3 statements and an article for International Widows’ Day 2013

On June 23, the world is supposed to pause and think about widows for at least one day. International Widows’ Day was first recognized by the United Nations in 2010 to highlight poverty and injustice faced by widows and their children in many countries.

Here are some speeches and statements from the UN Women website:

Widow Santosh Komodi sweeps her house on June 17, 2013 in Vrindavan, UP, India. Flickr/UN Women Asia & the Pacific
Widow Santosh Komodi sweeps her house on June 17, 2013 in Vrindavan, UP, India. Flickr/UN Women Asia & the Pacific
UN Women Acting Head calls for robust measures to ensure rights of widows in message for International Widows’ Day
In her message for International Widows’ Day, UN Women Acting Head and Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri, calls on the international community to end discrimination against widows so they can live in dignity and fully participate in society. Ms. Puri draws attention to the estimated 115 million widows currently living under the poverty line, and the 81 million who are subjected to physical abuse, often by their own family members.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS widows strive to regain their rights after husbands are gone
AIDS widows face economic and social exclusion and, for many, living with HIV adds to their vulnerability and stigmatization. UN Women is working with community groups and traditional leaders to empower widows, protect their property and inheritance rights, and provide essential services.

Socially-excluded widows mobilize for their rights
Along with partners, UN Women is working on initiatives to support widows in Guatemala, India and Malawi. To mark International Widows Day, a look at the work that is currently underway.

For my part, I browsed through Google Scholar, with the simple search term “widows” and with the time parameter of 2009 to present. As always, Google Scholar presents a rich array of things for me to read — I noticed several articles and reports on widows in Iraq and Africa.

I have chosen this article to highlight here, since it brings together widowhood, climate change, and women’s roles as agents of change as well as victims of circumstances. Here is the abstract for the article and publication information (it is not open access, I am sorry to say):

Journal of Cleaner Production
Widows: agents of change in a climate of water uncertainty
Sara Gabrielsson, Vasna Ramasar
Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University (LUCSUS), PO Box 170, 221 00 Lund, Sweden

The African continent has been severely affected by the HIV and AIDS pandemic and as a consequence, development is being obstructed. Agriculture and food production systems are changing as a result of the burden of the pandemic. Many farming families are experiencing trauma from morbidity and mortality as well as facing labour losses and exhaustion. To further exacerbate the situation, climate variability and change reduce the available water supply for domestic and productive uses. This article describes how these multiple stressors play out in Nyanza province in Western Kenya and explores livelihood responses to water stress in Onjiko location, Nyanza. In this community, widows and divorced women affected by HIV and AIDS have become agents of positive change. Data from local surveys (2007), mapping of seasonal calendars (September 2009) and numerous focus group meetings and interviews with women in Onjiko (October 2008, January 2010, January 2011), reveal that despite a negative fall-back position, widows are improving their households’ water and food security. This adaptation and even mitigation to some of the experienced climate impacts are emerging from their new activities in a setting of changing conditions. In the capacity of main livelihood providers, widows are gaining increased decision making and bargaining power. As such they can invest in sustainable innovations like rain water harvesting systems and agroforestry. Throughout, they work together in formalized groups of collective action that capitalize on the pooling of natural and human resources as well as planned financial management during hardship periods.

Click here to view figures and tables from the article.

Working together to protect rock art

Photo courtesy of the CARE Project

The CARE project is a collaboration between heritage and science research interests at Newcastle University and Queen’s University Belfast to help preserve ancient rock art.

Its primary objective is to co-produce a user-friendly, non-intrusive Condition Assessment Risk Evaluation (CARE) toolkit for gathering and organizing information essential for the long-term safeguarding of ancient rock art that exists out in the open. Please see their Fact Sheet for more information.

The main outputs from the project will be created with the help, advice and support of heritage professionals, landowners and land agents, rock art enthusiasts and other interested parties. If you would like to be involved, please email us at heritagescience@ncl.ac.uk. Please also visit this Facebook page for British rock art.

An initial workshop will be held on 29 June in Northumberland, UK, for rock art enthusiasts. he end aim is to roll these materials out to the British Isles and beyond.

