Where did our love go?

Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore, married for 40 years and an iconic couple of marital endurance against high odds, are quietly separating. I am sure that thousands of other people join me in wishing them both the best as they move on into new directions.

While the media buzz about the separation, I note the absence of insights from any cultural anthropologists. An article in today’s New York Times Style section, for example, includes comments from psycho-physiologist Robert Levenson of UC Berkeley, neuroscientist Bianca Acevedo of UC Santa Barbara, marriage historian Stephanie Coontz of Evergreen State College and economist Betsey Stevenson of the University of Pennsylvania.

Hello anthropology?

A quick scan of my library’s Anthropology Plus database of journal articles (going back to 2005) revealed nothing by cultural anthropologists on marriage in the United States. And nothing on marriage resilience or durability anywhere in the world.

“Marriage and the family” were core topics of cultural anthropology when I went to college, though typically the subject matter was “other” cultures. Nevertheless, as cultural anthropology has, since then, included in its purview cultures everywhere, including industrialized contexts, it seems to have missed out on love among the Nacirema.

It seems cultural anthropologists have yet to study the shadow (both positive and negative) cast by marriage. Image: “Love and Marriage” by Flickr user hammer51012, creative commons licensed.

Memorial Day: It’s okay to wear white shoes now

While out running errands this morning on Connecticut Avenue in the far northwest part of Washington, D.C., I was struck by how quiet it was — even compared to other Sundays — in terms of low traffic density. And quietness.

Then I heard it: the noise of several Harleys in unison moving south on the avenue.

Memorial Day in the United States was established to remember the service of Americans who died while serving in the military. It started after the Civil War. It is one of those “eggwhite” rituals, to use the term of British cultural anthropologist Tristram Riley-Smith, that pulls together many people in this diverse country. (See my “Must Read” review of his book, The Cracked Bell.)

“Whites.” Creative commons licensed photo from Flickr user Niklas Hellerstedt.

I emailed Riley-Smith this morning about Memorial Day, commenting to him that D.C. seems to be marked by a mass exodus of many people to the beach and in influx of Harley-riding bikers at the same time. Responding from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, where he has been launching his book, he sent me the following material which is similar to his writing about “Rolling Thunder ” in his book:

This is a nation all too often disappointed when those it seeks to liberate fail to show their appreciation, but with Vietnam the American people blamed returning draftees for the disastrous conduct of the war. They blamed draftees who had been sent into a battle they neither wanted nor approved of, all too often being pushed into the front line to protect the regulars.

The “Ride to the Wall” on Memorial Day, also known as Rolling Thunder, was initiated by these unhappy outcasts who felt the government wasn’t doing enough to recover the POWs and the remains of the dead abandoned in Indo-China. This protest has now been absorbed into the mainstream. On the Sunday before Memorial Day, the highways into D.C. become choked with convoys of Harley-Davidsons, with silencers removed, heading for the Mall and the Vietnam Memorial, where one is likely to encounter a huge, wild-eyed vet in grey pony-tail, studs, tattoos and leather biker’s gear being embraced by a young, uniformed, close-shaven Marine.

The Gold Star Mums are there to heal the wounds as well, “to give these poor outcasts the hugs they never had,” as one put it, “when they returned home.”

The Vietnam-American war (as it is called in Vietnam) took many, many lives, both American and Vietnamese. It irreparably damaged many more lives, here and there. Following the war, a new term appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that lists and classifies Western psychiatric diagnoses. The new term was Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

It also created deep rupture lines in anthropology; cultural anthropologists doing fieldwork in Southeast Asia often had knowledge of which villagers were sympathizers with the U.S. enemy. Some anthropologists took it as their duty, as American citizens supporting their country’s war efforts, to submit the names of such people to the U.S. military. Those people were killed.

Other anthropologists decried this complicity of anthropologists with the military and the abuse of people’s trust in someone who was supposedly a scholar seeking only to learn about their lives in order to write a book about it someday.

Out of this painful rupture grew the Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association, likely the first such code in any social science discipline anywhere that put as its first research commandment: do no harm. That means, among the people with whom you are doing research, do the very best you can to make sure that your research does not harm them, and if you have any concern that you might do them harm, stop doing your research immediately and find another topic or population to study. Do no harm to their lives or else get out of their lives.

Back to Memorial Day. Riley-Smith is right when he says, in his book, that more than Veterans Day, Memorial Day “is wired into America’s martial traditions” (p 195). It will likely be celebrated for a long time to come since we seem to keep waging war.

