After an outbreak of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus which affected 270,000 people on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion in 2005-2006, scientists at L’Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) in Marseille have been working hard to come up with a solution so that no one in France’s overseas departments (DOM), or anywhere else, has to experience high fever, headache, rash, and severe joint and muscle pain. These symptoms, although rarely fatal, can last between a few days and several months.
About time too some would say. Indeed, two academic commentators have accused the public health authorities as well as the media in metropolitan France of being far too slow to react to the initial crisis on an island, which lies nearly 6000 of miles south-east of Paris. In two papers on the chikungunya epidemic in La Réunion, one in 2008 and another in 2009, University of South Australia’s Philip Weinstein and Srilata Ravi claim that the delay in acknowledging the public health risk of the virus reflected “passive denial” by the French metropolitan government, convinced that its mainland European citizens were in no danger, a view which was mirrored in the “residual colonial thinking on the priority placed on reporting on an epidemic in the remote tropical location” by the mainstream media. Continue reading “La Réunion leads the way in tackling the chikungunya virus”→
“Brooks is almost indefinable – a contemporary shapeshifter, light and dark, adored and loathed,” reports The Guardian. “One moment, she is charming her way through life, the perfect party girl with her cheek and charm, taking Sun reporters to the annual love-in with their readers at an old Butlins holiday camp, chatting to the lady who serves the coffee in the Old Bailey canteen.”
Acquitted yesterday after a near eight-month trial of charges of phone hacking, the former editor of the U.K.’s News of the World, Rupert Murdoch’s most loyal and favorite editor, unsurprisingly has been the focus of much press comment. By contrast her former colleague and lover Andy Coulson, another former News of the World editor, was found guilty of conspiring to hack phones and faces a long prison sentence. Continue reading “If you want to get on in life try acting like Rebekah Brooks”→
Skin communicates many messages to others — a person’s race, gender, age, and even socioeconomic status. A tattoo is a chance for individuals to mark themselves outside of conventional boundaries. As DeMello explains: “If the physical body serves as a site in which gender, ethnicity, and class are symbolically marked, tattoos and the process of inscription itself create the cultural body themselves, thereby creating and maintaining specific social boundaries. Tattoos articulate not only the body, but the psyche as well” (1993:10).
Tattoos also have meaning to the individual. For my M.A. thesis at the University of Houston, my research goal was to analyze and understand how tattoo narratives help the story teller explain to themselves and to others how their tattoo has symbolized a change in their lives. Getting a tattoo can be a significant event for women in itself. Tattoos are often planned out with the artist to ensure that it is exactly what the wearer wants.
A tattoo narrative is rich with details and meaning. “As individuals reflect on the major events that have shaped their lives, they maintain and get others to acknowledge important features of their self-understanding. More than a social obligation, this sharing of personal experience serves the psychological purpose of bolstering one’s subjective sense of being properly motivated and well directed in life” (McCollum 2002:113). Being visually accessible to others the tattoo story is told over time and repeatedly. My goal was to record these stories and identify important changes in a woman’s life related to their tattoos. Continue reading “Tattoos as Transformational Pilgrimage: Women’s Tattoo Narratives in Houston, Texas”→
I was recently asked during an interview what value my anthropology degree added to my candidacy for a corporate attorney position.
Without hesitating, I answered that it taught me the importance of talking to people. As commonsensical as it may sound, this is rarely done in a methodical, deliberate way to understand another’s perspective, whether that of a negotiating counter-party, a potential consumer, or an existing client. Anthropology requires the practitioner to hone his or her people skills: it’s the primary means by which the anthropologist engages with the informant and uncovers insights often not revealed by a thorough study of the hard numbers.
For instance, consider the issue of school reform. How are we, as social scientists (whether sociologists, economists, or anthropologists) supposed to understand the potential solutions?
The answer: By reference to the weaknesses, deficits, or demonstrated needs highlighted by the data set. But different academics will most likely disagree as to the most reliable source of data for identifying the pressing issues. Is it the median test score of a particular class? Is the average truancy of a particular student demographic? What if, perhaps, we as scientists decided against simply intuiting the issues from hard numbers; what if, instead of starting with the data, we interview the relevant stakeholders? Interview the teachers, the parents, the administrators, and the students.
This is the default approach for anthropologists, which I believe places the profession in the same vein as a non-profit consultant or a sophisticated consumer-products conglomerate; each believes in the primacy of the individual — the importance of understanding the perspective of the client, or the consumer, or the key anthropological informant.
For instance, Proctor & Gamble will market Tide soap to Vietnamese women depending on how customers describe their view of the Tide product and its utility in their lives.
Alternatively, the non-profit consultant may suggest school reforms that focus on the particular socio-economic factors affecting a particular under-performing student demographic. However different the end objectives are for each of these professions, it is the primacy of the “other” — the focus on understanding the world from the perspective of the “other” — that defines the core strength of these pursuits.
