• On the varieties of marriage

Amidst ongoing debates and discussion in the U.S. about same-sex marriage, Rosemary Joyce, a professor of archaeology at UC Berkeley, published an article in Psychology Today summarizing exchanges in the past week at the Supreme Court hearings on California’s Proposition 8. She provides insights from anthropology about the many varieties of marriage and family found cross-culturally and  quotes from a 2004 statement from  the American Anthropological Association: “The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.”

• The social history of an Indianapolis neighborhood

Cultural anthropology students at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis recently participated in a research project to collect oral histories, photographs, and other memorabilia from what was once one of the most multi-ethnic neighborhoods in Indianapolis. They not only documented the area’s history, but they also brought former residents of the community back together. A book based on the project, The Neighborhood of Saturdays: Memories of a Multi-Ethnic Community on Indianapolis’ Southside, describes how African-Americans and Jews once lived together, sharing physical space and friendship. Their ties remained, despite the forces that scattered them including upward mobility in the postwar period and the construction of an interstate. For the last 38 years, 200 to 300 former residents of the community, with their families and friends, have gathered every year in August. The book covers the period from the 1920s to the early 1970s. The University has also established a digital collection of photographs in its library.

• If you don’t believe in fairies…how about termites?

But if you must cleave to science, then there are always termites to explain wondrous happenings such as thousands of circles, some smaller and some larger, thousands of them, found in a stretch of desert from Angola through Namibia into northern South Africa. According to an article in The New York Times, “To the Himba people who live in the region, however, there is nothing to explain. That’s just how it is, they tell anthropologists; the circles were made by their  ‘original ancestor, Mukuru.'” New research suggests that the fairy circles are engineered by a species of sand termites.  In an article in the journal Science, Norbert Juergens, a professor of ecology at the University of Hamburg, said these termites ”match the beaver with regard to intensity of environmental change, but surpass it with regard to the spatial dimension of their impact.” David P. Crandall, an anthropology professor at Brigham Young University in Utah who has studied the Himba people closely since 1990, said the fairy circles ”are a strange and interesting phenomenon” that is vital to their sparse population spread over an area about half the size of Arizona. Even though the people appear to have little curiosity about why the circles are there, they depend on the grasses around them to graze their cattle, goats and sheep. The Himba sometimes put the barren spots to new uses. Examining some Google maps, Juergens was puzzled by what appeared to be black margins to the circles in some pictures. Going to the sites, he found that the Himba had erected temporary wooden fences to hold cattle overnight.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/1/13” →

• Genocide trial in Guatemala

An extensive article in The New York Times described how Guatemala’s justice system is changing: ” In a show of political will, prosecutors are taking long-dormant human rights cases to court, armed with evidence that victims and their advocates have painstakingly compiled over more than a decade — as much to bear witness as to bring judgment.”  Early on, victims were afraid to speak out, but the United Nations truth commission helped to break that silence. Evidence emerged from the work of forensic anthropologists who have been exhuming the bodies for 20 years. Fredy Peccerelli, the head of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation is quoted as saying: “This is terror…This is a strategy to make sure that anyone and everyone who is opposed to you is afraid of you; not only now, is afraid of you forever.” Peccerelli will testify at the upcoming genocide trial.

• Follow the cheese

The Boston Globe carried an article about the research of Heather Paxson, an anthropology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her recent book, The Life of Cheese.  Exploring the modern American artisan cheesemakers, “the book profiles people who make cheese and delves into the science, art, politics, and culture, as it were, of these artisan products.” Paxson is quoted as saying: “What attracts a lot of people to cheesemaking…is that it’s magical: the transubstantiation of fluid milk to solid food. A lot of people [I interviewed] described cheese’s liveliness and used developmental metaphors like ‘hitting puberty’ and‘maturity.’ They anthropomorphize the cheese.”

• Autism numbers up or not up?

Several media sources, including USA Today, covered a new study claiming substantial increases in the numbers of children in the United States with autism:  “Autism rates in the USA may be substantially higher than previously estimated, according to a new government report that found that one out of every 50 school-age children — roughly one on every school bus — have the condition. That’s dramatically higher than the one in 88 announced by a different agency last year.” Some experts say, however, that the higher numbers suggest that officials are getting better at counting children with autism. For example, “I don’t see any evidence that there’s a true increase in the prevalence of autism,” says Roy Richard Grinker, a professor of anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/25/13” →

• Going green for St. Patrick’s Day and more

Anthropologyworks’ Sean Carey published an article in The Guardian about going green for St. Patrick’s Day, March 17. He discussed the trend to turn buildings and sites green through lighting or dye including  Berlin’s TV Tower, Cape Town’s Table Mountain, the Citadel in Jordan, Dubai’s Burj al Arab, the Empire State Building, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Pyramids of Giza, the Sydney Opera House, and Niagara Falls. There was a request to the Queen that Buckingham Palace be turned green to mark the saint’s day (the answer was no). Tourism Ireland has recently discovered that royal bride and mother-to-be Kate Middleton has Irish ancestry: “We have an authenticated connection, with all the certificates and everything,” said Tourism Ireland’s chief executive Niall Gibbons. He promises to reveal details in the next few weeks.

• A less green note: Lessons from Chernobyl to Fukushima

Cultural anthropologist Sarah Phillips of the University of Indiana at Bloomington writes in CounterPunch: “The March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused the deaths of approximately 16,000 persons, left more than 6,000 injured and 2,713 missing, destroyed or partially damaged nearly one million buildings, and produced at least $14.5 billion in damages. The earthquake also caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan’s eastern coast. After reading the first news reports about what the Japanese call ‘3.11,’ I immediately drew associations between the accident in Fukushima and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 in what was then the Soviet Union…. I positioned the problem-riddled Chernobyl clean-up, evacuation, and reparation efforts as a foil, assuming that Japan would, in contrast, unroll a state-of-the-art nuclear disaster response for the modern age…surely a country like Japan that relies so heavily on nuclear-generated power has developed thorough, well-rehearsed, and tested responses to any potential nuclear emergency? Thus, I expected the inevitable comparisons between the world’s two worst nuclear accidents to yield more contrasts than parallels.” In fact, the author finds many parallels.

• What do you believe, and does it matter?

Tapestry is a radio feature of CBA Canada about modern spirituality. Its host Mary Hynes recently asked the question: What do you believe? A write-up of the program mentions Tanya Luhrmann, cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, and her recent book, When God Talks Back, Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. Hynes ackonwledges Lurhmann’s role in trying “to bridge the chasm between those who believe and those who find the concept of belief unfathomable…On the one side: those for whom belief is real, tangible and beyond question. On the other: those who regard belief with skepticism, hostility, confusion or bemusement. So, go ahead and ponder the question, ‘What do you believe?’ But spare a thought, too, for its corollary: Does it matter?”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/18/13” →