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

Anthro connection: beauty in Japan

Today’s Washington Post carried an article called “Big in Japan? Fat chance for nation’s young women.” Among other points, we learn that young women in Japan are slimmer than they were two decades ago. Young men, however, have become heavier.

In the United States, more than one-third of the population is categorized as “obese” on the basis of BMI (Body Mass Index). In Japan, the obese population is four percent of the total.

Media messages about thinness abound. In addition, peer pressure is strong. Japanese women are outspokenly critical of each other’s looks, according to a researcher in the Keio University School of Medicine. Thinness among young women is reaching unhealthy levels. Eating disorders are becoming more frequent.

How to gain a deeper understanding of all this? I highly recommend a book called Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics by cultural anthropologist Laura Miller.

One chapter takes you to an aesthetic salon where various procedures on the body promise to make you beautiful. Another explores breast mania. Even though young Japanese women want to be slender, they also desire larger-than-A-cup breasts and are willing to spend a lot of money on massage, pills and other ways to increase breast size.

Another chapter explores appetite and dieting of young women. Miller comments on the recent explosion of new products to help women achieve the desire for a thin body: weight-loss services, diet goods and diet fads like the Hot Pepper Diet or the Karaoke Diet in which the dieter sings and dances to her favorite hit song at least once a day. All this in response to what Miller sees as a surge in the desire for female thinness starting around 1980.

At the same time that young, modern women are rejecting a body shape associated with fertility and nurturance, they are also rejecting marriage and motherhood. The beauty industry claims to sell young women agency and power, along with thinness. But, as Miller says, “this process rests on a mythology of transformation created by domestic and transnational corporations” (p. 206).

Photo: “Different walk of life,” creative commons licensed content by Flickr user colodio.

Why are some wars worse for women?

Guest post by Laura Wilson

The United State Institute of Peace recently presented the second part of its program on The Other Side of Gender: Masculinity Issues in Violent Conflict. Panelists Elisabeth Wood, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, and Jocelyn Kelly, Research Coordinator with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, drew on their diverse experiences in conflict zones worldwide to answer the question: Why are some wars worse for women than others?

Wood compared gender-based violence (GBV) in conflict zones in Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Israel/Palestine. She finds that rape is not an inevitable by-product of war. Combatants in different war-zones, on different sides of a conflict, or even within the same group take markedly different approaches to rape and violence against women. To effectively challenge rape as a tool of war, it is essential to understand why GBV is rare in some conflict zones. The fact that soldiers in some wartime situations respect human rights indicates that all combatants can and should be held accountable for their actions.

Wood argues that the cultural setting of war is the primary determinant of GBV. She highlights the importance of institutional norms within combatant groups: Does the military hierarchy punish, tolerate, or promote GBV? Is GBV a war-time innovation, or does it represent a pre-war phenomenon? Is the chain of command well-managed?

Generally, GBV is less prevalent in settings where the top-down repression of GBV is high and where religious and socio-cultural norms inhibit rape as a tactic. This pattern provides insights into how to address the high rates of GBV in other contexts.

Jocelyn Kelly focused on one message: jobs. During her interviews with Mai Mai rebels in the DRC, combatants expressed a strong desire to demobilize if provided with job opportunities and livelihoods.

The Mai Mai originally formed to protect Congolese villages and minerals from the Rwandan Interhamwe. Many young men without economic opportunities joined the rebels who make their living scavenging and stealing from local communities. Life as a rebel soldier cuts young men off from social interaction and marriage prospects. But many yearn for the chance to start a normal family life. Within this context, soldiers may rape out of bitterness or a psychological “war fog.” While professionalizing the rebel groups, or incorporating them into the national army, might lower the risk of GBV during conflict, Kelly asserts that economic empowerment would have the greatest impact in de-militarizing the Congo and bringing combatants back into everyday life.

The presentations thus forcefully raised this question: Is the best way to prevent GBV during war to change the culture of war or improve livelihoods through development?

In his new book Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand, Duncan McCargo, professor of politics at the University of Leeds, provides insight with a story. Walking through a Malay village in Southern Thailand shortly after the kidnapping and murder of two marines, McCargo noticed Thai soldiers digging holes in front of each house. He learned that the soldiers were creating fish ponds in order to bring “economic empowerment” to the village to prevent further violence.

McCargo asks: would a fish pond have saved the lives of the two marines? Some (fish) food for thought.

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: “Mother & baby wait…” from Farchana Refugee Camp in Chad, photo by Lin Piwowarczyk, from Flickr user physiciansforhumanrights, licensed with Creative Commons.

