• Understanding Afghanistan: how and for whom
The New York Times book review Sunday section carried a two-page review, with a color illustration, of three books on Afghanistan — two of them by cultural anthropologists: Noah Coburn’s Bazaar Politics, “the first extended study of an Afghan community to appear since the Taliban fell” and Thomas Barfield‘s “ambitious history.” The reviewer mentions the U.S. military’s demand for “local knowledge” and how American anthropologists are resistant to providing it. Nonetheless, cultural anthropologists’ expert knowledge of aspects of Afghanistan’s social life could help in ways not directly related to military activities. [Blogger’s note: stay tuned for another important book coming out in January 2012 co-authored by cultural anthropologist Magnus Marsden and historian Ben Hopkins].

• Impact: reducing poverty’s health burden through primary health care
Paul Farmer, physician and medical anthropologist, is a co-founder of Partners in Health and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Farmer is one of the most prominently mentioned anthropologists in the mainstream media. In an op-ed this past week on sustainable health programs for the world’s poor, he writes: “Partners in Health, a nonprofit I’ve worked with for almost three decades, started by moving resources and primary care into a part of central Haiti where almost none existed. As TB, AIDS, cancer and other diseases emerged as leading killers, we did our best to combat them: Treating patients no matter the cause of the illness nor the cost of the remedy is what health-care workers are trained to do. Some of our AIDS and TB treatment efforts in rural Haiti and elsewhere achieved success rates rivaling those in hospitals in Boston. We witnessed another benefit: Delivering care for cancer, AIDS or multidrug-resistant TB improved a community’s general health. Fewer women died in childbirth, and infant mortality declined.”

• Advanced capitalism gets a look
AW’s contributor, Sean Carey of Roehampton University, published an article in the New Statesmen in which he offers insights into the worldwide demonstrations against bankers and capitalism in the world’s big economies: “Until recently, the world’s advanced economies had experienced nearly two decades of the biggest increase in prosperity in the history of mankind. This has been very fortunate for the majority of the population, especially those in the middle classes and above. As British anthropologist, Ernest Gellner, pointed out it in his acclaimed 1997 book, Nationalism, the material improvement in (most) people’s lives creates political and social legitimacy.” He goes on from there.

• Drug use in Manipur
A one-day seminar on the Impact of Drug Use in Manipur was jointly organized by the Department of Anthropology of Manipur University, India, and Community Network for Empowerment (CoNE). Speaking on the Social and Economic Impact of Drug Use in Manipur, M. C. Arun, a professor in MU’s dept of anthropology, said that the problems faced by the youth need to be addressed.

• American Anthropological Association considers ethics code revision
The Chronicle for Higher Education covered changes in the proposed new code with a focus on the “prime directive.” The previous code told anthropologists that they “have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work.” This means that an anthropologist’s obligation to the research population must override the goal of acquiring new knowledge. The proposed newer version has not yet been formally adopted. It explains that the primary ethical obligation is “to avoid doing harm to the lives, communities, or environments” that anthropologists study. “Dealing with ethics codes is complicated,” said cultural anthropologist David Price, a member of the committee charged with revising the guidelines and professor at Saint Martin’s University, in Washington. The word was echoed last week by fellow committee members at a panel on ethics at the annual meeting of AAA.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/21/11” →

• Multiple realities and the Occupiers
ABC published an opinion piece by two cultural anthropologists, Ghassan Hage, professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne, and Gerhard Hoffstaedter, a researcher at La Trobe University who take up a lectureship in anthropology at the University of Queensland. They both do research on the politics of multiple realities. At the end of their essay, they say:  “…there is an important and growing body of work in anthropology showing that rather than being defined by individualism, or territorialism and private property, or instrumental reason, what marks our modernity is that it has increasingly limited us to become mono-realist…This is not to say that the Occupiers want to revert to a non-modern mode of existence. It is to assert that, the idea of societies that allow the co-existence of multiple realities is not a figment of someone’s utopian imagination. It is to assert that, as the saying goes: another life is possible.”

