Save the date: Public Anthropology Conference (PAC 2015) 12th Annual Conference

SHIFTING CLIMATES
Dialogues of the Urgent and Emergent

Call For Participation
jv6775a@student.american.edu

When: October 3-4, 2015
Where: American University, Washington, DC

The rapidly transforming world in which we live requires an immediate response to the global discussions of climate change, economic development, armed conflict, international human rights abuses, racial injustice, medical emergencies, and sexual and gender inequalities. A dialogue concerning these and other pressing public issues will allow us the opportunity to discuss ideas of the “urgent” and the “emergent.”

“Urgent” draws our focus toward social justice issues that require a time-sensitive response while maintaining deliberate and careful attention to holistic human well-being. Likewise, the “Emergent” presents to us new challenges that arise, causing us to pause and reevaluate the framework in which we approach our everyday work. We will explore our roles as practitioners, teachers, students, and interested members of the public within these shifting climates and discover how we can produce and support positive social, environmental, economic, and political change.

All are welcome to apply.

Submit proposals to aupublicanthro@gmail.com
Deadline: August 31st

For more info contact conference organizers:

Davis Shoulders
davis.shoulders@gmail.com

John Villecco
jv6775a@student.american.edu

anthro in the news 6/29/15

  • A matter of Pride: There is no neutral

An article in the Guardian reports on conflicts related to how a group of queer activists mobilized in solidarity with miners in the U.K are being treated in this year’s London Pride Parade line-up. The group, Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM), was scheduled to lead this year’s parade, but the parade’s organizers won’t let trade union members march with them at the front of the parade because they are not political and not neutral. The article points out that LGSM is not the only political group at this year’s Pride and will be joined in the procession with Ukip, a political party whose leader recently declared that HIV-positive immigrants should be barred from the U.K. The article turns to insights from the “politically committed, morally engaged” anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes who points out that “neutrality” in the face of structural violence is not neutrality at all: it’s complicity.

  • Microfinance works, but for whom?

Cultural anthropologist Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics published an article in the Guardian in which he zings microfinance as “…the neoliberal development strategy par excellence. Forget about colonialism, structural adjustment, austerity, financial crises, land grabs, tax evasion, and climate change. Forget about challenging the concentration of power and wealth. And, above all, forget about collective mobilisation. Bankers shall be our new heroes and debt our salvation. Debt, incidentally, is a great way to keep people docile.” Hickel proposes alternatives that will address the structural causes of poverty. Continue reading “anthro in the news 6/29/15” →

Pepper water and protests in Haiti

By Scott Freeman

Tear gas is not uncommon in Port au Prince. Over the past decade, whether it has been protests over food shortages, controlling political demonstrations, or ‘peacekeeping’ actions by the infamous MINUSTAH UN forces, tear gas and other methods of crowd control have been a reality of the political and social landscape in downtown Port-au-Prince. A veteran reporter in Haiti told me that he had developed all sorts of strategies to deal with tear gas, ranging use of lime under his nose to more preventative measures like always having a paint masks handy.
But as of late, a new method of mass crowd control has been quite literally ‘sweeping the streets’ in the capital of Haiti. A type of pepper spray spiked water is being shot out of water cannons and into crowds of protesters. Dlo grate, or itching water, as it is referred to in Haitian Creole, is a now common term in Port au Prince. While not all have felt its devastatingly powerful effects, knowledge of the new tactic is widespread throughout the city.

The visit of French President François Hollande was the backdrop for the most recent student protest and excessive police response. Student protests are not uncommon in Port-au-Prince, and for the past years these demonstrations have often targeted the government in power. On May 12th, outside of the Faculté d’Ethnologie, the storied home of Haitian anthropology and site of many student demonstrations, 50 or so university students protested the arrival the French President– the first official state visit of any French President to Haiti. Given that Hollande had just rescinded an offer of reparations to Haiti for the damages of slavery and exploitation (officials insisting he was talking about a ‘moral debt’ and not a financial one), such a protest was largely predictable. Other protests in the plaza of Champ de Mars supposedly numbered around 200. During the day of his visit, students and protesters chanted ‘Nou pa esklav anko!’ (We won’t be slaves again), invoking France’s historical role as a slave owning colonial power, and hinting at the continual neocolonial tactics used by France and the broader international community. Some students provocatively dressed as slaves outside the university campus.

Student Protestors at Faculté d’Ethnologie on May 12, 2015.

During the late morning that Tuesday, I was in the second floor computer of the Faculté d’Ethnologie preparing a seminar that would be cancelled 45 minutes later. I could hear student chants that had been building for an hour or so. But new noises soon entered the air-conditioned room, and students sitting around me got up from their computers to see what caused the loud commotion.

