Mainstreaming gender in the military to improve security and development

Guest post by Ally Pregulman

The United States’ perspective on gender in the military and the security sector as a whole is substantially different from how many other countries, particularly African countries, view their security. On January 19^th, the US Institute for Peace (USIP) held a panel on mainstreaming gender in the military and the security sector, which lead to a broader discussion of perceptions and reform of the security sector.

Alpha Company. Credit: Anneh632, Creative Commons, Flickr

According to Lt. Colonel Shannon Beebe, many Africans view their security in terms of human security: poverty alleviation, health, environmental shock / natural disasters, and reforms, instead of the traditional United States view of security as physical security: types of force and real threats. This perspective provides an opening for women to enter into the military; integrating gender in African militaries allows women to help with many of these alternate types of security concerns, including water and sanitation, health, and infrastructure.

The evolution of security perspectives stems from integrating women in the military. As the military becomes more gendered and diverse, it can focus more on issues of human security. In Senegal, studies show that having a president interested in gender issues helps move this issue forward. National strategies on equity and equality, cooperation with the Senegalese Ministry of Gender, and involving women in the process of integration all contributed to the success of mainstreaming gender in the military.

Panelists from the United States offered a different perspective. Although women participate in many roles of the armed forces in the United States, there are some areas, such as the Special Forces, that remain closed to women. Colonel David Walton, an instructor from the special warfare school, conceded that gender mainstreaming is not really taught to Special Forces trainees because of time constraints that require prioritizing the curriculum. Gender needs to be incorporated into the military from the ground up, in order to emphasize its importance and ensure its incorporation into every aspect of military training and daily life. All of the panelists echoed the sentiment that making gender a separate issue would be inefficient and ineffective.

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Tweetography: the sounds of Egyptian silence

Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell

This post is not a content analysis of the recent tweets about Egypt. Their volume is staggering and would demand a more rigorous analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, than is possible at this time. Just click on the hash tag “#Egypt,” wait a minute to refresh, and you will have hundreds of new tweets in dozens of different languages.

There are calls to action, directions for protesters, jokes, cracks about Anderson Cooper, links to video and photo galleries, and the latest in negotiations between the Mubarak regime and the White House. One thing worth noting though: for all that Twitter activity, the pro-Mubarak crowd has been notably quiet, even silent at times.

Anti Mubarak demonstration at Tahiri Square, Feb 1, 2011. Photo Credit: darkroom productions, Creative Commons, Flickr — Anti Mubarak demonstration at Tahiri Square, 2/1/2011. Credit: darkroom productions/Flickr

Setting aside the trends and messages of the thousands (millions?) of tweets out there, it is fascinating to look at the flexibility and agility of the protest itself. Despite government crackdowns and blockages of webpages – as early as the first day of protesting – and cell phone networks, the flow of news and information never ceased.

Even after the government effectively shut off the entire internet, tweets continued to pour in, live from Tahrir Square and other locales across Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez.

Four of five cell phone providers in Egypt were shut down within three days of the first major protest on January 25. Internet then followed, causing a 90 percent drop in data traffic to and from Egypt. The only company to remain in operation was Noor, also incidentally the provider for the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

We are still witnessing the reaction to and consequences of the service stoppages. In the New York Times, Jim Cowie of Renesys, a New Hampshire company that monitors global internet traffic, commented, “In a fundamental sense, it’s as if you rewrote the map and they are no longer a country.”

Such drastic overstatements misunderstand the impact of the internet blockage and its relation to the protests. What map was being “rewritten,” exactly? Protests hardly seemed to slow despite the lack of mobile phone and internet access, and, while Egyptians may not have been able to live-blog from the 6^th of October Bridge on their smart phones, the world outside Egypt did not want for eyewitness, up-to-the-minute reports. If there was indeed a new map, Egypt and Tahrir Square were at the very heart of it.

Tweeters in turn reacted strongly to assertions like Cowie’s, rejecting the power of Twitter and Facebok to fuel the revolution.

@SultanAlQassemi There was no twitter, mobile phones, Satellite TV, internet, facebook, sms or youtube when Romanians overthrew Ceausescu in 1989. #Jan25

@altivexfoundry #Egypt #Tunisia “It was not a twitter revolution … It was a revolution … Covered by twitter” #jnb5feb

@asteris Won’t be RTing anything w. words Twitter (or Facebook) & revolution adjacent to each other; disrespectful towards the brave ppl of #Egypt

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Tackle this: football as an American ritual

Guest post by Peter Wogan

In preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, there is something we should stock up on, along with the nachos and beer: anthropological analysis. Yes, it is a great time to step back and ask ourselves how football reflects American culture. Such an extremely popular sport must resonate with some underlying aspects of our culture. Otherwise, we could be getting ready right now to watch Super Shot-Put Sunday or the Big Badminton Bowl (BBB).