• On the European economy
The Guardian carried a debate between cultural anthropologist Gillian Tett, writer for the Financial Times, and a television journalist, Paul Mason. She is quoted as saying: “Just as the past four years have raised questions about the way modern finance works, they are raising profound questions about our systems of government: we have no institutions to plan for the future, nor institutions that can quickly respond to a crisis. This is one of the reasons faith in so many public institutions is collapsing, alongside faith in the bankers. It’s why you’ve got this Occupy Wall Street protest.” Go, Gillian!

• Paul Farmer on Cuba’s humanitarian role in Haiti
An article in the New York Times on Cuba’s health aid to Haiti quotes Paul Farmer — cultural anthropologist at Harvard University, doctor, United Nations deputy special envoy to Haiti, and co- founder of Partners in Health — who said the Cubans sounded an important early alarm about the cholera outbreak and helped to mobilize health officials and lessen the death toll.

• Speaking truth to Governor Scott about anthropology and anti-racism
Cultural anthropologist John Moore, emeritus professor at the University of Florida, wrote about the importance of anthropology in the Florida Sun. He traces the connections of anthropology to anti-racism. That’s important, and it affects us all including those in the sacrosanct STEM fields. Thanks, John.

• Review All-American Muslim
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, assistant professor of anthropology and African American studies at Purdue University, published an article in Religion Dispatches magazine that offers a positive review of the new reality TV show, “All-American Muslim.” Set in Dearborn, Michigan, the show follows five Muslim-American families as they struggle to balance faith and nationality in a post-9/11 world.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/14/11” →

• David Graeber is “something of a star”
The Toronto Star describes David Graeber, an anarchist and cultural anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, as being “something of a star.” An article in the Sunday New York Times mentions his role in promoting a “horizontal” rather than a top-down “vertical” leadership structure in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Graeber is credited with coining the phrase “the 99 percent.”

• Anthro tribe will descend on Montreal next week
Gillian Tett, cultural anthropologist and writer for the Financial Times points to a hot topic of discussion at the upcoming annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Montreal: links of cultural anthropology and the U.S. military. She writes, “Last month, the AAA posted an article from Nature on its website that claimed that the US military has been employing the services of anthropologists in Afghanistan to improve its data-gathering techniques. In particular, during the past five years, it has apparently run so-called “human terrain analysis” programmes, to make its Afghan operations more culturally sensitive.” Leading spokespersons with critical views of such involvement who are likely to be on hand are David Price and Hugh Gusterson.

• Dumpster anthropology

The Seattle Times carried an article about the research project of cultural anthropology doctoral student, David Giles. For his dissertation at the University of Washington, he is practicing dumpster diving and getting to know regular dumpster divers in Seattle. His questions concern how cultural assumptions of what is appetizing lead to the disposal of edible food and how people make a meal of other people’s leftovers. He hopes his work will raise awareness of the volume of edible food that gets thrown out and will prompt people to think about how they might get more food into the hands of the hungry. “The first thing that hits you in the face is how good the stuff in the Dumpster is,” Giles said.”

• Social class and trans fats in the U.K.
AW’s contributing writer, Sean Carey of the University of Roehampton, published an article in the Guardian on culture, class and trans fats. He notes that fried chicken and chips are an age-set marker for low-income British young people including those of immigrant groups. Carey quotes a 17-year-old Bangladeshi boy, who lives with his parents and four siblings in a council house in London’s Tower Hamlets, the second most deprived borough in the capital and the third nationally: “I only eat what my mother cooks for me at home – and fried chicken and chips that I buy at the local takeaway.” In Bangladesh, the traditional diet is based on fish and rice and is low in trans fats. Fried chicken and chips and other fast foods are very high in trans fats and are clearly associated with health problems later in life. Welcome to European civilization.

• Still dreaming of a visit from the mother’s son
The mother would be Stanley Ann Dunham and the son, President Obama. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted the Sydney connection of Dunham as recalled by a woman who took a weaving class with her in the 1960s at the University of Hawai’i and Dunham’s stated wish, at the time, of getting a job in Australia someday. That wish never materialized, and President Obama’s jettisoned trip to Australia last year has yet to be scheduled. Still dreaming.

