Anthro in the news 3/25/13

• Genocide trial in Guatemala

An extensive article in The New York Times described how Guatemala’s justice system is changing: ” In a show of political will, prosecutors are taking long-dormant human rights cases to court, armed with evidence that victims and their advocates have painstakingly compiled over more than a decade — as much to bear witness as to bring judgment.” Early on, victims were afraid to speak out, but the United Nations truth commission helped to break that silence. Evidence emerged from the work of forensic anthropologists who have been exhuming the bodies for 20 years. Fredy Peccerelli, the head of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation is quoted as saying: “This is terror…This is a strategy to make sure that anyone and everyone who is opposed to you is afraid of you; not only now, is afraid of you forever.” Peccerelli will testify at the upcoming genocide trial.

• Follow the cheese

The Boston Globe carried an article about the research of Heather Paxson, an anthropology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her recent book, The Life of Cheese. Exploring the modern American artisan cheesemakers, “the book profiles people who make cheese and delves into the science, art, politics, and culture, as it were, of these artisan products.” Paxson is quoted as saying: “What attracts a lot of people to cheesemaking…is that it’s magical: the transubstantiation of fluid milk to solid food. A lot of people [I interviewed] described cheese’s liveliness and used developmental metaphors like ‘hitting puberty’ and‘maturity.’ They anthropomorphize the cheese.”

• Autism numbers up or not up?

Several media sources, including USA Today, covered a new study claiming substantial increases in the numbers of children in the United States with autism: “Autism rates in the USA may be substantially higher than previously estimated, according to a new government report that found that one out of every 50 school-age children — roughly one on every school bus — have the condition. That’s dramatically higher than the one in 88 announced by a different agency last year.” Some experts say, however, that the higher numbers suggest that officials are getting better at counting children with autism. For example, “I don’t see any evidence that there’s a true increase in the prevalence of autism,” says Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/25/13” →

Anthro in the news 3/18/13

• Going green for St. Patrick’s Day and more

Anthropologyworks’ Sean Carey published an article in The Guardian about going green for St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. He discussed the trend to turn buildings and sites green through lighting or dye including Berlin’s TV Tower, Cape Town’s Table Mountain, the Citadel in Jordan, Dubai’s Burj al Arab, the Empire State Building, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Pyramids of Giza, the Sydney Opera House, and Niagara Falls. There was a request to the Queen that Buckingham Palace be turned green to mark the saint’s day (the answer was no). Tourism Ireland has recently discovered that royal bride and mother-to-be Kate Middleton has Irish ancestry: “We have an authenticated connection, with all the certificates and everything,” said Tourism Ireland’s chief executive Niall Gibbons. He promises to reveal details in the next few weeks.

• A less green note: Lessons from Chernobyl to Fukushima

Cultural anthropologist Sarah Phillips of the University of Indiana at Bloomington writes in CounterPunch: “The March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the deaths of approximately 16,000 persons, left more than 6,000 injured and 2,713 missing, destroyed or partially damaged nearly one million buildings, and produced at least $14.5 billion in damages. The earthquake also caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast. After reading the first news reports about what the Japanese call ‘3.11,’ I immediately drew associations between the accident in Fukushima and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 in what was then the Soviet Union…. I positioned the problem-riddled Chernobyl clean-up, evacuation, and reparation efforts as a foil, assuming that Japan would, in contrast, unroll a state-of-the-art nuclear disaster response for the modern age…surely a country like Japan that relies so heavily on nuclear-generated power has developed thorough, well-rehearsed, and tested responses to any potential nuclear emergency? Thus, I expected the inevitable comparisons between the world’s two worst nuclear accidents to yield more contrasts than parallels.” In fact, the author finds many parallels.

• What do you believe, and does it matter?

