Category: development

Anthro in the news 6/17/13

• Unexpected result in Iran’s presidential election

Presidential Election Map of Iran/Wikimedia Commons, Nima Farid.

For New America Media, William Beeman, professor of cultural and linguistic anthropology at the University of Minnesota, commented on the recent presidential election in Iran: “Much of what transpired in Iran during the presidential election on Friday, June 14 (Flag Day in the U.S.), won by Hassan Rowhani should be familiar to American citizens: A candidate replacing a term-limited president contrasting himself with a former conservative government, campaigning on social and human rights issues along with a promise for an improved economy, combined with a split vote for his opposition that assured his victory by less than a one per-cent margin. Echoes of the American election in 2012 and many earlier elections are clearly present in Iran in 2013. Apparently Iranian and American voters are more alike than either group realizes.”

• Paradoxical consequences of elections in Malaysia

In The Malaysia Chronicle, Clive Kessler analyzes the how, paradoxically, the election of a reduced Barisan Nasional presence and increased opposition numbers in parliament has amplified, not diminished, the power of the UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), specifically its power within the nation’s government and over the formation of national policy. He also examines the election campaign that yielded this paradoxical outcome. Kessler is emeritus professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of New South Wales.

• Studying abroad at home

Paula Hirschoff, two-time U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and M.A. in anthropology, published an article in The Chronicle for Higher Education on the value of student exchange programs within a country. She describes her positive experiences in a program which placed her in a traditionally black college in the U.S.

• Investigation of unmarked graves in Florida delayed

DNA testing begins to further unravel the mystery of the unmarked graves at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys./ Tampa Bay News

According to several sources, including The Tampa Bay News, a request to dig up remains at the controversial Dozier School For Boys in Marianna, Florida, has been put on hold. Researchers at the University of South Florida requested an archaeological permit from the state at the end of May to excavate. Through ground penetrating radar, researchers earlier discovered the remains of close to 50 boys buried in unmarked graves there. The State Archaeologist sent a letter to USF researchers asking for more information before making a decision on granting the permit. Families of those believed to be buried there are frustrated by the delay. Despite the permit delay, forensic experts from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office proceeded with the next step for families, taking DNA samples of three relatives. Researchers are hoping to match the DNA with the remains at the reform school. USF Archaeologist Erin Kimmerle said they will  review the questions from the state archaeologist next week. Once the answers are received, it will be at least another two weeks before a decision about the permit is made. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/17/13” →

GW event on health in Mongolia

Innovations in Health: A Discussion on MCC’s Investments in Fighting NCDIs in Mongolia

When: Thursday, June 6, 2013, 2:00 – 3:30 PM

Where: Marvin Center 433, GW (800 21st NW)

MCC’s nearly $40 million Health Project in Mongolia aims to address the high and growing incidence of non-communicable diseases and injuries (NCDIs). Through the project, MCC has invested in training and educational support, promoting policy changes, and provision of equipment and supplies to health facilities throughout Mongolia’s 21 provinces.

Join panelists for a discussion on the Health Project’s partnerships and innovations. Speakers include:

Ms. Batsaikhan Bolormaa, Counselor for Economic Affairs, Embassy of Mongolia

Dr. A. Munkhtaivan, MCA-Mongolia Health Project Director

Dr. James M. Sherry, Professor of Global Health and International Affairs, The George Washington University

Dr. Silvija Staprans, Director of Medical Affairs, Strategic Partnerships & Stakeholder Engagement, Merck.

Co-sponsored by GW’s Center for Global Health and Development, the Elliott School’s Institute for Global and International Studies, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation

Anthro in the news 6/3/13

• Unhappy 40th anniversary

 

Map of Chagos Archipelago/Wikipedia Commons

David Vine, cultural anthropology professor at American University, published an article in The Huffington Post remarking on the painful 40th anniversary of the final deportations of Chagossians from their homeland in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago in order to build a secretive military base on Chagos’s largest island, Diego Garcia. He writes: “Over a weekend of memorials, I was remembering a friend who died of a broken heart. Her death certificate may not say so, but she did. Aurélie Lisette Talate died last year at 70 of what members of her community call, in their creole language, sagren–profound sorrow… Madame Talate died of sagren because the U.S. and British governments exiled her and  the rest of her Chagossian people from their homeland…”  And, further: “In those same forty years, the base on British-controlled Diego Garcia helped launch the Afghan and Iraq wars and was part of the CIA’s secret ‘rendition’ program for captured terrorist suspects.”

• Paul Farmer: it’s not innovative to help the poor

WGBH radio interviewed medical anthropologist and humanitarian advocate Paul Farmer of Harvard University. In speaking about Partners in Health, which has moved many, including former President Bill Clinton, to call Partners in Health’s methodology innovative, is quoted as saying: “The idea that it’s somehow innovative to serve the poor is kind of sad, right? Because it’s not a new idea.”

Map of Karnataka

• Research Institute in India launches student fieldwork program

The Karnataka State Tribal Research Institute in southern India will recruit 50 to 100 anthropology students every year to conduct studies on the education, economics and health of tribals, besides their society and lifestyle, throughout the State. The Institute was set up in Mysore in 2011. It is undertaking research, evaluation and training activities, besides organizing seminars and producing documentaries. The students will receive training and monthly salary.

The Gerzeh bead has nickel-rich areas that indicate a meteoritic origin/ OPEN UNIV./UNIV. MANCHESTER (Nature)

• Jewels from the sky

Fox News carried an article about an ancient Egyptian iron bead found inside a 5,000-year-old tomb that was crafted from a meteorite. In an article in Nature, researchers say the bead has a Widmansttten pattern, a distinctive crystal structure found only in meteorites that cooled at an extremely slow rate inside asteroids when the solar system was forming. Further investigation showed that the bead was not molded under heat, but rather hammered into shape by cold-working: “Today, we see iron first and foremost as a practical, rather dull metal,” study researcher Joyce Tyldesley, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester…”To the ancient Egyptians, however, it was a rare and beautiful material which, as it fell from the sky, surely had some magical/religious properties.”  Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/3/13” →

Book note: Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico

Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico by Vania Smith-Oka. Vanderbilt University Press, 2013.

Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico book cover
Vanderbilt University Press
Mainstream Mexican views of indigenous women define them as problematic mothers. Development programs have included the goal of helping these women become “good mothers.” Economic incentives and conditional cash transfers are the vehicles for achieving this goal.

This book examines the dynamics among the various players – indigenous mothers, clinicians, and representatives of development programs. The women’s voices lead the reader to understand the structures of dependency that paradoxically bind indigenous women within a program that calls for their empowerment. The cash transfer program is Oportunidades, which enrolls more than a fifth of Mexico’s population. It expects mothers to become involved in their children’s lives at three nodes–health, nutrition, and education. If women do not comply with the standards of modern motherhood, they are dropped from the program and lose the bi-monthly cash payments.

Smith-Oka explores the everyday implementation of the program and its unintended consequences. The mothers are often berated by clinicians for having too many children (Smith-Oka provides background on the history of eugenics and population control in Mexico) and for other examples of their “backward” ways. One chapter focuses on the humor indigenous women use to cope with disrespectful comments. Ironically, this form of resistance allows the women to accept the situation that controls their behavior.

GW event: Multilingual Proficiency and Employment Opportunities for Tibetans

Case Study of Rebgong

Monday, May 20, 2013
4:00-5:30PM
Mickey East Conference room, suite 501, 5th floor
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW

Yumkyi Dolma is a graduate student at the Central Minzu University in Beijing who specializes in education. She has conducted fieldwork on the impact of multilingual education in the northeastern region of Amdo (Qinghai province). She is currently completing a visiting fellowship at the University of Maryland where she focused her studies on sociolinguistics.

Co-sponsored by the Global Policy Forum

Call for papers: 2013 RAI Postgraduate Conference on Tensions in Anthropology

Photo courtesy of RAI Postgraduate Conference

Ideas in Movement: Addressing Tensions in Anthropology, a conference for postgraduates in anthropology, will be held at the University of Aberdeen, October 28-29, 2013. The new deadline for proposals is May 31.

The Scottish Training in Anthropological Research (STAR) is proud to announce the 2013 RAI Postgraduate conference at the University of  Aberdeen. Established in 2006, STAR fosters collaborations between social anthropology staff and research students from the Universities of Aberdeen,  Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews. Plenary speakers are Tim Ingold and Rane Willerslev.

Today, confronted with a world that appears more dynamic and rapidly changing, anthropologists are questioning some fundamental conceptions, arguing from different and often contradictory perspectives. As a guiding concept for this conference we have chosen the role of tensions within the contemporary anthropological debate. Such tensions, flourishing all around the discipline, mark not only its conceptual history, but also its constant engagement with the constitutional concerns of our world. Among many, we might highlight tensions between the real and the imaginary, the fluid and the static, discourse and perception, nature and culture, purity and hybridity, the visible and invisible, ethnography and anthropology, discovery and construction, and so on. Continue reading “Call for papers: 2013 RAI Postgraduate Conference on Tensions in Anthropology” →

“Half-baked” doctors better than none for rural India?

An editorial in the Economic and Political Weekly asks: Is the opposition to a proposed new BSc degree in community health course in the interest of the rural population?

“A Parliamentary Committee on Health recently asked that the government abandon its proposal to introduce a new educational course that will train healthcare providers for rural areas. The committee’s suggestion appears in tune with the Indian Medical Association’s (IMA ) shrill cries that this new course, the BSc in community health, will create “half-baked doctors” and with the general response of the MBBS doctors’ lobby that the government would be playing with the lives of the rural population.”

New book: Climate change, indigenous peoples, and legal remedies

This extract is from a review in the blog PowerEngineering:

Elizabeth Kronk, associate professor of law and director of the Tribal Law & Government Center at KU, has co-edited Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies with Randall S. Abate, associate professor of law at Florida A&M University. The editors gathered work from a collection of legal and environmental experts from around the world, many of whom hail from indigenous populations. Their entries examine how climate change has affected indigenous peoples on numerous continents and how future legal action may help their cause.

“As far as I know it’s the only book of its kind,” Kronk said. “There are lots on climate change, but none that I know of that examine the effects of it on indigenous people. A lot of times when you hear about climate change people say ‘when or if this happens.’ Well, it’s already happening, and indigenous people especially are being forced to deal with it.”

The book examines climate change through an indigenous perspective in North and South America, the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand, Asia and Africa. The contributors, all either practicing lawyers or law professors, both explain the problems faced by indigenous populations and break down attempts to devise legal, workable solutions.

Upcoming event: State of the World 2013 book launch and symposium

On Tuesday, April 16, the Worldwatch Institute will release the latest edition of its annual flagship publication, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, in Washington, D.C.

The event will feature some of the book’s key contributors, who will share their expertise and ideas on the three main themes of the book, discussing how the term “sustainability” should be measured, how we can attain it, and how we can prepare if we fall short.

Speakers will include:

Worldwatch President Robert Engelman and Project Co-directors Erik Assadourian and Tom Prugh

Contributing authors Jennie Moore of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Pat Murphy of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, and science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson

The symposium will take place from 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. on April 16 at 1400 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. A reception with food and refreshments will follow the event. Space is limited, RSVP here . You can also pre-order a copy of the book here.

Email Grant Potter at gpotter@worldwatch.org if you have any questions.