• From major anthropology to major actor
Canadian actor John Ralston (Derek’s dad, Ming the Merciless, or the guy living in his car on HBO Canada) was a double major in English and cultural anthropology from the University of New Brunswick. He grew up steeped in anthropology due to his parents’ interest in the subject. Ralston is quoted in Canada’s Daily Gleaner as saying, “My whole family has taken anthropology. There would always be anthropology books around my house…”

• Hold my hand…for 1,500 years
Archaeologists have uncovered a 1,500 year-old tomb containing a man and a woman, facing each other and holding hands. Archaeologist, the excavation director, Donato Labate said, “I have been involved in many digs but I have never felt so moved.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/7/11” →

• The anthropologist behind Occupy Wall Street
Several mainstream media outlets carried stories about cultural anthropologist David Graeber, said to be the anthropologist behind Occupy Wall Street. As reported in Business Weekly and other sources, David Graeber says he had three goals for the year: promote his book, learn to drive, and launch a worldwide revolution. The first is going well, the second has proven challenging, and the third is looking up. Graeber has published innovative theories on exchange and value, exploring phenomena such as Iroquois wampum and the Kwakiutl potlatch. His pamphlet, Toward an Anarchist Anthropology, is widely read. An American, he teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.

• Drug trafficking and rising femicide in Latin America
Drug trafficking does not offer job opportunities where one wants to promote gender equality. These job are very dangerous and may be particularly dangerous for women. The Honduras Weekly quoted cultural anthropology professor Howard Campbell of the University of Texas-El Paso on the current and historic roles of women in drug trafficking in Latin America as both mules and bosses. The article also points out the high mortality rates of women involved in drug trafficking. Disposable workers in the interest of criminal capitalism.

• What’s that thing you are holding?
The Chronicle for Higher Education profiled cultural anthropology professor Balmurli Natrajan‘s course where he shows his students a simple object, usually a pen. “What do you see?” he asks. At first, they describe the obvious: a pen. Then he urges students to think about the pen’s life. What is it made of? Where did it come from? “They start seeing that there are human beings, dead and alive—some of them barely alive—that have actually gone into the making of that object,” explains Natrajan. “They start excavating some of those things that are hidden.” Natrajan has been teaching anthropology courses at William Paterson University, in New Jersey, for more than six years, but he says this course is easily the most beloved by his students. It’s called “Global Transformations and the Human Condition.”

• Forensic anthro identifies victims of ethnic warfare
Foreign Policy magazine carried an article including video clips and impressions from a trip to Tuzla and Srebrenica to meet with investigators and victims of the July 1995 massacres. Journalist Michael Dobbs went to the DNA tracking facility in Tuzla operated by the International Commission on Missing Persons. A clip shows an interview with an ICMP forensic anthropologist describing the laborious process of matching DNA samples to an individual victim. It’s all in the numbers.

• Fox News Latino covered findings by Japanese archaeologist
Archaeologist Saburo Sugiyama found that the architects of the ancient city of Teotihuacan based their designs on a numerical measure equivalent to 83 centimeters (32.68 inches). Teotihuacan is the largest city built by indigenous peoples in Mexico.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/31/11” →

• On vengeance and feuding
Canada’s National Post carried an article about the execution (assassination?) of Gaddafi which quoted Ronald Niezen, chair of anthropology at McGill University in Montreal. Niezen said that the killing of Col. Gaddafi “establishes the legitimacy of the old tribal allegiances that are destabilizing of state structures…The danger is the complete destabilizing of the fledging state, because the institutions on which it depends for stability are weakened by that informal sphere of tribal alliances. Maybe he was such an exceptional figure that the fallout will not be disarray, but it was an opportunity, when he was taken, for the state to be legitimated [by bringing him to trial].”

• It’s not working
There’s more to securing our future than technical and commercial innovation, writes Dame Anne Salmond, Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland. She argues that the international rating agencies have done New Zealanders a favor: the double downgrade of the country’s credit rating makes it clear that the policies promoted by successive governments are not working. [Blogger’s note: Dame Salmond’s long-term collaborative research with the Maoris, and the several publications resulting from it, may offer alternative insights for policy makers about more effective policies].