If you are interested in attending the workshop or if you wish to be kept in touch about project progress, please get in touch at heritagescience@ncl.ac.uk.

Anthro in the news 6/17/13

• Unexpected result in Iran’s presidential election

Presidential Election Map of Iran/Wikimedia Commons, Nima Farid.

For New America Media, William Beeman, professor of cultural and linguistic anthropology at the University of Minnesota, commented on the recent presidential election in Iran: “Much of what transpired in Iran during the presidential election on Friday, June 14 (Flag Day in the U.S.), won by Hassan Rowhani should be familiar to American citizens: A candidate replacing a term-limited president contrasting himself with a former conservative government, campaigning on social and human rights issues along with a promise for an improved economy, combined with a split vote for his opposition that assured his victory by less than a one per-cent margin. Echoes of the American election in 2012 and many earlier elections are clearly present in Iran in 2013. Apparently Iranian and American voters are more alike than either group realizes.”

• Paradoxical consequences of elections in Malaysia

In The Malaysia Chronicle, Clive Kessler analyzes the how, paradoxically, the election of a reduced Barisan Nasional presence and increased opposition numbers in parliament has amplified, not diminished, the power of the UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), specifically its power within the nation’s government and over the formation of national policy. He also examines the election campaign that yielded this paradoxical outcome. Kessler is emeritus professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of New South Wales.

• Studying abroad at home

Paula Hirschoff, two-time U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and M.A. in anthropology, published an article in The Chronicle for Higher Education on the value of student exchange programs within a country. She describes her positive experiences in a program which placed her in a traditionally black college in the U.S.

• Investigation of unmarked graves in Florida delayed

DNA testing begins to further unravel the mystery of the unmarked graves at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys./ Tampa Bay News

According to several sources, including The Tampa Bay News, a request to dig up remains at the controversial Dozier School For Boys in Marianna, Florida, has been put on hold. Researchers at the University of South Florida requested an archaeological permit from the state at the end of May to excavate. Through ground penetrating radar, researchers earlier discovered the remains of close to 50 boys buried in unmarked graves there. The State Archaeologist sent a letter to USF researchers asking for more information before making a decision on granting the permit. Families of those believed to be buried there are frustrated by the delay. Despite the permit delay, forensic experts from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office proceeded with the next step for families, taking DNA samples of three relatives. Researchers are hoping to match the DNA with the remains at the reform school. USF Archaeologist Erin Kimmerle said they will  review the questions from the state archaeologist next week. Once the answers are received, it will be at least another two weeks before a decision about the permit is made. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/17/13” →

Can we really stand on our own two feet?

By Sean Carey

Street side tailor in Bangkok. Many people around the world spend substantial time sitting/ Mark Fischer, Wikimedia Commons.

In his 1982 book Man, the Tottering Biped the South African-born anatomist and paleoanthropologist, Philip V Tobias (1925 – 2012), questioned the conventional wisdom, developed from Charles Darwin onwards, that standing in an upright stance on two feet freed our arms for tool making and tool using and marked a significant advance in human evolutionary history.

Tobias argued, instead, that the capacity to sit upright occurred long before the ability to stand on two feet and walk bipedally. Sitting upright, in his view, allowed our ancestors to develop a range of manual skills and with them the growth of a large brain.

Tobias made a further point about Homo sapiens’ achievement in standing upright:

“The way in which the body adjusted its structure and it bio-mechanics to the new way of uprightness and bipedalism may be described as little short of ingenious. Nonetheless, after perhaps four million years or more, we have not yet evolved a fault-free mechanism. Our bodies are still subject to what Sir Arthur Keith called the ills of uprightness. They include flat feet, slipped discs, hernias, prolapses and malposture. These maladies of uprightness account for much that keeps today’s orthopaedic surgeons busy. So the mechanism of man’s posture and gait, though resourceful and craftily contrived, is imperfect. The first human ancestors to come upright became heir to a host of new problems.”

