• Colbert reporting
Stephen Colbert interviewed Janny Scott, author of the biography, A Singular Woman, about President Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, who was a cultural anthropologist. In her interview and in her book, Scott complicates the image of Obama’s mother as simply “a white woman from Kansas.” Blogger’s note: cultural anthropology does complicate things, and such complication is our blessing and our curse.

• Complicating lap dancing
Judith Hanna, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Maryland, is an expert on dance. Her latest research is about lap dancing. If the Fox report is to be believed, Hanna sees lap dancing as a form of expressive art. Blogger’s note: interesting that Fox Business news picked up on this research.

• Sweat lodge rights
Religious conflict among the Cree brought the destruction of an aboriginal sweat lodge in a Quebec village by Christian Cree. Christian Cree feel that sweat lodges and other forms of indigenous practices such as pow-wows are not acceptable Cree practices. Ronald Niezen, cultural anthropology professor and chair of the anthropology department at McGill University, is quoted as saying that “the two resurgent faiths are coming into collision.” He explains the context: Christian missionaries taught that shamanic practices were wrong and created an older generation of devout Christians.

• Skirts rising
In Myanmar, desire for power is at the heart of the ruling generals’ decades-long fight against revealing female clothing, said Monique Skidmore in an article in the Los Angeles Times. Skidmore is an anthropology professor at Australia’s University of Canberra. She is quoted as saying that the ruling generals’ “…focus on ‘traditional values’ reflects a quest for legitimacy and an ongoing attempt to persuade the Burmese population they are guardians of the past and therefore fit rulers of their future.” In spite of the generals’ wishes, women’s hemlines are rising. Blogger’s note: odd as it may seem, cranking up a hemline may be as revolutionary for women in Myanmar as getting behind the wheel of a car in Riyadh. Context is so important.

• Kids should have chores as well as computers
Biological anthropologist Meredith Small, professor at Cornell University, entered the “Room for Debate” section of the New York Times with her piece on why American kids should have chores. She bases her comments on findings about children doing chores at early ages in non-industrial cultures and thereby learning to be responsible members of their households.

• Sail on Kon Tiki
In 1947, explorer Thor Heyerdahl claimed that Easter Island’s statues were similar to those at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, indicating a connection from the New World to the Pacific. He sailed a raft from Peru to Easter Island to prove that Easter Island could have been colonized from America. Professor Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo in Norway has found genetic evidence to support elements of Heyerdahl’s hypothesis. He collected blood samples from Easter Islanders. While most of their genes were Polynesian, a few carried genes found only in indigenous American populations. Findings appear in the New Scientist.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/20/11” →

• Anthro of cybersex
In an article on cyber-philandering, the Daily Beast mentions Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist in the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. The explanation provided is biological: sexual arousal pumps up dopamine levels, and brain scans show that the more dopamine is present in the brain, the less blood flow reaches the part of the cortex associated with decision making. Blogger’s note: let’s try thinking about this issue a bit more and definitely beyond only dopamine. Readers, can you help, please?

• Anthro of autism
The Huffington Post carried an interview with Roy Richard Grinker, professor of cultural anthropology at George Washington University, on cross-cultural rates of autism and focusing on a recently published study that he co-authored about autism rates in South Korea.

• Endangered Australian rock art
Archaeologists are launching a campaign to save Australia’s indigenous rock paintings. Paul Tacon, professor of anthropology and archaeology at Griffith University in Queensland, comments that few Australians know or care much about Australian indigenous rock art, as compared to France or South Africa. Alistair Paterson, archaeology professor at the University of Western Australia, says, however, “The art is globally significant.” Aboriginal communities are involved in a project to digitize and store rock art images and will decide about public access to the images, given cultural laws about access only by initiated people.

• Washed-up hand-axe
An ancient hand-axe between 100,000-450,000 years old was found on an Orkney beach, Scotland. Orkney-based archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones, lecturer in archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, is quoted as saying that the axe’s discovery is “incredibly exciting” and “pre-Ice Age.”

• Lean cuisine a la gorilla
The New York Times covered findings about the lean diet of our primate relatives, specifically gorillas. Jessica Rothman, an anthropologist at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and colleagues, studied mountain gorillas in Uganda. Apparently gorilla diets are in line with recommendations of the American Heart Association. Findings are published in the journal Biology Letters.

• Take that degree and do something with it
Here is an example of someone with a B.A. in anthropology who becomes a successful author. Darby Karchut earned a B.A. degree in anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She moved to Colorado and earned a Master’s in education and became a social studies teacher. Her first novel for teens, Griffin Rising, blends ancient myths with modern urban life.

