• Anthropologists to help the US military in war?
Two cultural anthropologists who have been critics of the Human Terrain System since its beginning hold firm to their conviction that anthropologists should not participate in war efforts. Furthermore, Hugh Gusterson, professor of anthropology at George Mason University, and David Price, professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University, are unconvinced that HTS works. Gusterson comments: “I wish I could say I’ve seen something that made me feel better [about HTS], but I haven’t.” Price, in noting that it is impossible for anyone to objectively measure the merit of HTS, says “I want to see some external results here and they’re not doing it. It’s a boondoggle.” The article presenting their views mentions that social scientists working in the HTS provide anecdotal support for its success. In one case, the social scientists “spent nearly a week” talking with urban residents in preparation for US withdrawal from the area. Compared to the soldiers who typically have only very short conversations with the “locals,” the HTS social scientists spent 30 minutes to an hour speaking with an individual.
• Akwesasne Mohawk women’s health
SUNY Albany’s Center for the Elimination of Minority Health Disparities is working with tribal Health Services on a study that will monitor Akwesasne women’s reproductive health and the possible effects of PCBs and lead. Center director and biological anthropologist Lawrence Schell is directing the project under funding from the NIH. The study will monitor approximately 180 women between 20 and 35 years old for four years. The tribe is concerned that elevated levels of PCBs and lead in their environment may be affecting women’s reproductive health. This study will shed light on the issue. Mia Gallo, co-investigator and biological anthropologist, commented that “The study is very important to the community.”
• Microsoft’s Ethnographer
Danah Boyd is making waves with her pioneering research on social networking, especially how US teenagers engage with technology to enter and use the digital world: “The social world around them today has mediated technologies, thus in order to learn about the social world they’re learning about the mediated technologies. And they’re leveraging that to work out the shit that kids have always worked out: peer sociality, status, their first crush.” She has found that control–and who has it– is all-important. In social networking, control is related to attention–and who gets it. All of which connects to issues she has been researching for several years: the class and race divides that exist between users of MySpace and Facebook.
Here’s how she introduces herself, lowercasing her name, on her blog, apophenia:
“My name is danah boyd and I’m a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society. I received my PhD from the School of Information at UC-Berkeley. I live in Boston, MA. Buzzwords in my world include: public/private, identity, context, youth culture, social network sites, social media.”
• Stress revealed in ancient hair
Stress has apparently been around a long time. A new study reports on the detection of the stress hormone cortisol in the hair of ancient Peruvians who lived between 550 and 1532 CE. Emily Webb, the lead author of the study, is a PhD candidate in Archaeological Science at the University of Western Ontario. The researchers selected hair samples from ten individuals from five different archaeological sites in Peru and analyzed them in segments to determine cortisol levels. Many of the individuals showed high stress levels right before death. A majority, however, experienced multiple levels of stress throughout the final years of their life, indicating that stress was prevalent in ancient Peruvians’ everyday lives.
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