That’s an impressive list but even so, it leaves out: plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinitis, ankle sprains, shin splints, fallen pelvic floors, hernias, sway back (lordosis), a sideways curvature of the spine (scoliosis), a rounded upper back or hunch back (kyphosis), and spontaneously fractured vertebrae.

No one would disagree that standing upright, the head poised on top of the spine, is a truly remarkable achievement. Many biological anthropologists, such as Craig Stanford of the University of Southern California, believe it is the key defining feature of Homo sapiens. As he says in his 2003 book Upright:

Feet are complicated. / Wikimedia Commons.

“Of the more than two hundred species of primates on earth today, one is bipedal. Of more than 4000 species of mammals, one – the same one – is fully bipedal when walking (a few oddities such as kangaroo rats and meerkats stand bipedally for a few moments at a time). If we include thousands more kinds of animals – such as amphibians and reptiles – walking on two feet emerges as the most unlikely way to get around. Kangaroos and birds such as ostriches and penguins are bipedal – sort of. But they are built on an entirely different body plan, and are not, strictly speaking, relying only on their legs for transport.”

Only the human primate, then, is able to come to a truly upright stance with fully extended knees and hips, that is without the bent leg joints found amongst bonobos and chimpanzees, our nearest relatives, and has the capacity to remain in that attitude for a significant amount of time.

Nevertheless, Tobias’s perspective on the problems of uprightness has plenty of contemporary supporters. “The human vertebral column is unique in its sinusoidal curvatures that allow the upper body to balance over the hips,” anatomist and physical anthropologist Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University recently argued at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). “Turning a spine originally adapted for a quadruped into one that is perpendicular to the ground has resulted in numerous problems that are unique to our species. If you take care of it, your spine will get you through to about 40 or 50. After that you are on your own.”  Continue reading “Can we really stand on our own two feet?” →

Anthro in the news 6/10/13

A badger at a rescue center. / Wikipedia Commons

• Badgers beware

National Geographic news covered the ongoing debate in Britain about the badger situation and whether or not to cull. The article quotes AW’s Sean Carey, a research fellow at the University of Roehampton’s Department of Social Science, said that the debate has some quintessentially British aspects to it. “To some extent, it’s a rerun of the fox-hunting debate, a split between town and country. The townie has a romanticized version of the badger, which has a privileged place in English literature. Mr. Badger in The Wind in the Willows is an outsider but has heroic qualities. The country farmer, on the other hand, prides himself on realism. It’s a case of ‘let’s get rid of the sentiment and get practical,'” he said. In the House of Commons, the Labour Party demand that badger culls be abandoned was rejected by a vote of 299 to 250.

Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer / Louis Sahagun, LA Times

• Paiute massacre site source of new disputes

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Indian oral histories and U.S. Cavalry records offer insights into a horrific massacre in 1863 when thirty-five Paiute Indians were chased into Owens Lake by settlers and soldiers to drown or be gunned down. California DPW (Department of Water and Power) archaeologists discovered the site a year ago, but its existence was not revealed to prevent vandalism. A dispute has arisen between the DWP and air pollution authorities is forcing it into the open. The site is on a section of the lake bed that state air pollution authorities say contributes to dust storms that create a public health hazard. The site also involves Indian heritage protection. Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation is quoted as saying: “Just over there, 150 years ago, our people ran into the water and then were picked off…We take this personally — my grandmother told me about this massacre and she knew the people it happened to…This ground, and the artifacts in it, is who we are.” She wants the land to be left undisturbed.

• Very old canoes

Ancient Britons made hundreds of thousands of dugout canoes, archaeologists now believe. Analysis of a key long-buried ancient river channel in Cambridgeshire suggests that canoes, made of tree trunks, were the basic transport in prehistoric times. Archaeologists and conservators are attempting to save eight of canoes in a specially designed cold store conservation facility at a Bronze Age site and museum at Flag Fen near Peterborough. The boats date from 1600 to 1000 BCE.