• Highlights about our friend Governor Scott
Some people believe there is no such thing as bad publicity. So, for better or worse, Governor Scott of Florida has brought anthropology into the media limelight as a field of study. Several anthropologists have responded, this past week, to Governor Scott’s dismissal of anthropology as being of little use to Florida’s economic future or career prospects of graduates.

Cultural anthropologist Janice Harper published an essay in the Huffington Post in which she stated that responses from anthropologists seeking to educate him on the vital role anthropology plays in the sciences, and the contributions it makes to policy, health, international development and even Homeland Security are unlikely to persuade him to reconsider his position: “When people publicly commit to a religious or political perspective, whether left or right or what have you, when presented with information challenging their positions they become more certain, not less certain, of their positions, as anyone in sales, marketing or psychology well knows. Moreover, Scott is probably quite aware of the role the social sciences already play in shaping policy and public perception. If anything, his sensitivity to anthropology’s social reach may well be what is influencing his aim to gut funding to the discipline and to other liberal arts programs, because these programs encourage critical thinking and challenge exclusionary policies and practices based on race, religion, class, gender and other social categories.”

Cultural anthropologist Paul Stoller also published a piece in the Huffington Post, using the concept of the limited good: “The anthropologist George Foster coined the term ‘limited good’ in 1965 to describe Mexican peasants who believed that the good things in life — money and good fortune — were in short supply and beyond their capacity to capture and fully enjoy. As a consequence, these peasants did not pursue new opportunities and lost their ability to dream about a different life. My sense is that the notion of the limited good should not be restricted to the Mexican peasants…Belief in the limited good has long been part of mainstream American society…politicians like Rick Scott have repeatedly tapped into these sentiments for political gain. My students, many of whom come from families of modest means, feel the pressure of the limited good. Their parents want them to major in business, accounting, or computer science — degrees that will lead to good well-paying jobs. Who can fault them for wanting what’s best for their kids. And yet many of my students, who have little or no interest in accounting, end up learning how to do audits instead of following their passion into anthropology, history or psychology.”

Strong support for a liberal arts education comes from the president of Arizona State University who argues in Slate magazine that Governor Scott’s emphasis on practical education is short-sighted: “It is critically important that students develop the ability to move from subject to subject and problem to problem, and from environment to environment and opportunity to opportunity, in ways that unleash and utilize their innate capacities and creative potential. Such mental agility will allow them to establish new business enterprises, scientific or technological capabilities, social initiatives, and creative endeavors in every sector of the economy. It may come as a surprise to Gov. Scott, but the perpetual innovation that drives our economy could even be inspired by anthropologists.”

Governor Scott both backpedaled and bit back. At a talk this past week, he said that he “loves anthropology, don’t you know”.

At the same time, he has pressed state-funded universities to provide detailed information to him about where Florida college graduates are finding jobs, how much they earn, and how much university officials are being paid: “I’d like to understand why our universities cost what they cost,” Scott said Wednesday during an interview in Gainesville. Scott said that “The growing jobs in our state over the next 10 years are going to be science, technology, engineering and math degree jobs.” He asked, “What percentage of our graduates are in those areas? How are we promoting that? What’s our success? Is it going up? Is it going down?” Scott sent a letter on October 13 to Florida’s 11 state university presidents with 17 requests for data, surveys and other information including:

– Job descriptions, total wages, number of courses instructed and “measurable goals” for the 50 highest-paid employees at each university for each of the past three years.

– Costs and revenues per program from the past decade.

– A list of the required classes for undergraduates.

Scott has implemented a fee for public record requests to his own office.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/24/11” →

• Anthro roots of Occupy Wall Street movement
According to an article in the Chronicle for Higher Education, Occupy Wall Street’s most defining characteristics are rooted in the scholarship of anarchism and, specifically, in an ethnography of central Madagascar by cultural anthropologist David Graeber. Graeber holds the position of Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He transplanted the lessons he learned in Madagascar to the globalism protests in the late 1990s in which he participated, and which some scholars say are the clearest antecedent, in spirit, to Occupy Wall Street.

