Category: anthro in the news

Anthro in the news 2/2/15

  • Applying anthropology: How to find a date for Valentine’s Day

As Valentine’s Day approaches, GMA News (The Philippines) offered a heads up about a Sunday, February 1, TV variety show, Ang Pinaka, with a panel on how to find your dream date. The segment entitled, “The Top Ten Ang Pinaka Smart Ways to Find a Date”, includes Nestor Castro, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of the Philippines. [Blogger’s note: if anyone watched the show, please send in comments!]

  • Adios, comadre
Ruth Behar, Esperanze, and their book. Source: Chronical for Higher Education.

Ruth Behar, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan, says farewell in an essay in The Chronicle for Higher Education, to her longtime friend and comadre, Esperanze. Esperanze died late in 2014.

Behar and Esperanze first met in 1983: “An unusual friendship was born, and over time we became ‘co-mothers’ of a book, Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story (1993). It wasn’t your typical life history. The story of her life was entangled with the story of how we came to know each other and why I was the one who wrote her story down.”

  • On Iran’s letter to Western youth

Tiziana Ciavardinia. Source: Tasnim News.

Tasnim News (Iran) carried an interview with Italian anthropologist Tiziana Ciavardini about the significance of the letter sent by Iran’s Supreme Leader to Western youth. On January 21, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei wrote a letter asking European and North American youths not to judge Islam based on the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. He urged Western youths to try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of the religion in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns.

The interview with Ciavardini covers a range of topics including whether the letter can be effective in attracting Western youth to study Islam, prevent Islamophobia in the West, whether the Western media will print the letter, and comments on the letter’s contents in general.

  • Teen pregnancy ad campaign going too far?

An article in Urban Milwaukee describes the recently launched public awareness campaign sponsored by the United Way seeking to reduce teen pregnancy. Ads show teen parents as a hand puppet, a jack-in-the-box, and a pull toy. The intended message is: wait and settle down before having a baby.

But the campaign sends a different message to two university professors who head a project called Hear Our Stories, which works to change and reshape what people think about teen parenting. Aline Gubrium, a medical anthropologist and associate professor of public health at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and her colleague Elizabeth Krause, associate professor of anthropology, take exception to the ad campaign.

Gubrum is quoted as saying: “We see calling out teen parents as bad examples to other teens, as [is done] in this campaign, as harmful and cruel…Teen parents have important stories to share and rather than stigmatizing and silencing the voices of young parents, our project gives young mothers the opportunities to share their stories.”

Krause said she realizes the campaign is not intentionally cruel, but said its visuals bully teen parents: “It’s not a campaign that has dignity.”

  • Book on Franz Boas: Reviewer wants more on his Inuit experience

The Alaska Dispatch carried a review of a book by Canadian cultural anthropologist and geographer Ludger Müller-Wille, The Franz Boas Enigma. The book asks how Boas became a leading figure in American anthropology, shaping the discipline and mentoring many prominent anthropologists.

The reviewer offers this context: “Boas did his first fieldwork during a year spent in the Canadian Arctic living with the Inuit of Baffin Island. He arrived in the fall of 1883 and to the best of his ability lived as the Inuit did, learning their language, their lifestyle and their cosmology.” Then he zings the book with this comment: “In the end, very little is gained from this book.” His concern is that, while the author credits much of Boas’ views and contributions to his initial time with the Inuit, he “…dashes right past this very experience and never delivers the story he promises.”

  • Forensic anthropologist pioneer in facial reconstruction

The Financial Times magazine profiled the work of forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson:

“Professor Caroline Wilkinson is one of the first people alive to have looked into the faces of a Bronze Age warrior, a Neolithic child — and Father Christmas. She uses a combination of the latest medical and digital-imaging techniques to recreate faces from the past; some from centuries or even thousands of years ago, some more recent. Her highest-profile projects have included King Richard III, who died at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and whose remains were eventually­ identified in 2012, Mary Queen of Scots, J.S. Bach and Saint Nicholas (Santa, it turns out, had a broken nose and olive skin).” She has worked with remains from around the world as well as forensic cases.

