Seeing the Ordinary as Curious

Sometime ago, I uploaded to a Facebook album my own version of a Sociological Images post — worth reproducing here, I think: so consider this March 20, 2009, photo of a group of Cameroon’s Baka people performing for Pope Benedict XVI as he left for Angola.

A group of Pygmies from Cameroun's Baka tribe dance for Pope Benedict XVI before he left for Angola to start the second leg of his trip to AfricaSimple question: who is wearing a costume?

To rephrase, can you see an ideology to men’s neckties? Why would they have been banned in the 1979 Iranian revolution? Or are they so ordinary, so normal, as to pass unnoticed?

(Admit it: you thought I was just comparing the dancers to the Pontiff, didn’t you?)