Anthro in the news 2/22/10

• Stop disaster capitalism in Haiti
Cultural anthropologist Mark Schuller published an update in the Huffington Post on the earthquake damage in Haiti. An assistant professor of African-American Studies and anthropology at York College, the City University of New York, Schuller recently returned from a trip there. He embroiders the often-cited statement that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with this vivid detail: Haiti also has the most millionaires per capita. He concludes by saying: “If anyone harbors plans to profit — call it disaster capitalism — please stop, if nothing else out of respect for the survivors and the thousands of dead whose bodies are still rotting beneath the rubble.”

• Trust me, I’m a policy-maker
The Na’vi chose war over trust. But the most pressing global issues of today, global climate change and the wide abyss between rich and poor countries, will not be changed by war argues cultural anthropologist Stephen Scharper in his op-ed in the Toronto Star: “They require, rather, greater trust and credibility on the part of more developed nations such as the U.S. and Canada.” Scharper is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. In his op-ed, he points to the lack of trust that impeded the achievement of a legally binding accord at the UN Copenhagen Summit. Arguing that trust is a cultural value inculcated in social life, he provides the popular example of a cultural “trust-deficit” among the now-famous fictional Na’vi people who resorted to the default solution of a “just war.” Blogger’s note: in case you didn’t realize it, James Cameron, the writer and director of Avatar, is a now-famous Canadian.

• Expulsion of non-native peoples from Mohawk land
Twenty-five non-native residents of Kahnawake, located on the St. Lawrence River near Montreal, are to be expelled by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. Matthieu Sossoyan, who teaches anthropology at Vanier College, is an expert on the historical context of non-native expulsion from the region for reasons such as “poisoning” the Iroqouis “with rum and spirituous liquors.” In his op-ed in the Gazette, Sossoyan documents the long and complex history of white settlement in Kahnawake, the easternmost region of the former Iroquois confederacy.

• And now, for something completely different: take a hike
Kevin Short is a cultural anthropology professor at Tokyo University of Information Sciences and a naturalist. It is the latter area of expertise that informs his op-ed in the Daily Yomiuri. To mark the beginning of the traditional Asian New Year, he put aside his writing and sketching and took a hike into the southern Kanto uplands. His current passion is winter buds, especially those of the horse-chestnut tree and kudzu vines: “Small children especially love the kudzu’s winter buds. Each one shows a slightly different smiling face. This year I was thrilled to find one that looks just like a skull!”

• The life and death of King Tut
The hot news item of the week was undoubtedly King Tut. His DNA was mapped, his kinship relationships revealed, his health problems exposed, and the likely cause of his early death named. A series of papers in the Journal of the American Medical Association explores all these topics and more. Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, provides a view into the paleo-forensic investigations of King Tut’s mummy in a two-part Discovery channel program airing February 21 and 22. Preview tidbits: King Tut’s parents were siblings and malaria contributed to his death.

• Cruise Med: very ancient mariners
Archaeologists have found stone hand axes on the island of Crete that are at least 130,000 years old and could be 700,000 years old. The research team is led by Thomas Strasser, associate professor of art history at Providence College and Eleni Panagopoulou of the Greek Ministry of Culture. Curtis Runnels, an archaeologist at Boston University and member of the team, is quoted in the New York Times as saying that his analysis of the site, and that of the geologists, “left not much doubt of the age of the site, and the tools must be much older.” Ofer Bar-Yosef, an archaeologist and professor at Harvard University, is waiting for further dating information. Strasser comments on how the ancient mariners may have reached Crete: “We can’t say the toolmakers came from 200 miles from Libya…If you’re on a raft, that’s a long voyage, but they may have come from the European mainland by way of shorter crossings through Greek islands.” Research suggests they may have had more reliable means of transportation than rafts. Blogger’s note: evidence indicates that Homo erectus reached Java 1.8 million years ago, but there was a land bridge at the time. More controversial findings suggest that Homo floresiensis (also known as the “Hobbits”) reached the island of Flores, in what is now Indonesia, 800,000 years ago. The Hobbits could not have walked to Flores: they were little creatures with big ideas and boats. [Thanks to my colleague Alison Brooks for verifying the accuracy of my comments here; she is an expert on Old World archaeology and is featured in Alan Alda’s series, The Human Spark].

