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.

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.”

Continue reading “From ecological disaster to constitutional crisis” →

Pretty shirty idea

Foreign aid and charity are often well-intentioned but just as often have no positive effects on the target population for a variety of reasons. Worse yet, aid may make people’s situation worse with one of the most clear and painful examples being food aid (if you don’t believe this statement, read up on what sending American rice to Haiti has done to its rice economy over the past several years).

The latest case of a well-intentioned but inappropriate charity idea involves a plan to send a million t-shirts to Africa. Somehow this plan caught the attention of bloggers around the world, many of whom trounced it. Happily, the guy with the idea is listening and plans to go back to the drawing board.

It sounds to me like the blogosphere has proved itself as a highly effective teaching medium. In short order, bloggers, including Professor Bill Easterly of NYU, opened the eyes of at least one member of the public, prompting him to think outside his own world and learn about people’s real needs and interests in order to come up with a culturally appropriate and more effective plan for giving.

Good work bloggers!

Image, “DSCF8068” from flickr user bigguybigcity, licensed with Creative Commons.

Anthro in the news 5/10/10

• A shot heard round the world
Yes, they did. Have sex. The news is out, and the media worldwide are buzzing about it. Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, is the lead scientist of the 58-member international research team that decoded the Neanderthal genome using material extracted from some Croatian bones. Results indicate that Eurasian populations carry up to 4 percent of Neanderthal genes. As quoted by BBC, Pääbo says that Neanderthals…”are not totally extinct, in some of us they live on–a little bit.” During an NPR interview, Harvard geneticist and team member David Reich is asked if Neanderthals and modern humans did more than exchange trading cards and had sex. His brief but definitive reply: “That’s right.” So, they had sex, and more importantly it was really great sex: it led to reproductively viable offspring who in turn generated the modern-day populations of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. Watch for major efforts at Neanderthal rebranding starting now!

• Precious Alaskan heritage: welcome home, for a while
Six hundred invaluable objects dating from 1850 to 1900, from the US National Museum of American History and the National Museum of the American Indian, will be on display in the new Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center at the Anchorage Museum starting May 22. According to the initial agreement, the objects can remain in Anchorage for seven years. Most have been in storage for decades and will be seen by the public for the first time. Smithsonian anthropologists, headed by Aron Crowell, director of the Arctic Studies Center, reviewed 30,000 items in Washington, DC, with assistance from 40 native elders. Hundreds of other Alaska natives contributed to the project. Many were videotaped telling stories about the objects and describing the memories they invoke. The videotapes will run continuously on large screens.

• The Big Five to make way for paleo-tourism?
Recent fossil discoveries in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Johannesburg, where several important fossils of early human ancestors have been found starting in 1947, promise to boost paleo-tourism to the region. Mark Tennant, one of Africa’s leading paleo-anthropological-tourism specialists, says that South Africa can become “one of the world’s premier heritage destinations.” While a long way from attracting the numbers of safari-focused tourists out to see the Big Five, paleo-tourism offers a growing niche for specialized tours.

• A lot of shaking going on
Videos of chimpanzees and bonobos made in six European zoos show several instances of “preventive headshaking.” Christel Schneider of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, made the discovery after studying the taped material.

One day for mothers

“Mother’s Day Paint Job,” creative commons licensed on Flickr.

One day out of 365? Not good enough.

Anthropologists have analyzed some annual holidays such as Mardi Gras in the West and Holi among Hindus in South Asia. They often involve “inversion.”

In Mardi Gras, people have a riotously good time in ways not normally accepted. Sexuality is emphasized. Some participants cross-dress.

During Holi, people get smashed on bhang, a powerful hash milkshake. In villages, low caste people pour buckets of urine on high caste people. Women beat their husbands with brooms.

Interestingly, these important holidays, like Mother’s Day, occur in the spring. Some aspects of Mother’s Day indicate that it is a ritual of reversal, though of a more quiet kind that Mardi Gras or Holi.