Female genital cutting update

A report by Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs and Donna Clifton of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, DC, provides updated information about the prevalence of female genital cutting (FGC):

“FGM/C is practiced in at least 28 countries in Africa and a few others in Asia and the Middle East. It is practiced at all educational levels and in all social classes and occurs among many religious groups (Muslims, Christians, and animists), although no religion mandates it. The prevalence of FGM/C varies significantly from country to country, from nearly 98 percent in Somalia to less than 1 percent in Uganda. There is also wide variation by geographic region and rural or urban residence within many countries. In most countries, including Ethiopia, Liberia, and Kenya, the practice of FGM/C is more common in rural areas. But the reverse is true in some countries, including Nigeria.”

The authors compile data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. While they present most of the data at the country level, they also provide some important glimpses into within-country variation by age (see table below) and region. A map of the horn of Africa shows that rates of FGC are lower in eastern than in western Ethiopia.

Data by age indicate lower rates of FGC in younger women in many but not all countries. In the Gambia and Chad, for example, survey indicate no difference at all.

Prevalence of FGM/C Among Younger and Older Women

Image from C. Feldman-Jacobs and D. Clifton, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Data and Trends—Update 2010.

The latest on love

What do cultural anthropologists know about love? To mark Valentine’s Day, a widely celebrated occasion in the United States, I did some research. Using the Anthropology Plus database available through my university library, and with love as my only search term, I came up with the following list of articles published by cultural anthropologists from 2007 to the present. This list offers a quick glimpse into the cultural anthropology of love.

Topics include romantic love, family love and love of country; love as a basis for establishing a marriage; breaking up when romance fades; professions of love in discourse and song and professions of love in the midst of a violent relationship or one that is risky in terms of HIV/AIDS.

Note: the journals are not open-source. If you email particular authors, however, they are likely to happily provide you with an electronic copy of their article. Often, the journal provides the email address of the author on the first page or at the end.

Abu-Rabia-Queder, Sarab. Coping with ‘Forbidden Love’ and Loveless Marriage. Educated Bedouin Women from the Negev. Ethnohistory 8(3):297-323, 2007.

Carlisle, Jessica. Mother Love. A Forced Divorce in Damascus. Anthropology of the Middle East 2(1):89-102, 2007.

Clapp, James A. The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style. Visual Anthropology 22(1):52-63, 2009.

Faier, Lieba. Filipina Migrants in Rural Japan and their Professions of Love. American Ethnologist 34(1):148-162, 2007.

Foster, Robert J. Commodities, Brands, Love and Kula: Comparative Notes on Value Creation. Anthropological Theory 8(1):9-25, 2008.

Gershon, Ilana. Email My Heart: Remediation and Romantic Break-Ups. Anthropology Today 24(6):13-15, 2008.

Haeri, Shahla. Sacred Canopy : Love and Sex Under the Veil. Iranian Studies: Bulletin of the Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies 42(1):113-126, 2009.

Harrison, Abigail. Hidden Love : Sexual Ideologies and Relationship Ideals among Rural South African Adolescents in the Context of HIV/AIDS. Culture, Health and Sexuality 10(2):175-189, 2008.

Hart, Kimberley. Love by Arrangement: The Ambiguity of ‘Spousal Choice’ in a Turkish Village. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(2):345-362, 2007.

Helsloot, John. The Triumph of Valentine’s Day in the Netherlands: After Fifty Years. Lietuvos Etnologija 8(17):97-116, 2008..

Kapteijns, Lidwien. Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990. Journal of African History 50(1):101-122, 2009.

Lipset, David. Women without Qualities: Further Courtship Stories Told by Young Papua New Guinean Men. Ethnology 46(2):93-111, 2007.

Marsden, Magnus. Love and Elopement in Northern Pakistan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(1):91-108, 2007.

Continue reading “The latest on love” →

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.

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

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” →

There is no pill against poverty

No pill can cure poverty. This is an old truth but one that needs repeating. Again and again. An article in the prestigious American Journal of Public Health (reprints can be ordered at the journal’s website) reminds me of this need. Three co-authors with Ph.D.s, two of whom have nursing experience, have published a “Field Action Report” assessing the affect of the formation of fathers’ clubs on child health in rural Haiti.

The article summary reports the key findings:

“The presence of a fathers’ club in a child’s birth village had a positive effect on vaccination status, growth monitoring and vitamin A supplementation after we controlled for socioeconomic status, time and the quality of the village health agent. Child weights and mortality were not affected by the fathers’ clubs.”

That pretty much says it all, but let’s break it down.

The study is based on detailed and extensive individual and household-level data gathered by the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF). The HHF was established in 1985 and is now operating in 104 villages in southwestern Haiti. The HHF instituted fathers’ clubs in 1994 in response to the discovery that fathers play an important role in child care in this region.

The clubs were meant to enhance child health and welfare. The fathers meet regularly to learn about child and family health from a nurse or village health agent. Education focuses on the 12 key family and community practices identified by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. The model outlines three pathways through which child health should improve.

