Now in its tenth year, the SCRM (Short Courses on Research Methods) program is for cultural anthropologists who already have the Ph.D. Two, five-day courses are offered during summer 2014 at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, North Carolina.

• Statistics in Ethnographic Research (Instructors: Daniel Hruschka and David Nolin), July 28-August 1, 2014
• Cultural Domain Analysis (Instructors: H. Russell Bernard and Rosalyn Negron), July 21-July 25, 2014
• Apply to the short courses on research methods HERE. Deadline: March 1, 2014.

Now in its tenth year, the WRMA (Workshops in Research Methods in Anthropology) program offers one-day workshops in conjunction with the national meetings of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Now in its third year, the DCRM (Distance Courses in Research Methods in Anthropology) is open to upper division undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals. Five courses are offered in summer 2014:

• Text Analysis
• Geospatial Analysis
• Network Analysis
• Video Analysis
• Methods of Behavioral Observation.

The development of these fee-based courses is supported by the National Science Foundation. Enrollment is limited to 20 participants.

The University of Arizona’s School of Anthropology is seeking applications for the School’s Summer 2014 Residential Scholar. Deadline for application is February 23, 2104.

The school encourages applications from all fields of anthropology. During residency, the scholar will be expected to contribute to the teaching mission in the School of Anthropology through a lecture, workshop, or other form of scholarly interaction.

For more information:  http://anthropology.arizona.edu/node/405

Urbanization and Insecurity: Crowding, Conflict and Gender

Who: The Environmental Change and Security Program, Urban Sustainability Laboratory, and Africa Program

Where: 5th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
One Woodrow Wilson Plaza – 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20004-3027

When: Tuesday, February 18 | 12:00pm-2:00pm

Description: Recent comparative studies of rapidly growing cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have identified a variety of threats to women’s personal security and an equally varied set of government and community responses. This seminar features presentations of the results of large-scale comparative studies as well as ethnographic studies that highlight the role of gender in urban violence.

Featuring:

 

When: Friday, February 14, 2014
11:00AM – 12:30PM

Where: Hortense Amsterdam House, Room 202 (Anthropology Seminar Room)
2110 G Street NW

Event Description: This talk explores the recent mix of “sound demos,” art installations and anti-nuclear music festivals in contexts of political protest in Japan since the tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi on March 11, 2011.

Featuring: David Novak is an associate professor at UC-Santa Barbara. He explores the relationship between modern cultures and the circulation of musical media. Novak is the author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation, (Duke University Press, forthcoming), an ethnography of Noise, an experimental electronic music, developed over several years of multi-sited fieldwork among Japanese and North American practitioners and listeners. He is the founder of the Music and Sound Interest Group in the American Anthropological Association.

Sponsored by the GW Anthropology Department

When: Monday, February 3, 2014
3:00PM – 4:30PM

Where: The Elliott School of International Affairs, Conference Room 501
1957 E Street NW

Event Description: Tenzin Jinba will be discussing his new research on masculinity and the state and also his new book, In the Land of the Eastern Queendom: The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan.

The story underlying this ethnography began with the recent discovery and commercialization of the remnant of an ancient “queendom” on the Sichuan-Tibet border. Recorded in classical Chinese texts, this legendary matriarchal domain has attracted not only tourists but the vigilance of the Chinese state. Tenzin Jinba’s research examines the consequences of development of the queendom label for local ethnic, gender, and political identities and for state-society relations.

Featuring: Tenzin Jinba,  professor of anthropology and sociology at Lanzhou University and postdoc at Yale University

RSVP: http://go.gwu.edu/genderethnicitytibet

Sponsored by the Tibet Governance Project and Culture in Global Affairs

By Guest Contributor: Adam Carter

As an anthropology major at University of Michigan, I had to deal with people always asking me, “Anthro? What are you going to do with that?” They referred to it as though it was one of those prison balls that would be attached to my leg for the rest of my life. I specifically remember a friend of my mother telling me, “When you are finished digging up old bones, give me a call and we can make some money.” I refrained from even explaining the archaeology anthropology difference, knowing such distinctions were beyond his comprehension, as it didn’t relate to the supply and demand curve he was focused on.

So, the question is: where have my Anthropology studies taken me?

