• The costs of war(s)
The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken 225,000 lives and will ultimately cost more than $3 trillion, according to a multidisciplinary study by professors at Brown University. The “Costs of War” study brings together the work of more than 20 economists, political scientists, legal scholars and anthropologists in what its authors say is the most comprehensive accounting of the fiscal and human toll of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. Catherine Lutz, professor of anthropology and international relations at Brown and a leader of the project, is quoted in the Chronicle for Higher Education as saying: “There has been a tremendous loss involved whether you’re talking about lives or money… The public needs to know these numbers, and sometimes they’re difficult to find. These aren’t the kinds of numbers that just pop up on Google.” PBS also covered the study. Blogger’s note: see the conversation with Catherine Lutz on anthropologyworks.com

• Debt is a hot anthro topic
You have to admit that cultural anthropology is a rising power (or something close to that) when a PhD in cultural anthropology, Gillian Tett, writing for the Financial Times, reviews a book entitled Debt, also by a cultural anthropologist. Tett is in fact the US managing editor and an assistant editor of the Financial Times, and she appears frequently on my weekday news feed, Morning Joe. Here’s what Tett says: “If you want to get a fresh perspective on the issue, take a look at a fascinating new book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber, a social anthropologist who teaches at the University of London. Admittedly, Graeber is not typical fare for your average Financial Times reader, let alone an economist or banker. A self-avowed ‘anarchist.’ Graeber holds radical political views and has previously published books with titles such as Direct Action: An Ethnography and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Still, Graeber’s book is not just thought-provoking, but also exceedingly timely.”

• Welcome students and why don’t you go away?
Cultural anthropology professor Paul Stoller, of West Chester University in Pennsylvania, published an essay in the HuffPo. His pitch is that his undergraduate students are too settled, too complacent, and they should go away — that is, study abroad and learn a language other than English. Stoller writes: “During the first class session of my introductory course in cultural anthropology, I always ask how many students speak a foreign language. In some classes a few students raise their hands, but more often than not, my introductory classes are filled with monolingual college students…I teach at a public university at which students can receive a quality education at a reasonable cost. Most of my students come from middle and lower middle class suburban households. Many of them have never traveled outside of the United States. Some of them think that once you leave America, the living conditions deteriorate and the world becomes dangerous. In January of this year, according to the State Department, 114,464,041, or 37 percent of Americans, held passports, meaning that about 2 of 3 Americans can’t even go to Canada or Mexico–or anywhere else beyond our borders.”

• Repatriation of indigenous artifacts in Australia
A lengthy piece in the Sydney Morning Herald presented divergent views on repatriation of indigenous artifacts in Australia. Ethnographer Arthur Palmer is one of the main voices informing the article. He finds the argument for repatriation of material culture from museums “overwhelming.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 9/12/11” →

• Arab Detroit
The Detroit Free Press carried an article about a new book about life in the Detroit area’s Arab-American community in the decade since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The book, Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade, incorporates academic, artistic and everyday voices and viewpoints from one of the most well-known and largest communities of Arabs outside the Middle East. It is edited by three experts on Arab life in the Detroit area: University of Michigan anthropology professor Andrew Shryock, University of Michigan-Dearborn history professor Sally Howell, and Henry Ford Community College anthropology professor Nabeel Abraham.

• Spotlight on Minangkabau women as “hidden feminists”
The HuffPo carried an article about the Minangkabau people, among whom it is a blessing to have a daughter. The article starts with a comment from Nursyirwan Effendi who is not wealthy. But people in his community see him as blessed with good fortune: “Why? Because I have four daughters…People say I am a rich man.” Effendi is a senior lecturer in anthropology at Andalas University in Padang, the regional capital of West Sumatra. He is a Minangkabau, the world’s largest matrilineal society, numbering between 4 and 5 million people who live in Malaysia and Indonesia and are Muslims.

• Maya palace unearthed in Mexico
Mexican researchers have discovered remains of a 2,000-year-old Maya palace at an archaeological site in the state of Chiapas. The project director, Luis Alberto Martos, said the discovery represents the first evidence of occupation of that area between 50 B.C.E. and 50 C.E.

• Archaeo dates keep getting pushed back
The New York Times and Science News covered findings from a new study showing that stone tools from a site near Lake Turkana in Kenya were made about 1.76 million years ago, making them the oldest Acheulean tools so far. The articles include quotations from Ian Tattersall, paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Eric Delson, a paleoanthropology professor at the City University of New York. The study findings are published in the journal Nature.