• Anthro under attack by Florida governor
Blogger’s note: since Florida governor Rick Scott’s negative remarks about the uselessness of an anthropology degree hit the media, a wave of responses have appeared. I hope a sister blog will do a “round-up” and analysis. This post provides links to the governor’s statement and just a few follow-ups.

The Herald-Tribune reported on Monday, October 10, that governor Rick Scott believes that anthropology programs do not contribute to Florida’s economy, and he wants to cut state funding for them. Scott is quoted as saying: “If I’m going to take money from a citizen to put into education then I’m going to take that money to create jobs…So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state…Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don’t think so.”

It did not take long for the media to learn that Governor Scott may have singled out anthropology degrees as job market losers because he had “inside knowledge.” His daughter, Jordan Kandah, has an anthropology degree from Virginia’s College of William and Mary. Kandah did not go to work in the field of anthropology. She was a special education teacher before enrolling recently in a Masters of Business Administration program.

The Atlantic joined in the discussion with commentary about how useful, in fact, an anthropology degree can be for jobs in U.S. security operations overseas and business in the U.S.: “The real irony of Governor Scott’s remarks is that anthropology can be so practical that it even makes many anthropologists uneasy, as in the Defense Department’s Human Terrain Program, condemned as unethical by a commission of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) in 2009. But that leaves many other business-oriented careers for anthropologists as promoted by the American Anthropological Association itself. Anthropologists have been helping improve Silicon Valley and could no doubt do the same for Florida. ”

• Pay for the funeral of organ-donators
An article in the The Guardian (London) reports on the recommendations of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a medical ethics think tank in the U.K. Dame Marilyn Strathern, professor emeritus of social anthropology at Cambridge University, chairs the committee. She is quoted as saying: “Paying for the funeral of organ donors would be ethically justified…it would be a form of recognition from society. We think a pilot scheme to test the public response to the idea is worth trying.” The official response, so far is: nice idea but not likely.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/17/11” →

• Myths about Afghanistan live on
“Ten Years In, Afghan Myths Live On” is an op-ed that appeared in the New York Times on October 8. It is co-authored by my colleague, Ben Hopkins, a historian at George Washington University, and Magnus Marsden, an anthropologist at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Hopkins and Marsden are co-authors of a new book, Fragments of the Afghan Frontier. In the op-ed, the authors point out that the “West” today is replicating the errors of the British in Afghanistan by adhering to stale and useless caricatures of the Afghan people.

• All night long
Slate took on the issue of sexuality last week and highlighted the work of Barry and Bonnie Hewlett, anthropology professors at Washington State University. The Hewletts believe they have found a society with a lot of sexual interaction going on. They have done long-term research with the Aka people of the Central African Republic. In a report published last year in African Study Monographs, the researchers discuss their findings from research that was prompted by hearing people report having sex three or four times per night.

• Toddlers share
An article in the Toronto Star discussed findings, published online by the journal PLoS ONE, that children as young as 15 months have a well developed sense of sharing. Marco Schmidt, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, and co-author of the study, observed 15-month-olds as they watched videos of people sharing crackers or milk.

• My language, my self: speaking up for Punjabi language
The Times of India reported that linguistic anthropology experts raised the issues of marginalization and distortion of Punjabi language in education, media and common use, during a seminar organized at the Punjabi university. Joga Singh, head of the Linguistic Anthropology and Punjabi Lexicography department at Punjabi University, insisted on the need of making Punjabi a medium of instruction at all levels of education.

• New thinking about ancient “temples”
Science Daily reports that ancient structures uncovered in Turkey and thought to be the world’s oldest temples may not have been religious buildings. Findings are published in the October issue of Current Anthropology. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto argues that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe may have been houses for people, not the gods.