Football action. Photo credit: JSmith, Creative Commons, Flickr

The best way to understand American football is to compare it with basketball. The comparative perspective should induce culture shock and throw football’s essential qualities into relief.

In football, players dress in Superhero outfits.
In basketball, players dress in bathing suits.

In football, it’s so cold you see steam coming out of the players, as if they’re scaling Mt. Everest.
In basketball, it’s so hot you see sweat pouring off players, as if they’re mowing the lawn.

But the ultimate difference lies in spatial orientation.

Football is all about lines: Lining up on lines, measuring lines, crossing lines. The central objective of the game, in fact, is to cross a line: the goal line.

Basketball, on the other hand, is all about circles: putting a rubber circle inside a slightly larger, metal circle (the ball and the hoop). Instead of yard lines, the basketball court is divided up into circles: the center circle (which contains a circle within a circle), the 3-point line (which is a semi-circle), and the foul circle at the top of the key. Not to mention all the players running around in circles, trying to get open for a pass. Lines vs. circles—that’s the key difference.

Blazers Court. Photo credit: Tom Langston, Creative Commons, Flickr

Empty Redskins Field; Photo credit: squidpants, Creative Commons, Flickr

How, though, do these micro aspects of football and basketball reflect American culture? Warning: I’d rather risk overstating the case than stating the obvious, and I would never say there’s only one reason we love and play these sports, nor that one is better than the other.

Basically, football reflects a hierarchical model of authority. Coaches, quarterbacks, and coordinators control every play. Basketball comes out of a more democratic model based on spontaneous teamwork. The basketball coach cannot even intervene in most plays.

Football is about masterful strategies, specialized roles (punter, receiver, linebacker, etc.), and strict lines of authority (have you ever heard anyone call it “circles of authority”?). Basketball is about role flexibility (every player shoots, passes, plays defense) and fast-paced improvisation.

Football comes out of America’s hierarchical, industrial economy and military strategizing, whereas basketball emerges from the more recent knowledge economy. Lines and circles.

It’s not just about political economy, however. Basketball, with its sweaty players in bathing suits, matches the growing informality and bare-all impulses of post-1960’s, mass media culture (casual Fridays, confessional memoirs, reality TV, Facebook, etc.). An ethos of social openness also plays a role. Circles are more associated than lines in American culture with equality and togetherness. Not coincidentally, basketball, the Circle Game, has skyrocketed in popularity at the same time that there’s been a push toward greater multiculturalism and gender equality. Circles and lines.

No matter what, though, much of the country comes together to watch the Super Bowl. Maybe that is because football does more than just reflect contemporary American culture, including longings and ambivalence. It also exquisitely embodies The Thrill of The Chase. The heart of football is The Chase: players frantically trying to get a few steps ahead of their pursuers. As anthropologists can tell you, that’s how homo sapiens and our hominid ancestors spent much of their time: chasing and being chased. So let the beer flow and The Great Chase begin.

Peter Wogan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Willamette University, co-author of Hollywood Blockbusters: The Anthropology of Popular Movies (2009), and author of blockbusteranthropology.blogspot.com, where he tries to make sense of sharks (“Jaws”), baseball (“Field of Dreams”), and model families (“The Godfather”), among other things. Peter thanks David Sutton for comments on a draft of this post.

For further reading:

Arens, W. “Professional Football: An American Symbol and Ritual.” In The American Dimension, Arens and Montague, eds., Alfred Publishing, 1976. A wonderful, early anthropological essay on football, with insight into things like football’s resonance with labor specialization in postwar America.

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Guns don’t kill people: Bullets kill people

Guest post by Charles Fruehling Springwood

Worldwide, perhaps a billion guns? Where do guns come from? Who makes them? Who sells them? What kinds of guns do Colombian drug lords buy? Marxist guerillas in the Philippines? A middle-class doctor in Finland, where some 15 million Fins own guns? A poor farmer in southern Mexico? An American situated on the U.S.-Mexican border, sporting binoculars and a Glock pistol, scanning the horizon from atop his Winnebago RV? Who gives up or gives away guns?