Tapestry is a radio feature of CBA Canada about modern spirituality. Its host Mary Hynes recently asked the question: What do you believe? A write-up of the program mentions Tanya Luhrmann, cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, and her recent book, When God Talks Back, Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Hynes ackonwledges Lurhmann’s role in trying “to bridge the chasm between those who believe and those who find the concept of belief unfathomable…On the one side: those for whom belief is real, tangible and beyond question. On the other: those who regard belief with skepticism, hostility, confusion or bemusement. So, go ahead and ponder the question, ‘What do you believe?’ But spare a thought, too, for its corollary: Does it matter?”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/18/13” →

Anthro in the news 3/11/13

• On gender equality in Cuba

A report on the status of women in Cuba, “Women’s Work: Gender Equality in Cuba and the Role of Women Building Cuba’s Future,” credits the leaders of the revolution with mandating and enforcing rules and laws guaranteeing gender equality and women’s rights, which have made Cuba among the highest-ranking nations in the advancement of women.

An article in The New York Times discussing the report quotes María Ileana Faguaga Iglesias, a Cuban cultural anthropologist and historian who argues that the story of Cuba’s progress toward gender equality is overstated. She expressed the frustration of highly educated women: ”We have to distinguish that access to university studies does not necessarily give us power … What’s more, to be in positions that are supposedly positions of power does not necessarily permit the exercise of power.”

Still, Cuba ranks high in international surveys on women. The World Economic Forum’s 2012 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Cuba 19th among 135 countries, up one notch from 2011, one of only two Latin American nations in the top 20 (Nicaragua ranked ninth). By comparison, the United States fell to 22 from 17 in the survey, which measured the health, literacy, economic status and political participation of women.

• Women on Wall Street

In an interview on the Bill Moyers report, cultural anthropologist Melissa Fisher comments that women could not have entered the U.S. professional workforce in significant numbers without the liberal feminist movement’s insistence on the opening up of formerly male bastions, such as finance. In her book Wall Street Women, Fisher charts the evolution of the first generation of career women on Wall Street. She is a cultural anthropologist and visiting scholar in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/11/13” →

Anthro in the news 3/4/13

• Economic anthropologists sought to enrich poor numbers

According to a book review in The Financial Times, “A tendency to issue doubtful data is rooted in colonial days and still creates problems for the [African] continent, according to an important study: Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled By African Development Statistics and What To Do About It, by Morten Jerven. The review goes on: “There are lies, damned lies and then there are African statistics. If economic figures everywhere are a work in progress — regularly rebased and updated to take into account fresh data — those from Africa are the most open to question and the most unreliable in their revision.”

Morten Jerven Poor Numbers — Credit: Cornell University Press

The reviewer considers Poor Numbers to be an important contribution to the subject. Morten Jerven, an assistant professor at the school for international studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, builds the case for renewed scrutiny. Pointing to “huge discrepancies and alarming gaps” in African figures, he writes: “Datasets are like guns. Someone will use them if they are left lying around.”

And, further [and now we are getting to the connection with anthropology], Jerven calls for a focus on strengthened national statistical capacity, the use of “economic anthropologists,” and greater transparency on the underlying assumptions and weaknesses of existing data.

As Jerven rightly concludes: “Numbers are too important to be ignored, and the problems surrounding the production and dissemination of numbers are too serious to be dismissed.”

• The real news in anthropology is not about Chagnon

In the Huffington Post, Paul Stoller, professor of anthropology at West Chester University, comments on the latest “flare up” in the news surrounding Napoleon Chagnon‘s memoir, Noble Savages (and see below in this aitn). He states: “In the sweep of time, though, Chagnon’s work is but a blip on the screen. In the nanosecond reality of the media universe, Chagnon’s ideas and struggles will quickly revert back to what they are: ‘very old news.’ The real news…is the ongoing work on structures of poverty and social inequality, work that exposes how contemporary economic practices trigger widespread real world suffering. That scholarship produces results that are politically threatening to men like Rick Scott, Scott Walker and Rick Perry. That’s why they’re slashing higher education budgets. What better way to undermine anthropology, sociology, and the humanities and protect their economic and political interests?”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/4/13” →

Anthro in the news 2/25/13

• Human Terrain System update

According to an article in USA Today, a $250 million U.S. Army program designed to aid troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has been riddled by serious problems that include payroll padding, sexual harassment and racism. The article cites Hugh Gusterson, an anthropology professor at George Mason University who has studied the program.