Riley-Smith also rightly notes the secular importance of the holiday: public swimming pools open, people go on picnics, and — something from my era — women can now wear white, especially as in shoes which you just couldn’t do before Memorial Day (The New York Times acknowledged the enduring nature of the white clothing rule in its style section today).

Under blue skies as brilliant as those on 9/11, here in Washington, we have a perfect day for a picnic, for remembering the pain of war and for a fervent wish for a rule that there can be no war after Memorial Day, or before it. Every year, on end.

Who you gonna call?

The major source of health information for South Asians in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area is not the family doctor: it’s the internet. In this respect, South Asians probably resemble most Americans. In other respects they do not.

The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has the fifth largest South Asian population in the United States. To learn about their perceived health status, health needs and health-related practices, several faculty, students, and alumni of The George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services collaborated on project SAHNA (South Asian Health Needs Assessment).

The SAHNA team conducted a survey on the web and by paper from which a total of 709 questionnaires was collected. The results are described in a report that was issued in May to mark Asian American month in the United States.

Selected findings: South Asians with higher incomes are more likely to have had a physical exam and to have seen a dentist in the past year. The same holds true for South Asians who speak English and those who are citizens. While the majority do not get much exercise, they also do not eat fast food regularly.

Project SAHNA has established a useful baseline for the Washington, D.C.-area’s South Asian population. It points the way to more qualitative follow-up research among the population. Even more importantly, it raises questions about what is distinct about the culture(s) of South Asian populations in the United States compared to that of other recently-arrived population and to longstanding residents.

Of the billions served at McDonald’s, not many of them are South Asians based in the District, according to a recent study. Image credit: Flickr user Road Side Pictures, creative commons licensed content.

I am intrigued by the 77 percent of the respondents who say that they never or rarely eat fast food. They are adults. What about their children?

When I did research with members of the North Indian immigrant community in Pittsburgh, Penn., in the early 1990s, food was sometimes a zone of contestation between parents and children. Parents wanted children to eat Indian food. A major compromise food was vegetarian pizza served at home. Children often lobbied for fast food from the major chains for special events like a birthday party or graduation. Concessions to children’s desires were made so that vegetarian pizza was served, for children, at communal meals following temple rituals.

According to the report’s findings, Jamie Oliver doesn’t need to do a site visit to South Asia, D.C. Not yet.

Must read: The Cracked Bell by Tristram Riley-Smith

The Nacirema are a large and diverse group of people who live south of Canada and north of Mexico (spell the tribal name backward in case you haven’t figured out who they are). In the mid-20th century, Horace Miner wrote a clever parody about the culture of this tribe. The nickname continues to have some currency among anthropologists and their students. It’s a clever way to get Americans to think of their culture as a culture: contextualized, changing and not at all natural.

Because the Nacirema are such a large and diverse population, I ask students in my introductory cultural anthropology class to avoid referring to Americans as a whole. Because of the many and deep differences across regions, urban/rural, class, age groups, genders, ethnicity and more, I ask that any mention of Americans be preceded by several adjectives.

I have long held to a belief that the only thing all Americans share is knowing what crayons smell like. I have learned much, therefore, from reading Cracked Bell by Tristram Riley-Smith, and I may have to acknowledge that all Americans share an attraction to the concept of freedom.

Riley-Smith is English. He earned his doctorate in cultural anthropology at Cambridge University and did his fieldwork in Nepal. In 2002, he moved to Washington, D.C., working in the British Embassy. Over the next few years, he cast his anthropological gaze on America, taking the pervasive value of freedom as his focal point.

His book provides deep insights for those who wish to understand the United States. In seven chapters, he explores the theme of freedom in America from different angles, all wide angles that allow space for Riley-Smith to draw on his very deep well of knowledge about my country. He knows far, far more about my country than I do — a citizen steeped in its history from childhood and nurtured on its popular culture. I stand in awe of the range of Riley-Smith’s data: historic documents, movies, one-on-one interviews with Americans throughout the land and much, much more.

Chapter one tackles the question of identity. Riley-Smith raises the question of how can and does a sense of identity as American exist out of so much difference? He discusses how the education system shapes a shared sense of identity, as well as “rituals” such as summer camp and mass devotion to sport teams. Yet freedom and opportunity cannot and do not successfully bridge the deep divisions of race and ethnicity and the dispossession of American Indians and the poor in general.