The functional theory of reversal rituals or holidays relies on the model of a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker model says that a reversal ritual allows a period of time, often just a day, within which people get a break from their normal roles and routine. Having experienced a release from the pressure, they go back to the same old same old for another 364 days.

My casually collected evidence for how Mother’s Day is marked in the United States reveals aspects of reversal in gift-giving, especially taking mom out for a meal, remembering her with a greeting card or a long distance phone call if you can’t visit her. These gifts constitute important reversals in terms of two core aspects of motherhood around the world: meal provision and care through communication.

Does Mother’s Day, as celebrated in the United States at least, fit the pressure cooker model? Such may be the unconscious hope of many children: okay, mom, I took you out for brunch and gave you a card, so be happy.

My hope is that all of us, born of a mother who cared for us, know that a ratio of 1/365 is not good enough by half. While further research is needed, my hunch is that the expectations for Mother’s Day is the bottom line. You have to do something–at least make a phone call. If not you are in deep trouble.

But that which is necessary is by no means sufficient.

Blogger’s note: Wikipedia’s entry on Mother’s Day around the world is worth a visit.

You say yes, I say no…

The headlines are saying that “Chimps shake their heads to mean ‘no’ just like humans” with the implication that it may “reflect a primitive precursor of the human ‘no’ headshake,” according to Christel Schneider of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Schneider spotted “preventive head shaking” from studying tapes of chimpanzees and bonobos in six European zoos.

I am shaking my head “no” to this wild assertion, and I am hopeful that Christel Schneider is, too, since the last line in the article indicates that she is aware that a shake of the head can mean “yes” in some cultures.

So why even talk about “a primitive precursor”? Precursor of what?

I had my first lesson about the arbitrary–not hard-wired–meaning of head shaking when I attended a classical Indian music concert as a college student in Syracuse, New York. During the performance, I was alarmed at seeing so many people in the audience shaking their heads in what I thought was a “no” message. They seemed to despair at the quality of the music. I felt sorry for the performers. After the performance, I learned that the head-shaking members of the audience were, in fact, deeply appreciative of the quality of the performance. Their side-to-side horizontal head movement meant, “yes, yes, wonderful, wah, wah.”

My second lesson is one that I probably share with thousands of other visitors to India, especially those lucky enough to be invited for a home meal. If, as an innocent American, you shake your head “no” when offered second helpings, you will find your hostess heaping yet more food on your plate. Again and again, because your hostess interprets your side-to-side head shaking as saying “yes, yes, more, please.”

The chimpanzees and bonobos living in European zoos would be at high risk for weight gain in India. Just like me.

Image: “Bonobo”, from flickr user tim_ellis, licensed with Creative Commons.

Anthro in the news 5/3/10

It was a quiet week for anthropology in the mainstream media, and I have only four items to share. To whet your appetite, three are about food.

• Go ask Alice
The Economist, ever watchful for studies that have to do with…well, economics, picked up on a study of mushroom gathering in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Luis Pacheco-Cobos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and colleagues followed mushroom gatherers from a village in Tlaxcala for two rainy seasons. Researchers recorded the weight of mushrooms collected, their location, and who collected them. Findings show that men and women collected the same weight of mushrooms, but men traveled farther, climbed higher, and used more energy. These findings connect to an ongoing discussion in many disciplines about the supposedly superior spatial skills of males. Results will be published in Evolution and Human Behavior. Blogger’s note: I applaud this new study’s inclusion of efficiency as measured through energy expended and other factors. Could males, who are reputedly “better” at spatial skills than females, also be better at wasting time and energy?

• What’s cooking?
Jody Adams is another anthro student turned chef, suggesting that there is more than something in the water. Adams is a James Beard Award-winning chef and the owner of the renowned restaurant Rialto in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She recently competed in Bravo’s “Top Chef Masters.” During an interview with the Huff Post, Adams says: “When I was studying anthropology at Brown I hadn’t a clue as to what I would be doing today. But I was cooking then and loving it and traveling as much as I could. I guess my path was already set, I just couldn’t see it.”