Source: Flickr user Ayton, creative commons licensed. — Bullets. Credit: Flickr user Ayton, creative commons.

Questions such as these have concerned me for the past year, as I have conducted ethnographic research among gun-owners in the Midwestern U.S. In particular, I have been drawn to the prevailing meanings that highlight a growing movement encouraging the public “open carry” of pistols in addition to enhancing the right to carry concealed weapons.

Why do a growing number of gun owners in the U.S. seek to naturalize the visibility of a gun on a person in a growing number of public spaces? In unpacking this ‘penchant to pack,’ I have zeroed in on the desires for guns and how this fascination turns on the significance of the relationship of embodiment a gun has with its user, especially when the user “wears” her or his weapon? As cultural things — both material and semiotic in form — do guns become less an instrument of the mind and more a part of the mind and an extension of the self?

All of these questions assumed a new kind of urgency this weekend, when Jared Loughner attempted to assassinate Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), killing six bystanders and wounding 13 other people.

Arizona boasts one of the most liberal environments for gun ownership and usage, commonly allowing citizens to openly and publically carry guns on their person. I do not know if Loughner was exercising his right to open carry as he approached the Giffords public meet and greet event at the supermarket, but the gun he used for commit this horrific act was legally his.

As an anthropologist, I am especially interested in the “conditions of possibility” that surround events such as this shooting – those discourses, images, and actions – that fall short of causing such tragedies but clearly animate them and provide cultural scripts for their unfolding.

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In search of respect: an interview with Philippe Bourgois

Guest post by Julia Friederich, Jessica Grebeldinger, Stephanie Harris, Jacqueline Hazen, and Casey McHugh

The following is an edited transcript of an interview with Philippe Bourgois, the Richard Perry University Professor of Anthropology and Family and Community Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Barbara Miller conducted the interview on October 26, 2010, as part of her introductory cultural anthropology class at the George Washington University. Her 280 students had just finished reading In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, and several of them submitted questions for the interview.

Anth_Class_Pic_2 — Skyping with Philippe. Photo credit: Elliott School of International Affairs, GW

BDM: First, please tell us why you decided to do your dissertation fieldwork in the United States?

PB: I didn’t! I began my dissertation research with the Miskitu Indians in Nicaragua. But the Nicaraguan Revolution, a popular guerrilla movement that eventually overthrew the Somoza dictatorship, was trying to develop an independent socialist government at the time, and the US, through the CIA, destabilized the situation. The CIA distributed machine guns among the people and it turned into civil war. So I went to Costa Rica and Panama where I did research on the United Fruit Company’s banana plantations, and really that’s what eventually brought me to East Harlem. I thought if I can study ethnic conflict in Central America, I should study ethnic conflict and its political economy in my own country. I wanted to look at segregation and what I call “de facto inner city apartheid” in the US. So I went up to East Harlem in New York City and started my new research project there while I was writing my dissertation about the ethnic divide-and-conquer strategy of a US multinational corporation in Costa Rica and Panama. It became my first book: Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation.

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Grilling culture: an interview with Steve Raichlen

Steve Raichlen, author of Planet Barbecue!, BBQ USA, and The Barbecue Bible.
Photo credit: Steve Raichlen

Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell

Are there any debates more heated than two barbecue enthusiasts hailing from different corners of the country going at it over whose style of ‘cue is better? From the vinegar tang of pulled pork in the Carolinas to the dry rubs of Memphis ribs to the earthy mutton of Kentucky to the sweet beef brisket of Texas, few foods are the subject of such enthusiasm and regionalism. But why stop there?

People across the globe use smoke and fire to coax new flavors out of food. American barbecue is itself the result of influences from all over the world, and this is no more apparent than in the writing and recipes of Steve Raichlen. His first book, The Barbecue Bible, was more than just recipes: compiled over the course of four years and 200,000 miles of world travels, it covers backyards, street stalls, seaside fires, and hickory pits from Georgia to, well, Georgia.

Since then, he’s been expanding an American barbecue vocabulary once limited to burgers and Boston butts to include banana leaves and branzino. After four successful seasons hosting “Barbecue University” on PBS, he has kicked off a new show, “Primal Grill” and released his 27th book, Planet Barbecue!: 309 Recipes, 60 Countries. He is the recipient of the IACP Julia Child Award and two James Beard Foundation Book Awards.

I am grateful to Steve Raichlen for taking time to answer my questions on culture and barbecue around the world and to explain how one turns a background in French literature into grilling expertise.