• Lost civilization found in Ghana
The discovery of 80 clay figurines from burial mounds in northern Ghana signals the existence of a significant civilization. The figurines, of human and animal figures, are between 800-1,400 years old. A 20 square mile area contains hundreds of burial mounds. The research team combines archaeologists from the University of Ghana and Manchester University. The Independent quotes Ghana’s Dr. Benjamin Kankpeyeng: “The relative position of the figurines surrounded by human skulls means that the mounds were the location of an ancient shrine.” Tim Insoll, professor of archaeology at Manchester University, comments: “These finds will help fill a significant gap in our scant knowledge of the period before the Islamic empires developed in West Africa.” Illegal excavations are already threatening the site.

• Death of Albert Dekin, Jr.
Albert Dekin, Jr., retired associate professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, died unexpectedly on January 28. His primary interests were in Arctic peoples, and he conducted research in Alaska including assessment of the archaeological damage caused by the 1993 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Ethnography briefing: the Andaman Islanders

The Andaman Islands are a string of islands in the Bay of Bengal that belong to India. For unknown numbers of centuries, many of the islands were inhabited by people who fished, gathered and hunted for their livelihood. During the 18th century, when European countries were expanding trade routes to east Asia, the Andaman Islands were of major strategic importance as a stopping place.

At the time of the first, small settlements of the British in the late 18th century, the total indigenous population was estimated at between 6,000 and 8,000 (Miller 1997). Today, more than 400,000 people live on the islands, and they are mostly migrants from the Indian mainland. The total number of indigenous people is about 400. British colonialism brought contagious diseases against which the indigenous people had no resistance. The colonial presence also resulted in death by direct violence (hanging of islanders who fought back, skirmishes in which the British had guns and the islanders had bows and arrows) and indirect violence (from displacement, despair and culture shock).

Only four surviving clusters of indigenous Andamanese now exist:

  • The smallest group, just a few dozen people, consists of the remnants of the so-called Great Andamanese people. Several groups of Great Andamanese people formerly lived throughout North and Middle Andaman Islands, but no indigenous people inhabit these islands now. Their surviving descendants live on a reservation on a small island near Port Blair, the capital city.
  • The so-called Jarawa, numbering perhaps 200, live in a reserved area on the southwest portion of South Andaman island, and very little is known of their language. Jarawa is a term that the Great Andamanese people use for them.
  • The Onge, around 100 in number, live in one corner of Little Andaman Island.
  • Another 100 people or so live on North Sentinel Island. Outsiders call them the “Sentinelese.” No one has established communication with them, and almost no one from the outside has gotten closer than arrow-range of their shore.

The December 2004 tsunami disrupted much of the Andaman Island landscape, particularly areas that had been cleared of mangroves and other trees. As far as anyone knows, none of the indigenous people died as a direct result of the tsunami, though many of the immigrant settlers did (Mukerjee 2005).

The future of the indigenous people is more endangered by external culture, in the form of immigration and development, than from nature. Immigrants from the mainland continue to arrive, and international organizations such as the World Bank and businesses continue to provide incentives for the settlers.

In February 2010, one of the few remaining survivors of the Great Andamanese people, a woman named Boa Sr, passed away. She was the last speaker of the Boa language.