• Lecture at the Kenya Museum
The National Museum of Kenya’s Louis Leakey Auditorium in Nairobi hosted one of the world’s foremost paleoanthropologists, Rick Potts. Potts is the director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and a Research Associate at the National Museums of Kenya. His lecture was about his research at Olorgesailie in the Rift Valley and the story it tells of 6 million years of human evolution.

• In memoriam
On August 16, 2011, cultural anthropologist Fernando Coronil died in New York City. Coronil’s many contributions to anthropology include the development of the joint doctoral program in anthropology and history at the University of Michigan as well as many publications. Here is a quotation from one tribute: “Fernando’s interventions have resonated with special force in Latin American history and politics, colonial studies and postcolonial theory, Third World state formations, historical anthropology, and Marxist geography and state theory. He was part of the innovative Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. He engaged forcefully with contemporary Venezuelan state politics and oil policies while also introducing synthetic and comparative frameworks for understanding the Latin American left today and the history of empire in the Southern Hemisphere. He argued persuasively that the field of colonial studies was too focused on Northern Europe and the modern period. He insisted that scholars of empire integrate into their analytic frameworks the history of early modern Iberian imperialism as well as the precocious experiments in decolonization and national emancipation that unfolded in nineteenth-century Latin America. His work demonstrated that political economy, historical geography, state forms, and political discourses cannot be studied in isolation from one another.” A collection of other tributes can be found at Savage Minds.

• Libya: the oily truth
FoxNews quoted William Beeman, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Minnesota: “Our interests are mostly commercial,” he said. “The U.S. has an important supply of excellent sweet crude out of Libya. There are very few places in the world that have oil of this quality.” According to Beeman, Libya produces 2 percent of the world’s oil supply. At its peak, that amounts to 500,000 barrels a day. Most of that goes to Europe, but Beeman says that with a new regime in place, more of that oil could come to the U.S. like it did before Gadhafi rose to power 42 years ago. “Whoever takes over the government after this political action will need to sell oil,” Beeman said.

• Anthro study of college student research habits
Not good news: The ERIAL (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project enlisted two anthropologists to collect data using open-ended interviews and direct observation to generate accounts of what students, librarians and professors think of library research at five institutions in the midwest U.S. One finding is that students’ research habits are worse than expected.

• Thriller anthropology
USA Today and other mainstream media covered Kathy Reichs, Chicago native who has used her scientific skills to help identify victims and determine cause of death in dozens of police cases investigated by the Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciares et de Médecine Légale in Canada’s Quebec province. Reichs is author of 14 thrillers starring forensic anthropologist Temperance “Tempe” Brennan — No. 14, Flash and Bones, is on sale Tuesday. She is also producer of the popular Fox TV show Bones, a series inspired by Reichs’ career and a fictional forensic anthropologist.

• Earliest horse domestication relocated
Saudi Arabia is excavating a new archeological site that will show horses were domesticated 9,000 years ago in the Arabian peninsula, the country’s antiquities expert said Wednesday. Reuters quoted Ali al-Ghabban, Vice-President of Antiquities and Museums at the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities: “This discovery will change our knowledge concerning the domestication of horses and the evolution of culture in the late Neolithic period.”

• Gruesome mummies
The oldest deliberately-created mummies ever found in Britain comprise body parts from several different people. The four prehistoric bodies were unearthed in 2001 on South Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.

• Earliest naked chef
Science News and the Guardian covered a report that early humans cooked their first hot meals nearly two million years ago, according to researchers at Harvard University. They have traced the origins of cooking through studying tooth sizes and the feeding behavior of monkeys, apes and modern humans.

• Listening to the evolution of the body
The New York Times carried an interview with evolutionary anthropologist, Dan Lieberman, professor at Harvard University. Lieberman focuses on the evolution of the human foot and head.

• Cultural critique of sex offender treatment in the U.S.
Cultural anthropologist Roger Lancaster published an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times that draws from his book, Sex Panic and the Punitive State. Lancaster is a professor of anthropology at George Mason University and director of cultural studies. In his essay he indicates how sex offenses in America are over-exaggerated in the public imagination in relation to their statistical frequency. He looks at existing laws about registration and notification and argues that they are not effective in protecting children from sex abuse.