But economists approach the “other” from quite a different standpoint. Economists believe in deriving insights from the way and extent to which individuals deviate from the “logical” or “rational” ideal models intuited by the arm-chair economists. Instead of starting with carte blanche, as anthropologists ideally begin their fieldwork (with no pre-conceptions about the society, culture, or way of life), economists rigorously define a model that describes how a “rational” individual would make decisions (or how a market of similarly rational individuals would operate). It is therefore a roundabout way (and with significant pre-conceptions of the “right” choices to make) that economists attempt to individualize or humanize the homo economicus. Occasionally, there are economists who are notable for suggesting “behavioral” impacts on particular markets; or “economists” that re-define the notion of rational decision-making. Generally the profession of economics is defined by its adherence to models.
Ronald Coase. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Recently, however, Ronald Coase, Nobel Laureate and long-time faculty member of the famed University of Chicago Department of Economics, has suggested that a new branch of economics be pursued. He has broached the idea of a journal titled Man and the Economy, focusing on case studies, historic data, and research that appears to combine the quantitative rigor of economics with the value-add of anthropology.
Coase has thrown down the gauntlet: Fellow economists, step out of your offices and speak to the people about whom you have long theorized. Critics lambast the venture: “it’s difficult to make this a hard science.”
True, and the venture might defeat attempts to aggregate data or research. But the point of this venture is to gut-check the insights and conclusions; to understand whether the data set is as thorough and reflective of the American economy as some economists assume it is.
I do not fault economists for this approach. There is value in aggregating data for unemployment numbers, or Gross Domestic Product. Economists, unlike most anthropologists, focus on large or macro-economic issues; and a simple way to aggregate data sets and reach broad conclusions is to “simplify” data and assumptions. By contrast, as the number of variables or nuances of the “data” multiplies, the objective of aggregating the research devolves into comparing “apples to oranges.” This problem often plagues anthropology and is certain to limit the comparability of research, per recent discussion about “man and the economy.”
But this approach, which values the primacy of hard numbers, abstract models, science, and business is less helpful for identifying business opportunities, or consumer trends, or the viewpoints of people. The economists need to recognize that people, not numbers, are the true source of insights.
Nick Bluhm is a student at the University of Virginia School of Law. He holds an M.A. in anthropology from the George Washington University.
Dr. Tashi Rabgey with Professor Dosky, University of Duhok - Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq
While traveling in Iraqi Kurdistan last week, I had the opportunity to give a talk at the University of Duhok on the problem of twentieth century statehood. The question of what will become of the project of rule we know of as the “nation-state” seemed particularly apt in the city of Duhok, given the raging civil war in neighboring Syria, mounting Turkish air strikes on the PKK along the Iraqi border and chilling developments in Iran to the east — all, rather disconcertingly, within easy driving distance of this ancient Kurdish town.
Yet even with Kurdish refugees from Syria streaming daily into Duhok as a reminder of the precariousness of contemporary statehood, the faculty and scholars I met with, both in the capital Erbil and in Duhok, were most animated by questions concerning the flip side of statehood — that is, the more humdrum business of governing and everyday practices of rule. How can the abundant natural resources of the region be best developed and their social benefits better distributed? In what ways can Kurdish language use in higher education be further advanced? What might be some prospects for global partnerships in cooperative research and strategic policy studies?
Faculty and scholars of the University of Duhok
These questions pointed to an extraordinary achievement. With little fanfare, Iraqi Kurdistan has become a fully autonomous political entity within a reconfigured Iraqi state. Legally recognized as the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) since the revision of the Iraqi constitution in 2005, the autonomous region has proven its mettle over the past seven years, navigating the treacherous geopolitics of the region while attracting major foreign investment from neighboring Turkey, formerly the loudest detractor of even the idea of an autonomous Kurdistan region within the state of Iraq.
Turkey, of course, has its own unaddressed Kurdish question, with a good part of its southeastern territories being composed of Kurdish lands, and its population of 15 million Kurds having been resistant to Turkish rule throughout the twentieth century. Indeed, the remarkable success of the Kurdistan autonomous region in Iraq only underscores the larger Kurdish question that remains unanswered in Turkey, Iran and Syria. Not only have Kurdish areas been subsumed within these states, the Kurds themselves have long been locked in a bitter struggle for their right to exist as a people. Longer term regional stability will require a political commitment to address the issue far beyond Erbil and Baghdad. Continue reading “Kurdistan Regional Autonomy and the Twentieth Century State”→
We now know that Mike Daisey’s theatre show was based on solid research about Apple Inc.’s labor practices in China, but key scenes were manipulated or fabricated for dramatic effect. I’d like to explore what this scandal tells us about culture, magic, and technology.
