• Politics as performance

U.S. presidential campaigns provide a unique window into society and reveal the obsession with celebrities, according to a new book by two U.S. linguistic anthropologists. Michael Lempert, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Michigan and Michael Silverstein of the University of Chicago are authors of Creatures of Politics: Media, Message and the American Presidency. They “dissect” the construction and presentation of a presidential candidate’s “message,” which includes appearance, style of speech, gesture and their packaged biography. Lempert is quoted as saying, “Basically, we’ve come to rely on the characterizations of candidates that this system has invented to help us make sense of which candidates we should support…We not only have debates, but endless debates about the debates.” The debates are a form of theater to take the measure of the candidates their appearance, their pronunciation, their use of gestures, even their gaffes, which explains why George W. Bush, famous for his trouble with language, could be perceived to have done well in the 2004 presidential debate with John Kerry. According to Silverstein, “Kerry was, ironically, viewed as being the more patrician — his extended family was wealthy, but his parents were upper-middle class — based on his grammar and elocution.” As reported in the Washington Times, Silverstein says that the candidates take their cues from celebrities.

• (A) mazing corn

The New York Times carried an article describing how many American corn farmers are looking to corn mazes and tourism to make ends meet. Corn mazes have become so popular in the past decade that those who engage in the craft hold annual conventions. Mazes are enhanced with zip lines, live zombie scarecrows, and corn cannons that can shoot an ear of corn across a field. People buy tickets online or pay on hand-held devices, sometimes handing over $20 or more. The article quotes Kendall Thu, a cultural anthropology professor at Northern Illinois University and editor of the journal Culture & Agriculture: ”Corn mazes are similar to the cultural connections farmers markets and C.S.A.’s are creating between two worlds” [C.S.A.’s are community-supported agriculture programs in which customers buy produce from farmers in advance]. Unlike farmers markets with their upscale appeal in urban areas, corn mazes are popular among suburban people who long for an imagined country experience.

• Pay higher tuition in Florida to take anthropology?

An editorial in the Orlando Sentinel commented on a recent plan for higher education in Florida as short-sighted, discriminatory, and financially backward: :It should come as no surprise that a state task force, created by Gov. Rick Scott to study the public university system, is suggesting Florida place a priority on students interested in pursuing degrees in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. But it’s shocking to hear the group’s proposal — lower tuition for in-demand degrees. Just last year, University of Florida President Bernard Machen suggested the opposite. In the face of a $300 million cut to the university system, Machen asked lawmakers for the flexibility to increase tuition for high-demand degrees that lead to high-wage jobs.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/5/12” →

• U.S. adults occupying Halloween

In the U.S., adults are making this holiday all about them. On Wednesday night in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a record 2 million people, about 90 percent of them grown-ups, are expected to gather and act like kids. A record $8 billion will be spent by U.S. consumers this Halloween, most by adults, for adults. Seven years ago, when the National Retail Federation asked adults if they planned to celebrate Halloween, 52.5 percent said yes. This year, it’s 71.5 percent.  Consumer anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “I call it Occupying Halloween…We need to creatively express ourselves to find pure joy.” A decade ago, fewer than three in 10 costumes purchased at Halloweenexpress.com were for adults. Now, it’s more than six in 10.

• Halloween is big business in Hong Kong

Halloween now eclipses Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong as businesses seize the opportunity to make scary amounts of money from this Western festival. When cultural anthropologist Joseph Bosco moved to Hong Kong from the United States more than 20 years ago, Halloween was a non-event; a Western festival celebrated by the mainly American expatriate community. Bosco, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is quoted in China Daily: “You might find a few costumes in a small section at Toys R Us, but that was about it.” Now, 20 years later, the picture today is very different. Pumpkins, jack-o’-lanterns, ghosts, ghouls and monsters are everywhere this month. Restaurants offer specially-cooked up spooky dishes, shopping malls are decked out in Halloween decorations, bars invite customers to get into the spirit by dressing up, toy shops hosting Halloween parades, while ghosts, vampires and werewolves take center stage as the main attraction at theme parks. “Travel on the MTR over the next week and you see families with little kids dressed up in costume on their way to Halloween events, which I don’t remember seeing at all when I first got here,” said Bosco. The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) may declare the city as Asia’s Halloween Capital and run special promotions in the six week run-up to the main event, to entice visitors from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, South Korean and the Philippines. More from Bosco: “I think people see it as being cosmopolitan. They know foreigners do this and want their kids to see it and participate in it and somehow be linked to this worldwide culture; the same way they do for Christmas…But what is surprising is that it has become so popular given that ghosts are not something you play around with in Chinese culture.”