• U.K. rioting not random
Anthroworks’ Sean Carey, cultural anthropologist at Roehampton University, published an article in the Guardian in which he argues against statements that the recent riots in several English cities were random. He acknowledges that the disorders do not fit the conventional sense of a race riot with people from different ethnic groups pitted against each other or an ethnic group in conflict with the police. Yet, he sees “a racial component” — specifically, the death of a 29-year-old black man, Mark Duggan, who was shot by police in Tottenham — which set off the disorders.

• Two new books on Australian Aboriginal affairs
The Australian carried a positive review of two new books about Aboriginal affairs: “In The Protectors: A Journey Through Whitefella Past, Stephen Gray takes as his subject, and as the mirror for his self-scrutiny, the record of the past century of Aboriginal affairs management in the Northern Territory. How did we get where we are? What are the hidden wellsprings of our conduct?” In her book, A Different Inequality: The Politics of Debate about Remote Aboriginal Australia, “Diane Austin-Broos gazes back in equally unflinching fashion on the role of her own profession across the same stretch of time. How did anthropologists observe and respond to the conditions of remote area Aboriginal life?” In sum: “Both books are clear and even-handed, and their open perspective is achieved in great part through urgent self-examination. They are models of the public intellectual’s craft.”

• Career tip: “search anthropology”
The Atlantic interviewed Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google. He studies how people do searches and has found that 90 percent of people do not know how to use CTRL/Command + F to find a word in a document or web page. [Blogger’s note: I am in that group of dummies and can’t wait to try out this search command! Furthermore, I have been living so far without knowing what “search anthropology” is!]

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes tie-in #1
John Mitani, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Michigan, published an opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times entitled, “Fearing a Planet without Apes.” Mitani argues for reauthorizing of the U.S. Great Ape Conservation Fund which seems to be stuck in Congress, like many other important issues. He describes the extent of habitat loss for the great apes, such as orangutans, and the positive impact that the Great Ape Conservation Fund has had, in spite of its relatively modest budget. [Blogger’s query: One can only imagine where the radical Republican right stands on primate conservation versus habitat destruction in the name of resource extraction, “modernity” and consumption. We know where they stand on the scientific story of human evolution and, therefore, the need to protect our closest relatives. Among humans, the word genocide would apply to the kind of treatment generally given to non-human primates today].

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 8/22/11” →

• Looting in England not “mindless”
The recent rioting and looting in several cities in England are not “mindless” or random, according to cultural anthropologist Sean Carey of Roehampton University. In an article he wrote for The New Statesman, Carey points to the targeted looting of high-end shops, including jewelry and technology stores, as an expression of frustrated consumption.

• Death threats to Guatemalan forensic anthropologist
Members of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation testified in the trial of four former soldiers about their role in the massacre of 250 people in 1982 during the country’s civil war. The soldiers were convicted of the killings and sentenced to more than 6,000 years in prison each. The founder of the Foundation, forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli, subsequently received a death threat hand-written in red ink.

• Pilloried without head and feet
An editorial in the Canberra Times comments on a cultural anthropology kerfuffle related to clarity in writing. The quoted sentence is worth reading, and it’s apparently lucid compared to the surrounding text, per a chirpy and quite comprehensible comment from the pilloried writer himself.

• How many people speak Na’vi?
Christine Schreyer, professor in the anthropology department of the University of British Columbia at Okanagan, conducted a global survey asking people about their commitment to Na’vi, the fictional language created for the movie Avatar. She was astonished by the hundreds of responses. Many people visit the Learn Na’vi website where they can study the Na’vi alphabet, read the Na’vi dictionary, and download an application so their GPS can speak Na’vi. Schreyer will present her findings at the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association in Montreal in November.

• Finding missing children in Turkey
BBC news covered the work of Dundee University forensic anthropologist and professor, Caroline Wilkinson, and her student Ozgur Bulut who spent a year at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification. Bulut has now established the Forensic Art and Anthropological Examination Unit in Ankara. This unit will help in the investigation of about 1,700 missing children. Dundee University’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification has become an authority in facial anthropology and forensic facial reconstruction. Wilkinson’s research has led to improving facial identification methods, and she been an expert witness in several court cases. Her techniques have been highlighted in the hit BBC 2 show History Cold Case.

