The floods in Pakistan

An interview by Maggie Ronkin with Fayyaz Baqir, Director of the Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center, Islamabad, Pakistan

MR: What regions of Pakistan and sectors of the population are affected most by the tragic flooding?

FB: Vast swathes of land in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (previously the Northwest Frontier Province), Southern Punjab (the Siraiki region of the Punjab), Sindh, and Balochistan have been devastated by the recent floods. These floods are considered to be the worst in the entire world during the past hundred years. It is not an exaggeration that fifteen million families have been rendered homeless, and hundreds of thousands of homes have been wiped off the face of the earth. Hundreds of villages are no more. Standing crops over thousands of acres, cattle, infrastructure, and productive assets of millions of families have been lost due to flooding. A woman from a very well off and respected family of a rural district contacted by phone said “Everything is gone. We are beggars”. Scores of women from small farm and landless families burst into tears when asked about their plight. “There is no food, no water, no medicine, no help” most of them narrated. If they do not receive assistance soon, they may reach the point where they think that there is “no hope”. Such a situation will add another dimension to the crisis because desperate minds are fertile ground for militants. This is a great humanitarian crisis to which the world’s conscience needs to respond. The scale of this tragedy is so enormous that the country’s entire population is reeling in shock.

MR: What does the devastation in Pakistan look like to you on the ground?

FB: Thousands of human settlements are under ten or fifteen-foot deep water. Dead cattle can be found everywhere. Innumerable people are stranded in areas surrounded by water. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, and elderly people who managed to move out of their houses leaving behind their assets accumulated over a life time have squatted along the roads. Tents are in extremely short supply, so the homeless sit under the burning sun without any shade to cover their heads. They often seem overwhelmed and unable to decide what to do. There are shortages of food, safe drinking water, and medicine. Whenever food arrives, scrambling for it leads to scuffles, and inevitably, the poor, weak, and households headed by women are hurt the most. There is no organized, visible, and dependable government assistance available.

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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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Tweetography: FIFA, can we blow our horns?

Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell

The World Cup is all of six days old and already the controversy rages. Not over the best team, the most skillful player, the biggest disappointment, or the prettiest goal, but over the vuvuzela, a thin plastic horn popular at South African soccer matches and blaring by the thousands at every World Cup game so far.

The French national team, following a disappointing scoreless tie against Uruguay, blamed the instrument for their poor play. After a lackluster showing in a narrow 1-0 win over Nigeria, Argentinian star and 2010 World Player of the Year Lionel Messi claimed, “It is impossible to communicate, it’s like being deaf.”

Twitter provides the main outlet for people around the world to express their hatred (or, less often, their love) for the vuvuzela. A simple search on Twitter for “#vuvuzela” reveals thousands of tweets posted daily around the globe. Most tweets are humorous:

JonahFisher: Girl in front of me is blowing #vuvuzela and has earplugs in. Strikes me as rather unfair. #wc2010

lee_Kern: The kazoo has more grace than the Vuvuzela, and the kazoo is a f***ing stupid instrument… http://youtu.be/gjQ0MzWH4Ss #vuvuzela

The complaints came as no surprise. Following public outcry over the vuvuzela during last summer’s World Cup warmup tournament in South Africa FIFA (soccer’s world governing body) President Sepp Blatter decided not to ban the horn because he did not want to “Europeanize the first African World Cup.”

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From ecological disaster to constitutional crisis

Guest post by Terence Turner

“Debating Belo Monte Hydroelectric Complex on the Xingu River,” creative commons licensed content by Flickr user International Rivers. March 14, 2007.

UPDATED: Once again, the indigenous peoples of the Xingú valley in the Brazilian Amazon are planning to make the long journey to the town of Altamira*, where the Trans-Amazonica highway crosses the Xingú. Their ultimate destination will be the island of Pimental a short distance downriver from the town, where the Brazilian government plans to build a huge hydroelectric dam they call Belo Monte after the nearest Brazilian village. The Indians’ bold plan, is to prevent the construction of the dam by building a new village directly on top of the proposed dam site and maintaining their occupation until the government abandons its plans for the dam. The planning for the encampment is being led by the Kayapo, the largest and most politically organized of the indigenous nations of the region, but other indigenous groups are also participating.

