On eliminating Valentine’s Day in U.S. public schools
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, many schools in the Minneapolis area will not be marking Valentine’s Day or many other so-called “dominant holidays” in the interest of promoting diversity. An ongoing debate concerns what, if any, celebrations should take place in classrooms. The article quotes cultural anthropologist William Beeman, chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, a “holiday supporter:” “It’s very difficult to eliminate all celebrations from human society, and finding a reason for celebration is a terribly important human function because it creates social solidarity…And we don’t want our schools to be a grim place, where there’s never any fun, never any community building.”
In Argentina: Culture of police violence vs. human rights
Complicated Connection: President Macri and his family meeting the Pope. The declaration of a national security emergency does not fit with a Francisan approach to social justice. Source: Wikimedia.
An article in the Argentina Independent discusses the “tough on crime” approach of President Mauricio Macri who assumed office in December and has already decreed a national public security emergency. The article expresses concern about the culture of police violence that continues to plague Argentina. It quotes Maria Victoria Pita, anthropology professor at the University of Buenos Aires: “There is a historical tradition of confrontation and violence between civil society and the police…It is a very complicated issue because it has to deal with the basis of cultural development and political conditions.”
Cultural anthropologist William Murphy, lecturer in the department of anthropology at Northwestern University, published an op-ed in the Chicago Sun Times about how U.S. football turns a person into a commodity: “In football calculus, knocking a skilled player out of the game is sometimes (but not always) worth the penalty for some form of unnecessary roughness. Some players specialize in this tactic, and are rewarded by fans and coaches when they get away with it. Unnecessary roughness is necessary in this calculus.” He draws on Homer, Simone Weil, and others to connect the violence of war and U.S. football with dehumanization.
U.S. football pride: It hurts not being first
Source: Creative Commons
An article in the San Diego Union Tribune reported on the decision to keep San Diego’s football team, the Chargers, for at least another year. The article quotes Seth Mallios, professor of anthropology at San Diego State University and the author of multiple books on San Diego history: “In terms of our collective psyche…we feel like we are in L.A.’s shadow. Los Angeles has two NBA teams, and one of them is one of our former teams. And look at the difference between the Dodgers’ payroll and the Padres’. When you start thinking about the giant money donations they can get up there, we can feel a little inferior.”
As described in an article in the Guardian, John Campbell, reader in the anthropology of Africa and law at the University of London, U.K. asylum policy for Eritreans is misguided. Campbell analyzed two Country Information Guidance documents issued by the Home Office last year which say that it is safe to return asylum seekers to Eritrea. Campbell argues that this position over-relies on one outdated source and does not take into account other available evidence and. Campbell is reported to have said: “An undergraduate would be failed for this sort of thing.” The Home Office has not responded.
Haiti: Still seeking an elected president
Poster encouraging citizens to vote in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 2016. Source: Nicholas Johnson, IGIS
An article in the Huffington Post offers insights into the unresolved presidential election in Haiti. It focuses on one candidate who is closely linked with the banana industry. Co-authors are Jennifer Vansteenkiste, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the University of Guelph and Mark Schuller, associate professor of anthropology and NGO leadership development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti.
Sam Beck, senior lecturer in the College of Human Ecology, has co-edited a new volume on the theory and practice of public anthropology. Source: Cornell Chronicle, Mark Vorreuter/College of Human Ecology
Social and cultural anthropologist Sam Beck is a leading proponent of moving anthropology out of academia’s ivory tower and into communities and cultures to bring about positive change.
He has been a fixture in the New York City neighborhood of North Brooklyn for more than two decades, where he has studied the effects of gentrification and supported community groups rallying for more affordable housing for ethnic minorities.
Beck has brought that experience to bear as co-editor of a new book, “Public Anthropology in a Borderless World.” With 10 essays in three thematic sections, the edited volume explores how public anthropology improves the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education and political action. Beck has also contributed a chapter, “Urban Transitions: Graffiti Transformations.” He co-edited the book with Carl Maida of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Public anthropology is a relatively new term that refers to the discipline as a collaboration between the anthropologist and communities to co-construct research and knowledge and communicate that knowledge to a variety of audiences. It also advocates for anthropologists to engage in various forms of intervention, including political action.
American anthropologists, Beck says, have a rich history of positioning themselves in the struggle for social justice and democratization. “Critical and political, [public anthropology] embraces advocacy and at times activism, not just as a strategy for generating data but as a commitment to support and effect change for society’s most vulnerable members and for those living in oppressive conditions,” Beck and Maida write in the introduction.
The first set of essays focus on participatory action research, in which professional anthropologists do research and take action with the community they study, not “on” or “for” them. The essays give examples of how the approach has forged pathways for community empowerment at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and addressed environmental justice concerns in a working-class Latino community in Pacoima, California.
Critical issues facing public anthropological engagement is the subject of the book’s second section. Topics range from how the anthropologist can at once serve as scientist and public social critic, to the promises and pitfalls of activist research.
