Category: communication

Reflections on the Sexuality Policy Watch conference

Guest post by Jamison Liang

Photo courtesy of Jamison Liang

As a graduate student in cultural anthropology whose research focuses on how international, national, and Islamic law have been applied to issues of gender and sexuality in the Indonesian province of Aceh, I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to partake in the recent conference, Sexuality and Political Change: A New Training Program hosted by Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW).

The meeting took place in Rio de Janeiro from March 18-22 and brought together 17 individuals from around the world who do research on sexuality in the global south and look to link their work to movements of political and social change. Sexuality Policy Watch, a Rio and New York-based organization, serves as a global forum for researchers and activists who engage with policy debates and initiatives on sexuality, gender, sexual and reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, and LGBT activism. This pilot program aimed to provide a forum for participants to share our research and experiences while reflecting on the intersection of theory, research, and change in the realm of genders and sexualities.

One factor that made this conference so important for me—but also challenging—was the diversity of the participants both in interests and backgrounds. Attendees came from Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Brazil, India, Egypt, the Philippines, Cameroon, China, and Mexico, among others. I was one of two Americans. We ranged from current graduate students to established professors to queer activists to UN lawyers and had expertise in areas including sexual health, LGBT rights, migration, and sex work.

In forums such as this, it is always helpful as a space for knowledge sharing, but it is undoubtedly difficult to negotiate how we translate all of our local identities and nationally-bound political structures into terms and strategies that have currency at the transnational and international level. Continue reading “Reflections on the Sexuality Policy Watch conference” →

Upcoming event: The Social Dimensions of Resilience

The Environmental Change and Security Program will host The Social Dimensions of Resilience at the Wilson Center on:

Monday, March 18, 2013
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
5th Floor Conference Room

Featuring: Roger-Mark De Souza
Vice President of Research and Director of the Climate Program, Population Action International

 

Elizabeth Malone
Senior Research Scientist, Joint Global Change Research Institute

Betty Hearn Morrow
Professor Emeritus, Florida International University
Moderator: Laurie Mazur
Author, ECSP Consultant

RSVP Here

From the Haitian earthquake to Superstorm Sandy, recent years have presented many “teachable moments” about the need for greater resilience in the face of disaster. To date, much of the conversation on resilience has focused on making infrastructure more robust—by, for example, building seawalls to protect against storm surges. But resilience has social dimensions that are at least as important. Social factors largely determine the extent to which people and communities respond to and recover from changes in the environment, whether gradual (such as climate change) or more abrupt (such as hurricanes). This panel will explore the social dimensions of resilience, including the role of equity–especially gender equity–and inclusive governance. Panelists will present research and initiatives that link reproductive health to climate adaptation, and showcase current projects in Malawi, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and the Caribbean that take a holistic approach to cultivating resilience.

Location: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. (“Federal Triangle” stop on Blue/Orange Line). A map to the Center is available at WilsonCenter.org/directions. Note: Photo identification is required. Please allow additional time to pass through security.

Conference at American University on LGBTQ languages and linguistics

Marking the 20th anniversary of the Lavender Language Conference, the program will feature an array of special events celebrating two decades of scholarship and activism in LGBTQ languages and linguistics.

Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference at American University
Dates: Friday, February 15 through Sunday, February 17
Location: 6th Floor, Butler Pavilion, 4410 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC

To register, visit the American University website.

Digital detox holidays

By contributor Sean Carey

“I hope you have a good rest,” I said to a friend, who works as an administrator at London University, a few days before her departure for a week’s holiday in Portugal last summer. She had been working hard on a project using an online survey to monitor the health and welfare of undergraduate students.

“So do I,” she replied. “But I’ll do bit of work while I’m at the hotel as the project needs to be finished on time.” She paused and added: “I’m taking my laptop.”

A young lady on the beach with a laptop. Flickr/IQ computer services

I was horrified on two counts. First, I could see that my friend was not going to get the peace and quiet she so obviously needed. Secondly, she was contributing to the steady erosion of the concept of “taking a holiday.” Put simply, an electronic form of communication — the Internet — was infiltrating and squeezing the life out of a traditional and highly valued leisure form.

Most social scientists agree that the post-industrial world is significantly different from anything that has gone before it. The big questions are: how different, and in what ways? Spanish sociologist and urbanist Manuel Castells, for example, thinks that the move towards information processing — economic activity based on the manipulation of signs, symbols, metaphors and metonyms in the service sector — is in many ways equivalent to the jump from an agrarian mode of production to the industrial one in 18th and 19th century Europe and North America.