The Indians, in a bold attempt to prevent the construction of the project, are building a new village directly on top of the proposed dam site, They have vowed to maintain their occupation until the government abandons its plans for the dam. The construction of the encampment is being led by the Kayapo, the largest and most politically organized of the indigenous nations of the region, but other indigenous groups are also participating.

The Kayapo, however, are not waiting for the discussion of the plan for the encampment among the 23 indigenous groups of the Xingú Valley to reach consensus. They have already seized the ferry that carries Brazil Route 80, an important link in the Trans-Amazonica highway system, across the Xingú River at the Kayapo village of Piaraçú. The ferry and the river crossing are now under guard by armed Kayapo warriors, who have announced that they will continue their blockade until the government negotiates with them about their plans for the Belo Monte dam.

This will not be the first indigenous encampment organized by the Kayapo in their effort to stop the building of dams on the Xingú. In 1989, when the government first set out to implement its plan for a giant hydroelectric complex on the Xingú, with financial support from the World Bank, the Kayapo led a great rally of 40 indigenous nations at Altamira against the scheme, setting up an encampment of several hundred Indians at a Catholic retreat center just outside the town. The five-day rally was extensively covered by national and international media, and succeeded in persuading the World Bank to withdraw its planned loan for the construction of the dams.

* See the video, “The Kayapo: Out of the Forest” in the Disappearing World Series, Terence Turner, anthropological consultant, 52 minutes. This video covers the 1989 Altamira meeting and campaign against the Xingu dams. Available from the Royal Anthropological Institute(RAI)
here.

After the 1989 Altamira meeting, the Xingú dam scheme remained dormant, but not dead, for two decades. Two years ago it was revived as the centerpiece of the Lula government’s Project for Accelerated Development. As a Brazilian activist remarked at the time, “These big dams are like vampires: you pound a stake through their hearts but they rise again from the grave and you have to do it all over again.”

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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.

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.

Go with the flow

Guest post by Laura Wilson

By focusing attention on a single but critical resource, Jessica Barnes sheds light on the complexities of social, economic, and political change in rural Egypt. The resource is water.

Barnes is currently completing her doctorate in Columbia University’s new multidisciplinary Ph.D. program in Sustainable Development. She combines training and perspectives in cultural anthropology, geography, and environmental science to understand the multifaceted world of water in a context where rainfall is extremely scarce and farmers depend on the flow of one river and its tributaries. Her mantra is: follow the water.

In a presentation at the Elliott School of International Affairs on January 27, Barnes described the findings from her research in Egypt on land reclamation from the desert for farming (she focused on the areas around Fayoum). The Egyptian government promotes land reclamation in order to help the country achieve food self-sufficiency and to create agricultural jobs for college graduates who cannot be absorbed by the civil service.

Barnes finds that the new farmers are successful in the “greening” of desert land, and much desert land is now producing food. But such expansion of farming requires water. Reclamation projects are located further from the Nile and its tributaries than the plots of longstanding farmers. Gaining access to irrigation water is difficult, so many new farmers resort to illegal means to obtain water for their farms. Barnes showed a photograph of one farmer’s illegal pipeline.

Long-term farmers said that their lands are no longer productive because the water they normally depend on is being diverted to the reclamation areas. Barnes links this pattern to what David Harvey refers to as “accumulation by dispossession.” The new farmers reclaim land from the desert and earn profits, but they simultaneously deprive long-term farmers of their livelihood. The long-term farmers are forced to abandon their nonproductive land.

Barnes’ ethnographic focus on water, augmented by her use of GIS mapping and long-term multi-level fieldwork, is an excellent example of how a resource-centered approach can yield rich insights of value to international development and environmental policy and programs.