The final essays seek to understand public anthropology in diverse arenas, from radio and television to visual culture to urban design. In this section, Beck’s chapter shows how urban graffiti, created in and of low-income communities of color, became a commodity for mass consumption, often without attribution.
“Together, the contributors to this volume reposition public anthropology as an anthropology of and in communities that meaningfully and productively engages in a world of intensifying disparities to fulfill a real-world purpose,” Beck and Maida conclude in the introduction.
Kim Shively, professor of cultural anthropology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, published an article in the Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania) about how autism can be fatal to children. Her article notes a recent death by drowning of a five-year old autistic boy in Allentown. She focuses on the variety of autism that involves a tendency to wander away from home, arguing that it is the most dangerous, especially for non-verbal children. She notes that “public safety and health service providers in our area…have poor understanding of what autism is or how it is manifested.” She offers three recommendations.
Sons of a paramount chief, seated, with an African slave, 1904. The Guardian/Institute for Iranian Contemporary Historical Studies, Tehran, Iran
African slavery in Iran
Anthropologist Pedram Khosronejad is Farzaneh Family Scholar and Associate Director for Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at the School of International Studies of Oklahoma State University. He has embarked on a new and controversial topic in Iranian studies, developing a narrative on African slavery in Persia through archival photography, interviews, and texts. The African slave trade in the Persian Gulf began well before the Islamic period. Mediaeval accounts refer to slaves working as household servants, bodyguards, militiamen and sailors in the Persian Gulf including what is today southern Iran. In Iran’s modern history, Africans were integral to elite households.
Washington Post published a weekly “In Theory” piece by medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California at Berkeley. She is also director of Organs Watch, and advisor to the World Health Organization, the European Union, and the United Nations. She writes: “Be aware that the sale of organs has damaged the families of sellers and their communities — in Syria, India, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, Brazil, Egypt, the Philippines, Turkey and wherever political refugees wash up on the shores of Europe. A kidney for an (un)safe passage to freedom: This is the unbalanced agreement demanded of many families fleeing political conflict and drought. In the watery slums of Manila, the obligation to sell a kidney for the financial sake of the family is being passed down from the father to his wife to their underage sons and daughters, whose bodies are seen as a family piggy-bank.”
Too many men?
Politico Magazine and the Australian cited Barbara Miller‘s work on male-biased sex ratios in relation to the many refugees entering Europe. Politico mentions her argument that countries should consider a balanced sex ratio to be a public good. The Australian quotes her as saying that heavily male-biased sex ratios can be a risk to local security. [Blogger’s notes: (1) political scientist Valerie Hudson of Texas A & M University has done much to promote awareness of the connection between heavily male-biased sex ratios and violence; a much earlier, foundational study on the social implications of male-biased sex ratios is an article by anthropologists William Divale and Marvin Harris appeared in the American Anthropologist in 1976. (2) It would be most unfortunate if the “too many men” factor were to become a knee-jerk justification for denying male asylum seekers since a common pattern of refugee migration is that a “pioneer” male first arrives and then brings in his family; see the next entry on U.S. family immigration/reunification policies].
Cultural anthropologist Sarah Hill, associate professor at Western Michigan University, published an article in the Boston Review detailing the work of cultural anthropologist Sidney Mintz of the Johns Hopkins University. [See also: In memoriam, below]. Mintz is lauded as the founder of “food anthropology” with the publications of his landmark book in 1985, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Hill writes: “…at the heart of Sweetness and Power lies an understanding of the history of capitalism in the Atlantic world that goes far to explain slavery’s enduring legacy.”
Can planet Earth be saved?
In an article in The Atlantic, several U.S. experts, including cultural anthropologist Elizabeth Moreno, assistant professor at Oregon State University, offer reasons for despair and hope about the future of our planet. Her reason for despair: “As an anthropologist working alongside indigenous communities in the United States, it’s hard not to see climate change as another wave of violence inherent in the colonial ideal. Colonized geographies like communities in Alaska, small nation states in the Pacific, and large nations in sub-Saharan Africa all share the heaviest burdens of a rapidly changing climate…These burdens are all part of climate injustice…I [also] despair because…climate change needs alternative cultural models for framing problems and non-Western solutions.” On the side of hope: “The rest of the world is talking back…. It’s going to be an interesting century.”
By Madhukar Ramlallah, editor of the Mauritius Times [with permission from the Mauritius Times]
‘Franco-Mauritians have realised that their economic power is best served by staying away from politics’
* ‘I think that there is a certain awareness among Franco-Mauritians that their position can only flourish when other Mauritians also benefit economically’
Mauritius will make progress only if it asks free and frank questions about how well the different components which make society accommodate each other for sustained development and harmonious participation in national affairs. We asked Dr T Salverda, a Dutch anthropologist who has been researching Mauritian society for more than a decade, resulting in, among others, the recently published book ‘The Franco-Mauritian Elite: Power and Anxiety in the Face of Change’, how well has the Franco-Mauritian community kept adapting to the changing social, economic and political climate of Mauritius and how it will likely respond to events in the future. Dr Salverda works as research fellow at the University of Cologne’s Global South Studies Centre and was in Mauritius recently for the international conference held at the MGI to discuss about the Mauritian diaspora. Read on:
* ‘Home is where our Beach is’ – that’s the title of your talk at the Mauritian Diaspora international conference at the MGI, two weeks ago, that sought to look into the reasons for, to use your own words, “the Franco-Mauritians’ limited interest to emigrate”. There must however be more than the beach that have gone into their decision to stay back, isn’t it?