Riley-Smith goes on to tackle six more big issues, bringing to each of them startlingly original insights. Chapter two examines consumerism, with Riley-Smith taking us down the corridors of excess and into the aisles of Walmart where the freedom to consume in fact shackles us all. Other chapters address religion, innovation, the wilderness, war and peace and law.

Riley-Smith isn’t as naive as Mork, who came to America from another planet to learn about our customs, but his observations are just as crisp and memorable. This is not a book you can whiz through in a few hours. I had to stop frequently, put it down, and think. It’s worth the effort.

One day for mothers

“Mother’s Day Paint Job,” creative commons licensed on Flickr.

One day out of 365? Not good enough.

Anthropologists have analyzed some annual holidays such as Mardi Gras in the West and Holi among Hindus in South Asia. They often involve “inversion.”

In Mardi Gras, people have a riotously good time in ways not normally accepted. Sexuality is emphasized. Some participants cross-dress.

During Holi, people get smashed on bhang, a powerful hash milkshake. In villages, low caste people pour buckets of urine on high caste people. Women beat their husbands with brooms.

Interestingly, these important holidays, like Mother’s Day, occur in the spring. Some aspects of Mother’s Day indicate that it is a ritual of reversal, though of a more quiet kind that Mardi Gras or Holi.

The functional theory of reversal rituals or holidays relies on the model of a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker model says that a reversal ritual allows a period of time, often just a day, within which people get a break from their normal roles and routine. Having experienced a release from the pressure, they go back to the same old same old for another 364 days.

My casually collected evidence for how Mother’s Day is marked in the United States reveals aspects of reversal in gift-giving, especially taking mom out for a meal, remembering her with a greeting card or a long distance phone call if you can’t visit her. These gifts constitute important reversals in terms of two core aspects of motherhood around the world: meal provision and care through communication.

Does Mother’s Day, as celebrated in the United States at least, fit the pressure cooker model? Such may be the unconscious hope of many children: okay, mom, I took you out for brunch and gave you a card, so be happy.

My hope is that all of us, born of a mother who cared for us, know that a ratio of 1/365 is not good enough by half. While further research is needed, my hunch is that the expectations for Mother’s Day is the bottom line. You have to do something–at least make a phone call. If not you are in deep trouble.

But that which is necessary is by no means sufficient.

Blogger’s note: Wikipedia’s entry on Mother’s Day around the world is worth a visit.

Cultural anthropologist opens Pandora’s box

The Internet has been labeled a modern day Pandora’s box. It can let loose on the Internet viewing public any and all knowledge and opinions. Anna Kata, a graduate student in anthropology at McMaster University, mined several Internet sites for the “social discourse” they establish concerning the dangers of vaccination.

As context, she reports that around 74 percent of Americans and 72 percent of Canadians are online. Of them, between 75-80 percent of users search for health information. Of them, 70 percent say that the information they access influences their medical treatment decisions.

Using Google as her search engine, Kata used inclusion criteria to label a particular website as “anti-vaccination.” Of these, she examined eight American and Canadian sites for content analysis.

Some of the prominent themes that emerged are:

•safety and effectiveness (vaccines are poisons; vaccines are not effective)
•alternative medicine endorsed in place of vaccines (“back to nature”)
•civil liberties (parental rights); conspiracy theories (accusations of cover-up)
•morality, religion, and ideology (go with god-given immune system)
•misinformation about vaccine studies
•emotive appeals (personal testimonies)

In conclusion, she returns to the metaphor of Pandora’s box in pointing out that the Internet releases a wide array of misinformation that is difficult to combat. Combating vaccine misinformation, she argues, with education is necessary but not sufficient. Analysis of the social discourse on the Internet can help pinpoint areas that need countering.

Image: “Vacuna influenza,” from flickr user alvi2407, Creative Commons.

Here’s to the Irish: sláinte!

Farming, family and fertility were prevalent themes in the cultural anthropology of Ireland in the 1980s. Over the past two decades, however, cultural anthropologists have pursued a wider range of research topics including violence, politics, heritage and language, policy and transnational issues.

I constructed the following list of references using AnthropologyPlus for the journal articles and a perusal of books in my personal library.

As with previous lists of references posted on this blog, the following is admittedly a partial collection. I offer it to you with the hope that it will inspire you to track down some of these sources, read them, and further explore the literature on Ireland and the Irish. The journal articles are not open access, so my apologies once again to readers without access to a library.

