Cultural anthropologist William Beeman of the University of Minnesota wrote an article in Highbrow Magazine stating that the many factions among Sunnis and Shi’as in the Middle East will act to limit the possibility of an all-out war:
“The success of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in capturing large territories in Syria and Northern Iraq, and now threatening Baghdad, has raised once again the specter of a Sunni-Shi’a war in the Middle East. Such a scenario is possible, but unlikely. That’s because Sunni and Shi’a believers throughout the world are divided into many factions living under different social conditions and with different religious, social and political agendas. These differences greatly reduce the possibility of the emergence of a coalition of either group into a single bloc opposing the other.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/24/14”→
BBC News, among many other media, reported on the mixed reactions in Brazil to the launch of this year’s World Cup competition – from jubilation among some to resentment and protest among others. The BBC quoted cultural anthropologist Arlei Damo of the University of Rio Grande do Sul:
“There is a real conflict…The usual love affair with the Selecao has been undermined by many things – the protests, the realisation that few Brazilians can’t afford to watch them as they wanted to. The emotions aren’t flowing as they typically would.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/16/14”→
The New Zealand Herald carried an article about a recently discovered Soviet era blacklist of “ideologically harmful compositions” including Tina Turner, Madness, and The Village People. The list, which was put together by the Communist Party’s youth wing, was distributed to bureaucrats in January 1985, two months before Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the premiership. Banning the artists only helped to make them more popular in Russia, according to Alexei Yurchak, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, who unearthed the blacklist: “The measures proposed to curb the spread of Western music helped to create the conditions that enabled its further expansion.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news: 6/9/14”→
Cultural anthropology icon of the 1970s, and subsequently discredited, Carlos Castaneda rises again. The Los Angeles Timesreviewed an exhibit at the Fowler Museum at UCLA displaying a collection of twelve masks from the Yaqui people of Sonora, Mexico that Castaneda put together as a graduate student at the university. They are on view in The Yaqui Masks of Carlos Castanedaalong with five others and accompanying accessories used in Yaqui ceremonies for celebration and commemoration. These pahko’ola masks are made of carved wood, mostly painted in vivid red, white and black, with goat hair added for bushy eyebrows and beards. Sometimes they resemble goats, most important of Yaqui domesticated animals, or monkeys, which were seen as tricksters in the wilderness.
David Delgado Shorter, associate professor and vice chair of the World Arts and Cultures/Dance department at UCLA, who has done extensive field work with the Yaquis of Sonora, Mexico, acknowledged the problems in Castaneda’s books: “Much of it seems completely fabricated and not based at all in Yaqui traditions…There are also ways of talking about speech and mannerism that are undeniably Yaqui.” For him, the masks themselves, which would have been very difficult to obtain outside of Mexico in the 1960s, are the clincher. “It attests he was right there,” Shorter said, “in that specific area where he said he was doing field work.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/2/14”→
Trafficking narrative databank for empowerment, research and policy
Reuters carried an article about the work of cultural anthropologist Pardis Mahdavi, a professor at Pomona College, who is collecting narratives of trafficked persons as testimony. The project, Stories Beyond Borders, seeks to contribute to a solution to the multi-dimensional problems experienced by trafficked people. It is a global online portal wherein survivors, activists, academics, and friends and families of survivors can tell their stories online. Beyond providing a global platform for survivors that could be anonymous (if the person so chooses), the portal will also generate a treasure trove of data for academics and policy makers to analyze. Policy makers, including officers of the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report and other global initiatives have often asked for a way to locate the data reflecting lived experience; this portal will allow just that. In addition to providing data, and giving survivors a voice, the portal is a place for community building for survivors who often feel isolated due to their experiences, as well as a center wherein those seeking help and outreach can locate services based on country of residence or origin. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/26/14”→
Street scene in Philadelphia. Credit: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia: A city in ruins
The Philadelphia Inquirer carried an article about how Philadelphia became the poorest big city in America and various social science perspectives on how that happened. Judith Goode, professor of urban anthropology at Temple University, is quoted as saying that although a new generation of leaders – including Philadelphia’s Ed Rendell – has brought a stronger focus to urban renewal since the 1990s, most of the programs have been aimed at tax breaks for developers and businesses luring upscale suburbanites to the central core. Efforts that would help poverty-stricken neighborhoods – luring back blue-collar employers coupled with job training, or improving public schools – got much less priority.
Cecily McMillan outside court as the jury was deliberating. Credit: The Villager.
An article in The Villager described recent developments in the case of a 2012 Occupy activist in New York City who has been found guilty of assaulting a police officer. A Manhattan jury on Monday convicted Cecily McMillan, a 25-year-old New School graduate student, of felony assault of a police officer. She has been remanded to custody at Riker’s Island without bail, pending sentencing on May 19. She could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison, but also could get probation with a suspended sentence and no jail time.
The article mentions David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics, often called an Occupy Wall Street founder and credited with coining the movement’s slogan, “We are the 99%.” He disagreed with the decision, saying the McMillan case sent a chilling message: “You do not have the right to freedom of assembly. Do not show up at a protest unless you are willing to face the possibility of torture, physical injury and years in jail.”