Wilkinson is director of the Liverpool School of Art & Design at Liverpool John Moores University; previously she was head of human identification in the Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification at the University of Dundee.

  • Take that degree and…

…become a conservationist working to preserve great apes. Robert Ford has a master’s degree in public health and anthropology and a doctorate in earth science/physical geography. He has over 35 years’ experience as a professor, administrator, field researcher, development consultant and conservation scientist. Ford has carried out conservation science and park management consulting and planning in many countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Haiti, Pakistan, Ghana, Eritrea, Gabon, the Marshall Islands, Mali, Pakistan, Senegal, Belize, Peru, Bolivia, and China.

…become a psychiatrist, specifically a social psychiatrist with a critical perspective on biopsychiatry. Jeremy Wallace, MD, did a M.Sc. degree in anthropology focusing on culture and mental health run by Professor Roland Littlewood at University College London. It provided him with his first critical look at psychiatry. A practicing psychiatrist working in the public sector in Finland primarily in a psychosis rehabilitation clinic. He is also the author of a book, The Recovering Psychiatrist.

  • Out of Africa and hello Neanderthals

CNN and several other mainstream media covered newly reporting findings about a prehistoric human partial skull found in Manot Cave in western Galilee, detailed in a study published in Nature. Co-author Israel Hershkovitz told the Guardian, “This is the first specimen we have that connects Africa to Europe.” The skull dates back about 55 millennia. This discovery provides the best possibility so far for interbreeding of modern humans with Neanderthals since Neanderthals were established in the region during this time period.

Israel Hershkovitz with the partial skull. Source: CNN.

Anthro in the news 1/26/15

  • Political cartooning

The Business Standard (India) carried a review of a new book on political cartooning in India by cultural anthropologist Ritu Khanduri, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington, College of Liberal Arts. Understanding what makes political caricature funny to some but not to others is critical today, says the author in an interview. Her book, Caricaturing Culture in India: Cartoons and History in the Modern World, traces India’s political history through political caricatures.

Khanduri comments:  “As a visual reaction to events, cartoons have the ability to reflect as well as shape public opinion. “They’re complex images with layers of sub-textual meaning. Understanding what makes them funny to some but not to others is what we need to understand, especially in our present times.”

  • Changing views on dating and marriage in Oman

Newsweek reported on changing patterns of finding a spouse in Oman where mixing between genders is limited. Marrying for love was rare just 20 years ago in Oman, and arranged matches were the norm, with minimal contact between a couple before their wedding. Oil wealth, globalization, and higher education have transformed the country since Sultan Qaboos bin Said seized power from his father in 1970. A survey of 921 Omanis aged 18 to 60, found that 83% were against arranged marriage. More than a love marriage, young Omanis want a “compatible marriage.” Many young people are looking for partners at university, at work or on social media. Social media offers a discreet ways for young men and women to connect.

Similar changes are happening in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, says Jane Bristol-Rhys, associate professor of anthropology at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. Exposure to other cultures – whether through television, the Internet, or direct contact with foreigners – has influenced ideas about what a good marriage should look like. “They’re not living in a vacuum here, and they know there are other choices,” Bristol-Rhys says.

  • Rethinking mental illness

Cultural anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in which she comments in depth on a “remarkable document” from the British Psychological Society, “Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia”. Its authors say that hearing voices and feeling paranoid are common experiences, and are often a reaction to trauma, abuse or deprivation: “Calling them symptoms of mental illness, psychosis or schizophrenia is only one way of thinking about them, with advantages and disadvantages.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/26/15” →

Anthro in the news 01/19/15

  • Afghan-American youth who turn to extremism

Morwari Zafar writes in Time magazine about why some Afghan-American youth may turn to radicalism. Zafar is conducting fieldwork among Afghan-Americans for her dissertation in social anthropology at the University of Oxford. She writes: “The current policy climate risks insularity by focusing on external motivators — such as unemployment, disenfranchisement and susceptibility to recruitment via social media. Such an approach raises valid points, but it is conducive only to identifying a limited range of resolutions.” [Blogger’s note:  Morwari Zafar is a visiting scholar with the Culture in Global Affairs Program, within the Elliott School’s Institute for Global and International Studies, at GW].