Laura Wilson is a candidate for an M.A. degree in International Development Studies at 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: “Egyptian stuff BW” from flickr user Richard Messenger, licensed with Creative Commons.

Anthro-pologies to both sides

Guest Post by Nick Bluhm

Students of anthropology face a renewed debate about the role of anthropology in the military, one that has recently drawn the attention of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (PDF) and the ire of many professional anthropologists. The American military, intent on surmounting the Taliban in Afghanistan, has sought out the expertise of social scientists, including anthropologists, as a means to enhance their counterinsurgency tactics.

Two contrasting views shape the debate. Critics deride anthropology for its role as what they scathingly characterize as “the handmaiden of the empires.” These commentators see anthropological involvement in U.S. military operations as a return to the 19^th century when anthropologists assisted governments in maintaining control over colonized people. In contrast, anthropologists who have joined the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System to aid in the Afghanistan war effort depict critics as malcontents who subscribe to an antiquated view of anthropology as a purely academic pursuit. Engagement, they conclude, is better than opposition and non-engagement.

Between these extremes, I see the potential for some fruitful middle ground. Most importantly, anthropologists could influence the manner in which the war is conducted, with possible effects on the length and consequences of the military occupation. Indeed, the need for an anthropological perspective in U.S. military strategy is ever more pronounced today. As General McChrystal stated emphatically in his August 30, 2009 Afghanistan report, “…focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely…our objective must be the population.” Furthermore, “gaining [the population’s] support will require a better understanding of the people’s choices and needs.” Anthropologists who focus on researching local culture could enhance the effectiveness of the governance and development aspects of the counterinsurgency.

However, before anthropologists will be seen as contributors to foreign policy discussions, they must indicate that they are willing to work with the U.S. government, though in ways that accord with the discipline’s ethical principles.

While I acknowledge the value that anthropology could contribute to international relations through more socially informed military activities, I also see specific problems with anthropologists assisting the U.S. effort in Afghanistan. I believe that the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is founded in part on faulty assumptions, largely reflecting the desires and values of foreign diplomats and not those of the local people. Furthermore, while fighting terrorism is an altruistic goal that affects global stakeholders, the strategy largely disregards the anthropological focus on the needs of the local population.

And, overall, the results so far are not comforting. Using brute force to achieve peace and security appears to be backfiring. In particular, the U.S. military is finding it difficult to distinguish between the Taliban extremists, and the vindictive locals who attribute the deaths of family members to U.S. forces. By associating with this military operation, anthropologists endanger their reputation as trustworthy researchers.

Obviously, I do not mean to proffer anthropology as a handmaiden of the U.S. military. But the U.S. military will be in Afghanistan regardless of anthropological criticism. Presuming that anthropologists have some control over their assignments, an anthropological presence in Afghanistan could be used to positively direct the means, and possibly the presumed ends, of the counterinsurgency. Further, I see this cooperation as one step in a larger effort to make anthropology relevant to foreign policy stakeholders while retaining the discipline’s concern for marginalized populations.

Nick Bluhm is a public policy analyst at the law firm Cooley Godward Kronish, in downtown D.C. He holds an M.A. in anthropology from the George Washington University.

Photo, “afghanistan,” from Flickr via Creative Commons.

Finally smoked ’em out

Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell

It has been surprising to find so little fuss in the blogosphere over the newly-passed smoking ban in Iraq. Articles on the subject have tended to express some sense of dismay or curiosity, a sort of “why now?” feeling that puts the Iraqi parliament’s priorities into question. With the most basic of services to worry about – security, electricity, etc. – does it make sense to take up this kind of cause at this particular moment?

The measure would ban smoking from all public places, and supposedly may include additional provisions down the road to ban smoking in private vehicles, too. Though certainly a forward-thinking measure and a positive step for public health, it comes with an oddly harsh penalty (the fine is equal to $4,300) that surely few Iraqis can afford to pay. And I can’t imagine many Iraqi smokers are enthusiastic about taking their cigarettes onto street corners in the midst of this month’s recent rash of attacks.