• Donner Party not gone to the dogs
The Los Angeles Times carried a riposte by Ethan Rarick, author of Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West, to anthropologist Gwen Robbins’ findings that the Donners ate the family dog and not family members. Rarick raises two questions related to Robbins’ analysis of bone fragments from Alder Creek: (1) the tale of the 84 members of the Donner Party includes many more sites than just Alder Creek and (2) desperation cannibalism tends to involve flesh consumption and not processing that would show up on bones. So, Rarick contends, just because cannibalism may not have occurred at Alder Creek does not prove it did not occur at other points in the Donner Party journey. Furthermore, cannibalism would not necessarily show up in bones left along the way. Blogger’s notes: what does the contention about the Donners’ survival diet tell us about ourselves, especially in comparison to members of societies that do not forbid consumption of human bits and pieces?

• The grieving of the chimps
Two new studies of chimpanzees support the idea that chimpanzees, like us, mourn following the death of an individual close to them. Both studies are published in Current Biology.

Thinking outside the pill box

The latest issue of the Journal of Women’s Health includes three articles describing health risks of women in the United States related to social exclusion and cultural factors. They all demonstrate that good health is about a lot more than medical care.

The first article looks at three factors associated with cardiovascular disease–hypertension, elevated cholesterol, and diabetes–among 733 uninsured, low-income rural women in West Virginia aged 40-64 years. The women were participants in the Well-Integrated Screening and Evaluation for Women Across the Nation (WISEWOMAN) program. West Virginia has a high percentage of people 50 years and older, the highest rate of angina and coronary heart disease in the United States, and is tied with Kentucky for first place in prevalence of heart attacks. Prevalence of hypertension, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, and obesity, are also among the highest in the nation. The study found that large proportions of the women are at risk for cardiovascular disease because of untreated hypertension and high cholesterol. They lack access to regular health care due to the limited availability of health services in rural areas. Women who are less educated, a likely proxy for poverty, are particularly likely to have these untreated chronic conditions.

The second article is about emergency care for women who have been sexually assaulted. According to the National Violence against Women Survey, 18 percent of white women, 19 percent of Black women, 24 percent of mixed race women, and 34 percent of American Indian/Alaskan Native women report a rape or sexual assault at some time in their lifetime. This article reports on findings about the “incident history” of sexual assault from 173 women who sought care in an Emergency Department in an unidentified city (possibly in Mississippi since the lead author is assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Southern Mississippi). Of the total, 58 percent of the women were black and 42 percent white. Weapons were much more likely to be involved in assaults on black women, and black women were more likely to be assaulted in the city rather than the suburbs. Substance abuse occurred in about half of the assaults; black women were more likely to report use of illicit drugs while white women were more likely to report alcohol use before the assault.

The third study reports on an evaluation of a community-based pilot intervention in New York City that combined cervical cancer education with “patient navigation” to improve rates of cervical cancer screening among Chinese American women. In the United States, Chinese American women have higher rates of cervical cancer than white women. The study compared an intervention group and a control group. Eighty women received the intervention: two education, sessions, open discussion with a Chinese physician, educational videos, and navigation assistance in identifying and accessing low-cost services. The control group of 54 women received two education sessions delivered by Chinese community health educators and written materials on general health and cancer screening. Twelve months later, screening rates in the intervention group were 70 percent compared to 11 percent among the control group. An important factor in the intervention group was greater perception of the severity of the disease.

Continue reading “Thinking outside the pill box” →

Anthro in the news 4/26/10

• Will China’s one-child policy be history?
Last year the Chinese government commissioned studies to assess possible effects of eliminating its one-child-per-couple policy. Susan Greenhalgh, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of California at Irvine, is a leading expert on the one-child policy and author of Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng’s China. She comments: “My view is that it will gradually be taken apart, piece by piece, over the next few years…”

• Blood rights and wrongs
The Havasupai Indians, who live deep in the Grand Canyon, issued a banishment order to keep Arizona State University researchers off their reservation. They also were awarded reparation of $700,000 from Arizona State University and granted the return of blood samples they donated for health-related research at ASU starting in 1990. The Havasupai accuse some biological anthropologists and geneticists at ASU of using the samples for research purposes beyond what the original permission agreement stated. The New York Times has produced an informative and moving video on this issue.