In one word: everywhere. I have been living, traveling, teaching, studying, all the while delivering humanitarian aid and smiles in 80+ countries. Though I am not a professional anthropologist, the cultural sensitivities and curiosity I developed in my college days have driven my explorations and personal discoveries.

I remember my first anthro course like it was yesterday. From that day on, I have been enthralled by the study of human culture. Before every semester I fantasized as I read Michigan’s impressive course catalogue, considering which faraway time or place I wanted to explore the next semester. Though I never left campus, I felt like I had visited the first cities of the Indus Valley, the Great Plains of the Native American tribes, the Amazon rain forest and the mega-cities of Asia. My college studies in Italy and subsequent travels through Europe and Morocco sparked my travel bug, so by the time I graduated, I had developed a deep awareness about how human culture had emerged and evolved. More importantly, I felt unprepared for the “real job” all my friends were racing to acquire. With a whole world out there to explore, I decided to close the textbook and witness for myself the wonderful variety of the human experience.

I bought a one-way ticket to China, wrangled my best friend into the plot and began a nine-month journey of discovery. Traveling on a tight budget (with only my profits from my summer job as beer vendor at Wrigley Field in my hometown of Chicago) fueling me, I found myself living in the most immersive manner possible, staying at the cheapest, seediest hotels and eating tons of street food. In the process, I got a more authentic cultural experience than I could have dreamed. Over time, I grew more comfortable with the uncertainty of my traveling style and the occasional discomfort I experienced. What fueled me was the daily contact with people from all walks of life. Suddenly, my role had transformed from textbook reader to ethnographer. I started asking deeper questions, piecing together whatever I could about local cultures. Soon, I started pushing the limits, venturing into places I never would have imagined myself. One day, as I hung out with some Filipino teenagers I met in a shantytown in Manila, I had a catharsis of sorts. Due to the cultural affinity we shared (playing basketball and listening to Snoop Dogg all day), I realized first of all that what united us was stronger than what divided us. Second, I reflected on the inherent disadvantages they were  born with. No matter how smart or motivated, most of them would never be able to get beyond the circle of poverty they found themselves. I internalized my privileged position of being able to simply swoop in and visit these guys (and people from all over the world), knowing they could never dream of doing the same. As I sat there, I got the spark. “What if I can help even the scales a bit,” I asked myself.

This is when my social consciousness took root. From there, I traveled throughout Asia, Latin America and Africa for another two years, hungering for the open road and the amazing cultural experiences I had every step of the way. As I experienced one culture after another, demystifying places like Bali, Botswana, Bangkok and Belize, I came to the realization that despite all of the cosmetic differences between cultures (the styles of dress, the food, the language and the daily habits), a common humanity always seemed to ring true.

In 1999, with three years of travel under my belt and a desire to apply my interest in anthropology and cross-cultural studies into a lifestyle, I enrolled in GW’s Elliott School Master’s Degree Program in International Affairs. My experience at George Washington expanded my knowledge immeasurably. In addition to providing the economic, historical and political context I needed to become a truly global citizen, I was able to study international development with amazing professors as well as practitioners that were active in the field. I was very pleased the way the program placed a priority on cultural sensitivity. Professors like Barbara Miller from the Anthropology Department played an active role in the curriculum and principles like cultural relativism formed a basis for the school’s international development approach.

While at GW, I served as a United Nations fellow, working as an intern with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); in that role, I also traveled to Colombia to do research on behalf of the UN about the plight of the internal refugees (people displaced by violence in the civil war) there. My experiences interacting with these desplazados, as opposed to my time spent in UNHCR headquarters, reinforced my desire to “get my hands dirty” as it were as I sought a career in the development industry.

Capitalizing upon my anthropology background and Masters degree, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study the socioeconomic effects of African immigration into Spain. My independent research allowed me to apply my fieldwork expertise into a contemporary, socially relevant setting, resulting in poignant articles and radio reports. More important though were the lasting friendships I formed with migrants from Morocco and West Africa.

