Dishonorable killings

So-called honor killings take the wind out of a form of cultural relativism that I refer to as absolute cultural relativism. According to absolute cultural relativism, anything that goes on in a particular culture, and is justified within that culture, cannot be questioned or changed by insiders or outsiders. For insiders, such questioning is cultural heresy; for outsiders it is ethnocentrism.

An antidote to absolute cultural relativism is critical cultural relativism, which promotes the posing of questions about practices and beliefs by insiders and outsiders in terms of who accepts them and why, and who they might be harming or helping. In other words: Who benefits, who loses? [Note: I present these terms in my cultural anthropology texts as a way to get students to think more analytically about the very important concept of cultural relativism.]

Image: Flickr creative commons licensed content. If only India, and indeed the whole world, was a domestic violence free zone.

When death, torture and structural violence are involved, it’s time to relegate absolute cultural relativism to the sidelines and bring to the fore critical analysis and discussion among insiders and outsiders. As far as I know, murder is not legal in any country in the world, including murder of one’s own kin for purposes of protecting family honor.

An article in The New York Times describes an alleged honor killing of a young unmarried Hindu woman in her family home in Jharkhand state, eastern India.

The article links the possible murder to Hindu caste values, which forbid marriage of woman to a man of a lower caste category — in this instance, the woman was of a Brahmin family and was engaged to a man of the Kayastha category, which is lower. Not only that, she had apparently engaged in premarital sex, another serious problem from the point of view of family honor.

What the article doesn’t say is that honor killings of daughters and wives by family members occur among people of other religions as well, including Christianity, that are not driven by caste purity. More deeply than particular religious values is the widespread existence of lethal patriarchy: male dominance in all domains of life — economic, political, social, sexual — that it justifies, even actively supports, murder of women and girls.

There can be no way, in this world, that anyone can get away with murder by saying that “it’s part of our culture” to kill a daughter or wife who breaks cultural rules. As if it’s their right and duty to kill.

Unfortunately, local police and the judicial system are often on the side of the killers.

Amnesty International now keeps track of so-called honor killings, but it’s likely that cases are severely under-counted. Nevertheless, any and all efforts to keep shining a very bright light on the problem of honor killings and related forms of patriarchy are essential.

See also this post on the blog Women Against Shariah.

Anthro in the news 7/6/10

• A bridge too far: belated apology to Ngarrindjeri women
Labor Party Mike Rann, South Australia’s 44th Premier, formally acknowledged this week that Ngarrindjeri women did not fabricate claims about their secret “business” in the mid 1990s. They argued that construction of the Hindmarsh Bridge linking their territory to the mainland would violate their sacred and secret beliefs. Many years later, most of the women originally involved in the protest are no longer alive. The bridge still stands. Controversy among cultural anthropologists still roils. Cold comfort that the women’s claims are now recognized as valid.

• Should we or shouldn’t we?
As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, so too continues the question of anthropological involvement in supporting US efforts. Time carried a piece reviewing pros and cons. It included commentary from cultural anthropologist David Price, a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, about how it takes at least a year of hands-on fieldwork for trained anthropologists to get their bearings. His implication is that the HTS process does not allow for competence among the social scientists they hire.

• Our technology ourselves
Intel’s Ninth Annual Research Day was held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The theme was about who will use the devices of the future, and how. This kind of forward thinking requires anthropological/social science knowledge about people’s behavior, perceived needs, and current “users’ experiences.” To support this effort, the company announced the launch of the Interaction and Experience Research Division led by cultural anthropologist and Intel fellow, Genevieve Bell.

• Cannibalism nouveau
In an opinion piece about Australian politics, Philippe Mora draws on the work of cultural anthropologist Shirley Lindenbaum on cannibalism and the false “primitive/modern” divide. He likens the demise of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a form of acceptable cannibalistic politics.

• Welcome to Timbuctoo, New Jersey
A newly discovered site in northern southern New Jersey is perhaps the most important African American site and one of the most significant in the US. Called Timbuctoo, it was likely founded by freed slaves in the 1820s. David Orr, Temple University historical archaeologist and professor, says that the site offers the opportunity to see how an African American community changed over time, from its founding through World War II. Many descendants of Timbuctoo families live in the area, and some have volunteered to help with the research.

• Paleo show time
The latest twist on interpreting European cave art is that it was “part of an audiovisual performance.” Researchers at Cambridge University and Sankt Poelten’s University of Applied Sciences in Austria say that the images created sequences that could create a visual narrative for the viewer. Along with Bauhaus University in Germany, the researchers are launching the “Prehistoric Picture Project” using computer technology to animate the sequences like a cartoon show. Stay tuned for men hunting, fighting, and dancing, but apparently no paleo of Wonder Woman.

• The high life
The pace of human biological evolution is generally thought to be very slow, many thousands of years at least, more often millions of years. Several independent studies, however, indicate that biological adaptation to high altitude life in Tibet occurred relatively rapidly, as recently as 3,000 years ago. Most of the studies are conducted by biologists, but one is carried out by a group led by Cynthia Beall, a biological anthropologist and professor at Case Western University. Their report appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• In memoriam
Jack A. Tobin, a cultural anthropologist who devoted his life to research in the Marshall Islands, died June 14 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Tobin served in the US Navy in the Pacific during World War II and earned a Bronze Star. He earned a doctorate in anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and then worked for many years as a community development officer in the Marshalls.