U.S. soldiers pass out toys during a Human Terrain Team site survey mission in Iraq, 2009. (Photo: Spc. Benjamin Boren) — U.S. soldiers pass out toys on a Human Terrain Team mission in Iraq, 2009/Spc. Benjamin Boren

In an email to USA Today, he said: “It’s another example of a military program that makes money for a contractor while greatly exaggerating its military utility … The program recruited the human flotsam and jetsam of the discipline and pretended it was recruiting the best. Treating taxpayer money as if it were water, it paid under-qualified 20-something anthropologists more than even Harvard professors. And it treated our [AAA] ethics code as a nuisance to be ignored.”

In Afghanistan, the Human Terrain teams feed information to military intelligence centers called Stability Operations Information Centers. The reports are designed to help determine potential targets and adversaries. “We don’t know how that information is useful in identifying a group or individual,” said R. Brian Ferguson, a Rutgers University cultural anthropologist who has studied the program. USA Today has obtained a soon-to-be published report by the National Defense University, a Pentagon-affiliated think tank, noting that Human Terrain System efforts “collectively were unable to make a major contribution to the counterinsurgency effort.”

• Follow the vodka

An article in The Atlantic described the growing role of sociocultural anthropology in marketing studies. It highlights the work of Min Lieskovsky, a 31-year-old straight New Yorker who mingled freely and occasionally ducked into a bathroom to scribble notes about a lesbian party in Austin, Texas, that was heavily infused with vodka.

Liekovsky had recently left a Ph.D. program in sociocultural anthropology at Yale University, impatient with academia but eager to use ethnographic research methods. The consulting firm she worked for, ReD Associates, is at the forefront of a movement to deploy social scientists on field research for corporate clients. The vodka giant Absolut contracted with ReD to infiltrate American drinking cultures and report on the elusive phenomenon known as the “home party.”

The corporate anthropology that ReD and a few others are pioneering is the most intense form of market research yet devised. ReD is one of a handful of consultancies that treat everyday life — and everyday consumerism — as a subject worthy of the scrutiny. According to the article, many of the consultants have trained at the graduate level in anthropology but have forsaken academia—and some of its ethical strictures—for work that frees them to do field research more or less full-time, with huge budgets. And agendas driven by corporate interests.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/25/13” →

Anthro in the news 2/18/13

• Gas company targets a protected park in the Peruvian Amazon

An article in The Guardian reported on how an energy company is eyeing the gas reserves of a Peruvian Amazon park where biodiversity exceeds any other place on earth and which is home to indigenous people who have little contact with the outside world.

Pluspetrol's Pagoreni-B gas well, part of the Camisea project in the Amazon jungle near Cuzco, Peru. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle/AFP — Pluspetrol's Pagoreni-B gas well near Cuzco, Peru. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle/AFP

The report is based on a leaked document. The revelation about Manu national park follows rumors and reports in Peru that the government is to create a gas concession bordering or including parts of the park, but which have not been publicly confirmed.

The Guardian quotes anthropologist Daniel Rodriguez, who has worked with indigenous federation Fenamad: “This is the first time we’ve seen evidence for plans to expand hydrocarbon activities into Manu.” Manu is home to 10 percent of the world’s bird species, 5 percent of all mammals, and 15 percent of all butterflies. Unesco has declared the park a World Heritage Site and biosphere reserve.

• Becoming a mother without a husband in Vietnam

The New York Times reported on northern Vietnamese war widows becoming mothers without husbands in order to avoid living without a child and dying a lonely death.

The article focuses on women in one village who “upended centuries-old gender rules and may have helped open the door for a nation to redefine parenthood.” Having endured the war, they developed a new strength and were determined not to die alone. They asked men, whom they did not interact with afterward, to help them conceive a child. The practice was known as “xin con,” or “asking for a child,” and it meant breaking with tradition, facing discrimination and enduring the hardships of raising a child alone.