• Digging up old roads
Science Daily reports findings of a University of Colorado Boulder team who excavated a Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption 1,400 years ago. They have found an ancient road that was covered by a blanket of ash. The road, known as a “sacbe,” is roughly 6 feet across and is made from white volcanic ash. In Yucatan Maya, the word “sacbe” (SOCK’-bay) means “white way” and describes an elevated ancient road typically lined with stone and paved with white lime plaster and that sometimes connected temples, plazas and towns.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/10/11” →

• Culture and chronic pain
Scientific American includes a comment about chronic pain from medical anthropologist/psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman in an article on experiencing pain: “However complicated to articulate and difficult to interpret, the patient’s experience of pain is lived as a whole. Perception, experience, and coping run into each other and are lived as a unified experience… Physiological, psychological; body, soul; mind, body; subjective, objective; real, unreal; natural, artificial – these dichotomies, so deeply rooted in the Western world and its profession of medicine, are at the heart of the struggle between chronic pain patients and their care givers over the definition of the problem and the search for effective treatment.”

• 100th anniversary of ethnography of the Veddah
The Sunday Times (Colombo) carried an article discussing the classic ethnography of Sri Lanka’s indigenous Veddah (or Vedda) people. They include a quotation from the British ethnographers, C.G. Seligmann and Brenda Z. Seligmann in the preface of their 1911 book, The Veddas: “The Veddas have been regarded as one of the most primitive of existing races and it has long been felt desirable that their social life and religious ideas should be investigated as thoroughly as possible.” The article goes on to say that the book “contains views on ethnicity which were acceptable at the time it was published.”

• Deeper history is better history
The New York Times included a major review of new, multi-authored book called Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present. Authors include an impressive coalition of archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and others (Timothy Earle, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Clive Gamble, April McMahon, John C. Mitani, Hendrik Poinar, Mary C. Stiner, and Thomas R. Trautmann). The book encourages readers to think big and deep about history and connections between past and present. For example: that shell beads in Europe’s Upper Paleolithic were mass produced on a scale, at the time, as iPhones are today, and what that all means.

• Evidence of ritual cannibalism in Mexico
A cache of cooked and and carved human bones has been discovered in El Salto, Durango State, northern Mexico. The site dates to around 1425 and was formerly home of the Xiximes tribe. As quoted in the Daily Mail, Joe Luis Punzo, an archaeologist with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), said that cannibalism “was a crucial aspect of their world view, their identity.” The cannibalistic rituals were tied to the agricultural cycle of planting and sowing corn, according to the research reported in National Geographic.

• Very old footprints in Mexico
Footprints from early humans that are between 4500 – 25,000 years old have been discovered in the Sierra de Tarahumara mountains in the northern state of Chihuahua. The prints were made by three adults and a child. A local resident informed the researchers of the footprints. “It took us a lot of work to find them because they are not easily identified,” said anthropologist Jose Concepcion Jimenez of the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

• Human-animal relationships and human evolution
Interacting with animals on an intimate basis led humans to develop sophisticated tools and evolve enhanced communication skills, including language, Dr Pat Shipman of Pennsylvania State University told the Observer. Animals, she posits, helped humans to evolve the vital skills of empathy, understanding and compromise: “The longest and enduring trend in human evolution has been a gradual intensification of our involvement with animals,” Shipman is quoted as saying. She added that as the world becomes increasingly urbanized, people have less contact with animals and the consequences are potentially catastrophic.

• Anthro on the road
Retired cultural anthropology professor, Bill Fairbanks, is on a long walk to learn about America. After teaching anthropology for 41 years at Cuesta College, he is now walking from his home in Los Osos, California, to Boston. He started his walk in 2009. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Fairbanks says: “I needed a challenge. So, I figured I would just walk across the country and study it as I go.” Fairbanks jots down his thoughts and e-mails them in daily updates via his laptop to anyone who requests them.

• Remains from the Spanish conquest
Fourteen human skeletons estimated to date back to the 17th century have been found buried under an old pedestrian walkway in the city of Merida, capital of the southeastern state of Yucatan, Mexico. Agustin Peña Castillo, responsible for the work of archaeological preservation, said that several of the skeletons have “spade teeth” (incisors with a cupped, shovel shape on their inner side, a genetic trait typical of Indian populations).