Sources:

  • “Culturama” by Barbara Miller, <a href="Cultural Anthropology, 5th edition, Pearson 2009, pg 94
  • Barbara Miller, “Andaman Update: From Colonialism to “Development,” paper presented at the Annual South Asia Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, 1997
  • Further information on the Jarawa and their cultural survival

Images: One of the many uninhabited islands in the Andamans with intact mangroves protecting the coastline from erosion. The roots of mangrove trees provide a habitat for shrimp, a prominent food item of the indigenous peoples and also now sought after by the tourist industry for hotel fare. Source: Barbara Miller.

Archival photograph from the early twentieth century of a girl wearing the skull of her deceased sister. Source: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922.

Home loss

Losing one’s home has both short-term and long-term negative effects on people. It can disrupt marriages and relationships and produce undesirable behavioral changes in children. The fallout of losing one’s home brings with it the catastrophic loss of investments, dignity, safety, aspirations and the ability to provide basic needs for oneself and one’s loved ones.

Moody’s Economy.com predicts that 1.9 million homeowners in the United States will lose their homes to foreclosure this year.

In Haiti, an article in the Washington Post today notes that more than one million displaced people don’t have “adequate shelter” — meaning? A tent? Or less? USAID has sent 7,000 rolls of plastic sheeting with another 5,000 on the way (Question: how many people can a “roll” cover?). The rainy season is also on its way.

A study conducted by the National Council of La Raza and the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looks at the effects of housing foreclosures on U.S. Latina families. It is based on interviews with 25 families in Texas, Michigan, Florida, Georgia and California.

Half of the parents reported problems in their interpersonal relationship with more than a third considering divorce or separation. Half of the families said that, after the foreclosure, they had more conflicts with their children and their children had more problems in school.

The American dream has turned into a bad one for many thousands of people who invested their savings into buying a home only to lose it all when the economic crisis hit.

And the Haitian dream for more than a million people tonight? Some plastic sheeting, please.

Image: “Sign Of The Times – Foreclosure,” creative commons licensed content by Flickr user

Upcoming event at the Elliott School

For those in the D.C. area, The George Washington University Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting are hosting a fascinating event on Monday.  Details below:

Afghanistan: The Human Factor

Monday February 22, 2010
1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons (Room 602)

Introductions:
Sean Aday, Director, Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication, GW

Jon Sawyer, Executive Director, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Panelists:
Vanessa Gezari, Washington-based writer; forthcoming book assesses the U.S. military’s Human Terrain program, which embeds social scientists and anthropologists with troops in Afghanistan

Jason Motlagh, freelance multimedia journalist; reporting focused on civilian casualties with on-the-scene accounts of the aftermath of coalition attacks in western Afghanistan last summer

Nir Rosen, freelance writer, photographer, and filmmaker; reporting contending the results in Iraq were less than advertised and likely to be worse in Afghanistan

To RSVP, email ipdgc@gwu.edu

Female genital cutting update

A report by Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs and Donna Clifton of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, DC, provides updated information about the prevalence of female genital cutting (FGC):

“FGM/C is practiced in at least 28 countries in Africa and a few others in Asia and the Middle East. It is practiced at all educational levels and in all social classes and occurs among many religious groups (Muslims, Christians, and animists), although no religion mandates it. The prevalence of FGM/C varies significantly from country to country, from nearly 98 percent in Somalia to less than 1 percent in Uganda. There is also wide variation by geographic region and rural or urban residence within many countries. In most countries, including Ethiopia, Liberia, and Kenya, the practice of FGM/C is more common in rural areas. But the reverse is true in some countries, including Nigeria.”

The authors compile data from the Demographic and Health Surveys and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. While they present most of the data at the country level, they also provide some important glimpses into within-country variation by age (see table below) and region. A map of the horn of Africa shows that rates of FGC are lower in eastern than in western Ethiopia.

Data by age indicate lower rates of FGC in younger women in many but not all countries. In the Gambia and Chad, for example, survey indicate no difference at all.

Prevalence of FGM/C Among Younger and Older Women

Image from C. Feldman-Jacobs and D. Clifton, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Data and Trends—Update 2010.