David Graeber in the news again
Should your job should exist? PBS Newshour interviewedDavid Graeber about his category of “bullshit jobs” Americans are now working more and more hours. But what, Graeber asks, do BS workers actually do: “It’s as if…we’ve created entirely new jobs to accommodate the workaday world. Administrators (think telemarketing and financial services) and the growing number of human resources and public relations professionals can’t pick up their own pizzas or walk their dogs.” Therefore, we have all-night pizza delivery men and dog-walkers, just to keep other people working. The interview follows up on an essay Graeber wrote in 2013 in Strike Magazine. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/12/14”→
President Obama in Indonesia: The son of an anthropologist
Stanley Ann Dunham (left) with her two children, Barack (middle), and Maya (right). Source: stanleyanndunhamfund
That’s meant to be a compliment! The Washington Post and other media covering the President’s trip to Asia noted that President Obama appeared to be especially comfortable during his visit to Indonesia:
“While Obama often utters a few halting words in the language of the countries he visits, he tossed off Malaysian phrases with ease during a state dinner in Kuala Lumpur. He also broke into a spontaneous exchange in Indonesian during a town hall meeting the next day. His personal connection to the region showed up in more subtle ways as well, as when he slowed his pace to keep in step with Malaysia’s king — a move many Malaysians saw as a cultural gesture of respect for an elder.”
Obama lived in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a cultural anthropologist whose second husband was Indonesian. Their daughter, Maya Soetero, is President Obama’s his only sibling. Dunham spent two decades living in the region doing anthropological research on local artisans. She died at the age of 52 in Honolulu.
Vetiver: Wealth from Haiti’s land whisked away
According to an article in Reuters, the vetiver plant, a tropical grass, is a little-known Haitian agricultural treasure, producing one of the most prized essential oils for high-end perfumes. The crop is a major employer in southwest Haiti, where farmers have harvested vetiver for decades but earn little from it. Production of the plant in Haiti collapsed in the late 1960s during the three-decade-long dictatorships of Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) and Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc). Pierre Léger, a Haitian agronomist, revived vetiver farming in the 1980s. Léger took samples to the top French and Swiss perfumers. “The quality was so good, they couldn’t believe it was from Haiti.”
The question now is: given the global value of Haitian vetiver, how can Haitian farmers benefit from it? Critics say the fair-trade system may not help the farmers enough given the precarious situation of vetiver famers. Cultural anthropologist Scott Freeman, a visiting scholar at George Washington University and author of a 2011 paper on Haitian vetiver, said events often force farmers to dig up immature roots to cover medical care, school fees or a funeral: “When they find themselves in a tight squeeze, they dig up the vetiver.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/5/14”→
PBS interviewed cultural anthropologist David Graeber, professor at the London School of Economics, in its Making Sen$e segment on Switzerland’s basic income debate and its appeal in the United States. The conversation focused on how a basic income would liberate wage slaves. Here is a snippet:
So you like this idea?
“I think it’s great. It’s an acknowledgement that nobody else has the right to tell you what you can best contribute to the world, and it’s based on a certain faith — that people want to contribute something to the world, most people do. I’m sure there are a few people who would be parasites, but most people actually want to do something; they want to feel that they have contributed something to the society around them.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/28/14”→
The article quotes Nancy Khalil, a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at Harvard: Years ago, she remembered “trying to explain who we really are, in these really anxious, tense meetings” with Jewish leaders, who were then trying to reconcile their desire for better interfaith relations with their communities’ concerns about a mosque founder’s anti-Semitic statements and alleged extremist ties.
“It was an unbelievable moment for me, and it was really indicative of the type of relationships that we now have across institutions and across communities,” Khalil said. “Because it wasn’t just the leaders being welcoming … It was everybody in that temple being welcoming. And that Muslims were comfortable staying there and mingling afterwards, that was telling.”
• U.S. evangelical churches reach out to save minds as well as souls
In an op-ed in The New Times, Tanya Luhrmann, Watkins University professor of cultural anthropology at Stanford University, writes about some movement in U.S. evangelical churches moving into the area of mental illness.
Rick Warren at TED, 2006/Wikipedia
She notes the pastor Rick Warren, whose son committed suicide one year ago after struggling with depression. Warren, the founding pastor of Saddleback Church, one of the nation’s largest evangelical churches, teamed up with his local Roman Catholic Diocese and the National Alliance on Mental Illness for an event that announced a new initiative to involve the church in the care of serious mental illness.
According to Luhrmann, the churches are not trying to supplant traditional mental health care but instead complement it: “When someone asks, Should I take medication or pray?” one speaker remarked, “I say, ‘yes.’”
Members of the churches think there are not enough services available. Further, many people do not turn to the services that exist because of the social stigma. [Blogger’s note: In other words: all hands on deck to help fight mental health problems. And heads up to the health care system to do more and do better work and try to address the stigma problem.]
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