Yet of all the countries in the region, how come Iraq is among the first to potentially ban smoking fully in public places? A few have detailed the ingrained culture of smoking in the Arab world – from friends smoking sheesha in coffeehouses to the myriad members of Iraqi parliament lighting up in their offices. Others still have wondered about American troops – with possibly up to two-thirds of American soldiers in Iraq smokers, how could the ban affect them and their morale?

Perhaps most interesting is the medical anthropological angle; that is, how the knowledge of health problems associated with smoking is imparted, and how it interacts with cultural practices. It would be interesting to see some examples of smoking education in Iraq, or from other countries in the region (such as Jordan, which has a public ban in place). I find myself very curious about the cultural backlash or resistance to the ban, but then again, there was and is resistance to similar bans in the United States – by smokers and businesses, in particular – but that has not measurably slowed its progress.

Graham Hough-Cornwell is an M.A. candidate in Middle East Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University.

Image: “Smoking Kid,” licensed under Creative Commons on Flickr.

Painting by more than just numbers: the case for anthropology

Guest post by Nick Bluhm

Can numbers alone capture the essence of human behavior? This is a question that most anthropology professors would quickly rebuff; yet former General Counsel of General Electric Benjamin Heineman posed this question in a recent article in The Atlantic.

Heineman suggests that in certain situations, an understanding of a community, country, or region requires more than just mathematics or formulas. As an anthroplogist, I agree that these “numbers” are insufficient for understanding human behavior. However, I would go further, and argue that anthropology is a necessary component of any community analysis.

At the heart of all human activity, at the most basic level, is an interaction between two individuals, who have preferences, biases, desires and idiosyncrasies. Anthropology examines these aspects in the collective, carefully developing an understanding of the qualitative, integral components of what drives a culture and a people. By aggregating these individual observations, mostly without the aid of numbers or formulas, anthropologists create a holistic picture, one that I believe is necessary for formulating effective foreign policies.

Tedious? Possibly. Essential? Certainly. Heineman provides an apt case study that highlights the need for qualitative data and field research: Vietnam. Heineman takes aim at former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who clearly failed at forecasting the failure of American troops to surmount the determined North Vietnamese.

McNamara, in his memoir, acknowledges that the failure of Vietnam can be attributed to the “profound ignorance in the history, culture, and politics of the people.” Although the mea culpa came 30 years too late, as an anthroplogist, I find it validating to hear a former U.S. senior official admit to the importance of this knowledge, something that anthropology is ideally suited to provide.

Michael Dove shares Heineman’s sentiment, championing the importance of anthroplogy for a deeper understanding of foreign affairs. In his New York Times article, Dove describes the work of Dr. Ann Soetoro, renowned development anthropologist and mother of current President Barack Obama.

Dove explains that, much like the Pentagon in conducting the Vietnam War, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) lacked the essential perspective gained by Dr. Soetoro during her studies in Indonesia. Dr. Soetoro, who consulted with USAID, attempted to dispel its misguided assumption that the proper village delegate for channeling aid was the village official. Instead, she pioneered the notion of micro-credit, eschewing the USAID approach that she found exacerbated social stratification in the Indonesian villages.

And this is where the two articles agree. In any policymaking or decision-making capacity, there is an urgent need for a dissenting perspective, especially one that captures the spirit, social structure and culture of a community. Anthropologists must continue to challenge the numbers and rigid, formulaic policies heralded as the explanation and objective solution. Anthropology, though often unacknowledged for its contributions, provides an essential toolset for anyone who seeks to thoroughly comprehend the world.

Nick Bluhm is a public policy analyst at the law firm Cooley Godward Kronish, in downtown D.C. He holds an M.A. in anthropology from the George Washington University.

Image: “Lego People.” Source: Joe Shlabotnik.