Category: development

What lurks at the margin for indigenous peoples

Guest post by Morgan Keay

This post is an analytical literature review, with bibliography, of recent sources that use anthropological methods to explore threats to indigenous peoples, the implications of the threats/factors, and the responses of indigenous groups. It was originally prepared for a graduate seminar at George Washington University on “Culture, Risk and Security” in spring 2009.

A broad range of factors — including those alleged to threaten land, identity, rights, reputation — and a broad geographic scope — ranging from Siberia to Papua New Guinea — are featured in this essay. This breadth illustrates the diversity of threats faced by indigenous peoples and how indigenous people perceive and respond to these threats in widely divergent contexts. Trends and themes will be discussed with regard to who assesses or identifies threat, the nature of the threat, and the subsequent threat-response strategy of indigenous communities.

Who Assesses Threat?
With regard to factors that affect indigenous peoples, what is perceived as threatening by one party may be benign to another. Non indigenous actors such as indigenous rights activists, NGOs, or anthropologists may be quick to raise alarms over the very same factor indigenous peoples actively seek out (Donahoe 2008, Errington and Gewertz 1996). Anthropologists, for example, may assess the practice of neo-shamanism by Anglo Americans and Europeans as a form of cultural appropriation and thus a threat to the cultural integrity of shamanist indigenous groups (Wallis 1999), while an indigenous shaman may assess the phenomenon as neutral or even beneficial for the visibility of their traditions. Vice versa, unconcerned outsiders or those with a different stake in an issue may not recognize the risks associated with a given factor, while indigenous peoples see it as a clear threat (Collaredo-Mansfield 2002). Even among indigenous peoples, a single factor may be assessed differently, as is the case with ethnic policy and identity-based land/resource legislation in Siberia (Donahoe 2008), or the arrival of an extractive industry in indigenous territory in Brazilian Amazonia (Turner 1995), which are perceived as threats by some indigenous groups and individuals and as opportunity by others.

The factors explored in this essay may be understood by evaluating them in terms of themes about who assesses them as threatening, and the level of ambiguity or consolidation of that assessment. A factor that is perceived as a threat uniformly by all members of an indigenous group, and by a variety of distinct outside agents might be classified as a “clear threat,” whereas a factor that is ambiguously assessed among indigenous groups and individuals or among outside entities may be a “potential threat” or “threat-opportunity.” Environmental degradation, for example, might fall under the former, while at the same time, mining activities may fall under the latter (Turner 1995). The term “projected threat” may be appropriate for factors assessed as being threatening by an outsider but benign or even attractive to an indigenous group. This is the case with commercialization of ritual associated with “modernity” for the Chambri in Papua New Guinea (Errington and Gewertz 1996).

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The g-word

Cultural anthropologist, medical doctor, and humanitarian activist, Paul Farmer of Harvard University and Partners in Health, testified to the Congressional Black Caucus on July 27. His focus was on Haiti. His pitch is that the aid money flowing into Haiti must not go only to NGOs, to non-state organizations, but also must be used to strengthen good government and the public sector.

Farmer uses vivid medical metaphors to describe what the situation is in Haiti: “acute on chronic,” for one. In three words, he captures the underlying structural violence and human deprivation over centuries that is painfully punctuated by an acute situation such as the January catastrophe.

Another metaphor is that of a blood transfusion needle that is too small to carry the aid money to the people. Solution? A bigger needle: a stronger public sector. Farmer, a trained doctor, obviously thinks that the veins of the people can tolerate a bigger needle and will benefit from the infusion of fresh blood.

But how does Haiti work its way toward forming a strong and compassionate government? Perhaps a strong and compassionate foreign aid community can (a) not stand in the way, (b) support the right kind leadership in the upcoming election, and (c) infuse financial aid to Haiti’s education system to start training the leaders of Haiti’s future.

Image: “Church chapel converted to hospital ward in compound of Partners in Health hospital in Cange, Haiti”, from flickr user NewsHour, licensed with Creative Commons.

What lies beneath

Possibly trillions of dollars worth of mineral deposits lie untouched beneath the surface in Afghanistan. A recent New York Times report generated a flurry of discussion about whether this subterranean wealth would help Afghanistan and its people or prove to be a “resource curse” that instead brings more violence.

One thing is certain, if the minerals are to be mined, there will have to be substantial infrastructure development (asphalted roads) and security for the mining companies. I can just see Halliburton written all over this, and taxpayer dollars supporting the US military to protect business interests.

A less gloomy and much more informed view than mine comes from long-term expert on Afghanistan, Thomas Barfield, professor of cultural anthropology at Boston University.