GHC: Why is barbecue so compelling to you, compared to other ways of preparing food?

SR: Four reasons: flavor, drama, history, and culture.

Nothing intensifies flavor like the high dry heat of the grill. Especially when you grill over wood or charcoal.

Nothing has the drama of cooking meat (or any food) over the dancing flames of a live fire.

Barbecue is intimately intertwined with human history, in ways both obvious and unexpected. For example, the discovery of eating meat cooked with fire by a human ancestor called Homo erectus about 1.8 million years ago had a profound effect on human evolution. Advanced reasoning, speech, our communal social system, technology, and even the division of labor–all stem from barbecue (in the sense of cooking meat with live fire).

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Ideological dogmatism and United States policy toward Haiti

Guest post by Alex Dupuy

Testifying before the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10, 2010, former US President Bill Clinton, who is now serving as Special Envoy to Haiti for the United Nations, said that the trade liberalization (aka neoliberal) policies he pushed in the 1990s and that compelled Haiti to remove tariffs on imported rice from the US “may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake… I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did.”

: Delivery of US rice to Haiti in February 2010
Credit: US Marine Corps, Creative Commons License on Flickr

Two weeks later, Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive appeared in front of the Haitian Senate to present the government’s post-earthquake recovery plan known as the Action Plan for the Reconstruction and National Development of Haiti. The Action Plan, originally conceived by the US State Department and co-chaired by former President Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, called for the creation of an Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) charged with deciding on and implementing the programs and projects for the reconstruction of Haiti for 18 months after the Haitian Parliament ratifies it.

When questioned by members of the Haitian Senate that Haiti in effect surrendered its sovereignty to the IHRC, PM Bellerive responded candidly that “I hope you sense the dependency in this document. If you don’t sense it, you should tear it up. I am optimistic that in 18 months… we will be autonomous in our decisions. But right now I have to assume… that we are not.”

These admissions by high-ranking public officials representing the two sides of the international community-Haiti partnership express succinctly the dilemma that Haiti faces in rebuilding its shattered economy in the wake of the massive destruction caused by the January 12, 2010 earthquake.

As accurate as PM Bellerive’s statement about Haiti’s dependence on and subordination to the international community is, that did not originate with the creation of the IHRC, and it is not as temporary as Bellerive suggests. Rather than recounting the long history of foreign involvement and dominance in Haiti, we can consider the 1970s as having marked a major turning point in understanding the factors that created the conditions that existed on the eve of the earthquake and contributed to its devastating impact.

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No Woman No Cry: Maternal mortality in the spotlight

From left: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nita Lowey, Suraya Dalil, Purnima Mane. Credit: World Bank Photo Collection, Creative Commons licensed on Flickr

Guest post by Erica Buckingham

The country is Tanzania. The scene is a woman, Janet, experiencing intense pregnancy pains. The hope is that the regional clinic will deliver Janet’s third baby. The reality is that hers is a “high-risk” pregnancy, and the clinic does not have the proper equipment. The tragedy is that Janet does not have enough money to rent a van (estimated at the equivalent of $30) to drive for one hour to Mt. Meru, the closest hospital.

This situation is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Motivated by her own complications during labor, Christy Turlington-Burns filmed the documentary, No Woman No Cry which powerfully exposes the hardships faced by at-risk pregnant women in Tanzania, Bangladesh, Guatemala, and the United States. Known for her career as a model and as a maternal health advocate, Burns now brings attention to the shocking statistics and stories surrounding maternal health and mortality.

Fortunately for Janet, Burns’ crew was able to provide the necessary funds for transportation to Mt. Meru. Arriving at the hospital exhausted and dehydrated, the staff worked to induce her, and, three days later, Janet gave birth to a healthy baby boy. While her story ends on an uplifting note, most women in the same predicament are less fortunate.

On September 16, a brief preview of the film screened at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, and was followed by a panel discussion. The panelists included Suraya Dalil, Afghan Minister of Health, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, World Bank Managing Director, Purnima Mane, United Nations Population Fund Executive Director and Rep. Nita Lowey, Chair, Foreign Operations Subcommittee, U.S. House of Representatives.

Inspired by Burns’ work and the important issues the documentary addresses, the four panelists engaged in a lively discussion about the current status of maternal mortality, the improvements made in the last decade as well as the hope for continued progress in the future. The main message from these four prominent women leaders was the need for greater financial investment in maternal and child health.

