To thee I sing: sweet land of oil spill

European colonists came to North America seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity. They destroyed the very same for those who had lived here for centuries.

One person’s liberty often means someone else’s shackles. One group’s success often means another group is in ruins.

The boom and crackle of Independence Day fireworks in the United States are echoed in the gunfire in the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan as outside forces vie for control of these strategic lands. Let freedom ring.

Allow me one more bit of gut gashing irony. In the 18th century, the American patriots fought hard to gain independence from the British. They succeeded.

What would those freedom fighters say about British Petroleum’s oil spill in the Gulf?

Image: “An American Flag on top of a fake oil derrick in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.” The derrick may be fake, but the questions the image raises are surely very real. Creative commons licensed Flickr content.

Anthro in the news 5/17/10

• Africa is not a big country
In a letter to the editor of The New York Times concerning an article on the global war on AIDS, Steve Black zings it for totalizing “Africa.” He writes, “Now just imagine what would happen to investment in the United States if articles did not distinguish between the United States and Colombia and discussed “American drug lords”?” Black spent a year in Durban, South Africa, while pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology. See also this.

• The tragedy of trachoma
Infectious trachoma is widespread among the indigenous peoples of Australia. Some eye care specialists argue that services in remote areas to provide eye care should be increased. Peter Sutton, an anthropologist, responds that spending more on services is questionable when much of the burden of trachoma could be prevented by improved facial hygiene.

• Let’s face it
A French proposal to ban full face veils for women has prompted much media discussion. The Daily Star (Lebanon) quotes Abdelrhani Moundib, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco: “The West has the right to preserve its secularism … As a Moroccan Muslim, I am against the burqa. I see nothing in it that relates to Islam or chastity.”

• Talk to me
Just hearing your mother’s voice can raise levels of oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone,” according to an experimental study conducted by biological anthropologist Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

• Jaws are us (guys)
Human males have thicker jaw bones than human females. The interpretation of this difference, provided by biological anthropologist David Puts of Penn State University, is based in evolution. Physically superior males were more attractive to females as mates, and male jaw bones were part of the selective mix: “Males have thicker jawbones, which may have come from men hitting each other and the thickestboned men surviving,” he said. “Things are different for us now in many ways.” Blogger’s note: I hope he’s right about things being better now.

• Makerere University drops archaeology B.A. degree
Scrapped programs on the main campus of Makerere University, Uganda, include the B.A. in archaeology. In all, 20 programs were dropped including the bachelor’s degrees in dance, tourism and wildlife health and management, and the master’s program in ethics and public management.

Must read: The Cracked Bell by Tristram Riley-Smith

The Nacirema are a large and diverse group of people who live south of Canada and north of Mexico (spell the tribal name backward in case you haven’t figured out who they are). In the mid-20th century, Horace Miner wrote a clever parody about the culture of this tribe. The nickname continues to have some currency among anthropologists and their students. It’s a clever way to get Americans to think of their culture as a culture: contextualized, changing and not at all natural.

Because the Nacirema are such a large and diverse population, I ask students in my introductory cultural anthropology class to avoid referring to Americans as a whole. Because of the many and deep differences across regions, urban/rural, class, age groups, genders, ethnicity and more, I ask that any mention of Americans be preceded by several adjectives.

I have long held to a belief that the only thing all Americans share is knowing what crayons smell like. I have learned much, therefore, from reading Cracked Bell by Tristram Riley-Smith, and I may have to acknowledge that all Americans share an attraction to the concept of freedom.

Riley-Smith is English. He earned his doctorate in cultural anthropology at Cambridge University and did his fieldwork in Nepal. In 2002, he moved to Washington, D.C., working in the British Embassy. Over the next few years, he cast his anthropological gaze on America, taking the pervasive value of freedom as his focal point.

His book provides deep insights for those who wish to understand the United States. In seven chapters, he explores the theme of freedom in America from different angles, all wide angles that allow space for Riley-Smith to draw on his very deep well of knowledge about my country. He knows far, far more about my country than I do — a citizen steeped in its history from childhood and nurtured on its popular culture. I stand in awe of the range of Riley-Smith’s data: historic documents, movies, one-on-one interviews with Americans throughout the land and much, much more.

Chapter one tackles the question of identity. Riley-Smith raises the question of how can and does a sense of identity as American exist out of so much difference? He discusses how the education system shapes a shared sense of identity, as well as “rituals” such as summer camp and mass devotion to sport teams. Yet freedom and opportunity cannot and do not successfully bridge the deep divisions of race and ethnicity and the dispossession of American Indians and the poor in general.