From the second floor balcony, we could see that a black armored national police truck had parked itself outside of the walls of the school. On the top of this tank, visible over the wall, was a large turret fixed with a water cannon. The noise we could hear was the water that was being shot at students, occasionally hitting the metal door of the courtyard. The demonstration was non-violent (a Professor later remarked that he saw one student throw a stone, only to be quickly reprimanded by other demonstrators), yet the tank was parked right outside the courtyard, knocking students to the ground with a surge of water even when they were inside the gates of the university. From its position higher than the university walls, the water cannon was policing actions of even the students inside the gate. Continue reading “Pepper water and protests in Haiti” →

anthro in the news 6/22/15

  • Hate in America

In the wake of the shooting in Charleston, many wonder what drives a person to commit a hate crime and whether hate groups have influence.  WROC Rochester carried an article about hate crimes and its study in the U.S. It notes the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which researches hate groups in the U.S. According to the SPLC, there are 784 active and organized hate groups across the country. The article quotes anthropology professor Thomas Gibson of the University of Rochester who studies hate crimes in the U.S. and abroad:

“People who have grown up in a condition of privilege and feel that slipping away, they’re the most likely recruits for hate groups…In a way the rise of social media and the way people’s extreme views can get reinforced by someone just sitting alone in a basement, I think is a cause for more concern perhaps than the organized groups.” Gibson says the patches seen in a photo of the Charleston shooting suspect, represent the past racial apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and a connection to supremacist ideologies that could easily be bolstered online. “People who might for whatever personal reasons nurture certain grudges can now find like-minded individuals all over the country or even all over the world.”

  • Beyond black and white: Transracial identity

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald addressed the question of racial identity as brought to popular attention in the case of Rachel Dolezal, who has chosen to live as a black woman. It quotes Farida Fozdar, associate professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Western Australia. The Dolezal case, she says, is complex:  “It reminds us of the US’s one-drop rule, which for so long meant that anyone with one drop of African-American blood was classified as African American…Since then, we’ve become much more constructivist about it, to the point that ethnic identity is seen as being about self-identification. But no one ever thought that meant that a white person with no black heritage, but black friends and family, can claim to be black. We’ve had the idea of ‘passing’ for a long time, but it has always meant people of black heritage ‘passing’ as white, in order to improve their life chances. So this is an interesting counterpoint.” Continue reading “anthro in the news 6/22/15” →

anthro in the news 6/15/15

  • Obama’s Trans-Pacific trade agreement may be tanking

KFOXTV (El Paso, Texas) commented on the defeat in the U.S. House of Representatives of President Barack Obama’s global trade agenda. Republican leaders, who generally support Obama’s trade objectives, signaled they might try to revive the package. Lack of support from Democrats in the House was pivotal in the defeat. Aurolyn Luykx, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso, agrees with those opposing the trade agreement, saying that it helps corporations at the expense of workers:

“Again and again we see that these trade deals are good for the richest people in all of the countries that are being affected but bad for everybody else in the country they are affecting…I think the consequences could be very dire. We already saw under NAFTA how so many jobs left the U.S. and also went from Mexico. Then, we saw as well tens of thousands of low income Mexican families being put out of work and losing their land and we saw how that drove migration to the U.S..”

  • Shame on us: Remembering Rwanda

Matthew Emery, Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at McMaster University, published an op-ed in the Hamilton Spectator (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), reflecting on 21 years since the violence in Rwanda:

“As people were being slaughtered the governments of the West remained silent, preferring instead to debate the definition of genocide and whether it was actually taking place in Rwanda at the time. It was not until post-July 1994 that the world finally paid tribute to those in peril. It was too late, however. It has been 21 years since the atrocities in Rwanda ended. This is a token in memorandum to those who lost so many family members in such a short amount of time between April and June, 1994. “ Continue reading “anthro in the news 6/15/15” →

anthro in the news 6/8/15

  • Porn-driven female genital esthetics

The Globe and Mail reported on growing industry in women’s genital esthetics, illustrating its point with some details about genital-area waxing and skin treatment for women available in Toronto. The article quotes Eileen Anderson-Fye, the Robson Junior associate professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University: “Because of technological advances, we have greater access to pornographic images that explicitly and implicitly convey aesthetic and erotic ideals…“These images hold women to increasingly singular standards about beauty and desirability.” [Blogger’s note: there’s an even more serious question here about what drives porn to portray sexually desirable female genitals as child-like].

  • Culture, hormones, and menopause
Logo of the Women’s Health Initiative

A Reuters article describes findings from a survey about vaginal pain during intercourse in several Western countries. The results, which reveal substantial cross-country variations, will not be surprising to anthropologists. Researchers conducted an online survey asking 8,200 older men and women in North America and Europe how menopause affects their sex lives and relationships. While similar complaints were reported across all countries, the magnitude of suffering for vaginal dryness, hot flashes, and weight gain varied. According to Melissa Melby, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware, the findings are limited because the survey recruited only women with vaginal pain and men who experienced it with their partners. Even so, she continues, the cultural differences about menopause highlighted by the survey underscore how regional differences in diet, physical activity, attitudes toward aging, and expectations about menopause influence how women experience symptoms.