After these experiences, I decided to pursue my humanitarian instincts, raising money on a grassroots level to assist at-risk kids in the favela shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I received an outpouring of support from friends and family and a grant from an American nonprofit. I was able to deliver these funds in a direct, strategic manner to a wonderful children’s community center where I had volunteered for months. I helped the director create a plan to administer the funds and oversaw every dollar that was delivered. One of the founding principles of the “micro-philanthropy” model I developed is granting recipients a prime role in their own development plans. I had learned this lesson at the Elliott School: all successful development projects must be developed in direct coordination with the recipients based on their input and addressing their immediate needs. This sounds like a no-brainer but the next year, while working as Associate Director for an amazing NGO called 100 Friends, I visited a Cambodian orphanage where some NGO had delivered 40 expensive mattresses. It turns out they never asked the orphanage about their specific needs, but felt the kids needed new mattresses. Since the kids there do not like to sleep on mattresses, $3,000 could have been spent on much-needed rehab and art supplies, but instead was rotting away in a closet. From experiences like this, I realized that too often, well-meaning organizations end up squandering their resources, so I was careful not to fall into this “top-down-westerner-knows-best” approach.

Soon thereafter I started my own nonprofit, The Cause & Affect Foundation, based on the “micro-philanthropy” model. Find a “cause and affect” a change. Simple maxim for a simple operation. When I find a project I want to help, the first question I ask is “What are your needs?” Whenever possible, I bring the stakeholders together to assess their communal needs. Together we brainstorm about the most effective way to spend the money. I often leave the amount open, assessing what can be done with $500 or $1,000 or $1,500. Sometimes we address crises, sometimes we expand the project to involve more recipients and sometimes we assist especially hard-hit families whose welfare lies beyond the mission of the organization they are associated with. I do not write checks and walk away; for every project, I oversee the purchase and delivery of whatever materials or services are required. I produce detailed field reports incorporating pictures, text and videos. These field reports are sent to my database via e-mail, posted on the blog and posted on YouTube. Donors can go to the site and make an instant donation on PayPal. My donors repeatedly tell me, “I give to Cause & Affect because I know you oversee every dollar spent.” Yes, it is great to learn that my years of thrifty travel amounted to something besides bed bugs and stomach disorders!

In eight years of humanitarian work, I have had life-changing experiences that have driven home my own good fortune and the continued importance of micro-philanthropy. I have also learned that if we were able to deliver aid in a more culturally sensitive manner, avoiding some of the pitfalls inherent in a top-down bureaucratic approach, our money could achieve a lot more good. In general, the international development industry has come a long way in adopting inclusion and local collaboration into their projects, but any “industry” there is plenty of room for improvement. I can’t help but think that aid would be much more effective if everyone involved had studied even a modicum of anthropology.

Since my work with Cause & Affect does not generate any income for me (all of the money raised, minus about 5% for expenses, goes directly to our recipients), I have pursued a career as a teacher in International Schools around the world. I created the Academic Social Action Collective, which is a website and blog designed to help international schools develop effective social action and service learning strategies. As a middle school social studies teacher, I am able to help young minds understand not only the world around them, but the potential they each possess to address the inequality in the world. While teaching at Schutz American School in Alexandria, Egypt starting in August, I will continue to support local projects and will also incorporate my students participation into my humanitarian work. I have become a firm believer in the importance of instilling Global Citizenship, so will use my anthropological background and cultural sensitivity to help shape my students into globally aware and socially responsible young adults.

Though non-conventional, my anthropological studies have opened my eyes to realities I never would have known and this basis has driven my desire to make a difference in the world and inspire a new generation of lifelong learners.

“Anthropology? What are you going to do with that?” Did I answer your question?

Adam Carter

Adam Carter is an Elliott School graduate (MA, International Affairs, 2001) that has been traveling, studying, and living in over 80 countries over the past 18 years. In recent years he has been conducting humanitarian work on behalf of his Cause & Affect Foundation, using his “micro-philanthropy” model to help people in need around the world. He majored in Anthropology as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan and is now pursuing a career as social studies teacher in international schools.

 

 

Manduhai Buyandelger, an MIT associate professor of anthropology

Office of the Dean | MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Associate Professor of Anthropology Manduhai Buyandelger has been awarded the James A. (1945) and Ruth Levitan Prize in the Humanities, a $25,000 research grant that will support her ethnographic study of parliamentary elections in Mongolia, with specific emphasis on the experience of female candidates.