My intervention at the conference results from research on the Franco-Mauritians more generally, and I didn’t analyse the Franco-Mauritian Diaspora, or lack thereof, in all its details. At the same time as many wish to stay on the island, there are most certainly also Franco-Mauritians who migrate or stay abroad after their studies. But what I noticed was that many Franco-Mauritians I met expressed little desire to leave the island. Most of the students I interviewed in France and South Africa also expressed the wish to return – and from what I know, many have returned, indeed. This is in contrast to the argument that many Mauritians studying overseas don’t return after their studies because they would see more opportunities elsewhere – I don’t have the figures if this is the case, but I frequently heard this argument.
In the case of the Franco-Mauritians, it is certainly not only about the beach. Access to the island’s most powerful economic networks is central to their position. Most of the students seemed to worry little about finding employment once they would return. Why I referred to the beach, though, is that the attachment to the island is more than just economic privileges. Many of the students had fond memories of a relatively carefree upbringing and a youth often spent with their family and friends at the seaside. The alternative of a life elsewhere, without the Indian Ocean and the pampering of domestic service, is less appealing.
* Would there be some other “comparative advantage/s” for them to live more permanently in a place such as Mauritius? Their high social and economic positions in a small place like Mauritius? Mauritius has more to offer them and more readily so, than competitive places like France or South Africa, for example?
Yes, most certainly. An important aspect is that, for much of the island’s history, their high social status was symbolised by their white skin-colour. This legacy still lingers on and my feeling is that notwithstanding the criticism their skin-colour also attracts, it still gives them status. “More than” would probably be the case in South Africa and France. There, they would be one of the many whites. In these cases, most would not be part of the wealthiest section or enjoy the same privileges and pleasant lifestyle as in Mauritius. When you combine this with a life on a tropical and relatively well-organised island, it is understandable that they like to remain in Mauritius.
I think, however, that this would go for many Mauritians, as many stay on the island after all – and not against their will necessarily. The closest comparison would, of course, be other Mauritian elites, of which you have a number. Unfortunately I don’t have comparative data, but it would be interesting to find out whether they express the same wish to stay on the island or are more eager to leave.
Two social scientists at the University of Oxford,, one a social anthropologist and the other an economist, co-authored an article in the Huffington Post about how “…European states need to go beyond the obvious target, ISIS and its twisted interpretation of Islam, and delve deeper into the complex genesis of violence. Violence is located not just in extremist ideology but also in struggles over the distribution of power within and across nations.” And later on, they write about “…the need to problematize the state and its policies alongside their targets of attack. We need to unpack the common sense view of the state as a benevolent agent operating under explicit policy directions.” Mohammad Talib is Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz fellow in the Anthropology of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic studies, and Adeel Malik is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies.
Miss Honduras at the 2015 Miss Universe contest. Source: Richard D. Salyer/Courtesy of Miss Universe Organization
Stop the killing: A message from Miss Honduras
National Public Radio (U.S.) carried an article about the national costume worn by Miss Honduras, Iroshka Lindaly Elvir, in the Miss Universe contest. It included many decorative skulls. According to archaeologist Rosemary A. Joyce, professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Elvir’s costume drew on Maya culture to bring world attention to violence in Honduras. The U.N. has ranked Honduras as having the highest murder rate in the world. Joyce noted that: “[Elvir] uploaded pictures to her Facebook page in which she is wearing that outfit holding a sign [that reads] ‘CICIH YA’ which is a call for an independent, U.N.-appointed anti-corruption task force to be appointed for Honduras.”
Marketplace (American Public Media) published a piece on the dire economic situation of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. According to a new report from UNHCR, Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan have limited opportunities to work since only a small group of refugees has work permits. It quotes Dawn Chatty, professor of anthropology and forced migration at the University of Oxford: “While refugee camps can provide a haven for the displaced population, the reality is that many Syrians in Jordan don’t have access to them…In Lebanon, refugee camps don’t exist…Many are surviving with irregular part-time jobs…and bad pay.”
No lip kissing, please, we’re Indian
James Bond gets only a half kiss in Spectre. Source: News Nation
The Times of India carried an article about a talk at the Godrej Culture Lab in Mumbai by William Mazzarella, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and author of Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity. He noted how the censorship story has been unfolding in Indian film: “Censorship itself is a kind of publicity that thrives on visibility…Censorship seems to be flourishing despite the fact that it hasn’t been able to silence or control a great deal of our public conscience space. So maybe we need to think differently about what the censors are up to.” He speculated on James Bond’s half kiss in the version of Spectre that made it to Indian movie halls.
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