  • Korean adoptees seeking Korean roots

The New York Times Magazine carried an article describing how many Korean adoptees, from locations around the world, are returning to the Republic of Korea. The article mentions the work of Eleana Kim, associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Kim notes that many adoptees fear that searching for their Korean roots is seen as a betrayal of their  adoptive parents and they dread “coming out” to their adoptive parents, whether in the form of birth-family searches, returning to birth countries, or criticizing the adoption system.

  • Spotlight on Breastfeeding

On NPR, biological anthropologist and blogger, Barbara King of William and Mary, interviews cultural anthropologist Katherine Dettwyler of the University of Delaware on cross-cultural breastfeeding practices. Dettwyler discusses cross-cultural patterns of which mothers decide to breast feed and for how long as well as social stigma toward women who may breast feed for “too long” in some people’s opinion.

  • Book in the news: Social inequality in South Africa

Seattle radio KUOW interviewed a co-author of a new book on South Africa showing that the country is less equal today than during apartheid. After Freedom: The Rise of the Post-Apartheid Generation in Democratic South Africa is an ethnographic account of seven young South Africans whose lives illustrate the realities of South Africa today. It is written by cultural anthropologist Katherine S Newman, provost at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and Ariane De Lannoy, a sociologist and researcher at the University of Capetown. The radio interview ranges from the research methods, some of the people in the book, and parallels between poverty in South Africa and in the United States. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 01/19/15” →

Anthro in the news1/12/15

  • On France as a target for jihad

Time Magazine published an article by cultural anthropologist John Bowen of Washington University in which he describes three factors contributing to France as a target for jihad: First, France has been more closely engaged with the Muslim world longer than any other Western country. Second, the French Republic has nourished a sense of combat with the Church—which for some means with religion of any sort. Third, the attack risks to add fuel to the rise of the Far Right in France and throughout Europe. In conclusion, he states:

“France will not change its decades-old foreign policy, nor are rights and practices of satire likely to fade away. But the main impact may be to use the attacks as an excuse to blame Islam and immigration for broad anxieties about where things are going in Europe today. Such a confusion can only strengthen the far right.”

Bowen is the author of Can Islam be French, Blaming Islam, and the forthcoming Shari’a in Britain.

  • On Muslim integration and discrimination in France

The International Business Times carried an article stating that the terror attacks in Paris will likely exacerbate the challenges faced by Muslim communities in Europe, as extreme right-wing political parties politicize the tragedy.  A large proportion of France’s Muslim population of five million faces day-to-day discrimination along with broader, institutional forms of disenfranchisement, said Mayanthi L. Fernando, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, whose work focuses on Islam and secularism in France. “The problem here is not a lack of willingness among a large number of French Muslims to integrate — many would say they are already integrated — the problem is they are not accepted as legitimately French by the rest of the white, Christian majority…The problem is that on one hand they are asked to prove their integration in the French mainstream, but on the other hand they are facing discrimination day to day and institutionally.”

  • Colonialism, dispossession, desperation, and suicide

The Guarani Indians of Brazil, according to a report cited in The New York Times and other media, have the highest suicide rates in the world. Overall, indigenous peoples suffer the greatest suicide risk among cultural or ethnic groups worldwide. In Brazil, the indigenous suicide rate was six times higher than the national average in 2013. Among members of the Guaraní tribe, Brazil’s largest, the rate is estimated at more than twice as high as the indigenous rate over all, the study said. And in fact it may be even higher. Continue reading “Anthro in the news1/12/15” →

Anthro in the news 1/5/15

Source: Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse. Getty Images
  • Paul Farmer in the news

Farmer zings M.S.F.: The New York Times quoted Paul Farmer, medical anthropologist and professor at Harvard University, in an article about controversy over the use of IV therapy for Ebola victims in West Africa. Two of the most admired medical charities are divided over the issue. Partners in Health, which has worked in Haiti and Rwanda but is just beginning to treat Ebola patients in West Africa, supports the aggressive treatment. Its officials say the more measured approach taken by Doctors Without Borders is overly cautious.