All we like sheep

Spring is a perilous time for sheep. Lambs are born in the spring, and often capricious weather can spell their doom. In the spring, many one year-old lambs are slaughtered to provide meat for a feast. It is the time of the sacrifice of the lambs.

Sheep are one of the earliest domesticated animals, and they still figure largely in the economies of pastoralist cultures from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe with China currently having the most sheep of any country in the world. Images of sheep appear in ancient rock art. Their wool provided one of the first textiles for humanity. Artisanal cheese from sheep’s milk is now a highly sought-after product. And don’t forget haggis.

What do cultural anthropologists have to say about this important animal? Compared to the amount of published sources by archaeologists: not much. In my search of AnthropologyPlus and AnthroSource, using the search words “sheep” or ‘lamb,” I found fewer than 30 articles published since 1995. I then looked in Google Scholar, using the search terms “culture sheep” and “culture lamb” and found a few more sources scattered among the many non-anthropological studies.

Several sources in the following list have to do with herding practices. Another prominent theme is the importance of sheep as items of exchange and sacrifice. Others look at sheep in mythology, symbolism, and healing. The most famous individual sheep in the world, Dolly, attracted some recent attention in terms of bioscience and ethics.

Cultural anthropologists have not written much about the animals in our lives, period. So sheep are not any more neglected than are dogs, horses, pigs, and other animals wild or domesticated. Cultural anthropologists have probably written more books with the word “car” than “sheep” in the title. Perhaps these gentle, low-demand, high-yield animals deserve more of us.

The following sources are the result of a few hours’ research and, with apologies again, they are not open-source:

Abu-Rabia, Aref. 1999. Some Notes on Livestock Production among Negev Bedouin Tribes. Nomadic Peoples 3(1):22-30.

Ayantunde, Augustine A., Timothy O. Williams, Henk M. J. Udo, Salvador Fernández-Rivera, and Pierre Hiernaux. 2000. Herders’ Perceptions, Practice, and Problems of Night Grazing in the Sahel: Case Studies from Niger. Human Ecology 28(1):109-140.

Bolin, Inge. 1998. Rituals of Respect: The Secret of Survival in the High Peruvian Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Maggie. 2005. Quartering Sheep at Carnival in Sud Lípez, Bolivia. In Wendy James and David Mills, eds., The Qualities of Time: Anthropological Approaches. Pp. 187-202. New York: Berg Publishers.

Brower, Barbara. 2000. Sheep Grazing in National Forest Wilderness: A New Look at an Old Fight. Mountain Research and Development 20(2):126-129.

Dám, Laszlo. 2001. Buildings of Animal Husbandry on Peasants’ Farms in Hungary. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 46(3/4):177-227.

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Upcoming event at GW

Please join us for an event next week on April 8 at the Elliott School of International Affairs, part of GW’s new Global Women’s Initiative:

Global Women’s Forum:
Global Women 2020: Challenges and Priorities over the Next Decade

Thursday, April 8, 2010
6:00 – 7:15 pm
1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons (Room 602)

Katherine Blakeslee, Director, Office of Women in Development,
U.S. Agency for International Development

Mayra Buvinic, Senior Director, Gender and Development, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, The World Bank

Kathleen Kuehnast, Gender Advisor, Gender and Peacebuilding Initiative,
U.S. Institute of Peace

Alyse Nelson, President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership

Moderator:
Barbara Miller, Chair, GW Global Women’s Initiative; Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University

Please RSVP at Global Women 2020

Sponsored by the Elliott School of International Affairs

Taking the pulse of the world

Guest post by Anna Applefield

Global Pulse 2010 is  a 3-day on-line “global conversation” on a variety of topics pertaining to development, including entrepreneurship, global health, education, and the comparative advantages of global or local approaches.  It is hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development and led by experts in their respective fields.  Its  aim is to take the “pulse” of the world by posing questions and allowing participants to comment, respond to each other, and  generate a conversation.

It’s not too late for you to join the conversation: it continues through March 31. Go to the forum’s website. Choose a subject or issue and then select a more focused discussion. Each focused discussion begins with a question that is posed by an expert. Individuals can comment on the response and then start a thread of conversation. The cumulative effect is an array of simultaneous conversations on any one topic.

People participating in the various conversations appear to come from diverse backgrounds, both professionally and regionally. For example, in a thread about of “global citizenship” vs. national citizenship, I read posts from university students, small business owners, and NGO and government employees representing Egypt, Morocco, Australia, Belgium, Jordan, and the United States. While the individual comments themselves are interesting, it is even more impressive to see  extremely varied perspectives come together in a cohesive discussion.