“It was unusual, and quite remarkable,” said Harriet Phinney, an assistant professor of anthropology at Seattle University who is writing a book on the practice of xin con in Vietnam. Purposely conceiving a child out of wedlock, she said, “was unheard-of.” It was a product of the mothers’ bravery and a postwar society that acknowledged the unique situation of women across Vietnam, including thousands of widows who were raising children alone.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/18/13” →

Anthro in the news 2/11/13

• Message in the chicken wings

According to an article in The Huffington Post by Jim Yong Kim, “One bit of bad news for millions of Americans during the Super Bowl was that chicken wings were suddenly more expensive. The cause, in part, was the U.S. drought last summer. The drought was the most widespread in more than 50 years, and it drove up the cost of chicken feed. In all, 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded in the United States. The bad news for the 850 million undernourished people around the world is that erratic weather is affecting food production globally. High and volatile food prices have become the new normal, and more and more extreme weather events are partly to blame. Climate trends have already affected food production around the world, driving up prices for everything from bread and tortillas to chicken wings.” Kim is president of the World Bank, a medical doctor, and cultural anthropologist.

• Take care of this land

Dame Anne Salmond published an op-ed in The New Zealand Herald, entitled “Let’s Look after Our Beautiful Land.” She writes, “Around the world, consumers are demanding that food, wine and timber are sustainably produced…But at home, domestic policies that head in the opposite direction put both at imminent risk. The Resource Management Act, for example, is being reviewed to weaken rather than strengthen environmental standards. The Department of Conservation is being eviscerated. The global Forestry Stewardship Council standards for sustainable production of timber are being flouted, with officials turning a blind eye. The Land and Water Forum, which aimed to agree on higher water-quality standards, has been hijacked.No wonder the integrity of our “clean, green” reputation is being assailed by news forums around the world. Expect much more of this in future…Industry, national and regional government and ordinary Kiwis need to link arms, get behind our 100 per cent Pure New Zealand brand and make it real. This is where we need some big ideas…” Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished professor of Maori studies and anthropology, University of Auckland. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/11/13” →

Anthro in the news 2/4/13

• Violence in Africa begins with greed

In an op-ed in The New York Times, Kamari Maxine Clarke, professor of cultural anthropology at Yale University, argues that violence in Africa is rooted in greed, related to contested and highly desired natural resources, and corporate greed should be considered a war crime:

“Violence in Africa begins with greed — the discovery and extraction of natural resources like oil diamonds and gas — and continues to be fed by struggles for control of energy, minerals, food and other commodities. The court needs the power to punish those who profit from those struggles. So do other judicial forums.

At a summit meeting here last week, leaders of the African Union proposed expanding the criminal jurisdiction of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to include corporate criminal liability for the illicit exploitation of natural resources, trafficking in hazardous wastes and other offenses.”

• Legal decision in Guatemala that genocide is genocide

According to an article in The New York Times, a Guatemalan judge ordered Efraín Rios Montt, the former dictator, and his intelligence chief to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with the massacres of highland Maya villagers three decades ago.

President Otto Pérez Molina, a former general, says he does not believe that the killings during the war amounted to genocide. A UN truth commission determined that the military had carried out “acts of genocide,” including in the Maya-Ixil villages during the war, in which 200,000 people died. As a legislator until last January, Mr. Rios Montt was protected from prosecution. Prosecutors filed charges when his term expired, but his lawyers’ appeals delayed the case.

Guatemala CIA World Factbook — Guatemala/CIA World Factbook

Scholars of Guatemala said that a number of factors combined to get the case to court, including the tenacity of the attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, and successful efforts to appoint more independent judges.

Victoria Sanford, an anthropology professor at the City University of New York who has written about Guatemala’s civil war, is quoted as saying: ”For Rios Montt to be tried breaks the wall of impunity … It says genocide is genocide and it is punishable by law.”

• Crash course in blood football

The Toronto Star carried an article about how “the concussion issue threatens to sack NFL’s business model” given the impending threat to profits from brain injury lawsuits.