• Career path: cultural anthropologist to Christian pastor
Cultural anthropologist Edson Way was a professor at Beloit College, then director of the Wheelright Museum in Santa Fe, then the New Mexico cultural affairs officer. At age 58, after hearing a voice instructing him, he entered seminary and is now pastor of an Episcopal church. He says that he finds his earlier training and work helpful in many ways including in developing his sermons.

• Career path: cultural anthropologist to artisanal jeweler
An interview with Pippa Small reveals her commitment to designing and selling ethically sourced jewelry, much of which includes materials from former conflict areas in Africa.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 8/15/11” →

• Angles of review
Paul Farmer‘s new book, Haiti: After the Earthquake, was reviewed in the Economist and the Washington Post. The first reviewer sniped at Farmer, who is a professor of anthropology and public health at Harvard University, for being thin on history and having no basis to talk policy. The second reviewer chides Farmer for a rush to publish and praises one of the accompanying essays in the book by anthropologist Timothy Schwartz. Neither review mentions that Farmer is a medical anthropologist, doctor, and health advocate. Blogger’s note: Could it be that Farmer brings to the table much more than the reviewers do?

• Indonesian government welcomes cultural anthropology’s “soft” approach
The National Resilience Institute (Lemhanas) plans to use cultural anthropology to better understand Papuan aspirations to maintain stability in the area. According to the National Resilience Institute governor, Budi Susilo, anthropology is necessary because there are many tribes and more than 400 languages in Papua, and anthropological insights will inform the government about how to raise awareness among Papuans regarding their relationship with the central government. The Jakarta Post quotes Budi as saying: “We want to invite anthropology experts to study this as part of soft approach to better understanding Papuan aspirations.” Budi also said that the idea of holding a referendum in Papua is not acceptable.

• Political accountability for high-level Chagos decisions
AW’s contributing blogger Sean Carey wrote an article for the Mauritius Times that likely means he will be stuck in academia forever. In response to a question posed to him by Professor J. Manrakhan, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Mauritius, Sean said: yes, former U.K. Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw and David Miliband should be held accountable for their decisions about Chagos. [Blogger’s note: in an email to me, Sean commented with irony: “End of my chances of being employed by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office!”].

• Ethno-tainment and gross misrepresentations of Amazonian people
According to the Independent online and several other sources this past week, anthropologists claim that a British television company faked scenes and mistranslated quotations from an Amazonian tribe to make them look “savage” and “sex-obsessed.” The series in question is Mark & Olly: Living with the Machigenga, which aired on one of the BBC’s international channels.
In one scene the subtitles indicate a tribesman saying: “We use arrows to kill outsiders who threaten us.” But a respected anthropologist, who speaks the tribe’s language, says the correct translation is: “You come from far away where lots of gringos live.”
The program also features a “wild pig dance.” An anthropologist with 35 years of experience with the people had never seen such a dance.

• The future of Facebook
Daniel Miller, professor of anthropology at University College London, has finished a year-long study of the Facebook phenomenon, published in the book, Tales From Facebook. The research has been used to predict how the site will evolve. Evidence suggests that for Facebook, the future is among older people. Miller says: “We assume that Facebook is something we should associate with the young, but my evidence suggests that this is entirely mistaken. If there is one obvious constituency for whom Facebook is absolutely the right technology, it is the elderly. It allows them to keep closely involved in the lives of people they care about when, for one reason or another, face-to-face contact becomes difficult… Its origins are with the young but the elderly are its future.” The article describing Miller’s work also mentioned an earlier study by cultural anthropology professor Ilana Gershon, of Indiana University. She studied Facebook’s role in the structure of relationship breakdowns among American college students. Miller situated his research in Trinidad and Tobago where people adopt new technology quickly.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 8/8/11” →

• On the Norway massacre
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, commented on the terrorist attacks in Oslo in several media sources. Please read his essay describing a week of media involvement.

Cultural anthropologist Marcel M. Suarez-Orozco of New York University co-authored an article in the Huffington Post about how widespread in Norway deep anger about immigration may be. He mentions the work of Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo.

• Central Park takeovers: First American Indians lost it, then African Americans
Central Park, in the heart of Manhattan, is likely one of the most valuable bits of real estate in the world. Before the arrival of Europeans, it was the home of American Indians. A brief historical interlude is coming to light about an African-American community that lived there until the creation of Central Park in the 1850s. The leaders of the Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History, a consortium of three professors from City College, Barnard College and New York University, won permission from the city to excavate in the park. About two-thirds of the residents of Seneca Village were African-American, while the rest were of European descent, mostly Irish.