Riley-Smith goes on to tackle six more big issues, bringing to each of them startlingly original insights. Chapter two examines consumerism, with Riley-Smith taking us down the corridors of excess and into the aisles of Walmart where the freedom to consume in fact shackles us all. Other chapters address religion, innovation, the wilderness, war and peace and law.

Riley-Smith isn’t as naive as Mork, who came to America from another planet to learn about our customs, but his observations are just as crisp and memorable. This is not a book you can whiz through in a few hours. I had to stop frequently, put it down, and think. It’s worth the effort.

Vodou healers fight hookworm

In Haiti, Vodou priests (houngans) and priestesses (mambos) use a wide variety of plant species to treat illnesses. About 20 plants are employed as a vermifuge–a medicine that expels intestinal worms.

A recent study screened 12 commonly-used plants used in Vodou treatments for intestinal parasites to detect their effectiveness against infective-stage larvae of a species of hookworm. Four of the 12 plants demonstrate inhibitory behavior against hookworm.

In rural Haiti, commercial deworming medicines are not widely available. If available, their price puts them out of reach of most people.

Vodou practitioners thus are providing valuable health care services for the poor. Additional research on the effectiveness of various plants used could help traditional healers improve their treatments and the health of their patients.

Image: “Hookworm,” from flickr user AJC1, licensed with Creative Commons.

Anthro in the news 3/15/10

• Yo-Yo Ma’s anthropological soul

Classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma is, according to an article in the Washington Post, “one of the most recognizable classical musicians on the planet.” Besides being a star of the musical world, he is also a social activist, in his own way. “I realized late in life,” Ma says, that my twin passions are music and people. Maybe that is why I am an odd person in this profession.” The article goes on to point out that Ma’s wonderful oddness may be in part due to his liberal arts education at Harvard where he expanded his view beyond music: “I have been passionate about music … but people in my dorm were equally passionate about other things. So suddenly, it was like, oh my gosh, what a huge world.” He is still an avid fan of anthropology. Blogger’s note: Thank you, Yo-Yo Ma.

• Knowledge about domestic violence for prevention

What safety nets are in place to protect women from domestic violence/partner abuse? The recent murder of two women in Miyagi Prefecture has raised concern about how to provide protection for potential victims. The Daily Yomiuri (3/14, page seven) of Tokyo quotes Ichiro Numasaki, professor of social anthropology at Tohoku University: “Many victims of domestic violence are scared to end the relationship because they are kept under the control of the abuser … Police need to learn more about domestic violence itself.”

•”I’m done with Indian stuff”

According to an article in The New York Times, a likely American Indian site has been, or soon will be, destroyed due to pressure from local business interests to “develop” the area. Harry Holstein, a professor of archaeology, has been lobbying for protection of what was a mound. Leon Smith, the mayor of Oxford, wasn’t eager to discuss the issue with the NYT: “You’re not going to hear from me … I’m done with Indian stuff.” He plans to top off the mound, level it and build a restaurant, hotel or clinic: “It’s going to be pretty,” he said. Blogger’s note: Yet another chapter in the shameful treatment of American Indians and their heritage in the United States.

• Career skill: anthropology students love the odd

A story on NPR applauds a new documentary, The Parking Lot Movie. It’s about a parking lot in Charlottesville, Va., and the characters who populate it. Most of the workers, all male, are students from the University of Virginia. The manager, who is also the filmmaker, says: “The anthropologists are always the best. They have a perspective that allows them to look at oddness and be interested in it, and not be bored.”

• Culture and AIDS in Lesotho

The Chronicle of Higher Education carried an article on the efforts of David Turkon to push policy makers to rely more on anthropological research in combating AIDS. Turkon is associate professor of cultural anthropology at Ithaca College and chair of the AIDS and Anthropology Research Group within the American Anthropological Association.

• Freedom of speech in China

Scott Simon, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Ottawa University says that freedom of speech in China is a global issue. He hosted a discussion forum profiling three Chinese human rights activists.

• Homage to American Jewish cultural anthropologist who redefined “blackness”

A review of the 2009 film, Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness, praises it as a “dense and fascinating documentary. ” Herskovits, a Jewish American cultural anthropologist, pioneered African American studies in the United States.

• Welcome to England and off with your head

Excavations for a road near the London 2012 Olympic sailing site unearthed a mass grave of 51 young Viking males. All were decapitated, and some showed multiple body wounds. The remains are dated between 890-1030 CE.

• Prehistoric climate change responders

Ezra Zubrow, professor of archaeology at the University of Buffalo, has been conducting research with other scientists in the Arctic regions of Quebec, Finland and Russia to understand how humans living 4,000-6,000 years ago coped with climate change. Zubrow is quoted in Science Daily: “…analysis of data from all phases of the study eventually will enable more effective collaboration between today’s social, natural and medical sciences as they begin to devise adequate responses to the global warming the world faces today.”