• From Haiti with love

In an article in The Huffington Post, Mark Schuller, assistant professor of anthropology and NGO leadership development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti, asks how U.S. foreign aid should be reformed. “For those who have the time and resources to read it, I recently published a case study begun as my doctoral thesis in 2000 of two Haitian women’s NGOs, both working on HIV/AIDS prevention (in the interest of disclosure: all my royalties will be donated to grassroots groups in Haiti).” He offers a list of summary recommendations to the United States Agency for International Development.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/29/12” →

Blogger’s note: the past week was relatively quiet for anthropology. In fact, far more news coverage appeared for beer than for anthropology.

Speaking truth to big mining

An anthropologist engaged by Fortescue Metals Group says his services were discontinued after he refused a demand to amend sections of his report discussing indigenous heritage where the company wanted to mine. In a statement made to a lawyer, Brad Goode says his “tenure with FMG was not continued” after he insisted on including references to the cultural significance of Kangeenarina Creek in the Pilbara and representing the wishes of the Yindjibarndi people to have a 50m exclusion zone either side of the creek.

Fieldwork debts

Catherine Sanders contributed an article to The Huffington Post on her debts to the people in Nepal who hosted her fieldwork. Sanders is completing her Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Montana and is a Research Associate at The ISIS Foundation, where her research informs health improvement projects in Nepal and Uganda. She says, “I’m writing about indebtedness today because I’m in serious debt to the people of Nepal. They had to feed me, teach me how to behave, and rescue me from baby cows for over a year. Some of those things you can pay for with money, but money doesn’t begin to touch most of them, and here’s why: being indebted in Nepal means placing a social contract alongside the money… They know that the one certitude is that their day will come, tomorrow most likely. Being in debt is saying, ‘when and if I can, I will be there for you, too.’ This terrified me. I didn’t know if I would be there for them, or even if I was, if I could offer them anything…I am in debt to the people of Nepal. I will never be able to pay it back. And I will never give up trying.”

Indigenous alcoholism policy in Australia

In Northern Australia, the threat of mandatory rehabilitation will be used to intentionally push problem street drunks out of public view and into the “scrub.” The government will also create up to 400 beds in alcohol rehabilitation facilities and a new body to manage NGO rehabilitation services. The article in The Australian quotes Richard Chenhall, a lecturer in medical anthropology at the University of Melbourne, as saying that there is little evidence that mandatory rehabilitation is more effective than previous measures: “The approach is more about getting problem drunks — read: Aboriginal people drinking in public spaces — off the streets,” he said. And, further, “The policy is effectively criminalising drunkenness…”
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/22/2012” →

• Reforming the World Bank

One of the world’s most influential cultural anthropologists (and a medical doctor, scientist, and former university president), Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, outlined his plans to overhaul the development institution, saying he wants to create a “solutions bank” that can more quickly meet the needs of the world’s poorest countries. “We must become faster, more innovative and more flexible,” Kim told finance ministers and central bankers gathered in Tokyo for the annual International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.

• Architecture and anthropology for public health

In 2006, Michael Murphy, a 26-year-old architecture student, approached Paul Farmer, global health pioneer and medical anthropologist, after a lecture at Harvard. Murphy asked which architects Farmer had worked with to build the clinics, housing, schools and roads he had described in his talk. Murphy was hoping to put his design degree to use by apprenticing with the humanitarian architects aiding Farmer’s work. It turns out, those architects did not exist. Soon after, Murphy flew to Rwanda where he and other students became Farmer’s architects. Murphy lived in Rwanda for over a year while the Butaro Hospital in northern Rwanda, which laborers built with local materials, was designed. The site, once a military outpost, is now a 150-bed, 60,000-square-foot health care center. In its first year, it served 21,000 people. It employs 270 people, most of them local. According to The New York Times, “For the 340,000 people who live in this region of Northern Rwanda, the project marks a literal reclamation: an area that was once a site of genocidal violence is now a center for state-of-the-art medical care. Healing happens there. An unmistakable grace permeates the place.”
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/15/12” →

• Goudougoudou lives on in Haiti

Since the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti, there has indeed been some progress, writes cultural anthropologist Mark Schuller in The Huffington Post…”but the on-the-ground realities are more complex and sobering.” Schuller has visited eight camps in a longitudinal study over seven visits. Schuller is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership Development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. His most recent book is Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs, with a foreword by Paul Farmer.