The Insecure American: Book Reading and Signing

Please join the Department of Anthropology and the College of Arts and Sciences of American University for the following special event:

The Insecure American: Book Reading and Signing
With co-editor Hugh Gusterson
and authors Susan Hirsch, Roger Lancaster, Janine Wedel, and Brett Williams

Thursday, February 25, 7-9pm
Hughes Formal Lounge
American University Main Campus, Washington, DC
Refreshments will be served

Directions: http://www.american.edu/maps; Questions: 202-885-1830

The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It:
Americans are feeling insecure. They are retreating to gated communities in record numbers, fearing for their jobs and their 401(k)s, nervous about their health insurance and their debt levels, worrying about terrorist attacks and immigrants. In this innovative volume, editors Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman gather essays from nineteen leading ethnographers to create a unique portrait of an anxious country and to furnish valuable insights into the nation’s possible future. With an incisive foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, the contributors draw on their deep knowledge of different facets of American life to map the impact of the new economy, the “war on terror,” the “war on drugs,” racial resentments, a fraying safety net, undocumented immigration, a health care system in crisis, and much more. In laying out a range of views on the forces that unsettle us, The Insecure American demonstrates the singular power of an anthropological perspective for grasping the impact of corporate profit on democratic life, charting the links between policy and vulnerability, and envisioning alternatives to life as an insecure American. [University of California Press, 2009]

Anthro in the news 2/15/10

• This may not work for everyone
A New York Times article in the Sunday Valentine Day’s edition collates advice (heterosexistly) for men about how to “step up their game” including the possibility of hiring a “pick-up coach” for tips on how to flirt. One coach says that laughter is vital–“it says we’re on the same page.” Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, research professor at Rutgers University, chimes in with her advice that when you are around people who are funny and charming you tend to be more attracted to them. Hm. I am sure she has more to offer than that in her book, Why Him? Why Her? How to Find and Keep Lasting Love.

• No sex please we’re married
Yoshie Moriki, associate professor of anthropology at International Christian University in Tokyo, spoke about “Sexless Marriage in Japan” at a Conference in Bangkok. She reported that when 2,500 Japanese were asked how often they had sex with their spouses in the previous 12 months, one-fifth said “Never.” The Nation (Bangkok) quoted Moriki as saying that “We need to seriously consider the underlying meanings of marriage and sexuality…”

• Paul Farmer re Bill Clinton re Haiti
In an article about President Clinton’s hospitalization in the Washington Post, Paul Farmer said that Clinton has been working “pretty nonstop” since the earthquake and that “He’s been putting heart and soul into Haiti…Everybody who’s been working with him knows how hard he’s been working on Haiti…He’s been inspiring all of us.” Farmer is a cultural anthropologist and medical doctor based at Harvard University, co-founder of Partners in Health, and deputy United Nations envoy to Haiti.

• Selling culture
Ethno-theme parks and Native American casinos are  examples of how ethnic identity has become a commodity in today’s global market place. John and Jean Comaroff, professors of cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago, explore how communities sell their traditional culture in their new book, Ethnicity Inc. They tell Laurie Taylor of BBC4 about how selling your cultural identity can be both empowering and impoverishing.

• Aspergers is autism
Richard Grinker, professor of cultural anthropology at George Washington University hails the impending merger of Asperger’s disorder within the range of autism as a good thing. The new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, prepared by the American Psychiatric Association, will no longer provide a separate category for Asperger’s disorder.

• Out of Siberia
As described in several media sources, DNA analysis of 4,000 year-old human hair found in Greenland indicates a link with the Chukchis who live in eastern Siberia. The hair belonged to a man, nicknamed Inuk, meaning “human” in Greenlandic. Inuk’s ancestors split from Chukchis 5,500 years ago and may have traveled across the northern edges of North America until they reached Greenland. The 52 person team of researchers is led by evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev and PhD student Morten Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen. They decoded the genome from four tufts of hair excavated in 1986 and kept in a plastic bag in the National Museum of Denmark. The hair was found at a site in eastern Greenland with other waste and may have been tossed aside after a haircut. The findings are published in Nature.