• Message in a lock of hair
According to coverage in Science Daily, an international team of researchers has pieced together the human genome from an Aboriginal Australian. Professor Eske Willerslev, of the University of Copenhagen, who headed the study, explains: “Aboriginal Australians descend from the first human explorers. While the ancestors of Europeans and Asians were sitting somewhere in Africa or the Middle East, yet to explore their world further, the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians spread rapidly; the first modern humans traversing unknown territory in Asia and finally crossing the sea into Australia. It was a truly amazing journey that must have demanded exceptional survival skills and bravery.” Other commentary appears in the New Scientist which quotes Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Findings are  published in the journal Science.

• On human evolution
The Philadelphia Inquirer carried an article about human evolution, and how to define “human” in its Arts and Entertainment section which quotes several biological anthropologists and archaeologists on their views about how to determine when we became human. [Blogger’s note: I have mixed feelings about seeing major questions about human evolution discussed in the Arts and Entertainment section].

• Kudos
Anthropologist Barbara King has been invited to guest-blog for National Public Radio. King is Chancellor Professor of Anthropology at William and Mary. The title of the blog, 13.7, refers to the age of the universe in billions of years. NPR describes the feature as the “intersection of science and culture.”

• In memoriam
Ivan Karp, died recently at the age of 68 years. Karp earned his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Virginia and joined the faculty of Emory University in 1994. At Emory, he served for many years as National Endowment for the Humanities professor and director of the Center for the Study of Public Scholarship. Karp is most known for making connections between cultural anthropology and the arts.

• On campus drinking culture
Nearly 40 percent of U.S. college students engage in high-risk alcohol consumption. This rate has remained unchanged for 30 years. Each year 2,000 students die from alcohol related deaths, and an estimated 600,000 are injured while under the influence of alcohol. So begins Jim Yong Kim‘s editorial in the Washington Post, “Targeting Campus Drinking.” He has worked in Peru and Rwanda, and is a world-renowned expert on tuberculosis. He brings that experience to a major campus affliction through the Learning Collaborative methodology that weds research with practice through innovative strategies to change “alcohol culture.”

• Anthro of London bankers
What do bankers in the City of London do all day? The Guardian is launching an anthropological study of the Square Mile by Joris Luyendijk, a Dutch anthropologist. According to Luyendijk, “So what is a Dutch anthropologist doing talking to bankers in the City of London? That was certainly the first thing bankers themselves wanted to know before they would even consider meeting with me in secret.” The project includes a blog with profiles of several bankers. It’s meant to be interactive: you can comment!

• Interview with Thomas Eriksen
The Mauritius Times carried a lengthy interview with Thomas Eriksen, professor of anthropology at the University of Norway, on ethnicity, kinship, community, and more.

• Anthro of Paris magicians
To find out how the craft of magic works, Graham Jones spent two years inside Paris’ thriving world of magic. Jones, a cultural anthropology professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, passed an examination to join France’s largest magic association. He recently published a book based on his research, Trade of the Tricks. “Magic is more than illusions,” Jones says. “It’s a whole repertoire of crafty interactions.”

• Anthro of drought and development
An article in the Nairobi Standard describes the work of cultural anthropologist Stacy Hope, who is in Kenya to help address the drought. To find out the root cause of drought in the country, she is conducting research focusing on the Turkana and Samburu people: “The study seeks to understand the lives of the Turkana and Samburu people vis a vis the environment. It will help Kenya manage drought from a social perspective,” she says.

• Eurozone decline and tourism in Mauritius
AW’s Sean Carey, of Roehampton University, published an article in the Mauritius Times on tourism expansion plans that may be thwarted by “the on-going economic turbulence in the eurozone, from where nearly two-thirds of tourists coming to Mauritius originate.”

• Fathering and plummeting testosterone
Findings from a localized study in the rural Philippines caught the attention of several mainstream media including front page coverage in the New York Times. The study measured testosterone levels in over 600  men for around five years and found that the testosterone of men who spend time in child care “plummeted.” Lead author of the study of Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern University.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 9/19/11” →