Image: Marilyn Monroe Reading James Joyce. Flickr creative commons licensed content by user I, Puzzled.

Read, enjoy, and join me in raising a glass to the Irish!

Andriolo, Karin. 2006. “The Twice-Killed : Imagining Protest Suicide.” American Anthropologist 108(1):100-113.

Bairner, Alan. 2003. “Political Unionism and Sporting Nationalism: An Examination of the Relationship between Sport and National Identity within the Ulster Unionist Tradition.” Identities 10(4):517-535.

Ballard, Linda-May. 2008. “Curating Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 17(1):74-95.

Best, Alyssa. 2005. Abortion Rights Along the Irish-English Border and the Liminality of Women’s Experiences. Dialectical Anthropology 29(3-4):423-437.

Brown, Kris, and Roger MacGinty. 2003. “Public Attitudes Toward Partisan and Neutral Symbols in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland.” Identities 10(1):83-108.

Bryan, Dominic. 2000. Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control. London: Pluto Press.

Cadhla, Stiofán Ó. 2001. “Fast Knocks and Nags: The Stolen Car in the Urban Vernacular Culture of Cork.” Ethnologia Europaea 31(2):77-94.

Carter, Thomas F. 2003. “Violent Pastime(s): On the Commendation and Condemnation of Violence in Belfast.” City & Society 15(2):255-281.

Carter, Thomas. 2003. “In the Spirit of the Game?: Cricket & Changing Notions of being British in Northern Ireland.” Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe 3(1):14-26.

Cashman, Ray. 2006. “Critical Nostalgia and Material Culture in Northern Ireland.” Journal of American Folk-Lore 119(472):137-160.

Continue reading “Here’s to the Irish: sláinte!” →

Anthro in the news 3/15/10

• Yo-Yo Ma’s anthropological soul

Classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma is, according to an article in the Washington Post, “one of the most recognizable classical musicians on the planet.” Besides being a star of the musical world, he is also a social activist, in his own way. “I realized late in life,” Ma says, that my twin passions are music and people. Maybe that is why I am an odd person in this profession.” The article goes on to point out that Ma’s wonderful oddness may be in part due to his liberal arts education at Harvard where he expanded his view beyond music: “I have been passionate about music … but people in my dorm were equally passionate about other things. So suddenly, it was like, oh my gosh, what a huge world.” He is still an avid fan of anthropology. Blogger’s note: Thank you, Yo-Yo Ma.

• Knowledge about domestic violence for prevention

What safety nets are in place to protect women from domestic violence/partner abuse? The recent murder of two women in Miyagi Prefecture has raised concern about how to provide protection for potential victims. The Daily Yomiuri (3/14, page seven) of Tokyo quotes Ichiro Numasaki, professor of social anthropology at Tohoku University: “Many victims of domestic violence are scared to end the relationship because they are kept under the control of the abuser … Police need to learn more about domestic violence itself.”

•”I’m done with Indian stuff”

According to an article in The New York Times, a likely American Indian site has been, or soon will be, destroyed due to pressure from local business interests to “develop” the area. Harry Holstein, a professor of archaeology, has been lobbying for protection of what was a mound. Leon Smith, the mayor of Oxford, wasn’t eager to discuss the issue with the NYT: “You’re not going to hear from me … I’m done with Indian stuff.” He plans to top off the mound, level it and build a restaurant, hotel or clinic: “It’s going to be pretty,” he said. Blogger’s note: Yet another chapter in the shameful treatment of American Indians and their heritage in the United States.

• Career skill: anthropology students love the odd

A story on NPR applauds a new documentary, The Parking Lot Movie. It’s about a parking lot in Charlottesville, Va., and the characters who populate it. Most of the workers, all male, are students from the University of Virginia. The manager, who is also the filmmaker, says: “The anthropologists are always the best. They have a perspective that allows them to look at oddness and be interested in it, and not be bored.”

• Culture and AIDS in Lesotho

The Chronicle of Higher Education carried an article on the efforts of David Turkon to push policy makers to rely more on anthropological research in combating AIDS. Turkon is associate professor of cultural anthropology at Ithaca College and chair of the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group within the American Anthropological Association.

• Freedom of speech in China

Scott Simon, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Ottawa University says that freedom of speech in China is a global issue. He hosted a discussion forum profiling three Chinese human rights activists.

• Homage to American Jewish cultural anthropologist who redefined “blackness”

A review of the 2009 film, Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness, praises it as a “dense and fascinating documentary. ” Herskovits, a Jewish American cultural anthropologist, pioneered African American studies in the United States.