One Love vs. side dishes

Sylvia Tamale, a feminist sociologist and legal scholar who teaches at Uganda’s Makerere University, is quoted in a recent PlusNews article as saying that the “risky sexual practices” framework, as uncritically accepted in HIV policy circles in Uganda, is “racist, moralistic and paternalistic.” Instead of fighting people’s culture, she suggests that raising people’s awareness about safe sex is more likely to be effective in reducing sexually transmitted diseases.

Having concurrent sexual partnerships, she feels, is deeply ingrained in Ugandan culture. Furthermore, concurrent sexual partnerships have not been definitively proven as a factor underlying high rates of HIV/AIDS.

Yet, since the 1980s in Uganda, HIV prevention campaigns have pushed for fidelity to one sexual partner. The recent “One Love” campaign urges people to abandon “side dishes.” But they also promote condom use for those who don’t.

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.

What lies beneath

Possibly trillions of dollars worth of mineral deposits lie untouched beneath the surface in Afghanistan. A recent New York Times report generated a flurry of discussion about whether this subterranean wealth would help Afghanistan and its people or prove to be a “resource curse” that instead brings more violence.

One thing is certain, if the minerals are to be mined, there will have to be substantial infrastructure development (asphalted roads) and security for the mining companies. I can just see Halliburton written all over this, and taxpayer dollars supporting the US military to protect business interests.

A less gloomy and much more informed view than mine comes from long-term expert on Afghanistan, Thomas Barfield, professor of cultural anthropology at Boston University.

Anthro in the news 6/28/10

• Iran says thanks but no thanks to US help
“So why would we force it on them?” asks cultural anthropologist William Beeman, professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, Beeman explains that the ability of the United States to aid the Green movement in Iran is negated by decades of “interference in Iranian affairs” to the extent that any official American support of reform in Iran will “poison that movement with the plausible accusation of another round of American desire to dominate Iran.”

• Oh what a night
The annual all-night party at Stonehenge, England, draws thousands of people who wait for dawn at the Heel Stone. One participant with flowers in her hair said that “It means a lot to us…being British and following our pagan roots.” What Stonehenge now means to people is a story in itself. What it meant when it was in its heyday: “The truthful answer is that we don’t know exactly what it was for,” says Amanda Chadburn, an archaeologist who manages the site.

• Tall man walking
A second skeleton discovered in Ethiopia belonging to the same species as the world’s most famous fossil, Lucy, indicates that early human ancestors were walking on two feet by 3.6 million years ago. The new skeleton is that of a male about five and a half feet tall. Predating Lucy by 400,000 years, this new evidence suggests that little Lucy, who was a mere three and a half feet tall, was also a walker.

• Chimps fighting
A new publication about chimp “warfare” attracted major media coverage from the New York Times to the Economist. The question under consideration is: Do chimps fight for females or for land? The latest research based on field studies in Uganda says: land. John Mitani, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, presents his findings in Current Biology.

• In recognition and memoriam
Ellen P. Brown, cultural anthropologist, died June 11 of a brain hemorrhage. She had a B.A. in anthropology from Bryn Mawr and an MA and PhD in anthropology from Cambridge University. Her service with the US Peace Corps in Chad, where she remained for many years, led to a job for Exxon Mobil as a cultural broker between its pipeline project from Chad to Cameroon and local people.

Don’t let the sun catch you crying

Journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger says that he wanted to make you feel like you are actually there in a remote combat outpost in Afghanistan in Restrepo. He and his partner Tim Hetherington, succeeded. After the documentary’s powerful 90 minutes, people in the packed AFI theater in Silver Spring, Md., on Friday June 28 were in shock and awe and tears.

Junger (right) and Tim Hetherington (left). Creative Commons Licensed

Restrepo will remain embedded in my heart and mind for the rest of my life.

The film chronicles the daily lives, and sometimes deaths, of a small platoon of American soldiers tasked with pushing against Taliban control of the Korangal Valley. The soldiers, all men, are very young — 19 years old, many of them, pimply some of them, and proud to be serving their country in fighting “the enemy.” Also, over time, bored, thrilled, scared and sad.

Occasionally, the film provides footage of local villagers. They appear to be mostly scared by what is happening in their valley as they experience the counter-pressures of the Americans and the Taliban. But sometimes proud and dignified as male elders attempt to gain compensation for a cow who died as a result of entanglement with wire fencing surrounding the outpost.

The film brilliantly and effectively interweaves footage from the combat zone with tight-shot interviews with eight soldiers conducted in Italy four months after they had left Afghanistan. So one minute you are in the outpost Restrepo, named after a fallen comrade, with all the noise and smoke from artillery and helicopters. The next minute you are up close and personal listening as a young soldier quietly talks about what it was like to be in the combat zone and what it is like to be dealing with not being there. One says that he doesn’t want to go to sleep because of the nightmares. He has tried five different kinds of sleeping pills, but none works to allow him a peaceful night’s sleep.