In announcing the award, Deborah K. Fitzgerald, the Kenan Sahin Dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, remarked that there were “many excellent proposals” for this year’s Levitan, the School’s top annual prize for research. “It is a real tribute to your depth of intelligence and experience … that the committee chose [this project] as the winner,” Fitzgerald wrote in congratulating Buyandelger.

A project on Mongolian women and political power

“The Levitan Prize is going to transform my life,” Buyandelger says, “because I’ll be able to finish this project” — a book highlighting the “unconventional and creative strategies” women politicians in Mongolia have employed to meet the challenges of the postsocialist era, and the ways in which women’s early electoral failures in Mongolia helped spawn a women’s movement there.

“During socialism, the state promoted top-down strategies to equalize the sexes,” Buyandelger says. “With the collapse of the state, women were left on their own … and their marginalization at the top levels of politics became even more stark.”

Although women rarely secured election during Mongolia’s early democratic years — women’s representation in the national parliament never exceeded 8 percent until 2012 — Buyandelger finds that this failure helped spur the launch of a wide range of small nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that advocated for women’s rights.

“The individual fruits of these little NGOs in the end contributed to building a new culture and awareness about gender issues,” Buyandelger says. While the Mongolian NGOs did not always explicitly work together, “in the end they collectively transformed the perception of the populace regarding women in politics,” she says. “They also leveraged the government to designate an agency to attend to gender issues.”

Travel to Mongolia

The Levitan Prize will enable Buyandelger to travel to Mongolia to finish the research for her forthcoming book, “One Thousand Steps to Parliament: Elections, Women’s Participation, and Gendered Transformation in Postsocialist Mongolia.” It will be the second book for Buyandelger, who is the only anthropologist in the United States focused on Mongolia. Her first book, “Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia,” was released by the University of Chicago Press in November 2013.

“Buyandelger explores how individuals and groups interpret, resist, and accommodate these drastic socioeconomic transformations, by both reviving traditional cultural practices and creating new ones,” says Professor Susan Silbey, who heads the Anthropology Section. “In ‘Tragic Spirits’ [she documents] the revival of shamanism in the transformation from Soviet communism to liberal capitalist subjects.”

A documentary film on Parliamentarian Burmaa Radnaa

Buyandelger says she also plans to use the Levitan Prize to complete a related documentary film, “Intellect-ful Women,” centered on the experiences of Burmaa Radnaa, a Mongolian politician she shadowed during the 2008 campaign. The film should provide a wholly novel perspective on the election process. “There are very few studies of women politicians in anthropology,” says Buyandelger, who was afforded rare access to top parliamentary politics while shadowing Radnaa on a daily basis.

After Radnaa lost the 2008 election, she took her case to court alleging ballot fraud — and won. And, although the court did not award her a seat, the publicity surrounding the case helped earn both her and her party a fair shot at election in 2012. As a result, Radnaa is now serving as a member of parliament.

“The film concentrates on Burmaa’s extraordinary analytical skills and mercurial but nuanced ways of thinking and solving problems,” Buyandelger wrote in her Levitan Prize application. “Against the commercialized elections and party politics where networks and money pave much of the road to parliamentary seats, Burmaa won a seat with limited resources but with much thinking. Her electoral strategies are embedded, primarily, in her intellect.”

The Levitan Prize prize was established through a gift from the late James A. Levitan, a 1945 MIT graduate in chemistry, who was also a member of the MIT Corporation and of counsel at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom of New York City. The prize, first awarded in 1990, supports innovative and creative scholarship in the humanities by faculty members in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

Story by MIT SHASS Communications
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Editorial and Design Director: Emily Hiestand
Senior Writer: Kathryn O’Neill

The original article can be found here.

Protesting Democracy in Brazil, edited by Alexander S. Dent and Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, provides a range of studies examining
what happened in Brazil during June and July, 2013. The editors provide an introductory essay; the collected articles are written by anthropologists, activists, and writers across several generations. They open up new questions not only in the anthropology of Brazil and/or Brazilian anthropology, but also in the understanding of social movements, mediation, and policing writ large.

What started as a protest over an increase in bus fares grew into something much larger, with rallies and protests occurring in major cities all over Brazil. The question of how to understand these events is of interest to scholars, onlookers, comedians, journalists, participants, and voters in Brazil and around the world.

The collection is open access.