• Discovery of very large serpent mound
What may be the world’s largest serpent mound has been discovered in Mariemount Ohio. Ruth Tankersley, wife of University of Cincinnati archaeology professor Ken Tankersley, first noted the unusual shape in a satellite image. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, she showed the photo to her husband saying “What in the world is this?” He responded, “It’s a snake.” Both Tankersleys have been involved in excavations in the area.

• War and “civilization”
Warfare, triggered by political conflict between the fifth century BCE and the first century CE, likely shaped the development of the first settlement that would classify as a civilization in the Titicaca basin of southern Peru. Charles Stanish, director of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Abigail Levine, a UCLA graduate student in anthropology, used archaeological evidence from the basin to trace the evolution of two states in the region.

• DNA says Neanderthals and modern humans had sex
Many modern-day humans are likely carrying a fragment of Neanderthal DNA on one of their sex chromosomes, according to a new study that supports earlier publications stating that Neanderthals and humans interbred. The DNA fragment, found on the human X chromosome, is present in 9 percent of humans across the world from Asia to Europe to America, except in Africa, where it does not appear: “It’s in the Middle East, it’s in Europe, it’s in Eurasia, it’s in America, it’s in Australia,” said researcher Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal.

• Neanderthal demise
New research sheds light on why, after 300,000 years of domination in Eurasia, Neanderthals abruptly disappeared. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have discovered that modern humans coming from Africa swarmed the region, arriving with over ten times the population as the Neanderthal inhabitants. Findings are published in the journal Science by Professor Sir Paul Mellars, Professor Emeritus of Prehistory and Human Evolution, and Jennifer French, a second-year PhD student in the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 8/1/11” →

• On extreme rightwing terrorism in Norway
Thomas Hylland Eriksen….published an essay in the Guardian in which he notes that rightwing extremists in Norway are not very visible and that it’s difficult to easily label various websites, blogs, and chat groups as “rightwing.” One thing the various loose networks and groups may have in common is resentment of the “defenders of diversity” who are seen as an “elite” who are “traitors.” Eriksen is professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo.

• Get back: to Chagos at last?
Cultural anthropologist Sean Carey published an article in the Mauritius Times that provides an update on the Chagos Islanders’ right of return.

• Nigeria improving women’s reproductive health
The Vanguard (Lagos) quotes Niyi Akinnaso, a lecturer in anthropology at Temple University, Philadelphia, on the three “delays” that predispose pregnant women and their infants to death. The World Bank is looking at Nigeria’s Abiye Project, in Ondo State, as a model for addressing the three delays, and more.

• Pride of Angola
Angola Press referenced Angolan cultural anthropologist Américo Kunonoca on the importance of the National Anthropology Museum in Luanda as a major scientific resource. It contains information on all ethnic groups in the country.

• Lo and behold: Wales claims oldest rock art in Britain
Faint scratching on the wall of a seaside cave in Wales, dated to 13,000 years ago, seem to depict a reindeer. Findings are reported by George Nash, visiting fellow in archaeology at Bristol University.

• Away from all that
Archaeologist Zahi Hawass, former Minister of Antiquities in Egypt, is quoted in the arts section of the New York Times, as saying: “I am retiring to focus on my own work, as a scholar and a writer, away from politics.”

• Read my very ancient footprints
Discovery News reports that the oldest known human ancestor footprints, dated to 3.7 million years ago, reveal that some of the earliest members of our family tree walked fully upright rather than partially upright. The findings are published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. If correct, this new interpretation pushes back the date for upright walking by nearly 2 million years.

• In memoriam
Georges Condominas, a French cultural anthropologist best known for his studies of the Mnong in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, died at the age of 90 years. Condominas was honored by the government of Vietnam in 2007 for his contributions. Born in the northern city of Hai Phong to a French father and Portuguese Vietnamese mother, Condominas spent many years living in the Mnong Gar people’s village in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak conducting ethnographic research. He also conducted studies in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Japan.