• Kudos
Genevieve von Petzinger, Ph.D candidate in anthropology at the University of Victoria, is the only Canadian on the list of 20 new international fellows at the TEDGlobal Conference 2011 to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland. Von Petzinger earned international media attention last year with her interpretation of Ice Age cave designs based on a database she compiled of 5,000 designs from 146 caves in France.

Archaeologist, Richard Wright, emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, has been recognized for his work in this year’s Queens Birthday Honours List and is now a Member of the Order of Australia. Wright, who is semi-retired, has been a leader in the field of forensic archaeology. He helped reveal mass graves in France, Ukraine and Bosnia.

• Haiti earthquake and the politics of numbers
A new report containing revised statistics about deaths and displacement following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti created a media buzz this past week. The report was written by Timothy Schwartz, a cultural anthropologist, and commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development. Aid providers are concerned that the smaller numbers will provide an excuse for further delays in moving money committed in 2010 by major donor countries. Blogger’s note: even when the numbers were big, the big money didn’t move.

• Anthropology of perps
According to an article in Newsweek, one of the two lead detectives in the Special Victims Division of the New York Police Department working on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case is Alan Sandomir. Sandomir, whose undergraduate major was anthropology, says: “Doing this job is truly fighting the good fight.”

• Calling on volunteers for clean-up in Japan
An article in the Japan Times discusses the work of David Slater, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Sophia University, in promoting volunteer clean-up efforts in the Tohoku region. Slater is working with the American Chamber of Commerce and Peace Boat, a non-governmental organization. Slater emphasizes the importance of involving business people both as individuals and as part of corporate social responsibility.

• On the move: dealing with rural poverty in India
The Times of India quoted Govinda Reddy, professor of anthropology at Madras University, in an article about how men farmers increasingly commute to Chennai to work as drivers in order to compensate for declining incomes from farming. Reddy says: “The auto drivers earn according to city standards but spend only in a village economy.”

• Intel anthropology
BBC News interviewed cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell about what it’s like to be a corporate anthropologist.

• Dunbar’s number again
Robin Dunbar, professor of biological anthropology at Oxford University, continues to attract media attention with his theory that a person cannot truly have more than 150 friends or, more generally, that human group solidarity maxes out over 150 people. In an interview with National Public Radio, he comments on Facebook overload and military organization, among other topics.

• Before match.com
A big media hit of the past week was a finding that among early human ancestors in Africa, around two million years ago, males stayed in place while females left their home areas to seek out a mate. The interpretation is that this pattern is advantageous to males as a way of defending their territory and maintaining access to known food sources. Blogger’s queries: Doesn’t it seem that when males are on the move, the story is that they are spatially smart and creative? But, when females are on the move, aren’t they more likely to be depicted as cast-out from their home territory and socially needy? Similarly, explaining stay-at-home males seems to generate a story of powerful holders of knowledge about food sources and protectors of territory. When females are the stay-at-home group, they are more likely to be depicted as dependent and lacking spatial skills. Hm.

• Tunnel of death
A newly-discovered 1,800 year-old tunnel below the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Mexico, likely leads to chambers containing the remains of rulers of one of the most influential cities of pre-Hispanic America, according to Sergio Gomez Chavez, an archaeologist at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/6/11” →

• On time (or not)
The BBC carried an article about the findings of a multidisciplinary research team from Portsmouth University that the Amondawa people of the Brazilian Amazon have no abstract concept of time. Blogger’s note: see next item.

• Just try it: be bored
At a recent TEDx conference in Sydney, corporate anthropologist Genevieve Bell urged people to stop fiddling with their mobiles and embrace boredom in order to fuel creativity. Bell is the Director of Interactive Research and Experience Research at Intel in Portland, Oregon. She also said, “It’s harder to be bored than ever.”

• Our gossip, our selves
A letter to the editor of The New York Times noted that anthropologists, along with psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, physiologists, biologists, and other scientists can contribute to studying why and how people gossip, as the “culture of gossip is more prevalent and powerful now than ever before.” This claim is based on social media, such as Facebook, where content is mainly about friends and family.

• Giving her credit
The Christian Science Monitor carried a review of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother which credits Ann Dunham, a cultural anthropologist, with giving her son confidence, intelligence, ambition, idealism, and humor.

• Battle of the Buddha (he would not be pleased)
First the Taliban and now Chinese capitalism. China is planning to the launch a huge copper mine in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan. It will destroy an important Buddhist site. Archaeologists were originally given three years to do conservation work, but President Karzai reduced it to one year. Dr. Omar Sultan, renowned archaeologist and Culture Minister, says that with funding and a team of 40 archaeologists, the essential conservation work can be done on time.