• Welcome to England and off with your head

Excavations for a road near the London 2012 Olympic sailing site unearthed a mass grave of 51 young Viking males. All were decapitated, and some showed multiple body wounds. The remains are dated between 890-1030 CE.

• Prehistoric climate change responders

Ezra Zubrow, professor of archaeology at the University of Buffalo, has been conducting research with other scientists in the Arctic regions of Quebec, Finland and Russia to understand how humans living 4,000-6,000 years ago coped with climate change. Zubrow is quoted in Science Daily: “…analysis of data from all phases of the study eventually will enable more effective collaboration between today’s social, natural and medical sciences as they begin to devise adequate responses to the global warming the world faces today.”

• Sick or just small? Hobbit debate still newsworthy

The Canberra Times quoted several biological anthropologists commenting on a recent publication in the Journal of Human Evolution in which Peter Brown and Tomoko Maeda argue for the position that the Hobbits (aka Homo floresiensis) were small but healthy. Dean Falk, Florida State University, supports their view. Daniel Lieberman, Harvard University, now agrees that the Hobbits represent a new species. Ralph Holloway, Columbia University, has not ruled out the disease hypothesis.

• Those bonobos are sharing again

BBC News picked up on research by Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, showing that bonobos share food. He conducted research on orphaned bonobos living in a study center in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In experimental settings, the bonobos willingly share food with other bonobos. He now wants to understand why they share. His findings are published in Current Biology.

• American biological anthropologist wins Max Planck Research Award 2010

Tim Bromage has been awarded one of the two annual Max Planck Research Awards for his achievements in establishing the field in human evolution of growth, development and life history. Bromage is professor of basic science and craniofacial biology and of biomaterials and biometrics in New York University’s College of Dentistry. The award carries a stipend of $1.2 million.

Calling on Comedy Central

An article in USA Today points out that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have helped bring science to a wider public by hosting scientists who discuss an issue of importance such as climate change or their new book on a topic of public interest.

A scan of the cultural anthropologists who have appeared on both shows reveals a total of zero.

K. David Harrison, who appeared on The Colbert Report, is a linguist and ethnobotanist who does fieldwork and employs ethnographic research methods. He is an expert on endangered languages, Director of Research for the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, and author of When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge and the co-author of Book of Peoples of the World: A Guide to Cultures, published by National Geographic. But he teaches in the linguistics department and doesn’t self-identity on his website as a cultural anthropologist.

Cultural anthropologists are few in number compared to other scientists, and most cultural anthropologists do not write books targeted for a non-academic audience. So that’s part of the explanation for their being overlooked by Daily and Colbert. Other factors are probably the same ones discussed in an earlier post about the lack of presence in the mainstream media compared to biological anthropology and archaeology. Perhaps cultural anthropology lacks shazam appeal? Perhaps it relies too much on fieldwork and not enough on “truthiness”?

I have some ideas as to who I would invite if I were Stewart of Colbert. Paul Farmer would be at the top of my list. So how can we raise the cultural anthropology awareness of these two great comedians?

Image: “Stephen Colbert” from flickr user lleugh, licensed with Creative Commons.

Laura Wagner’s report from Haiti

If you still think that “all Haitians” are trapped in “voodoo worship” please read Laura Wagner’s description of her experiences in Haiti following the earthquake. Laura is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she has been in Haiti conducting research on human rights.

Her report doesn’t mention anything about Haitians turning to “voodoo” in the days following the earthquake. If “voodoo” is so pervasive a force in all Haitians lives, funny that she didn’t notice it and document. She’s a trained cultural anthropologist, so I take her description as meaning that people were living their lives in a fairly voodoo-free way.

Instead, Wagner describes what she saw, including the “fierce generosity” of the Haitian people with whom she interacted. Her essay paints a picture of a moral high ground that I am not confident I would find following such a crisis in my home town of Washington, DC. True, the Washington Post carried an article over the weekend about how neighbors in one part of DC got together following our double snowstorm to help those without power and the elderly.

Today’s Post carried no articles about Haiti in the first section, but it did provide substantial coverage about how Washington area residents are fed up with being stuck at home and how they just want to get back to their normal routines.

Being stuck at home in a place where earthquakes don’t happen would be a blessing to thousands and thousands of Haitians.

Image: “Haiti Earthquake,” from flickr user IFRC, licensed with Creative Commons.