Castells refers to the type of economic activity on display in the advanced economies as the “informational mode of production.” Unlike some of his colleagues, however, he prefers the term “Network Society” (PDF) to “Information Society” or “Post-industrial Society.”

Why? Castells reckons that the concept of Network Society captures the reality of the way the modern world is increasingly organized around “electronically processed information networks,” where individuals are connected to one another in novel and innovative ways. He thinks (and recommends) that citizens now have the capacity to challenge the power of the state as well as the inequalities generated by global capitalism.

Whatever label you choose, it is clear that electronic communications are changing the way people perceive and experience time — and not always for the better. As Oslo-based social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen pointed out in his 2001 book Tyranny of the Moment:

The last couple of decades have witnessed a formidable growth of various time-saving technologies, ranging from advanced multi-level time managers to e-mail, voice mail, mobile telephones and word processors; and yet millions of us have never had so little time to spare as now. It may seem as if we are unwittingly being enslaved by the very technology that promised liberation. (2001:vii)

Continue reading “Digital detox holidays” →

Visual anthro: new film on mothering

A new short video is now online featuring UMBC anthropologist Bambi Chapin tackling the question of what makes a good mother.

Chapin is co-editor of the December issue of Ethos on “Mothering as Everyday Practice,” which explores not just what mothers say about parenting, but what they actually do and why. Chapin undertook this research while parenting her own child in the field, and she describes how others’ reactions to her mothering had unexpected effects on her fieldwork.

You say yes, I say no…

The headlines are saying that “Chimps shake their heads to mean ‘no’ just like humans” with the implication that it may “reflect a primitive precursor of the human ‘no’ headshake,” according to Christel Schneider of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Schneider spotted “preventive head shaking” from studying tapes of chimpanzees and bonobos in six European zoos.

I am shaking my head “no” to this wild assertion, and I am hopeful that Christel Schneider is, too, since the last line in the article indicates that she is aware that a shake of the head can mean “yes” in some cultures.

So why even talk about “a primitive precursor”? Precursor of what?

I had my first lesson about the arbitrary–not hard-wired–meaning of head shaking when I attended a classical Indian music concert as a college student in Syracuse, New York. During the performance, I was alarmed at seeing so many people in the audience shaking their heads in what I thought was a “no” message. They seemed to despair at the quality of the music. I felt sorry for the performers. After the performance, I learned that the head-shaking members of the audience were, in fact, deeply appreciative of the quality of the performance. Their side-to-side horizontal head movement meant, “yes, yes, wonderful, wah, wah.”

My second lesson is one that I probably share with thousands of other visitors to India, especially those lucky enough to be invited for a home meal. If, as an innocent American, you shake your head “no” when offered second helpings, you will find your hostess heaping yet more food on your plate. Again and again, because your hostess interprets your side-to-side head shaking as saying “yes, yes, more, please.”

The chimpanzees and bonobos living in European zoos would be at high risk for weight gain in India. Just like me.

Image: “Bonobo”, from flickr user tim_ellis, licensed with Creative Commons.

Ethnography briefing: the Andaman Islanders

The Andaman Islands are a string of islands in the Bay of Bengal that belong to India. For unknown numbers of centuries, many of the islands were inhabited by people who fished, gathered and hunted for their livelihood. During the 18th century, when European countries were expanding trade routes to east Asia, the Andaman Islands were of major strategic importance as a stopping place.

At the time of the first, small settlements of the British in the late 18th century, the total indigenous population was estimated at between 6,000 and 8,000 (Miller 1997). Today, more than 400,000 people live on the islands, and they are mostly migrants from the Indian mainland. The total number of indigenous people is about 400. British colonialism brought contagious diseases against which the indigenous people had no resistance. The colonial presence also resulted in death by direct violence (hanging of islanders who fought back, skirmishes in which the British had guns and the islanders had bows and arrows) and indirect violence (from displacement, despair and culture shock).

Only four surviving clusters of indigenous Andamanese now exist:

  • The smallest group, just a few dozen people, consists of the remnants of the so-called Great Andamanese people. Several groups of Great Andamanese people formerly lived throughout North and Middle Andaman Islands, but no indigenous people inhabit these islands now. Their surviving descendants live on a reservation on a small island near Port Blair, the capital city.
  • The so-called Jarawa, numbering perhaps 200, live in a reserved area on the southwest portion of South Andaman island, and very little is known of their language. Jarawa is a term that the Great Andamanese people use for them.
  • The Onge, around 100 in number, live in one corner of Little Andaman Island.
  • Another 100 people or so live on North Sentinel Island. Outsiders call them the “Sentinelese.” No one has established communication with them, and almost no one from the outside has gotten closer than arrow-range of their shore.

