Category: Uncategorized

Taped lecture series on indigenous wellbeing in Australia

The aim of this open-access lecture series is to summarize the evidence on Indigenous wellbeing, with a particular focus being an examination of the variation in measures of wellbeing across the life course. The series will suit students and policy makers working on or researching Indigenous issues, as well as academics with an interest in indigenous people’s wellbeing.

Each lecture is available on as a PDF document with presentation slides and embedded audio, along with an accompanying short formal paper addressing the lecture’s subject.

The series was created by Dr. Nicholas Biddle, a Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University (ANU). He has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons.) from the University of Sydney, a Master of Education degree from Monash University, and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the ANU where he wrote his thesis on the benefits of and participation in education of Indigenous Australians.

Anthropology field school in the Himalayas: health focus

Himalayan Health Exchange (HHE) is organizing an anthropological field expedition to India from June 24 till July 15, 2013.  Through an independent study/fieldwork in a remote Himalayan Tibetan Borderland, HHE will offer students a practical approach to the study of India and the Himalayan culture in a socio-cultural, medical and religious context.  During their journey, team members will attend a 7-day medical clinic camp and have the opportunity to investigate local history, religious beliefs and practices, modern human adaptations, regional effects of globalization and monastic life. In addition, through trekking and camping in remote areas, they will participate in the interconnectedness of the magnificent natural environment with a daily local existence. This first-hand experience will be accompanied by daily academic lectures and research assistance.

For details, please contact:   Himalayan Health Exchange: info@himalayanhealth.com or see www.himalayanhealth.com.

How to know what works when intervention programs lack time and money for evaluations?

A report describing results from a systematic review of programs seeking to reduce female genital mutilation/cutting in several African countries offers this conclusion:

[Our] systematic review shows that there is a paucity of high quality evaluations of the effectiveness of interventions to reduce the prevalence of FGM/C. We included eight controlled studies assessing the effectiveness of five broad categories of interventions, set in seven different countries in Africa. We identified no controlled interventions that had taken place in other parts of the world. All of the evaluation studies were characterized by low methodological quality. Thus, while our calculated effect sizes for prevalence of FGM/C, knowledge, beliefs, and intentions about FGM/C suggested that there appear to be positive developments as a result of interventions, the low quality of the body of evidence affects the interpretation of results and draws the validity of the findings into doubt.

In other words, if one is seeking rigorous, control-trial tested findings about intervention effectives for FGM/C intervention programs, we don’t have it.

In spite of these dismal conclusions, the 156 page report provides a more positive overall contribution by describing several important programs. And even though they lack formal, statistically dependable evaluations, they do seem to be headed in the direction of reducing the practice of FGM/C.

Anthropological Summer School project in Malta, Europe for July 2013

Don’t have plans for this summer? Here’s one possibility:

Anthropological Summer School project in Malta, Europe for July 2013

Here is a quick tour to some pages that are of interest to get a basic view on the project:

You will find two attachments included for easy dissemination amongst students:
  • a single page flyer concerning the scholarships
  • the full brochure (5 pages)

GW Department of Anthropology
Hortense Amsterdam House
2110 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052Jonathan Higman, Office Supervisor
Kristina Short, Executive Aide

Cambridge IDC 2012: Ethical development?

Should government aid be conditional upon human rights or economic reform? How can a gap year truly make a difference? Do religious groups use charity as an evangelistic tool? Can Corporate Social Responsibility change the world? Is the very idea of International Development ethical?

Join the debate at the Cambridge International Development Conference this December in a conference which will examine the ethics of International Development. Be inspired by the decision-makers and thinkers of today as they explore the ways in which we can improve our approach to International Development.

1st December 2012 at Cambridge University Law Faculty.

Climate change matters: A letter to the U.S. presidential candidates

Shirley Fiske an environmental anthropologist and research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, published a letter to the U.S. presidential candidates in CounterPunch. It begins:

“We are in the final week of the Presidential campaign of 2012, buffeted by a massive storm that wreaked havoc in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.  SuperStorm Sandy has demonstrated the devastation that nature can bring even with the best public compliance behavior and sophisticated forecasts and warnings.”

Fiske goes on to argue that anthropology can play an important role in climate change studies and policy:

“Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ as policy experts have termed it and solutions are not easy; but we can’t afford to let climate and adaptation fall off the policy agenda. Anthropologists and other environmental social scientists can help by describing how climate changes are affecting communities and their capacity to sustain lives and livelihoods. We can help work with communities to strengthen their resilience in the face of adverse change by improving adaptive capacity. And, we can help work with governments to shape policy that reflects the cultural guideposts that are central to actually achieving intended results.  But it is far harder to do our work if climate policy becomes a policy of neglect, if no one is listening to the plights of real people, and our leaders aren’t talking about either climate change or infrastructure.”

The full article is available here.

Fiske is also Chair of the American Anthropological Association Task Force on Global Climate Change and a former NOAA program official, and senior legislative advisor in the U.S. Senate, working on climate, oceans, fisheries, public lands and energy issues. Contact her at sjfiske@gmail.com

 

SfAA 2013 abstract deadline extended

President Merrill Eisenberg announced today (October 16) that the deadline for receipt of abstracts for the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Denver (March, 2013) has been extended to October 31, 2012. This announcement provides an additional two weeks to prepare and submit an abstract for the Meeting.

President Eisenberg announced the decision after learning of several recent developments. The Denver Meeting has attracted the interest of a large number of international colleagues and they had requested an extension of the deadline. There were also some delays with the on-line abstract submission system over the past week-end because of the heavy traffic. She added that the extended deadline will address these issues and assure that members and colleagues will have sufficient time to pre-register and submit abstracts.

The delays encountered with the on-line system over the past week-end have been resolved. We encourage you to to register and submit abstracts by going to the SfAA 2013 Annual Meeting web site at:

http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2013.html

If you have already registered for the SfAA 2013 Annual Meeting, thank you. See you in Denver!

SfAA Office

Upcoming Event at GW on Women, Girls and Disaster

Women and Girls: Forces for Creating Disaster-Resilient Societies

Observing the 2012 International Day for Disaster Reduction

Opening remarks:

Carla Koppell, USAID

Panelists:

When: Thursday October 11 | 9:00 am-noon

Where: 1957 E Street, NW, 7th floor, City View Room

Note: Open to the public

Please RSVP at: http://lnweb90.worldbank.org/EURVP/survey.nsf/Contact?OpenForm&Conf=WomenandGirls

This event is sponsored by the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GRDRR)  the George Washington University’s Global Gender Program which is part of the Elliott School’s Institute for Global and International Studies

Fall issue of AnthroNotes

The fall issue of AnthroNotes, with its general theme on communication, contains the following articles:

–Unpacking Cars: Doing Anthropology at Intel by Genevieve Bell (Intel)

–Recovering Voices: Documenting and Sustaining Endangered Languages and Knowledge by Joshua Bell (NMNH)

–The Impact of Written Telecommunications Technology on the World’s Linguistic Diversity by Gabriela Pérez Báez (NMNH)

–Early Childhood Language and Classroom Discourse by Courtney B. Cazden (Harvard)

Access articles.