• Early immigrants to Bronze Age Britain

According to a report in The Telegraph, archaeologists analyzing findings from burial pits in Suffolk have found that immigrants were settling in Britain as far back as 3,000 years ago. Immigrants at that time came from Scandinavia, the western Mediterranean, and  North Africa. Findings are published in British Archaeology. Mike Pitts, the editor, said: “This is the first burial site of its type that we’ve found and it reveals that Britain was always part of a bigger landscape that includes most of Europe.”

• Lost and found: Sunken city in the Mediterranean

The Australian, among other mainstream media outlets, carried an article about  an Egyptian city, swallowed by sand and sea more than 1,200 years ago. Elsbeth van der Wilt, a University of Oxford archaeologist working at the site, said the port played an important role in the network of long-distance trade in the Eastern Mediterranean and would have been among the first stops for foreign merchants arriving in Egypt: “Excavations in the harbour basins yielded an interesting group of lead weights, likely to have been used by both temple officials and merchants in the payment of taxes and the purchasing of goods. Among these are an important group of Athenian weights. It is the first time that weights like these have been identified during excavations in Egypt.” The article includes a video.

Scientists have raised concern about the health effects of the smoke released from burning wood. / Wikimedia Commons

• First case of very old case of cancer

The finding of a cancerous tumor in the rib of a Neanderthal specimen predates previous evidence of such a tumor over 100,000 years. Prior to this research, the earliest known bone cancers occurred in samples approximately 1,000-4,000 years old. The cancerous rib, recovered from Krapina in Croatia, is an incomplete specimen, and thus the researchers were unable to comment on the overall health effects the tumor may have had on this individual. Findings are published in PLoS One by David Frayer from the University of Kansas and co-researchers. Science Daily quotes Frayer as saying that “Evidence for cancer is extremely rare in the human fossil record. This case shows that Neandertals, living in an unpolluted environment, were susceptible to the same kind of cancer as living humans.” However, in an interview with CBS news, he clarifies that Neanderthals did not always live in a completely clean air environment: “They didn’t have pesticides, but they probably were sleeping in caves with burning fires…They were probably inhaling a lot of smoke from the caves. So the air was not completely free of pollutants — but certainly, these Neanderthals weren’t smoking cigarettes.”

• Let them eat grass

The Republic and Science Daily discussed a new study showing a major change in the diet of African hominids about 3.5 million years ago when some ancestors added grasses or sedges to their menus. Tests on tooth enamel indicate that prior to about 4 million years ago, Africa’s hominids had a chimpanzee diet that included fruits and some leaves. According to CU-Boulder anthropology professor Matt Sponheimer, lead study author, despite the availability of grasses and sedges, the hominids seem to have ignored them for an extended period: “We don’t know exactly what happened…But we do know that after about 3.5 million years ago, some of these hominids started to eat things that they did not eat before, and it is quite possible that these changes in diet were an important step in becoming human.” Findings are published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences along with three related papers.

GW event on health in Mongolia

Innovations in Health: A Discussion on MCC’s Investments in Fighting NCDIs in Mongolia

When: Thursday, June 6, 2013, 2:00 – 3:30 PM

Where: Marvin Center 433, GW (800 21st NW)

MCC’s nearly $40 million Health Project in Mongolia aims to address the high and growing incidence of non-communicable diseases and injuries (NCDIs). Through the project, MCC has invested in training and educational support, promoting policy changes, and provision of equipment and supplies to health facilities throughout Mongolia’s 21 provinces.

Join panelists for a discussion on the Health Project’s partnerships and innovations. Speakers include:

Ms. Batsaikhan Bolormaa, Counselor for Economic Affairs, Embassy of Mongolia

Dr. A. Munkhtaivan, MCA-Mongolia Health Project Director

Dr. James M. Sherry, Professor of Global Health and International Affairs, The George Washington University

Dr. Silvija Staprans, Director of Medical Affairs, Strategic Partnerships & Stakeholder Engagement, Merck.