• A dung deal
The Incas’ rise to power depended significantly on llama dung as fertilizer. A new study, picked up by The Times (London) argues that llama dung allowed the Incas, around 2,700 years ago, to switch from reliance on growing quinoa to maize and that this transformation allowed Inca expansion. According to Dr. Alex Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, who led the study: “Maize and muck were the essential ingredients to drive the expansion of the Inca Empire.” The study is published in the journal Antiquity.

• More pyramids in Egypt
According to an article in Australia’s Herald Sun, satellite imaging has discovered 17 buried pyramids in Egypt and thousands of other tombs and buildings dating to the time of the pharoahs. The article quotes archaeologist Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama, who used the technique to identify tombs that were pillaged during the recent political revolution. Findings are documented in a film to be broadcast on BBC.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/30/11” →

• Who’s stressed and why?
USA Today quoted Elinor Ochs, professor of cultural and linguistic anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, in response to a new U.S. study reporting on the relationship between husbands and wives doing household chores and stress levels: “This is the first time biological stress levels have been coordinated with…information we have about every moment of people’s lives across a week.” The study, conducted at UCLA, is described in the Journal of Family Psychology. Key findings are: men’s stress levels drop when their wife is doing chores, and women’s stress levels drop when their husband help with chores. Among the households in the study, women spend twice as much time as men on household chores.

• Mother is gold in Nigeria
Africa News quoted Misty Bastian, professor of cultural anthropology at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, in a review of a new book on gender in Nigeria entitled Mother is Gold, Father is Glass by social historian Lorelle D. Semley. She said that the “book will be of great interest to Africanist historians, anthropologists, and others…”

• Oldest organized mining in the Americas
Archaeologists have discovered a 12,000 year-old iron oxide mine in Chile that is the oldest evidence of “organized mining” in the Americas. Findings are reported in Current Anthropology. Blogger’s note: the concept of unorganized mining has my attention.

• Height may be over-rated
Alexandra Brewis, professor of anthropology at Arizona State University, cautioned about “super-sizing humans” in a Room for Debate feature in the New York Times. She mentions the work of Andrea Wiley in challenging common assumptions about pro-height cultural values and emphasis on children drinking more milk.

• Kudos
Kay Fowler, emerita Reno Foundation professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, is one of the 212 new members elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fowler is the only representative from a Nevada institution among the 4,300 active members.

• Largest U.S. Campus prize to anthropology student
An anthropology major who wrote about a life-changing trip to Tanzania and the simple pleasures of life in a small town in Maryland has won the largest student literary prize in the nation, the Sophie Kerr Prize awarded by Washington College in eastern Maryland. Graduating senior Lisa Beth Jones will receive a check for $61,062 from an endowment.

• Faculty campus prize
Donna Chollett, associate professor of anthropology and Latin American area studies coordinator at the University of Minnesota-Morris, received a 2011 Imagine Fund award. It will support research on the question “Are Social Movements Morally Noble? Challenging the Intrinsic Virtuosity of Grassroots Social Movements.” Her enduring interest in rural communities and sociocultural change in Latin America will take her back to her established research site in Puruarán, Michoacán, Mexico, this summer to learn why a worker-run sugar mill cooperative failed to live up to its potential for modeling democratic ideals and ensuring economic stability.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/23/11” →

• Get a life, birthers
Alan Boraas, professor of anthropology at Kenai Peninsula College, offers on the ground evidence that the President of the United States is “American”: If Trump and other birthers hung out in the same Soldotna coffee shop that I do they could have asked fellow Americano-sipper Mary Toutonghi about Barack Obama’s origins. As described in a 2009 article by Jenny Neyman in the Redoubt Reporter, Toutonghi baby-sat the infant Barack after his mother returned to Seattle from Hawaii in 1962. Dunham had spent most of her high school years in Seattle and had gone off to the University of Hawaii, met a man, got pregnant, got married, had a son, and moved back to Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. Dunham lived in an old lumber-era mansion that had been converted to a four-plex managed by Toutonghi and her husband, a student at Seattle University. Dunham took evening classes at the University of Washington twice a week and Toutonghi baby-sat Barack along with her own kids. If Dunham had given birth to Barack in Africa a few months earlier, Toutonghi would surely have heard about it.