• Sick or just small? Hobbit debate still newsworthy

The Canberra Times quoted several biological anthropologists commenting on a recent publication in the Journal of Human Evolution in which Peter Brown and Tomoko Maeda argue for the position that the Hobbits (aka Homo floresiensis) were small but healthy. Dean Falk, Florida State University, supports their view. Daniel Lieberman, Harvard University, now agrees that the Hobbits represent a new species. Ralph Holloway, Columbia University, has not ruled out the disease hypothesis.

• Those bonobos are sharing again

BBC News picked up on research by Brian Hare, assistant professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University, showing that bonobos share food. He conducted research on orphaned bonobos living in a study center in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In experimental settings, the bonobos willingly share food with other bonobos. He now wants to understand why they share. His findings are published in Current Biology.

• American biological anthropologist wins Max Planck Research Award 2010

Tim Bromage has been awarded one of the two annual Max Planck Research Awards for his achievements in establishing the field in human evolution of growth, development and life history. Bromage is professor of basic science and craniofacial biology and of biomaterials and biometrics in New York University’s College of Dentistry. The award carries a stipend of $1.2 million.

A heresy is occurring in Australia

Guest post by Helen Caldicott

Ever since white men appeared 200 years ago on the shores of Sydney Harbour in their uniforms, with their guns and flags, the aboriginal people have been hunted, shot at and herded off cliffs and escarpments, and have had to drink from poisoned water holes.

Until very recently, aboriginal children were stolen from their parents by policemen under the direction of government and transported to “Christian” mission stations where they were taught English history, language and morality. Many were treated as slaves and sexually and physically abused. This horrifying history leads me to the current abuse and desecration of several aboriginal tribes inhabiting their land in the Northern Territory.

This land called Muckaty Station is conveniently located adjacent to the railway line, constructed recently by Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton, which bisects Australia connecting Darwin, a port in the north, to Adelaide a port in the south.

In its wisdom, the previous conservative Howard government allocated this site along with three others for a possible radioactive dump. At the time the opposition labor party strongly criticized the nomination of Muckaty, labeling the Howard government’s National Radioactive Waste Management Bill as sordid and draconian. At the same time, the Howard government offered $12 million to just two of the tribal elders, excluding all other members. However the new labor government under the act can still impose a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory against the wishes of the indigenous owners and the government of the NT.

Muckaty Station sits above an ancient aquifer which is used by both the aborigines for drinking water and white station owners to water their cattle. It also experiences large intermittent rainfalls during the year.

Not only does the government intend to bury Australia’s low and high level waste at this site, but there is a distinct possibility that waste from overseas – namely the United States – will be transported by ship and on the Halliburton line to Muckaty Station, thus making Australia one of the main radioactive waste dumps in the world.

The reason for this eventuality is that Howard signed a treaty with the American government called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership GNEP which stipulates that after Australia exports its large quantities of uranium to nuclear powered countries, the high-level radioactive waste would be re-imported to prevent lateral proliferation of nuclear weapons. Despite its previous promises, Labor has not vetoed the GNEP and there is a suspicion that a secret deal was negotiated under the aegis of the GNEP to relieve America of some of its deadly radioactive waste.

Long-lived carcinogenic isotopes will inevitably leak into underground water systems, bio-concentrate in food chains and over generations induce cancer, genetic disease and congenital deformities in humans, animals and plants. A dismal prospect indeed for Australia’s future.

Helen Caldicott is an advocate of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises. She has devoted the last 38 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. Dr. Caldicott holds a medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School and was on the staff of Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war. While living in the United States, she co-founded the Physicians for Social Responsibility and the umbrella group, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament. The recipient of many awards and the subject of several films, she currently divides her time between Australia and the United States.

Image: “Northern Territory.” Creative commons licensed content from Flickr user dinaiz.

Preventing cervical cancer in Appalachia

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

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

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

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

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

A tale of two op-eds

They are both about Haiti. They are both worth reading. In my view, one is the best of op-eds and one is the worst. Please read them and say what you think and why.

Op-ed #1: In the February 7 New York Times, Ben Fountain takes us to rural Haiti in 1999. After driving for a few hours away from Port-au-Prince, he saw sprawling mansions in the hillsides. “Had oil been discovered in Haiti”? His Haitian friend shook his head: “Drogue. Drugs.” Fountain talks about how Haiti, 10 years ago, had become a major transshipment point for cocaine from South America to the United States. It still is. The Haitian military helps keep this billion-dollar-a-year trade going. Fountain concludes: “So it’s come to this: the richest country in the hemisphere and the poorest, the first republic and the second, trapped together in the New World’s most glaring modern failure: the war on drugs.”