Join in!

Anna Applefield earned her BA from Skidmore College and is currently pursuing her MA in International Development Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Preventing cervical cancer in Appalachia

In the United States, cases of invasive cervical cancer have declined in recent decades due to earlier detection through the Pap smear and improved forms of treatment. Significant regional variations exist across the country in mortality rates from cervical cancer, and the Appalachian region stands out as having high rates. It is also an area characterized by poverty, lack of transportation, and low rates of health insurance.

Faith Moves Mountains (FMM) is a health care project supported by the National Cancer Institute which seeks to reduce cervical cancer mortality in southeastern Kentucky. FMM targeted women aged 40-64 years, an age when women in the region typically stop getting Pap smears. The program followed a community-based participatory approach that is implemented through churches. Its aim is to increase cancer screening (Pap tests) through educational programming and health counseling. FMM was initiated by a team of medical faculty at the University of Kentucky.

Since many of the factors that serve as barriers to cervical cancer prevention cannot be changed, FMM took an “assets approach.” In Appalachia, two major assets are churches and social networking. The researchers arranged dates for educational workshops through churches. In order to forge links between the local people and medical care providers, they implemented a lay health advisor (LHA) program which involved local women as peer advisors. So far, the program has recruited 421 women who were rarely or never screened. While this number may not seem impressive to readers, given the logistical difficulties of working in Appalachia and the relatively sparse population, it is actually substantial.

Along the way, the researchers learned valuable lessons about how to work with the culture rather than in an outsider-driven way. For example, invitations mailed to churches asking them to participate were “returned to sender” or left unopened on the preacher’s desk. So, the researchers learned that they had to do door-to-door visits and build relationships. Also, taking notes on a laptop computer had to be abandoned as it distanced the researchers from the participants.

Image: “Blue house,” from Flickr user dok1, licensed with Creative Commons.

Mountains of a different kind

Tracy Kidder‘s widely read documentary book about Paul Farmer’s work in Haiti is called Mountains beyond Mountains. The title comes from a Haitian proverb which is translated into English as: “Beyond the mountains, more mountains.” In other words, every challenge is followed by another.

Have you by any chance read Rose George‘s book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters? If not, I highly recommend it. It will take you where no book (that I know of) has gone before. It’s about human excrement.

In following the excrement, George will guide you through the sewers of London to open defecation in rural India to the biogas revolution in villages of China: all places and situations that are quite “normal.”

Perhaps, in an updated edition, she will add a chapter on the “big necessity” in crisis situations. What happens, for example, when over a million people are displaced from their residences and are forced to survive in “tent camps?”

One things that happens is mountains beyond mountains of excrement. An article in the New York Times points to the sanitation situation and its implications for disease. Not to mention everyday misery and degradation.

The article, however, provides a ray of hope. Viva Rio, a Brazilian nongovernmental group, has launched an operation in one slum area of Port-au-Prince that turns human excrement into biogas that can be used for cooking and electricity.

This project should be replicated throughout the camps, throughout the island: turn the mountains beyond mountains of excrement into something people can use. Thank you, Viva Rio.

Image: Creative commons licensed Flickr content by BBC World Service. Feb. 9, 2010. From Haiti. “There aren’t many latrines, so this is pretty much the only way to dispose of all types of waste – dig a big hole and stick it in the ground.”

Home loss

Losing one’s home has both short-term and long-term negative effects on people. It can disrupt marriages and relationships and produce undesirable behavioral changes in children. The fallout of losing one’s home brings with it the catastrophic loss of investments, dignity, safety, aspirations and the ability to provide basic needs for oneself and one’s loved ones.

Moody’s Economy.com predicts that 1.9 million homeowners in the United States will lose their homes to foreclosure this year.

In Haiti, an article in the Washington Post today notes that more than one million displaced people don’t have “adequate shelter” — meaning? A tent? Or less? USAID has sent 7,000 rolls of plastic sheeting with another 5,000 on the way (Question: how many people can a “roll” cover?). The rainy season is also on its way.

A study conducted by the National Council of La Raza and the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looks at the effects of housing foreclosures on U.S. Latina families. It is based on interviews with 25 families in Texas, Michigan, Florida, Georgia and California.

Half of the parents reported problems in their interpersonal relationship with more than a third considering divorce or separation. Half of the families said that, after the foreclosure, they had more conflicts with their children and their children had more problems in school.

The American dream has turned into a bad one for many thousands of people who invested their savings into buying a home only to lose it all when the economic crisis hit.

And the Haitian dream for more than a million people tonight? Some plastic sheeting, please.