• Make mine rare
Discovery News picked up on the possibility of an ancient origin for steak dinners based on the finding of a million-year-old cattle skull in Eritrea associated with early human remains. Paleontologist Bienvenido Martinez-Navarro of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, reports on  the findings in Quaternary International.

• Stepping on more than toes
Plans to build a the so-called Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem have run into opposition because the proposed site is that of the ancient Muslim cemetery of Mamilla. While the tombs are crumbling, they still have meaning for Arab families in Jerusalem. Several solutions have been proposed including building around the tombs and erecting a platform and glass barriers.

Laura Wagner’s report from Haiti

If you still think that “all Haitians” are trapped in “voodoo worship” please read Laura Wagner’s description of her experiences in Haiti following the earthquake. Laura is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she has been in Haiti conducting research on human rights.

Her report doesn’t mention anything about Haitians turning to “voodoo” in the days following the earthquake. If “voodoo” is so pervasive a force in all Haitians lives, funny that she didn’t notice it and document. She’s a trained cultural anthropologist, so I take her description as meaning that people were living their lives in a fairly voodoo-free way.

Instead, Wagner describes what she saw, including the “fierce generosity”  of the Haitian people with whom she interacted. Her essay paints a picture of a moral high ground that I am not confident I would find following such a crisis in my home town of Washington, DC. True, the Washington Post carried an article over the weekend about how neighbors in one part of DC got together following our double snowstorm to help those without power and the elderly.

Today’s Post carried no articles about Haiti in the first section, but it did provide substantial coverage about how Washington area residents are fed up with being stuck at home and how they just want to get back to their normal routines.

Being stuck at home in a place where earthquakes don’t happen would be a blessing to thousands and thousands of Haitians.

Image: “Haiti Earthquake,” from flickr user IFRC, licensed with Creative Commons.

The latest on love

What do cultural anthropologists know about love? To mark Valentine’s Day, a widely celebrated occasion in the United States, I did some research. Using the Anthropology Plus database available through my university library, and with love as my only search term, I came up with the following list of articles published by cultural anthropologists from 2007 to the present. This list offers a quick glimpse into the cultural anthropology of love.

Topics include romantic love, family love and love of country; love as a basis for establishing a marriage; breaking up when romance fades; professions of love in discourse and song and professions of love in the midst of a violent relationship or one that is risky in terms of HIV/AIDS.

Note: the journals are not open-source. If you email particular authors, however, they are likely to happily provide you with an electronic copy of their article. Often, the journal provides the email address of the author on the first page or at the end.

Abu-Rabia-Queder, Sarab. Coping with ‘Forbidden Love’ and Loveless Marriage. Educated Bedouin Women from the Negev. Ethnohistory 8(3):297-323, 2007.

Carlisle, Jessica. Mother Love. A Forced Divorce in Damascus. Anthropology of the Middle East 2(1):89-102, 2007.

Clapp, James A. The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style. Visual Anthropology 22(1):52-63, 2009.

Faier, Lieba. Filipina Migrants in Rural Japan and their Professions of Love. American Ethnologist 34(1):148-162, 2007.

Foster, Robert J. Commodities, Brands, Love and Kula: Comparative Notes on Value Creation. Anthropological Theory 8(1):9-25, 2008.

Gershon, Ilana. Email My Heart: Remediation and Romantic Break-Ups. Anthropology Today 24(6):13-15, 2008.

Haeri, Shahla. Sacred Canopy : Love and Sex Under the Veil. Iranian Studies: Bulletin of the Society for Iranian Cultural and Social Studies 42(1):113-126, 2009.