Every tall tale requires an audience. And one that succeeds on a massive scale requires a storyteller with a subtle understanding of the audience’s unconscious needs and assumptions. So what were the cultural blindspots that Daisey played on? In particular, why was the scene of the Chinese man with the mangled hand considered to be one of the most moving parts of the whole show?
I’m referring to the scene where Daisey supposedly met an old Chinese man whose “right hand is twisted up into a claw” because it got crushed in a metal press while making iPads. In hushed tones, Daisey describes the man’s reaction when he got to use an actual, working iPad for the first time:
Using a finger to operate the iPad. Flickr/kennykunie
“I reach into my satchel, and I take out my iPad. And when he sees it, his eyes widen, one of the ultimate ironies of globalism—at this point there are no iPads in China. Even though every last one of them was made at factories in China, they’ve all been packaged up in perfectly minimalist Apple packaging and then shipped across the seas, so that we can all enjoy them.
He’s never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Kathy [Daisey’s translator], and Kathy says, “He says it’s a kind of magic.”” –Mike Daisey, excerpt played on the radio show “This American Life.”
Ira Glass, the host of “This American Life,” referred to this scene as “the most dramatic point in Daisey’s monologue; apparently onstage it’s one of the most emotional moments in the show.” Yet Kathy, Daisey’s translator, later said that this scene “is not true. You know, it’s just like a movie scenery.” She’s right—it has that Hollywood feel. So to figure out why this episode was so moving to audiences, aside from the obvious way that it elicits empathy for the injured man, the best place to begin is with movie tropes.
Daisey was echoing a familiar movie scene that depicts native awe in the face of Western technology. We’ve seen this image, for example, in The Gods Must be Crazy, where an African tribe is over-awed when they encounter a Coke bottle for the first time. Other such encounters can be found throughout Western cinema, from the gramophone that amazes the Eskimos in Nanook of the North to John Smith’s compass in Pocohantas. These scenes validate a Western sense of identity based on superior technology, and they play off the vicarious thrill of seeing others surprised by novel situations.
All the world’s a stage. Political geography often adopts theatrical terms such as “actors” and “performance” into its jargon. Using theatrical terms to spotlight the Tibetan government in exile, at a presentation sponsored by the CIGA Seminar Series at the George Washington University, Fiona McConnell delivered a presentation entitled, “Rehearsing the State: The Governance Practices of the Tibetan Government in Exile.” McConnell is a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, the University of Cambridge.
Tibetan flag
Using the performance analogy, McConnell conceptualizes the long waiting period of the Tibetan government in exile as rehearsal, the Dalai Lama as playwright, and receptive countries as audience. She explores questions of the nature of state and statecraft and what the state-like Tibetan government in exile reflects about conventional statehood.
Addressing the nature of state and statecraft, she pointed to how the Tibetan government in exile, the Central Tibetan Administration, exercises a degree of sovereignty without having sovereignty. The government in exile is unrecognized and lacks authority. Yet, the Central Tibetan Administration has government headquarters, a network of schools and hospitals, eleven “pseudo-embassies” which organize the Dalai Lama’s official visits, and passport-like official documents.
McConnell discussed the roles and functions of states in the imagination and in reality and the fundamentality of the idea and ideal to understanding polity. She asserted that rather than trying to pin down what a political entity is, it is more productive to ask what it does.
Fiona McConnell speaks at GW. March 2012.
She then turned to the geography of temporality and explained how, in the drama of the Tibetan government in exile, its waiting period before returning to Tibet can be seen as a rehearsal. If statecraft is a set of practices to be performed and perfected, then this rehearsal time presents an anticipatory opportunity to practice and perfect state practices. While in India, the state controls immigration cards and taxes, the Central Tibetan Administration runs foreign visas and day-to-day operations. Tibetan settlements in India are economically sufficient communities which foster nationalism in exile and a pan-Tibetan identity which did not exist in pre-1959 homeland Tibet. Thus, the Central Tibetan Administration has developed state-like practices to ensure uniformity of practices across scattered, diasporic communities.
According to McConnell, exiled communities are defined by a timeline to return. They are shaped by the necessity to deal with both the immediate needs of exile as well as the contested future of its path to statehood. The Tibetan government in exile has been in rehearsal in Dharamshala, India, since 1959. Rehearsal depends on participation, presenting the challenge of how to keep people engaged. It also depends on belief in the script, in the playwright, and in the eventuality of a final performance. Continue reading “Rehearsing the state: Governance without sovereignty among Tibetans in exile”→
On December 2nd, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi at her house in Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military government in 1989). It was truly a historic meeting. Aung San Suu Kyi had spent most of the past 22 years under house arrest, but was freed in November 2010. President Thein Sein, a former military general who was inaugurated in March 2011, has surprised Burmese citizens and the world by introducing tentative political and economic reforms and reaching out to Aung San Suu Kyi and the United States. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, December 2, 2011. Wikimedia Commons
Hillary Clinton’s visit was meant to encourage the government to commit to further reforms, as well as to demonstrate support for Aung San Suu Kyi and the democratic movement. Hillary Clinton and Aung San Suu Kyi gave a joint press conference on Aung San Suu Kyi’s porch, which ended with a heartfelt embrace. Clearly these two women feel great affection for each other, and for Burmese inside and outside the country, it was an ecstatic moment.