• To tell the truth or not the truth: a complicated question
Cultural anthropologist Mike McGovern, assistant professor at Yale, published an op-ed in The New York Times in which he provides context about Guinea and why someone from Guinea might choose to misrepresent his or her background in order to get out. As you might imagine, McGovern’s essay is about the DSK case. His description of the grim poverty and violence in Guinea, fueled by big mining, adds a new level of understanding, no matter what happened at the Sofitel: “As the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn seemingly disintegrates, he is enjoying a political renaissance at home, yet I keep asking myself: does a sexual harassment encounter between a powerful and wealthy French politician and a West African hotel cleaning woman from a dollar-a-day background not in itself constitute a gross abuse of power?”

• Men just want to cuddle, maybe
A new study by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University finds that more frequent cuddling and kissing in a long-term relationship predicts happiness for men but not for women. They study included 1,000 heterosexual couples in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Spain, and Germany. Cynthia Loyst, a Toronto-based relationship expert comments that the finding may relate to the fact that cuddling and kissing may lead to sex…in other words, they are not ends in themselves for men. Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, links cuddling to the release of oxytocin. Beyond kissing and cuddling, the study also addressed orgasm. Findings are published in the journal, Archives of Sexual Behavior. [Blogger’s notes and queries: I would love to know what a “relationship expert” is and how you get to be one, and I definitely plan to check out the article in hopes of finding if there are country-specific, culture-specific patterns that exist).

• Labels matter
Cultural and linguistic anthropologist William Beeman wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in response to a columnist’s essay, Where Words Can Never Do Justice. Beeman objects to the phrase used in your column, referring to certain readers who objected to Israel’s use of lethal force against protesters in the Golan Heights as “pro-Palestinian.” Beeman says: “There is no reason to label people who object to misleading, skewed reporting in this case as ‘pro-Palestinian.’ Any fair-minded reader might come to the same conclusion, whatever his or her views. I have long felt that The New York Times is consistently biased in its reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and your column only reinforces that impression.” Beeman is professor of anthropology and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and an expert on Middle East culture, society, and politics.

• Water, water is not everywhere anymore
The first of a three-part Washington Post series on water reviews three new books on the topic including archaeologist Brian Fagan’s Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind. Fagan is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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

• How much are the wars costing: guess again
President Obama recently cited a price tag of $1 trillion for America’s ongoing wars and one reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan. According to a study just released, is a gross underestimate and the total is more like $3.7-4.4 trillion, not to mention the human lives lost. The report, “Costs of War,” pulls together thinking of more than 20 academics convened by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. Catherine Lutz, head of the anthropology department and co-director of the study, told Reuters news that many people want to know if it’s been worth the costs.

• Khmer Rouge leaders on trial
Four of the surviving top members of the Khmer Rouge’s ruling elite are about to face justice. The tribunal started in 2006. Its first defendant was Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch. Up to 16,000 people were tortured under Duch’s command and later taken away to be killed. Alex Hinton, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and Director of the
Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights, is quoted in the New Zealand Herald. Hinton says that Duch’s case has “enormous symbolic value” because his role was so closely associated with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, but the current case is even more significant because it will put the four most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for the first time: “We will learn much about their thinking, the way their regime worked, and, ultimately, how their programme of mass murder was enabled and unfolded.”

• Political change in rural Thailand
In an article about political change in rural Thailand, the New York Times quoted Charles Keyes, professor emeritus of cultural anthropology at the University of Washington. Keyes first studied village life in Thailand nearly five decades ago. Describing the contemporary transformation from ”peasants to cosmopolitan villagers,” he says ”…in Thai society…the social contract is being renegotiated.” He points out that the changes to village life and breakdown of a national political consensus are not just relevant to Thailand, but are a cautionary tale for other countries in Asia that are developing so rapidly: ”It’s definitely something the Chinese, for one, should be more aware of.”

• The cannibal war machine
Counterpunch published the text of a speech that Neil L. Whitehead gave at a conference on Sacred Empowerment at the University of Leeds, England, in June. Whitehead is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. He launched his talk by saying: “A critical anthropology then is not just telling alternative stories but also unveiling what the supermodern Cannibal War-Machine does not want to be shown…So the suggestion here will be that there is a deep historical and systemic relationship between the modern free-market, liberal democratic world order and the prosecution of war and other forms of military and police violence.”

• What is secularism?
The Guardian carried an essay entitled “what is secualarism” in which social anthropologist Chris Hann is quoted as saying that secularism is a “good idea.” Hann is director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 7/5/11” →