Harrison, Abigail. Hidden Love : Sexual Ideologies and Relationship Ideals among Rural South African Adolescents in the Context of HIV/AIDS. Culture, Health and Sexuality 10(2):175-189, 2008.

Hart, Kimberley. Love by Arrangement: The Ambiguity of ‘Spousal Choice’ in a Turkish Village. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(2):345-362, 2007.

Helsloot, John. The Triumph of Valentine’s Day in the Netherlands: After Fifty Years. Lietuvos Etnologija 8(17):97-116, 2008..

Kapteijns, Lidwien. Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990. Journal of African History 50(1):101-122, 2009.

Lipset, David. Women without Qualities: Further Courtship Stories Told by Young Papua New Guinean Men. Ethnology 46(2):93-111, 2007.

Marsden, Magnus. Love and Elopement in Northern Pakistan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13(1):91-108, 2007.

Continue reading “The latest on love” →

Cultural anthropology up

The number of research proposals submitted by cultural anthropologists to the U.S. National Science Foundation has risen dramatically in the past few years according to Deborah Winslow in American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology News (Winslow is the cultural anthropology program officer at the NSF).

Encouraged by the rising number of applications, Winslow comments, “I believe that anthropologists are needed to solve the world’s most urgent problems, but we must do basic, gritty and time-consuming research to get the recognition that will accord us voice.”


I agree with Winslow that cultural anthropology has relevance to solving the world’s problems, and I am happy that the number of cultural anthropology proposals is rising. But I don’t see a direct relationship between more research by cultural anthropologists and more recognition and voice.

That won’t happen until more cultural anthropologists want to, and learn to, present their findings outside the academic box.  As in the mainstream media.

Since this blog began in late August 2009, I have been scanning media coverage of anthropology (all four fields) for my weekly blog feature, “Anthro in the News.” You don’t have to be a mathematician to see that biological anthropology and archaeology have much more visibility than cultural or linguistic anthropology. In fact, a single finding in biological anthropology or archaeology may be picked up by several outlets.  Last year, the only cultural anthropology news hitting multiples media buttons  was the death of Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Several reasons account for the media bias toward biological anthropology and archaeology. Here are four that I think are important (if you think of more, please share them in the comment section):

1. Research by biological anthropologists and archaeologists is considered “scientific,” and the media  more actively pursue science news than non-science news from academia [related to #4].

2. Biological anthropologists and archaeologist make “discoveries” which constitute “breaking news” and create buzz. Compare the following: “Chimpanzees understand wildfire and dance to it” and “Oregonians avoid accepting food stamps due to pride” and consider which one was a media hit.

3. Biological anthropologists and archaeologists are more likely to be able to publish their results quickly, in short articles, and with snappy, media-friendly summaries.

4. The public is more interested in findings in biological anthropology and archaeology (“the missing link,” buried gold treasure, and endangered species).

In a nutshell, cultural anthropology is neglected by the media because it’s less scientific, sexy, and snappy. And therefore cultural anthropology loses traction in educating the public via the media.

Relatedly, cultural anthropologists lose ground in influencing policy. So-called “public anthropologists” are no strangers to this discussion: they have been working hard, and uphill, for several years to raise the visibility of culture anthropology outside academia. This post applauds their efforts and seeks to add muscle to it.

In that direction, I highly recommend Cornelia Dean’s brief book, Am I Making Myself Clear? A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public. Whether or not you consider yourself a “scientist,” you will find many helpful insights on topics such as the journalism landscape, being prepared as a source of knowledge, establishing credibility, writing op-eds, doing radio/tv interviews, writing books, being an expert witness, and influencing or making policy.

Beyond Cornelia Dean’s suggestions, other increasingly available and powerful avenues for getting your message out exist: video — documentaries, YouTube. Social media. Blogging. Even tweeting:  develop a following of your friends, family, students, and others, and tweet about something relevant in the news, or offer an interpretive comment or quick critique.

Image from Harvard University Press.