Farmer, one of the founders of Partners in Health, using the French initials for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), is quoted as saying: “M.S.F. is not doing enough…What if the fatality rate isn’t the virulence of disease but the mediocrity of the medical delivery?”

Farmer joins the movie stars: The Huffington Post reported on an effort by The Hunger Games movie stars to keep pressure on efforts to stamp out Ebola. They created a YouTube video which includes luminaries Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Jeffrey Wright, Mahershala Ali and Julianne Moore….and Paul Farmer.

Farmer was right: Ross Douthat, a regular columnist for The New York Times, reflected on three errors he had made in 2014, one of which was to assume that the Ebola crisis would arrive in the U.S. Therefore, he supported travel restrictions. But now, he writes, “Two months later, there has been no wider outbreak, most of the cases treated domestically have resulted in a cure, and the president and his appointees can reasonably claim vindication (as can Dr. Paul Farmer who argued in an October essay that with Western standards of medical treatment, Ebola victims could have a 90 percent survival rate). Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/5/15” →

Anthro in the news 12/29/14

[Blogger’s note: Here is the last anthro in the news for 2014. Please stay tuned for my annual “best cultural anthropology dissertations” post coming soon]

Ruth Behar
  • U.S. Cuba relations: Hoping for a miracle

Ruth Behar, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, published a piece in The Tico Times, reflecting on President Obama’s recent statement on U.S.-Cuba relations:

“When I awoke to the news of President Barack Obama’s proposed U.S. policy changes, I immediately thought: Isn’t it amazing that this occurred on Dec. 17? It’s a day of great significance to Cubans, when thousands of them make an annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Rincón to mark the feast day of San Lázaro…It is a Cuban custom to bring pennies to San Lázaro, hoping they will translate into miracles. Even my father likes to scatter pennies on the porch of his house in Queens…Right now, I don’t know whose promise of miracles to believe in more — those of San Lázaro and Babalu Ayé, or those of President Obama. Maybe both. Maybe both.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/29/14” →

Anthro in the news 12/22/14

  • On U.S.-Cuba relations

An article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about the possible opening up of U.S.-Cuba relations quoted cultural anthropologist Kathleen Musante of the University of Pittsburgh who travels to Cuba frequently with students: “I think we all miscalculated the pressures on Raul Castro…The economy in the last three or four years has appeared as desperate as it was after the Soviet Union’s collapse. I think there is no going back now.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/22/14” →

Anthro in the news 12/15/14

  • Ed Liebow, Executive Director of the American Anthropological Association.

    Cultural anthropology is essential for addressing Ebola

Discover Magazine reported on a conference on anthropology and Ebola held at the George Washington University in November that convened nearly twenty anthropologists to brainstorm about how to better address Ebola through the inclusion of cultural knowledge. The article mentions several anthropologists, academics and professionals working in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, including Sharon Abramowitz of the University of Florida, one of the effort’s organizers.  The article quotes Edward Liebow, executive director of the American Anthropological Association, one of the co-sponsors of the conference: “Epidemiologists are making oversimplified assumptions about transmission, setting these wild upper limit bounds…We’re in a position to actually breathe life into the numbers, to put people into those positions, to make much more realistic assessments of near-term and longer-term predictions.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/15/14” →

Anthro in the news 11/24/14


  • Building a green wall to hold back the Sahara

The New York Times carried an article called “Senegal Helps Plant a Great Green Wall to Fend Off the Desert.” It mentions the changes in the environment from a time still remembered by elders when there were so many trees that you couldn’t see the sky to now, when the landscape is miles of reddish-brown sand dotted with occasional bushes and trees. Overgrazing and climate change are the major causes of the Sahara’s advance, said Gilles Boetsch, an anthropologist who directs a team of French scientists working with Senegalese researchers in the region. The article quotes him as saying: “The local Peul people are herders, often nomadic. But the pressure of the herds on the land has become too great…The vegetation can’t regenerate itself.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/24/14” →