Op-ed #2: In the February 5 Wall Street Journal, Lawrence Harrison writes from Boston about how the Haitian people’s widespread devotion to voodoo is its “curse.” He states that although Haiti has received billions of dollars in foreign aid over the past half-century, its progress indicators are more like those of Africa than Latin America. The reason: the powerful influence of voodoo, which, he explains came from Africa and continues to be an “obstacle to development” there. Harrison avers that that all Haitians feel its influence. His sources of data? A son-in-law of his “who is Haitian and holds a graduate degree from Harvard.” And an American missionary who lived in Haiti for 20 years. Shaky grounds? Not for Harrison, who sums it all up for us: “Haiti’s predicament is caused by a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes…”

Image: “Members of the Jordanian Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) take position during a drug seizure exercise. 22/Dec/2008. UN Photo/Marco Dormino.” Link. Creative commons licensed Flickr content.

Recent sources on Haitian culture and social change

This list is intended to provide a guide to recent resources on culture and society in Haiti for people who wish to be better informed about the context in which the recent earthquake and its devastation are occurring. With apologies, most of the journal articles are not public access.

Furthermore, we really encourage everyone to visit InterAction’s Haiti response page, which includes a variety of ways to help out.

Benoît, C. 2007. “The politics of vodou: AIDS, access to health care and the use of culture in Haiti”. Anthropology in Action 143, 59-68.

Coreil, J. & Mayard, G. 2006. “Indigenization of illness support groups in Haiti”. Human Organization 652, 128-139.

Curci, S. 2008. “Mapping Haitian history: a photo essay”. Journal of Haitian Studies 142, 120-30.

Farmer, P. 2004. “An anthropology of structural violence.” Current Anthropology 453, 305-325.

Farmer, P. E. 2001. “The consumption of the poor: tuberculosis in the 21st century.” Ethnography 12, 183-216.

Farmer, Paul. 1992. AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Farmer, P. E. 2008. “Mother courage and the future of war.” Social Analysis 522, 165-184.

Giafferi, N. 2004. The violence of relations in fieldwork: the Haitian example. Terrain 43, 123-40, 159.

Guilbaud, P., & Preston, M. 2006. “Healthcare assessment study in Les Cayes, Haiti: towards a framework for rural capacity development and analysis”. Journal of Haitian Studies 122, 48-69.

Hastings, A. 2007. “Eradicating global poverty: is it really achievable?” Journal of Haitian Studies 132, 120-134.

James, E. C. 2004. “The political economy of “trauma” in Haiti in the democratic era of insecurity”. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 282, 127-149.

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Anthro in the news 1/11/10

• Tell it to the Marines
NPR aired an interview with cultural anthropologist Paula Holmes-Eber who teaches “operational culture” at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Classes include discussion of cultural sensitivity and the cultural/social consequences of military presence and military actions, such as blowing up a bridge.

• Nacirema craziness goes global
In an article called “The Americanization of Mental Illness” in The New York Times Magazine, Ethan Watters (blog) describes how Western, especially American, globalization includes the spread of Western/American understandings of mental health and illness. He points to some of the negative consequences of this trend.

In discussing why people diagnosed with schizophrenia in developing countries fare better than those in industrialized countries, he draws on the work of medical anthropologist Juli McGruder of the University of Puget Sound. McGruder’s research in Zanzibar shows how Swahili spiritual beliefs and healing practices help the ill person by avoiding stigma and keeping social and family ties intact. Note: Nacirema is “American” spelled backwards.

• Guardians of the nameless dead
The bodies of hundreds of victims of political violence in Colombia are often disposed of by being thrown into rivers. Sometimes the bodies wash up on the river bank. WIS News describes the work of one local civil servant, Maria Ines Mejia, who spends time recovering bodies from the Cauca River and thereby helping authorities record the deaths and chronicle the killings.

Maria Victoria Uribe, an anthropologist with Colombia’s National Commission of Reconciliation and Reparation, names people like Mejia as “unknown heroes.” Michelle Hamilton, an expert in body composition who directs the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, notes that “…you can imagine trying to grab onto a water-logged body with the skin slipping off. It can come off in your hands.”

• Celebration and warning
Survival International’s “weighty coffee-table book,” We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, is reviewed in the Ecologist. The unity and diversity of indigenous peoples around the world is celebrated in beautiful photographs and through the words of tribal and non-tribal people. Given that Survival International commissioned the book, it also expectedly contains a message of deep concern about the dangers to survival that so many indigenous/tribal cultures face.

• Who rules?
Janine Wedel is a cultural anthropologist and professor of public policy at George Mason University. Her book, The Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market, was reviewed in the Financial Times and by Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post. Wedel has appeared at several book launches in D.C.
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