Sunday, September 28, 2014

"Navajo Canyon Country"

The video I watched was "Navajo Canyon Country" which was a semi-colored documentary from 1954 that talked about the history and culture of the Navajo Indians in northern Arizona and New Mexico. The documentary began by showing the differences between urban American lifestyles and the lifestyles of the Navajo Indians. Shots of cars stuck in traffic were set against shots of carriages and horses running through the desert. The documentary then continued on talking about the lifestyle of the Navajo and how they continue to live as a primarily agricultural society where crops and livestock are the backbone of the economy.
The next section of the video talked about ancient civilizations that lived in the same region and how they were both similar and different to the Navajo. Comparisons were made about housing, social structure, agriculture, and culture.
I believe that this is a video that would benefit a class on Information Society for several reasons. Firstly, it gives a strong viewpoint of a society that is about as far from Post-Industrial and Networked as we can see today. At the time the film was made the Navajo shown had very little access to technology or information and thus live in an almost information-less society rather than the information society that we live in. This would help to illustrate the impacts that different forms of information have had on our society as you can analyze the differences and see how information technologies have shaped our modern, urban society.

https://archive.org/details/0122_Navajo_Canyon_Country_12_16_15_00


No comments:

Post a Comment