  • Good news: First woman president in Mauritius

Anthropologyworks’ Sean Carey published an article in the New African on the election in Mauritius of its first woman president, Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, an eminent scientist specializing in ethnobotany. She will also serve her country as its ceremonial Head of State, a move that has caused some controversy but also much support. She vows to be an “apolitical president.” Well, let’s see says Carey, a longtime observer of politics in Mauritius. Continue reading “anthro in the news 6/8/15” →

anthro in the news 6/1/15

  • Not funny

In an article in the Huffington Post, Christa Craven, assistant professor of anthropology and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, and chair of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the College of Wooster, takes on campus jokes about sexual violence. Pointing out what should be unnecessary – that such jokes are not funny — she offers steps to address this widespread and enduring problem.

Craven, who has been threatened as a professor, writes: “What bothers me the most about my experiences…is that over the past 20 years, I see little difference in how we — as a society and in many campus communities — are responding to sexual violence and threats of violence. Many continue to see violence as an essential part of masculinity and adopt the naïve (and often dangerous) stance that ‘boys will be boys.’”

  • The ills of humanitarian health aid

Medical anthropologist Paul Farmer of Harvard University writes about “the caregivers’ disease” in the London Review of Books. He ponders recent health humanitarianism in West Africa in response to the Ebola outbreak, providing a wide historic sweep from Graham Greene’s writings to medical anthropologist Adia Benton‘s book, AIDS Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone. He praises her book as a “withering critique” of the workings of public health funding.

  • Spelling bee culture
Co-winners of the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee

WBUR (Boston NPR) highlighted the research of Shalini Shankar, sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist at Northwestern University, in an article on the May 28 results of the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Her current research examines the growth and proliferation of spelling competitions, specifically how they have become a mass-mediated, sport-like spectacle, why South Asian American children dominate them, and how spelling bee franchises are being exported to other countries leading to further commodification of the English language. Shankar is conducting fieldwork in the New York City area on spelling bees, spellers and their families, broadcasters such as ESPN and SONY TV, spelling bee production companies, and the Scripps Foundation. Continue reading “anthro in the news 6/1/15” →

GW event: Promoting Arctic Urban Sustainability

When: Thursday and Friday, June 4-5, 2015, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Where: Alumni House (1918 F Street NW), Washington, DC 20052

The unprecedented rate of climate change in the Arctic observed in recent decades creates greater opportunities to exploit oil, natural gas, and mineral resources. Extracting these resources will require labor migration into the Arctic. The effect of climate change is amplified in urban centers, where the presence of population, natural resource development, and other human activities exert additional pressure on Arctic ecosystems. Promoting urban sustainability in the Arctic is critical because the fragility of the environment, economy, and population makes mistakes more costly and likely to have a lasting impact than they would in more resilient environments. Policy makers and corporations focused on maximizing profit margins are not paying sufficient attention to such sustainability concerns meaning that the continuation of current practices could do irreparable damage to the Arctic environment.

On June 4 and 5 IERES will host a conference addressing a variety of topics central to promoting Arctic urban sustainability. The panels will address such issues as the role of cities in Russia, sustainability in various Arctic urban centers, energy resource development in the Arctic, and the future of Arctic cities in comparative perspective.

Please find the full agenda for the event and short summaries of the presentations here: http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/programs/conference_2015.cfm

Please RSVP at http://go.gwu.edu/arcticurbansustainability

This event is on the record

anthro in the news 5/25/15

  • The non-science (and more) of virginity testing of women

Sherria Ayuandini, a doctoral candidate in medical anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, published an op-ed in The Independent (U.K.) in which she argues against testing women’s virginity on scientific grounds:  “Any type of virginity test that relies on the observation of the hymen or of the tightness of the vagina is inconclusive, at best, or completely invalid.”  Beyond the science, she states: “No-one, neither a woman nor a man, should ever be compelled to endure such questioning, regardless of the reliability of the exam.” She concludes with this question:  “…it is worth pondering that as the testing tool at hand is highly unreliable, why would anyone even dare to entertain the imposition of such fallibility?” [Blogger’s note: Answer to the question – because they are patriarchists].

  • Farmers protesting in Burma
U Bein Bridge, Mandalay, Burma/Myanmar

Elliott Prasse-Freeman, doctoral candidate in anthropology at Yale University, published an article in Foreign Policy on how grassroots farmers are protesting elite control of “development” and land takeovers. Farmers have gone to court to protect their homes and land are increasingly taking to the streets to protest the new “development” policies and the draft land acquisition policy. According to Prasse-Freeman, a combination of protests and individual actions has, in some cases, succeeded in winning farmers meaningful concessions.

He cautions however that, “The successes of these movements and village-based politics should not be overstated. In Burma’s central Magwe region, most people still live under the thumb of the state. In outlying regions, ethnic minorities struggle for the freedom to govern themselves and for equal representation in national affairs. Plow protesters often end up in jail, the money they spent plowing their fields squandered. (Ko Taw estimates that only 5 percent of plow protests succeed in getting land returned.)” Continue reading “anthro in the news 5/25/15” →