• Romney as a transactionalist

An article in The Atlantic, typified Mitt Romney as a “transaction man: someone who moves assets around with a speed and force that leaves many of the rest of us bewildered. The insurrection in business has profoundly affected the lives of most people who work, pay taxes, and get government benefits. It’s the backdrop of this Presidential election.” The article proceeded to link this characterization to a debate in anthropology detailed here “over transactionalism kicked off by the 1959 monograph Political Leadership among Swat Pathans by Norwegian social anthropologist Fredrik Barth. Anthropology had for decades been dominated by structural functionalism’s focus on society’s forms and norms. Barth instead focused on the role of the individual’s rational self-interest in northern Pakistan’s Swat Valley.” And, further, that Obama’s “You didn’t build that” is to structural functionalism what Romney’s “We built it” is to Barthian transactionalism. [Blogger’s note: see the response on Savage Minds which dismisses the value of this inerpretation and various comments on Twitter].

• Tailgating parties about sharing

According to cultural anthropologist John Sherry, pregame tailgating is a complex community-building exercise that hearkens back to ancient harvest festivals: it “…is more about sharing than it is about competition” and helps build the brands of people’s favorite teams. “The individual traditions that they are creating add to the larger tradition,” he says. “They see it as participating in the team experience.” Sherry, who is in the anthropology department at the University of Notre Dame, conducted a two-year study of college tailgating and found that the parking lot parties are rooted in harvest celebrations in ancient Rome and Greece and in picnics during Civil War battles. They also share similarities with modern-day camp-outs at Jimmy Buffett concerts and Occupy Wall Street encampments: “The idea of getting out of your house and feasting and drinking somewhere else is a pretty old tradition,” Sherry says. “People eat and drink and build up community in the process. It’s one last blowout before we hunker down for winter.”

• Patio dreaming

After a dreary few years, the U.S. housing market is showing signs of life. A mid-September report from the National Association of Realtors found that home resales rose 7.8% from a year before. New housing is up, too. What do American home buyers want: outdoor living spaces where adults can relax and kids can play. But…”Anyone who studies how Americans spend their time eventually comes to a stark conclusion: Impressions and reality differ a great deal.” The article mentions a “fascinating book” called Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century, based on an anthropological study of middle-class Los Angeles families. Researchers from UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families recorded hours of footage, documented possessions, and clocked how people spent their days to the minute. While these families may yearn to spend time on their patio, in fact, they don’t.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/8/12” →

• Beyond Tsimane health as “yardstick”

An article in The New York Times headlines findings about the good health and longevity in an indigenous group of the Bolivian Amazon as a “yardstick” (presumably for “advanced” populations in “developed” countries). Since 2002, when the Tsimane Health and Life History Project was founded, more than 50 Bolivian and American researchers, doctors and students have participated in the health project, generating an array of landmark studies. The population of 13,000, which stretches along the Maniqui River, has become the most studied population in the Western hemisphere. ”This is the most productive research site in anthropology today,” said Ray Hames, an anthropologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Samuel Bowles, of the behavioral sciences program at the Santa Fe Institute, said, ”The Tsimane will soon become a basic point of reference for everyone studying small-scale societies.” Michael Gurven, an anthropologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, who is a co-founder and co-director of the project, said the primary focus of the Tsimane studies was aging. ”We look at what’s different and what’s similar between the Tsimane and Western populations,” he said. The Tsimane also have the advantage of variety within that population, said Hillard Kaplan, an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico and the project’s other co-founder and co-director. A small number of the Tsimane live in or around San Borja, the area’s only town; they own motorcycles and use cellphones. The contrast to the modern world provides a fascinating basis for study, with ”real public health significance for us,” said John C. Haaga, a program officer at the National Institutes of Health, which has supported the Tsimane studies for years. The studies have required time and personnel. Thesis students live in communities for up to a year. A roving medical unit visits almost all 90 Tsimane villages at least once a year. The infiltration of doctors and anthropologists has had some impact on the culture, the researchers acknowledge, but not as much as might be expected. The article goes on to discuss ethical issues of impact of the researchers’ presence and whether or not to provide health care interventions. [Blogger’s note: I hope the Tsimane can take the outsiders’ lifeways as a “yardstick” and try to protect themselves from the health downsides of modernity.]