As context, the article points out: The National Football League brought in more than $9 billion in revenue in 2012, and tickets to its showcase event, this weekend’s Super Bowl, range from $850 to $1,250, and even more trough the online resale market. Meanwhile, corporations advertising on Sunday’s game paid a record $3.8 million (U.S.) for a 30-second slot. The NFL is the undisputed king of cash among North American pro sports.

Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, 2006/Wikipedia

But as the money piles up, so do lawsuits and workers compensation claims filed against the league and its teams by former players, who say they suffered irreversible brain injuries while playing in the NFL, and that the league and its teams never informed them about the lasting effects of football’s repeated head trauma.

Duke University cultural anthropology professor Orin Starn wonders if the legal action will lead to similar efforts to raise awareness among football players and fans: “Football is in the same situation; they’ve got a product that’s hazardous to your health,” says Starn, who specializes in the anthropology of sport. “It should come with a warning label stamped on the helmet. America is in massive denial about the blood cost of football.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/4/13” →

Anthro in the news 1/28/13

• “Invisible cultural anthropologist” Jim Kim in the news

Anthro in the news picked up on two mentions of Jim Kim, medical anthropologist, physician, humanitarian development expert, and current president of the World Bank.

Jim Yong Kim, president of The World Bank — World Bank President Jim Yong Kim/Moritz Hager, Wikipedia

First, his op-ed, “Make Climate Change a Priority,” appeared in the Washington Post opinion section in which he wrote: “As economic leaders gathered in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum, much of the conversation was about finances. But climate change should also be at the top of our agendas, because global warming imperils all of the development gains we have made. If there is no action soon, the future will become bleak. The World Bank Group released a report in November that concluded that the world could warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century if concerted action is not taken now.”

Second, an article in an economic/trade-focused forum discussed Kim’s visit to Tunisia to promote private sector development: “World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim today concluded a two-day visit to Tunisia during which the Group’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, announced a $48 million investment to support the growth of private entrepreneurs. Kim met the country’s leadership and civil society to discuss the reform agenda and Tunisia’s progress two years after its popular uprising. ‘We are here as strong supporters of the Tunisian revolution,’ said Kim. ‘[The people of Tunisia] went through some very difficult times, but in doing what you’ve done, you’ve inspired the entire world. [Now] we’ve got to make sure that Tunisia is successful in showing that Islam and democracy go together, that you can have economic development that includes everyone.'”

Kim emphasized ongoing World Bank Group support for Tunisia’s aspirations through programs that address improved governance and accountability, opportunities for women and youth, private sector job-creation and investments in interior regions.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/28/13” →

Anthro in the news 1/21/13

• Revenge against French fueling conflict in Mali and Algeria

Mali. Source: CIA Factbook. The contested region is in the north.

An article in The Star (Toronto) about how Mali’s conflict spilled across its borders into Algeria this past week quoted Bruce Whitehouse, a cultural anthropology professor at Lehigh University, and a Fulbright scholar who has lived in Mali.

He says: “They want to get back at the French desperately and they have a history of carrying out a tit-for-tat response when it comes to French intervention …They clearly want to portray what they’re doing as a direct and balanced response to what’s being directed against them … It will bring a lot more pressure from the United States and European governments to get involved … (It) might be a good thing from Mali’s point of view. Algeria has what’s reckoned to be the most capable military there and they have experience and they know the terrain.”

• Mali: Where music is dangerous

An opinion piece in the Cyprus Mail says that Islamic extremism is stopping the music in Mali:

“We all have a favourite album. Mine is Talking Timbuktu, the collaboration between the great Malian musician Ali Farka Tourι and Ry Cooder. Arguably it’s some of the best guitar playing you’ll ever hear. Ali died in 2006, but his son Vieux carries the sound onward, that curious mix of African soul and heart with a blues base.

“So it was with utter horror that I heard Lucy Durán, who hosts the BBC programme World Routes and teaches the anthropology of world music at SOAS (University of London), say in an emotional comment this week that one of the terrible side effects of the extreme Islamic fundamentalism now invading northern Mali is the silencing of music. Outlawed under Sharia law, all instruments, radio, CD players have been destroyed, and as Lucy chillingly said, those seen playing guitars were threatened with having their fingers cut off.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/21/13” →