• “If nothing else, I gave you an interesting life”
During the past week, more reviews appeared of the biography of Ann Dunham, cultural anthropologist and mother of President Barack Obama. Here is an excerpt from the review in Newsweek: “In 1960, before the Civil Rights Act, before the women’s movement, a smart, white 17-year-old arrived at college to find herself pregnant within a matter of weeks. The startling part was not that she dropped out of school at the end of the semester. Or that the father of the child she was carrying was from a different continent and of another color. Nor was it startling that she married him, at a time when doing so qualified as a felony in nearly half of America. Or that she divorced her husband shortly thereafter. The startling part was her conviction–as the child grew into a man–that her son was so gifted ‘that he can do anything he ever wants in the world, even be president of the United States.’ And that she was right.” Other reviews appeared in the Seattle Post, The Washington Times, and the New York Times Sunday edition.
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• Kudos
Senior British diplomat James Bevan has been appointed as the U.K.’s High Commissioner to India. Bevan studied Social Anthropology at Sussex University before joining the Foreign Office in 1982.

• A book reviewed around the world
Ann Dunham, mother of the President of the United States, was a cultural anthropologist. The recently published biography about her, titled A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother, was published shortly before Mother’s Day. The New York Times carried a review on May 3, written by cultural anthropologist Catherine Lutz of Brown University. USA Today chimed in on the same day. After that came reviews in The Washington Post, The Irish Times, The Nation (Nairobi), and The Times (London), and no doubt many more. Blogger’s note: Surely there has not ever been a biography of a cultural anthropologist that has received so much attention in the media. The President must be very proud of his mother. We are!

• Autism in South Korea
A new study, co authored by Richard Grinker, cultural anthropology professor at George Washington University, reports a higher than expected prevalence of autism spectrum disorders among middle class children in one city. The New York Times and NPR reported on the study.

• What goes in will come out
The earliest direct evidence of dog consumption comes from a rock shelter known as Hinds Cave in Texas. A dog bone was found in a coprolite (fossilized fecal matter) from a human and dated to 9260 years ago.

• Persian gazelle kill-off
About 5,000 years ago, in Syria, people drove entire herds of Persian gazelles to their death by using stone corrals. This finding is from research by archaeologist Melinda Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A thousand years later Persian gazelles were rare in the region as they are now.

• Kudos
Three decades of archaeological research by Richard Hansen, professor at Idaho State University, are featured in the May edition of Smithsonian magazine in an article describing his work in El Mirador, a Maya cultural site in Guatemala and Mexico. In addition, there will be an event on the Mirador Basin at the Morgan LIbrary and Museum in New York City, a forthcoming article in Archaeology magazine, an exhibit in Paris at the Musée Quai Branly in June, and a feature on the National Geographic Channel in September.

Erik Trinkaus, professor of biological anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis and one of the world’s most influential scholars of Neanderthals, will receive the 2011 Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award from Washington University.

• All bets still on for Royal Honeymoon destination
Sean Carey’s guest post in anthroworks on where the Royal couple will honeymoon got picked up by the Huff Po. Check out his cultural anthropology-informed prediction.

• Rx for love everlasting
USA Today carried a piece about keeping the spark in marital love, featuring advice from Helen Fisher, a research professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. For a romantic marriage to endure, Royal or otherwise, Fisher advises that couples should “keep taking novel exciting adventures together.” Also: choose someone with a similar personality type. And, Dr. Fisher says it is important to “make love regularly” because that triggers the testosterone system. Last, touching is good.

• Anti-royalist anthros arrested in London
Two cultural anthropologists were arrested in London on April 29, in advance of the Royal wedding, for planning a mock execution at Westminster Abbey. Blogger’s note and queries: For unknown reasons, my Tweet about this arrest attracted more re-Tweets than I have ever had the pleasure to experience. Is there a major population of anti-monarchists who follow aw on Twitter? And/or is it exciting for an anthropologist — two, in fact — to get arrested?

• The anthro way: documenting displacement
Canadian photographer and filmmaker Devin Tepleski was working on an archaeology dig in Ghana when he was asked by villagers, who would soon to be displaced by a hydroelectric dam, to tell their story. The result is a series of portraits of men, women and children standing knee-deep in the Black Volta river taken before the dam was built. Tepelski, in his last year of earning his degree in visual anthropology, realizes that, unlike photojournalists, he can make a long term commitment to a community and take a collaborative approach in telling their story.

• Conference in Ooty
Tamil Nadu, a state in south India, has a rich cultural heritage making it an endless source of fascination for anthropologists. A number of eminent anthropologists, researchers, tribal activists and students gathered in Ooty, a historic hill town in the state, on Thursday to discuss issues and challenges in anthropological research with special reference to Tamil Nadu.