• Anthropologist released from Turkish prison

A court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır ruled to release anthropologist Müge Tuzcuoğlu and eight other suspects pending trial in the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) suit. Tuzcuoğlu said she was still in a state of shock due to her sudden release, after her life had turned upside down following her arrest on March 8, 2012. Tuzcuoğlu, a cultural anthropologist who wrote the book Ben Bir Taşım (I Am a Stone) added that she felt bittersweet despite her release, as a number of her friends still remained locked up behind bars. She is quoted as saying, “I was arrested seven months ago by [armed people.] This arrest has to do with what a social scientist…sees when they look at a poor neighborhood. Is that a community with a penchant for criminal activity, or is it the lives of people resisting against being drawn into destitution that seem so perplexing to us?”
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/01/12” →

• Hello, Big Organic

Cultural anthropologist Elisa Sobo published an essay in The Huffington Post based on her ongoing research on education and health in a U.S., school, including views of the students’ parents. She comments that, “As organic market shares have grown, the environmentally-friendly, healthful, and socially just diet that early advocates promoted seems to have been somewhat forgotten. Big Food has entered the organic business, changing fundamentally what it comprises. For example, now, over 250 non-organic substances can by law, be included in foods labeled ‘organic’. Plus, organic no longer by definition means locally or non-industrially produced.” Sobo is a professor of anthropology at San Diego State University. Her current projects include a study exploring cultural models of child development as applied in classroom teaching, particularly in the Waldorf or Steiner education system.

• More on women’s breasts in the news

An op-ed in The Irish Times, titled Fascination with Kate’s Breasts and Karen’s Clothes Makes Idiots of Us All, discusses the debate raised by Adrienne Pine‘s recent breastfeeding of her baby while teaching a university class. Pine is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. The other women mentioned are Kate Middleton and Karen Woods, the wife of Seán Quinn, jr.

• American scholar of Nigeria honored

The Guardian (Nigeria) carried a story about Debra Klein, a cultural anthropologist from Gavilan College in  Gilroy, California, noting that she “is deeply in love with black culture, Yoruba cultural heritage especially…[and she] speaks Yoruba with relative ease, her genealogy as an American notwithstanding.”  She recently completed a Faculty Research Fellowship in the performing arts department at the University of Ilorin, ending with a public lecture on her study, Reclaiming the Orisa in Nigeria: The Intersection of Traditional Indigenous Religion and Islam in Yoruba Popular Culture.

• Anthropologists speak at workshop in India

A two-day workshop on Advanced Research Methods in the Social Sciences, concluded at the Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology & Sciences in Allahabad. The workshop was jointly organized by the department of anthropology and the department of agricultural extension education. Professor Jahanara, head of the department of anthropology and extension education, gave the welcome speech.  Professor  V.S.  Sahay, head of the department of anthropology at Allahabad University, gave a presentation on the Chowre people of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 9/24/12” →

• They say that breast is best

ABC’s Yahoo News, among other media , carried reports about cultural anthropologist Adrienne Pine, single mother and professor at American University in Washington, DC, who sparked controversy after breastfeeding her toddler in class. She says that she wasn’t trying to start a revolution, but was trying to manage an untenable situation of lecturing on the first day of class and having a feverish toddler who could not go to daycare. “It wasn’t the ideal option but the fact is there were no ideal options and it was the best of the options available to me,” Pine said.

• Hello baby, goodbye libido

Medical practitioners attending the annual meeting of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynacologists in Canberra learned that they should be aware of the sexual health of new parents. Sexual anthropologist Bella Ellwood-Clayton, who spoke at the conference, said it could take years for couples to resume their normal sex lives: “Rather than setting the bar for six weeks, I think it’s more likely to set at six years.”

• Moving back to the village in Spain

The current economic crisis is sending Spaniards from cities to villages where the cost of living is lower. An article in The New York Times quotes Carles Feixa, professor of social anthropology at the University of Lleida in Catalonia: ”Rurbanismo started before the crisis, once the Internet took off and made it possible to work anywhere…but what the crisis is doing is making the model more attractive.”