Each of the eight men gets very close to tears.

An excellent panel discussion following the film was skillfully moderated by Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent with CBS News, and included Sebastian Junger as well as one of the film participants, Major Dan Kearney, who made it possible for the film team to work with his combat team.

In the discussion, Sebastian Junger commented that the interviews really “make” the film. What you don’t see, he pointed out, is that the person interviewing the soldiers — Junger — is also fighting back the tears. Junger noted that soldiers cannot show emotion, especially in a combat zone. Instead, when death happens, especially the death of your buddy, you mourn for a minute or two and then get back out there and kill the enemy who took his life.

Once they leave combat, the men have to try to process all that they have been through in the previous 15 months. Many do not succeed in readjusting to civilian life. Junger hopes that the film will help with the re-integration process by promoting understanding of the challenges they face. He said that many of the men will end up going back into combat, leaving behind their wives who feel rejected. They go back, he thinks, because for many 19-year-old men in the United States civilian life does not offer a satisfying role, identity or sense of belonging. The combat zone does that in spades. Many soldiers, he says, become addicted to the male bonding, the brotherhood that is forged in the daily routine of a harsh life and possible death. It is an intoxicating form of solidarity, stronger than friendship, that trumps all differences and disagreements and provides an emotional security that overrides concerns about physical security.

Combat, says Junger, is a small, closed, male world. His film offers a peek through a keyhole into that world. Restrepo is an ethnographic film of the highest order. (Junger has a B.A. in cultural anthropology and it shows). Although Junger wasn’t with the troop for the entire 15 months — he visited five times — he and his camera were not obviously intrusive. But they must have created an extra layer of life and death?

In the question and answer period, no one asked Junger how he is dealing with re-entry to the civilian world. It can’t be easy for him, either. I believe I saw tears in his eyes at several points during the panel discussion.

Update: Tim Hetherington tragically was killed April 20th, 2011 while on assignment in Libia.

It takes an anthropologist

Diana Putman, a USAID health specialist working with the Pentagon’s Africa Command, spoke up about a poorly conceived idea of the State Department in concert with the US military. She spoke up all the way to the top of the chain of command, to the four-star head of Africa Command, General William “Kip” Ward.

Putman gave the General a brief pitch about the need to substantially revise a plan for US military involvement in providing short-term surgical or psychological treatment to women victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to instead constructing or rehabilitating buildings for use by NGOs who are already working with victims and who have the necessary linguistic and cultural skills to facilitate their work. The General agreed immediately.

On Thursday, Putman was one of three people by the US State Department with a “constructive dissent award.”

The story in the Washington Post never mentions the fact that Putnam is a cultural anthropologist. I figured she must be. I checked. She is: BA, MA and PhD, all from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.

Thanks, Dr. Putnam, for speaking truth to generals.

Image: “The visit” from flickr user cyclopspr, licensed Creative Commons.

A smile so sweet

Could it be Chevron? Suzana Sawyer, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of California-Davis, breaks down Chevron’s multi-million dollar “Human Energy” PR campaign that was launched in 2007.

Chevron is the second largest oil company in the United States and fourth largest in the world. Its ad campaign, which includes television commercials and print ads in magazines and billboards, pitches Chevron as one of us, or better: men and women of vision, people who care about the environment. “I will use less energy,” says an earnest, professional-looking white man while a smiling young African American woman vows to “leave the car at home.”

Sawyer points out that the campaign is probably more focused on investors—on protecting the value of its stock—than persuading individual drivers to stop and buy gas at a Chevron station instead of some other station. In either case, however, the goal is to convince people that Chevron is a positive force in the world and allay consumption guilt.

One group that hasn’t bought the message is Amazon Watch. In 2009, they launched a counter-campaign of “subvertisements” about the “InHuman Energy Campaign.” On their billboards, an Amazonian woman says, “I will ignore the toxic waste pits in my village.” An Ecuadorian woman says,”I will try not to have a miscarriage.”

Shareholder activists are raising their voices, questioning corporate practices from the inside and pushing for greater accountability. Sawyer tartly comments: “This is the power of human energy that Chevron never bargained for.”

Image: “Chevron Shareholder Meeting in Houston,” from flickr user Rainforest Action Network, licensed Creative Commons.

World Cup fans keeping their pants on

According to a news report from South Africa published in the Irish Times, sex workers are experiencing an economic downturn during the 2010 World Cup rather than the expected upswing. Only those working closest to the stadia are finding that business is brisk.

Some sex workers point to increased police presence, the cold weather, girls asking for too much money, and HIV risk as factors keeping punters away. One woman said that the visitors she had met so far are “boring.”

If this report is accurate, predictions in advance of the games of extra demand for sexual services and the likely massive trafficking of sex workers have not materialized. That sounds like good news to me, though I am sympathetic to sex workers who are disappointed at not making some extra money that is no doubt much needed.

Image: “P1010233” from flickr user Thomas Ormston, licensed Creative Commons.