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Roma: Not all alike

*Roma beggar in Paris. Credit: Seb Ruiz, Creative Commons licensed on Flickr*

Guest post by Sam Beck

The European Union must be held accountable if European states continue to expel Roma from member countries. The expulsions are taking place because Roma have created settlements not only in designated campgrounds but also within urban boundaries. This is not new. However, the scale and density of such settlements disturbs the sensibilities of Europeans. This is not only a West European phenomenon. Events of intolerable discrimination are also taking place in East Central Europe and the Balkans from which many of these Roma originate. The history of anti-Roma sentiments in both East and West Europe is torturous and long-standing.

A rather unusual situation emerged in Romania where Roma have lived for hundreds of years, where to this day they appear in abundant variation, from people who have resumed migratory lives to people who have been settled at the margins of villages, towns, and cities for as long as anyone can remember. In Romania, Roma were enslaved and indentured for centuries. They played important roles as musicians, miners, and in producing objects necessary for an agrarian society, crafting metals and wood objects. Today, those that we call Roma, were involved in all sorts of labor, agricultural workers and house servants.

Some may no longer speak their Sanskrit based language, or if they do they speak it with lexical-items borrowed from Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and so on. In Romania, many no longer speak Romani. In Romania, Roma may identify themselves with this “national” identity, or they may identify as “tsigani,” how others have named them. This is a term of derision. Some Roma have integrated themselves into the mainstream of Romanian society and melted into the Romanian ethnic identity. Some Roma sustain their identity and have experienced upward mobility in many different fields.

Roma were persecuted in the Nazi era, large numbers of whom lost their lives; their population decimated in great proportions to their total numbers, referred to as Prajmos. Oddly enough, when mentioned at all as a persecuted population in Germany’s ethnic cleansing effort they are lumped in with Jews, rather than being mentioned outright as a population. No museums exist for them and if there are memorials for them, I do not know of them. They have no homeland with which they can identify. There is no Israel that was created for them as it was for Jews. Their identities are claimed as citizens of their countries of origin.

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Cruise ships to heaven: Mauritius expands tourist sector

Guest post by Sean Carey

Mark Twain famously quoted a local person in his 1897 travelogue, Following the Equator: “You gather the idea that Mauritius was made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.”

Anyone lucky enough to fly to the Indian Ocean island will understand something of why this sentiment was recorded. The view as the plane starts its descent to the airport is stunning — the central mountain range looks as if it has been cut from some dark grey and green material with some very sharp scissors. Towns and small villages dot the landscape. As the plane comes into land at Plaisance on the south-east coast you see a patchwork of green sugar fields, which contrasts with the azure water gently rippling within the coral lagoon.

Little wonder, then, that with these physical attributes the Mauritius tourist sector, which started in a small way in the early 1970s, has expanded greatly. Even with the current global economic downturn around 915,000 visitors are expected in 2010. In fact, the country’s tourist sector often referred to as one the “pillars of the economy” — the others are sugar, textiles, ICT, offshore banking and luxury property — contributed 7.4 percent of the $10 billion economy in 2009. Significantly, it remains the island’s main source of foreign exchange.

Screensaver worthy: a view of Mauritius. Credit: Tim Parkinson, creative commons licensed on Flickr.

It is nearly 40 years since Indo-Trinidadian writer, V.S. Naipaul, referred to Mauritius as an “overcrowded barracoon” and a “half-made society,” and predicted economic collapse and social mayhem. He was wrong and has since apologized. (In fact, a much better guide to the history and social make up of Mauritius is provided by Norwegian anthropologist, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, in Common Denominators, a brilliant analysis of the island’s polyethnicity, identity politics and nationalism.)

But there can be little doubt that contemporary travel writers love to visit Mauritius, because it produces such good copy. In the last few years I have yet to see a bad review in the mainstream press. Mauritius is often referred to as a “paradise island” which is easy enough to conclude if you are paid to stay in some of the big five-star hotels that punctuate the coastline — Trou aux Biches, Le Touessrok and the Royal Palm are good examples — and are waited on hand and foot. For example, a recent article by Erin O’Dwyer in the Sydney Morning Herald is fairly typical of its kind:

“If what people want most in a holiday is good food, great beaches and a glimpse of local culture, then Mauritius has it all… Golf and snorkelling are island mainstays, though most resorts have a hectic schedule of activities — from archery and bocce to yoga and tai chi — and the spa is never far away, either.”

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