Co-sponsored by GW’s Center for Global Health and Development, the Elliott School’s Institute for Global and International Studies, and the Millennium Challenge Corporation

Anthro in the news 6/3/13

• Unhappy 40th anniversary

 

Map of Chagos Archipelago/Wikipedia Commons

David Vine, cultural anthropology professor at American University, published an article in The Huffington Post remarking on the painful 40th anniversary of the final deportations of Chagossians from their homeland in the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Archipelago in order to build a secretive military base on Chagos’s largest island, Diego Garcia. He writes: “Over a weekend of memorials, I was remembering a friend who died of a broken heart. Her death certificate may not say so, but she did. Aurélie Lisette Talate died last year at 70 of what members of her community call, in their creole language, sagren–profound sorrow… Madame Talate died of sagren because the U.S. and British governments exiled her and  the rest of her Chagossian people from their homeland…”  And, further: “In those same forty years, the base on British-controlled Diego Garcia helped launch the Afghan and Iraq wars and was part of the CIA’s secret ‘rendition’ program for captured terrorist suspects.”

• Paul Farmer: it’s not innovative to help the poor

WGBH radio interviewed medical anthropologist and humanitarian advocate Paul Farmer of Harvard University. In speaking about Partners in Health, which has moved many, including former President Bill Clinton, to call Partners in Health’s methodology innovative, is quoted as saying: “The idea that it’s somehow innovative to serve the poor is kind of sad, right? Because it’s not a new idea.”

Map of Karnataka

• Research Institute in India launches student fieldwork program

The Karnataka State Tribal Research Institute in southern India will recruit 50 to 100 anthropology students every year to conduct studies on the education, economics and health of tribals, besides their society and lifestyle, throughout the State. The Institute was set up in Mysore in 2011. It is undertaking research, evaluation and training activities, besides organizing seminars and producing documentaries. The students will receive training and monthly salary.

The Gerzeh bead has nickel-rich areas that indicate a meteoritic origin/ OPEN UNIV./UNIV. MANCHESTER (Nature)

• Jewels from the sky

Fox News carried an article about an ancient Egyptian iron bead found inside a 5,000-year-old tomb that was crafted from a meteorite. In an article in Nature, researchers say the bead has a Widmansttten pattern, a distinctive crystal structure found only in meteorites that cooled at an extremely slow rate inside asteroids when the solar system was forming. Further investigation showed that the bead was not molded under heat, but rather hammered into shape by cold-working: “Today, we see iron first and foremost as a practical, rather dull metal,” study researcher Joyce Tyldesley, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester…”To the ancient Egyptians, however, it was a rare and beautiful material which, as it fell from the sky, surely had some magical/religious properties.”  Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/3/13” →

Call for papers in applied anthropology

The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA) invites abstracts (sessions, papers and posters) for the Program of the 74th Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, NM, March 18-22, 2014. The theme of the Program is “Destinations.”

We welcome papers from all disciplines. The deadline for abstract submission is October 15, 2013. For additional information on the theme, abstract size/format, and the meeting, please visit our web page (www.sfaa.net, click on “Annual Meeting”).

For meeting information visit http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2014.html

Book note: Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico

Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico by Vania Smith-Oka. Vanderbilt University Press, 2013.

Shaping the Motherhood of Indigenous Mexico book cover
Vanderbilt University Press
Mainstream Mexican views of indigenous women define them as problematic mothers. Development programs have included the goal of helping these women become “good mothers.” Economic incentives and conditional cash transfers are the vehicles for achieving this goal.

This book examines the dynamics among the various players – indigenous mothers, clinicians, and representatives of development programs. The women’s voices lead the reader to understand the structures of dependency that paradoxically bind indigenous women within a program that calls for their empowerment. The cash transfer program is Oportunidades, which enrolls more than a fifth of Mexico’s population. It expects mothers to become involved in their children’s lives at three nodes–health, nutrition, and education. If women do not comply with the standards of modern motherhood, they are dropped from the program and lose the bi-monthly cash payments.

Smith-Oka explores the everyday implementation of the program and its unintended consequences. The mothers are often berated by clinicians for having too many children (Smith-Oka provides background on the history of eugenics and population control in Mexico) and for other examples of their “backward” ways. One chapter focuses on the humor indigenous women use to cope with disrespectful comments. Ironically, this form of resistance allows the women to accept the situation that controls their behavior.