Image: “Sign Of The Times – Foreclosure,” creative commons licensed content by Flickr user

With new spotlight on masculinity, please don’t bypass the women

Guest post by Laura Wilson

Some development and humanitarian aid experts now argue that focusing on masculinity and emasculation during a complex emergency, rather than on women and girls, may be more effective at preventing or reducing gender-based violence. On January 15th, the United States Institute for Peace (USIP) held a panel discussion titled “The Other Side of Gender: Masculinity Issues in Violent Conflict” to address the role that gender-sensitive programming can play in ameliorating violence against both men and women during conflict.

The panel’s three speakers all called for a greater focus on masculinity in addressing a variety of issues, but panelist Marc Sommers (USIP, Fletcher School), who has conducted research comparing the needs and aspirations of young people in Rwanda and Burundi, was particularly emphatic in calling for an increase in male-oriented programming.

Sommers’ comments focused on education, and he drew on survey data from interviews conducted with youth in both countries about how they prioritize higher education within their future goals. His findings, somewhat surprisingly, reveal that the majority of young people in Burundi, which is less stable and less developed than Rwanda, expressed strong desires and intentions to pursue higher education despite a severe lack of schools and opportunities for learning. In Rwanda, however, which has been held up of late as a beacon of African development and democracy, the young people interviewed expressed much less interest in finishing high school or attending college.

Part of this difference may lie in the specifics of Rwandan culture. In Rwanda, boys are expected to build a house before they can marry. Without a house, a Rwandan boy cannot achieve manhood and start a family. So, pressure is great for young men to succeed economically. As a result, many drop out of school at a young age to work and save for this major investment. Sommers argues that these Rwandan cultural expectations effectively emasculate young men, leading to frustration and increased risk of GBV.

At the same time, Rwandan girls achieve womanhood through marriage. If young men are constrained in being able to contract a marriage, girls’ attainment of maturity is also put on hold. Other scholars writing on similar situations in other African contexts refer to this bottleneck as a “marriage crisis,” which appears to be particularly acute in Rwanda.

The solution, according to Sommers: development practitioners should focus on helping young men achieve adulthood through economic development, jobs, housing and land reform. The empowerment of women and girls and social stability in general will follow.

But, experts in academia and in the field continue to debate the degree to which masculinity should be incorporated into conflict prevention. For another perspective, we now turn to Naomi Cahn, professor of law at George Washington University and co-author of the upcoming book On the Front Lines: Gender, War and the Post Conflict Process.

Laura Wilson: Where and when have you studied gender-based violence in Africa?

Naomi: I lived in Kinshasa, Congo, from 2002-2004. Since 2002, I have conducted legal research on issues of gender and post-conflict reconstruction. Before joining the GW faculty in 1993, I worked in a law school clinic on domestic violence, and I also co-taught one of the first International Women’s Rights courses in the country. I am currently co-authoring a book, On the Frontlines: Gender, War and the Post-Conflict Process, which examines related issues.

Laura Wilson: What are your major findings about the best ways to reduce/prevent GBV?

Naomi: Promoting women’s independence and status, providing them with economic livelihoods and health care, promoting literacy, enacting laws, establishing shelters, and demilitarizing societies are some of the proven ways of helping women who face threats of GBV. GBV is one aspect of women’s subordinate status. It has also received a great deal of attention, but women face numerous other issues that are as seriously discriminatory in promoting their status.

Laura Wilson: Do you think focusing on the challenges that boys/men face will drain resources to support programs for women and therefore be counterproductive for women?

Naomi: In our book project, although we definitely pay attention to masculinities and recognize their centrality to the issues we think about, we also recognize the danger in such a focus. We worry about what will happen to women if donors and policy makers start to think about men. There is an obvious risk that this will replicate other biases that we know too well exists.

Laura Wilson: While masculinity is an important factor in conflict prevention, I agree with Naomi that the focus should not stray too far from women’s needs. Gender programming is a two-sided coin. On one side, development experts must acknowledge the special issues and challenges that men and boys face within different contexts, and especially during conflict. On the other side, to achieve gender equity in most places, projects must continue to put the needs of girls and women first, because the cultural, political, and economic barriers preventing them from independent action and self-determination are far taller than those facing men. Only when gender equity is realized should programming equally target men and women.

Laura Wilson is a candidate for an M.A. degree in international development studies at The George Washington University with a focus on gender, human rights and development. She received a B.S. degree in foreign service from Georgetown University in 2007. She is currently the program assistant for the International Development Studies program.

Image: Women in Action Cameroon, November 25 – December 10, 2008. Creative commons licensed Flickr content by user CWGL.