Focusing on data from 23 villages with fathers’ clubs, the authors used children born before the clubs were established as the control group and children born afterwards as the “intervention group.” While not ideal, this approach is scientifically acceptable.

The presence of fathers’ clubs is associated with children aged one to two years being vaccinated, having their growth measured and taking vitamin A supplements. Here is what the authors say about this finding:

“Actual weights of children and infant mortality — measures that are arguably more important than the more proximal outcomes of growth monitoring, vaccinations and vitamin A supplementation — did not improve with the intervention. Furthermore, child weights remained flat over the years of study. Malnutrition is still a major problem in Haiti and continues to contribute to high morbidity and mortality in the first year of life. Malnutrition appears resistant to HHF efforts and is instead affected by factors well beyond the scope of a public health services program such as the underlying conditions of economic deprivation in rural Haiti and the political upheaval that has endured in Haiti for many years.”

I don’t need to remind you that the article under discussion was written before the earthquakes of January 2010.

So what to do? The authors mention the WHO recommendation to educate parents about feeding supplements for infants through 24 months. But they note, “This recommendation may not be feasible, given the economic constraints …. Further research is needed to develop programs that can be successful within these constraints.”

“Constraints” indeed. The kind of “constraints” that prevent the usual well-meaning educational interventions to work. At all.

How would you feel if you had a malnourished baby and no money, and someone tried to educate you about the importance of providing more food for your baby?

You might, as I was, be surprised to read the upbeat concluding paragraph:

“In conclusion, fathers’ clubs appear to be an effective strategy in child health programs. The success of fathers’ clubs in Haiti may encourage other global efforts to include fathers in a wide range of child health programs that use a community-based participatory approach.”

What? An “effective strategy” if your goals are limited to increasing the rate vaccinations, growth monitoring and vitamin A intake. But for improving children’s health? No success at all.

I’m all for fathers’ clubs. They may work in ways that this study overlooks: social support for parents (notably fathers) through the regular meetings. But they are not going to put food in the mouths of Haitian babies.

Source: Elizabeth Sloand, Nan Marie Astone, and Bette Gebrian. 2010. The Impact of Fathers’ Clubs on Child Health in Rural Haiti. American Journal of Public Health 100(2):201-204.

Image credit: Flickr user shouldbecleaning, licensed by Creative Commons.

Yemeni women down and out in the Tenderloin

The Tenderloin is the poorest neighborhood in San Francisco. Some of its poorest residents are immigrants who come from the poorest regions of Yemen. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Ninety percent of Yemeni immigrants to the US are single males, and this pattern prevails among the approximately 1,000 Yemenis in the Tenderloin. But there are some married couples with children and some extended families.

Cultural anthropologist Lucia Volk conducted interviews with 15 Yemeni women who live in the Tenderloin. Her conversations reveal the many challenges they face and the resulting distress they are experiencing. A consistent theme is a strong sense of social isolation, both from the mainstream culture and other Muslims including other Yemenis. The women’s inabilities to speak English and their Yemeni dress (including full veiling) create barriers separating them from people in mainstream American culture. In terms of the latter, their small apartments with an open kitchen-dining room-living room plan prohibit the women from receiving guests according to Yemeni rules that require separate areas for men and women. High crime rates on the street inhibit the women from moving around the neighborhood.

Another pervasive factor contributing to the women’s sense of isolation is that other Yemenis are beginning to act more American: “Everyone is looking out for themselves.”

Volk concludes that the sources of distress for Yemeni women immigrants in the Tenderloin are multiple and cannot be easily changed. The women’s loneliness translates to complaints of physical fatigue, depression, and weight gain. Medicalizing their condition is not a solution.

Educating the non-Muslim population to become more accepting of the Yemenis and their culture would help improve understanding and acceptance. Providing English language classes for the Yemeni women that they can attend safely would help them communicate with non-Yemenis. Volk admits she has no idea how to counteract increasing self-centeredness either.

Any ideas from you?

Link: Volk’s article in Medical Anthropology Quarterly (December 2009)

Image: “-1231” by Flickr user Carpetblogger, licensed by Creative Commons.

Call for papers on women and men

From the official website of the Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, published by the University of Bucharest Departments of Sociology and Social Work:

The Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology invites articles, research notes, and book reviews for its first issue, “Women and Men.” Submitted articles and research notes should explore differences and similarities in experiences and perspectives of women and men around the globe, in various historical and cultural contexts. Papers that illustrate, explain and discuss the gendered construction of social institutions and individual life trajectories are welcome.

Deadline for submission is January 21, 2010. Send to: journal.compaso@gmail.com

This issue aims to explore:

What patterns of alikeness and dissimilarity between women and men can be found in social research data?
How can these patterns be explained?
What methods and techniques are best suited to investigate gender differences and gender effects? What are the methodological pitfalls in quantitative and qualitative comparisons of men and women?
How should gender be understood and studied in sociological and anthropological research?