees of separation,” which can also easily relate  to the world of snowboarding. For instance, using Shaun White as an example yet again; I look up to Shaun White as one of the greatest snowboarders of all time. I would have to assume that most of the general population of this world probably knows who Shaun White is, and may even look up to him as well. I could not ever imagine meeting Shaun White or even having any kind of relation to him, but when considering the rule of the six degrees of separation, it is extremely possible that I do know a person who knows a person that either knows, or has met Shaun White before, which is pretty cool to think about. Another way to apply six degrees of separation to the snowboarding community is the way in which people who ride at the same resort all have a connection in some way. For example, the mountain that I snowboard at is a pretty small mountain, in a pretty small town. Almost anytime I meet someone there, we both know the same person, or if we become friends on Facebook, we have multiple mutual friends. It is actually quite amazing how small of a world we really do live in.

Although both topics in “Synchronized Chaos” and “Small-World Networks” are quite random topics and topics that may seem like ones that a person could never relate to the snowboarding world, when looking closer into them, it is quite easy to find a relationship.

The Concepts of Learning and Praise

As I began reading “The Perils and Promise of Praise,” I noticed how the topic of the reading could be applied to my topic, the sport of snowboarding, right away. Although the author of this article was applying the concept of praise to children learning in a school setting, it can just as accurately get the point across when talking about people learning how to snowboard. I learned quite a few things about how teachers should praise their students in certain ways in order to boost their confidence and strengthen their efforts in school, but I am going to take the things that I learned and apply it to snowboarding. 

First of all, I learned that there are two types of people when it comes to learning: fixed and malleable.Those learners who are the fixed type believe that “they have a certain amount of intelligence, and that’s that.” These types of people with a fixed personality believe that they are either smart or dumb and nothing they do can change that. Then, there are the malleable types of people, who enjoy a challenge and believe that it is possible for them to learn new things and become smarter when they are faced with something new to learn. In snowboarding, there are definitely both fixed and malleable types of learners. Personally, I am a malleable kind of person when it comes to snowboarding. When I first began snowboarding, I of course was not good at all. It took me the entire first season for me to even people able to make it down trails higher than beginner ones. In my mind, I knew that it would take awhile for me to eventually become a more skilled snowboarder, but I kept trying and trying, going on more difficult types of trails and riding with people that were way better than I was, just so I would be forced to keep up with them. Now, eight years later, I am definitely glad that I never gave up the challenge of snowboarding because I am certainly a better rider than I was eight years ago.But there are also the fixed types of learners when it comes to snowboarding. Many people who try to learn how to snowboard never try again after the first time. They say that “they suck” and that “it’s so hard,” just expecting to be the next Shaun White after their first day riding, but I always make sure to tell them that no one is good after the first day. 

This video shows kids at High Cascade Snowboarding Camp getting down many of the tricks that they  learned during their time at camp. They would not ever be able to accomplish any of these tricks if they did not have a malleable mind set. 

Secondly, I learned that it is important for those instructing or teaching others how to do something, it is more efficient if they praise them in a specific way. In “The Perils and Promise of Praise,” certain studies showed how students learned more effectively if teachers praised them in their efforts rather than their intelligence. For example, instead of a teacher just telling a student how smart they are when they do a good job, it is better if a teacher were to say something like “You really put in a lot of effort on this task, you must have worked really hard.” In praising someone because of the effort that they put in, instead of solely just complimenting a person’s intelligence, or in snowboarding, skill level, it makes that person being praised feel more encouraged and valued, instead of just naturally being ‘smart’ or ‘good’ at something. I find these differing forms of praise also very relative to those learning to snowboard, or trying new things in snowboarding. When a person is snowboarding, and say, trying to learn a new trick in the terrain park, they want to hear praise from their friends or instructors just as much as students learning in school. After a person keeps attempting to learn a new trick over and over, and they finally get that trick down, they want to be acknowledged for the hard work that they put in, instead of someone just saying, “You’re so good at snowboarding,” they would probably rather prefer hearing a compliment that also includes the fact that they worked hard to finally get that trick down. Maybe something like, “Wow, that trick looked awesome! I knew you would get it down soon enough after working so hard for it!” After hearing a compliment like this, that snowboarder would probably continue to try to learn even more difficult tricks instead of just doing the same one over and over again because they would want to hear people compliment them about their efforts instead of “Oh, you’re just naturally good and don’t have to work hard for it.” 

All in all, I believe that you could apply these two concept to anyone learning something new for the first time. It is very important for everyone learning something new to receive the right kind of praise in order to continue being successful.  

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