In the press conference and other recent statements, Aung San Suu Kyi emphasized the need for the rule of law and the cessation of civil war in Burma. If there were rule of law, meaning independent courts as well as protections for freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, there would be no more political prisoners.
Currently there are several hundred prisoners of conscience, including a number of women. In 2009, Hla Hla Win was sentenced to 27 years in prison for her undercover reporting on the second anniversary of the monks’ 2007 protests and other sensitive stories for an exile media outlet. In 2008, Nilar Thein was sentenced to 65 years in prison because of her leading role in non-violent political protests in 2007 and earlier. Her husband is also a political prisoner, and their young daughter must now be raised by her husband’s parents.
In the ethnic states, decades of civil war have resulted in widespread destruction and displacement, while countless girls and women have been raped. As Burmese women’s groups and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Burma have documented, Burma Army soldiers commit rape with impunity. While for decades, the Burmese military leadership has sought to force the country’s non-Burman populations into submission, Aung San Suu Kyi has called for a genuine union of Burma in which the rights of ethnic minorities would be respected. If she, the United States government, and others can persuade Burma’s military leadership that a federal system of government is viable, then genuine peace can be restored and the healing process can begin.
If all goes according to plan, Aung San Suu Kyi will run for parliament in an upcoming by-election for a number of vacant seats. She is encouraging other women to run as well. They are likely to push for more attention on health, education, poverty alleviation, and humanitarian assistance.
Should the reform process continue, Burma could at last move toward recognizing and valuing the contributions of all its citizens. That would really be something to celebrate.
Christina Fink is a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. An anthropologist who has focused on Burma for many years, she is the author of Living Silence in Burma: Surviving Under Military Rule (2009).
Recently, I was helping Faton, a Roma friend of mine, fill out his college application. He had arrived at the question of ‘Father’s Occupation,’ when he looked up and asked me, “Can I write social assistance for father’s occupation.” All I could do was to shake my head and reply, “How about unemployed?”
In the community in which Faton grew up, unemployment has been at about 98 percent since the War in 1999. As Serbian speaking Roma, few in his town have found employment in the new country of Kosovo. Unemployment was high even before the War. Additionally, the town suffers from a problem of 95 percent adult illiteracy. If he is accepted to the university, Faton will be the first in his family to attend any form of higher education.
Roma Children. Courtesy of Joanna Brucker
The question of literacy and poor academics in the community is one which has troubled me since my arrival in Kosovo. I currently manage a series of education support centers for Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian youth across Kosovo.
Faton’s hometown of Plemetina hosts one of the longest running centers. However, the importance of education continues to be a problem within the community. Despite their inability to provide academic support for their children, parents are still reluctant to send their children to our educational center. Some parents cite the lack of proper footwear and warm cloths in winter months for their children. Others invoke historic family feuds. Last year, when a lack of funding caused us to cut the “hot meal” program, our numbers dropped significantly.
The most frustrating reason parents cite for not sending their kids is a simple: “What is the point? They will not get a job anyhow.”
Throughout the past year, I have seen so many kids grow and develop because of attending our centers. I have watched children, who had been forcibly returned from Germany, learn the Serbian language and move on to attend school successfully.
I have seen the magic of children learning to count, to read and to do the simple task of spelling their names.
But the cards are stacked against these children. As Roma, many students report discrimination in the schools both in terms of classroom learning, segregated classrooms and school grades. Kosovar Roma children overwhelmingly attend schools taught in the Serbian language while at least 80 percent of the new country of Kosovo speaks Albanian.
Thus, not only are Roma discriminated against in terms of their skin color and culture, but also the language that comes out of their mouths. Few speak Albanian and even fewer speak enough to hold a job in the language. Despite having both a Serbian and Kosovar school in Plemetina, overwhelmingly the Roma there attend the Serbian school.
How does a student like Faton grow up and make the decision to go to college? How does he become part of the 2 percent of the town population able to hold a job and then to give that up to attend university? Remember, even attending high school is a rarity.
Joanna Laursen Brucker has been working in Kosovo for the last year and a half as Educational Coordinator managing a series of 4 educational centers for Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian youth. Previously, Joanna worked as a public high school teacher in the Czech Republic. Joanna holds an Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education in International Educational Policy and a B.A. from the George Washington University in Anthropology.
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