• Resetting dress from Manhattan to Gurgaon

The New York Times carried an article profiling a New York professional woman who returned to India and faced a challenge that her male counterparts do not: wardrobe. As an investment banker in New York City, Poornima Vardhan had all the right clothes: power suits, cocktail dresses and jeans. But no saris. In India, it’s goodby to cocktail dresses. Even in upscale, westernized Gurgaon, saris still reign. The article quotes Mukulika Banerjee, professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and co-author of a book titled The Sari: ”A complete no-no in Indian modesty is to show legs…cleavage is fine but not legs.”
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 09/17/12” →

• Chinese exceptionalism

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s insistence on a democratic approach to controversies involving China has brought out similarly insistent statements from defenders of the “Chinese way.” They point to flaws of democracy while touting China’s special Confucian values. This is dangerous thinking, according to op-ed contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, Kevin Carrico. He writes: “The notion of Chinese characteristics portrays the people of China as so unique, on account of their longstanding cultural traditions, as to be immune to the political and cultural change that has swept the world in recent decades.” Carrico is a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at Cornell University, researching neo-traditionalism, nationalism, and ethnic relations in contemporary China.

• Women’s second class citizenship extolled in Egypt

An article on an apparent rising tide of attitudes in Egypt that women should be good wives and mothers but not leaders or rulers quotes Hania Sholkamy, an anthropologist and an associate professor at the Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo: ”The woman is the symbol of a moral platform through which easy gains can be made…Those who deprive women of their rights, limit their freedom or place them in a subordinate position believe that the political cost of doing so is very low.”

• Mines vs. people in Oz

A cultural heritage specialist and archaeologist has claims that a mining company’s environmental impact statement is not based on proper consultation with Cape York Aboriginal groups on a proposed sand mine. An article in the Courier Mail quotes Mick Morrison, a Flinders University archaeologist.

• Lapdancing is not the Bolshoi?

In a tax case in New York City, New York State’s Court of Appeals considered whether lap dancing constitutes a form of art. A lawyer representing Nite Moves, a strip club in Latham, New York, asked the judges to rule that the club was exempt from paying $124,921.94 in sales taxes on its door admission fees because it offered artistic, choreographed performances, invoking a provision that exempts Broadway shows and ballet performances from taxes on admission fees. An un-named cultural anthropologist who is an expert on exotic dance was cited as saying that lap dancing is an art form. A ruling is expected next month.  Judge Pigott, who appears to disagree with the anthropologist’s views, commented, “We need to get past the idea that somehow this is the Bolshoi.”
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 09/10/12” →

• Retributional hair cutting and Amish trials in Ohio

The New Zealand Herald, along with several other mainstream media, covered the ongoing trial involving a breakaway Amish group accused of settling a score by carrying out hair-cutting attacks against members of their faith moved into the hills of eastern Ohio two decades ago after a dispute over religious differences. It quoted David McConnell, an anthropology professor at Wooster College who noted that a dozen Amish groups live in Ohio’s Holmes County which is , home to one of America’s largest Amish settlements.

• Is corporate social responsibility an oxymoron in China?

Andrew Hao, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California- Berkeley, published an essay in The Huffington Post highlighting negative social and environmental impacts of industrialization and economic growth in China. He argues that these matters are increasingly represented as ethical failures specific to China’s position in a global moral economy.

• First Nation’s protests in northern Canada

According to an article in the Montreal Gazette, chiefs in three impoverished Atikamekw communities gave the Quebec provincial government an ultimatum to resolve a 33-year-old land dispute or face blockades on logging roads across the Haute Mauricie region. Negotiations have stalled, and the deadline has expired. Grand chiefs in the Aboriginal towns want a bigger stake in the management of natural resources on their reserves as well as a “James Bay Cree” style agreement with the provincial government. Marie-Pierre Bousquet, a Université de Montréal anthropology professor is quoted as saying, “There’s really no excuse for the deafening silence our politicians have shown this issue. It would seem the Atikamekw in particular are truly an invisible people.” The Atikamekw villages lie in the heart of Quebec’s massive Boreal Forest, where the faltering logging industry is the only major employer. It is estimated that the unemployment rate among the northern communities is as high as 50 per cent. Despite all three mainstream political parties planning major mining and natural resource exploitation projects in northern Quebec, none have made consulting with Aboriginal leaders a priority.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 09/03/12” →