Discussion 5: Baby in the Box
Ends September 26
Must post first.
Scenario: The class is part of a large expedition that has come across a remote people in a previously undiscovered area of the world. They still live as hunters and gatherers in a small tribe, somehow eking out a life of subsistence on the nearly barren landscape they inhabit. Life expectancy is short, no one lives much past their 40s. Although their ability to survive in such an inhospitable climate has greatly impressed your group, you have also witnessed these people engage in infanticide during times of hardship when the feeding of a non-productive infant is no longer easy for the tribe. An elaborate ritual is performed where the child is buried alive in a small box and sent to paradise, never having faced the trials and tribulations of adult human life. You understand that this is seen as a blessing to the child by these people. They do not see what they have done as murder or cruelty. The Gods have called the child to heaven. The call the child “The Chosen One.”
Your group learns that the tribe do not believe that the child will starve or smother to death, but is instead transported up to paradise soon after the box is buried. The belief is that when the crying stops, then the child has been taken to paradise. Someone in your group asks if they can dig up past boxes to see if the remains of the children are still in the box? You are informed that this is impossible, because if one disturbs the box they will kill the child and rip them out of paradise, leaving only a skeleton in the child’s place. Times are hard right now. The tribe is having difficulty feeding everyone. The Tribal Elders have decreed that a child must be chosen for paradise
1. Should your group try to change the behavior of the tribe or scold them for this practice?
2. Do you have a responsibility to try to save the infant from this fate given what you know about what is really going on here?
3. What would be an argument for not trying to change the behavior?
4. Think for a second…what might be the effect of informing the tribe of what they are really doing?
5. On the other hand are you a partner to a murder if you allow the ritual to take place and do not try to stop it?
6. How would a Conflict Theorist and Functionalist differ in explaining this ritual and why it is performed by the society?
You must start a thread before you can read and reply to other threads