• Maasai en garde
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is Africa’s third fastest growing city. And its crime rate is on the rise. Couple these facts with the situation in rural areas where Maasai pastoralists live: growing poverty, hunger, and loss of their herding livelihood related to loss of land because of the encroachment of farmers and the state’s creation of tourist parks. As explained by Ann May, professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, these forces constitute a strong push and pull effect: in order to earn money to provide for their families and their herds in Maasailand, proud Maasai herders migrate to Dar to work…as security guards. One Maasai guard in Dar said: “People have faith in Maasai because we work diligently, we don’t have greed for wealth, and we don’t steal. So we are trusted.” Another explained: “At least if we are in the city we don’t have to sell the cows back home…It’s not that we like this job but the hardness of life makes us do it. It’s dangerous. We want to be back home. But we have to find a way to look for money.”

• Better chance of finding your spouse online than in a bar
A survey commissioned by match.com reveals that 17 percent of US marriages in the past three years are based on meeting online compared to only 8 percent based on meeting in a bar or club. Still, the majority of marriages, sixty-seven percent, result from meeting through friends/family or work/schools. Susan Froelich, cultural anthropologist at the University of Manitoba who studies online dating, comments that “it’s become hyper-mainstream” in the last five years. Blogger’s note: The match.com survey goes back only three years. It would be great to have more longitudinal data and data disaggregated by age, class, ethnicity, and region.

• Organ donors wanted
In response to the shortage of organs in the United Kingdom, a “public consultation” is underway, run by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a thinktank, and led by Dame Marilyn Strathern, professor of social anthropology at Cambridge University. While recognizing the large unmet demand for organs in the UK, she poses ethical questions about financial incentives such as cash payments, coverage of funeral costs, or priority for organs in the future: “Offering incentives may encourage people to take risks or go against their beliefs in a way they would not have done otherwise.”

• What do people understand about anti-malarials?
Large-scale use in Tanzania of the anti-malarial drug commonly known as ALu or dawa mseto prompted a study to assess mothers’ perceptions of its efficacy and side-effects. The research team, led by V.R. Kamat of the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, indicates that more and better communication between health care providers and mothers of sick children is needed to improve mothers’ understanding and adherence to the dosage recommendations.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/26/10” →

Equal play for girls and women

The US Department of Education has repealed a 2005 Bush-era policy that made it easy for high schools and colleges to avoid compliance with a federal law mandating equal opportunities for female students in schools and colleges that receive federal aid, specifically in terms of athletics.

One way to comply with Title IX was to use a survey to assess the interest and ability of girls and women to participate in athletics. Schools could use their survey results to document a lack of interest or ability and, just like that, they were off the hook for another year.

An event at the George Washington University today, April 20, marked not just Equal Pay Day but also the “Title IX Announcement” with Vice President Joe Biden, Jr., Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, and Joy Cheek, Duke University basketball player and former intern in Vice President Biden’s Office.

Secretary Duncan mentioned a recent cross-state analysis by Betsey Stevenson of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania which shows several positive effects of girls’ participation in high school athletics: being an athlete is associated with about one more year of schooling, higher labor force participation rates, higher earnings, and higher participation in male-dominate jobs and mixed-gender jobs compared to female-dominated jobs. These findings about the effects of athletic participation hold true in spite of the potential bias created by self-selection into athletics.

Vice President Biden delivered an impassioned, off-the-prompter speech in which he noted that while statistics are important, they don’t tell the whole story. Making Title IX “as strong as it can possibly be is the right thing to do.” In spite of the great progress that has been made since 1972, “we have a long way to go” to “take away every barrier that exists.” The bottom line is: “empower, empower, empower women to take control of their own lives.”

SOURCE: Betsey Stevenson, Beyond the Classroom: Using Title IX to Measure the Return to High School Sports. The Review of Economics and Statistics May 2010, 92(2):284-301.