• Tell it to me one more time: the “untold” story of human evolution
The Guardian carried a six-page feature on human evolution including commentary from bio anthropologist Robin Dunbar of the University of Cambridge.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/2/2011” →

• Stanley Ann Dunham: her story
The New York Times magazine‘s cover story this week is about President Obama’s mother who was a cultural anthropologist. The article is adapted from a forthcoming book on Dr. Dunham called A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother. Last year, Duke University Press published her study of artisans in rural Indonesia. There is much to ponder in the fact that instead of having a white, Texas oil family son in the White House, we are fortunate to have the mixed-race son of a cultural anthropologist who lived in different cultures and experienced discrimination as a dark-skinned child in Bali.

• Presidential support for anthro
Last year, President Obama gave $2,000 to the University of Hawaii Foundation as part of an endowment fund to honor his mother, cultural anthropologist Stanley Ann Durham.

• Vive la différence: mixed marriages and cultural tolerance in Quebec
An editorial in the Montreal Gazette describes findings from a study of 80 married couples in Quebec. In couples involving an immigrant partner, both partners were found to embrace cultural differences. Cultural anthropologist Deirdre Meintel was involved in the research and is co-author of the editorial.

• Anthro not so bourgeois after all
An article in the Guardian describes how young activists in Havana, associated with the Cuban Institute of Anthropology, draw on anthropology to bring new life to politics in Cuba through connecting to the global justice movement.

• Campus politics and the F word
University of Iowa professor of anthropology Ellen Lewin’s email to the College Republicans at her university has created a stir. The campus Republicans sent an email blast announcing “Conservatives Coming Out Week.” Lewin replied: “F*** YOU, REPUBLICANS.” The university president has asked everyone to be respectful of others.

• She walked in beauty
The face of a princess of China’s Tang Dynasty has been restored by digital archaeology. She died in 736, perhaps of an illness and was buried in a royal tomb in Xi’an. According to the reconstruction, she has a high forehead, round face and almond-shaped eyes. Her tiara, which requires no digitization to attest to its beauty, was decorated with gold, silver, copper, agates, pearls, amber, turquoise and other semi-precious stones.

SOURCE: Korea Times, April 20 “Face of Tang Dynasty Princess Restored” – website unavailable at time of posting

• Archaeo fashion line perhaps going too far?
Among the many controversies surrounding Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass is the latest: his association with a line of men’s fashions. He says all profits will go to a good cause.

• Ethics controversy at the Smithsonian
Several archaeologists in the U.S., including members of the National Academy of Sciences, are calling for cancellation of an exhibition of artifacts from a Tang Dynasty shipwreck. The main issue is that a commercial treasure hunter mined the artifacts and did not follow academic standards.

• In memoriam
Esther Pressel, retired professor of anthropology at Colorado State University, died at the age of 74 years. She taught at CSU from 1968 until her retirement in 2003. A medical anthropologist with interests in healing, ritual and spirit possession, she conducted fieldwork in India, Russia, Nigeria, and Brazil.

• Ask an anthro

Two articles in the mainstream media this past week recognized the relevance of cultural anthropology to major global issues.

An article in the Guardian discusses the importance of family planning for improving women’s health and reducing poverty in developing countries. It quotes J. Joseph Spiegel: “If you ask anthropologists who live and work with poor people at the village level … they often say that women live in fear of their next pregnancy. They just do not want to get pregnant.”

A review of a new book in the Times (London) (requires login) titled Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven includes a quotation by Lieven: “To understand how Pakistan works, it is necessary to draw heavily on the field of anthropology” because “kinship and patronage” permeate almost all aspects of life in Pakistan.

Blogger’s note: thanks for the shout out to anthropology. In fact, all cultures are equally cultural and therefore inscrutable without a cultural anthropology lens, which can be gained through formal training as well as long-term immersion in a culture other than one’s birth culture. It’s likely that many Pakistanis would view the “West” as “hard” — or something else equally reductionist and view the “West” as lacking kinship values. Depending on one’s definitions, patronage, political favor-giving, and corruption may be widely shared cultural features of state-level societies.

• What would the Buddha say?

The Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan is reputedly stunningly beautiful. It was even more beautiful before two 1,500 year-old monumental Buddhas were blasted to dust by the Taliban. Ten years later, here come Chinese mining companies seeking profits from the area’s copper deposits. A team of French and Afghan archaeologists are working in Mes Aynak to document the cultural richness of the area and to retrieve as many of the portable artifacts as possible. They hope to prevent the mining operation by documenting the cultural value of leaving the area intact. The Independent (London) says that: “What happens in Mes Aynak will have implications across the country. Buried beneath Afghanistan’s mountain ranges are more deposits of copper, iron, gold, lithium, worth $1 trillion…”

Blogger’s note: So, what would the Buddha say? I think he would ask the miners to keep out.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/18/11” →