The Mountain People Essay

Ik people, the ethnic community from Uganda, have presented an interesting issue for examination since their tribe was discovered. Being hunting and gathering community, Ik people were moving around the Kidepo valley and mountains of Uganda, living in small temporary villages surrounded by outer walls.

Colin Turnbull, famous British-American anthropologist, was studying various African tribes for many years. In one of his books, The Mountain People, Turnbull describes the Ik people in the period of close examination. Turnbull stayed with this tribe for several years and studied the Ik people’s customs, traditions, culture, and other key aspects of their life. The book was published in 1972, and became very successful yet rather controversial. The moral aspect of The Mountain People remains a questionable issue nowadays. Turnbull studied the Ik people in very acute period for them. The area of Kidepo valley became a national park, thus the tribe had no place to hunt and feed their families. The Iks suffered soundly from famine, and Turnbull was participating in tribe life in this very period influencing significantly its moral values.

Mary Wollstonecraft Essay

Mary Wollstonecraft was known as a writer, a philosopher, and a feminist. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Knowing that Wollstonecraft was a vehement fighter for women’s rights we can make a supposition, that she was fonder of women, and vindicate their positions in the question of virtue possession.

Taking a closer look in to her works, we see that one thing she was vindicating – is equality in virtues, which on her opinion were different for men and women:

Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue. I speak collectively of the whole sex; but I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? (Wollstonecraft, 135)