The December 2004 tsunami disrupted much of the Andaman Island landscape, particularly areas that had been cleared of mangroves and other trees. As far as anyone knows, none of the indigenous people died as a direct result of the tsunami, though many of the immigrant settlers did (Mukerjee 2005).

The future of the indigenous people is more endangered by external culture, in the form of immigration and development, than from nature. Immigrants from the mainland continue to arrive, and international organizations such as the World Bank and businesses continue to provide incentives for the settlers.

In February 2010, one of the few remaining survivors of the Great Andamanese people, a woman named Boa Sr, passed away. She was the last speaker of the Boa language.

Sources:

  • “Culturama” by Barbara Miller, <a href="Cultural Anthropology, 5th edition, Pearson 2009, pg 94
  • Barbara Miller, “Andaman Update: From Colonialism to “Development,” paper presented at the Annual South Asia Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, 1997
  • Further information on the Jarawa and their cultural survival

Images: One of the many uninhabited islands in the Andamans with intact mangroves protecting the coastline from erosion. The roots of mangrove trees provide a habitat for shrimp, a prominent food item of the indigenous peoples and also now sought after by the tourist industry for hotel fare. Source: Barbara Miller.

Archival photograph from the early twentieth century of a girl wearing the skull of her deceased sister. Source: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.

Anthro in the news 1/25/10

• Cultural anthropologist on key aspect of Haitian devastation

It’s rare that a cultural anthropologist is quoted on the front page of The New York Times or of any of the mainstream media. So it’s especially noteworthy when it happens. In this case, the article is even above-the-fold. “Burials without Rituals” describes the extreme psychological stress of Haitians facing loss of many family members, friends and others. This stress takes on an extra edge given the critical importance of proper burials to ensure good relations with the dead. The article draws on insights from Ira Lowenthal, a cultural anthropologist who received his doctorate in the United States and has lived in Haiti for 34 years. He comments: “Convening with the dead is what allows Haitians to link themselves, directly by bloodline, to a pre-slave past…” With so many bodies denied a place in family burial plots where many rituals take place, important spiritual connections are severed: “It is a violation of everything these people hold dear … On the other hand, people know they have no choice.”

• OMG limited brain capacity for Facebook friends

The Daily Mail, UK carried a piece highlighting the research of Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University. Dunbar is well-known for his work on sociality, grooming and friendship in nonhuman primates and throughout human evolution. He claims that the size of the human neocortex limits us to manage about 150 friends max. This figure has come to be known as Dunbar’s Number. It has been tested in various contexts from neolithic societies to contemporary office environments. Dunbar is now studying social networking sites to see if Dunbar’s Number applies. It seems to. “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people.” The published study will appear later this year.

• Thanks for the compliment

According to an article in the Chicago Herald-News, studies of social scientists and psychologists point to the nuanced meanings and effects of compliments. Peter Wogan, associate professor of anthropology at Willamette University in Oregon, highlights how gender affects the giving and receiving of compliments. He says that women tend to compliment other women on their appearance while men do not. If men compliment women on their appearance, women perceive it as a come-on and often deflect it. Blogger’s note: I was struck by how heterosexual these patterns sound. So I went to Google Scholar to learn more about Wogan’s research. I think I found the source (PDF file), a brief chapter based on a class project Wogan conducted a few years ago. Students in his “Language and Culture” class collected 270 compliments on the campus in Salem, Oregon. An intriguing glimpse into campus compliments, and a pilot study that would merit replication in different contexts.

• Thoughtful review of Secrets of the Tribe

Secrets of the Tribe is a new documentary exploring the ethical controversies related to anthropological and other research among the Yanomami of the Venezuelan Amazon since the 1960s. It will premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition. The reviewer comments that the film is “…an often provocative interrogation of how all ambitious people impact the world around them and how difficult (or impossible) it is to be a mere observer.”

• Upcoming event noted in the The Nation

As posted in The Nation, The Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., is hosting a briefing: “Humanitarianism: Prolonging the Palestinian Political Plight?” with Ilana Feldman, assistant professor of anthropology and international affairs, The George Washington University. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority and the Work of Rule (1917-67). The event is free and open to the public. A light lunch will be served to registered guests at 12:30pm. The briefing and question/answer period will be from 1 – 2 p.m. on January 27. Registration is required.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/25/10” →