On science, conscience, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences

Upon the recent appointment of anthropologist/sociobiologist Napoleon Chagnon to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, longstanding member, Marshall Sahlins of the University of Chicago, resigned in protest on February 23. An article in CounterPunch by cultural anthropologist David Price includes an interchange with Sahlins about his views on Chagnon’s research and the NAS. The article clarifies the distortion that has long surrounded the critique of Chagnon’s interactions with the Yanomamö and his publications, notably his assertions of a reproductive/ adaptive advantage to male violence and that male violence is innate and “natural.” The critique is not “anti-science” but instead is about bad science and harmful science that is a discredit to an ethical pursuit of knowledge.

As Price comments, “We are left to wonder what is to become of science, whether practiced with a capital (at times blind) “S” or a lower case inquisitive variety, when those questioning some its practices, misapplications and outcomes are increasingly marginalized, while those whose findings align with our broader cultural values of warfare are embraced. The NAS’s rallying around such a divisive figure as Chagnon, demonizing his critics, claiming they are attacking not his practices and theories, but science itself damages the credibility of these scientists. It is unfortunate that the National Academy of Sciences has backed itself into this corner.”

Upcoming event at GW on gender and migration

Migrant Care Work from Two Sides: Care Work in the U.S. and Families Care Workers Leave Behind

When: Wednesday, March 20, 5:00pm-7:00pm
Where: 1957 E Street NW, 5^th Floor, Room 505

Open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.
Please RSVP at http://bit.ly/WNoKYn

The Global Gender Program (GGP) at the Elliott School for International Affairs is pleased to announce its first-year Spring Roundtable panel, which is devoted to gender issues in migration and international development. It aims at bringing together scholars, researchers, practitioners, students, and activists to educate the public on the intersections between gender, migration, international development, economics, race, ethnicity, social class, and religion across disciplines. A discussion will follow with questions and answers from the audience.

Panelists will include:

Sonya Michel, professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park, is a founding co-editor of the journal Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, published by Oxford UP. Her research interests include migrant women and care provision in the developing and developed worlds.
Helma Lutz, professor of sociology and chair of Women and Gender Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. She currently holds a research fellow position at the Woodrow Wilson Center, in Washington, DC. Her research interests include gender, migration, “care crisis,” and “care migration.”
Tunde Turai completed her PhD at Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest. She is a researcher at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Ethnographic Institute. She also teaches at the International Student Program of the Corvinus University. She is currently a Fulbright Exchange Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Her research interests include the care system and the social and economic constraints of the sending communities.
Gabrielle Oliveira, PhD student in Anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. Her area of interest includes migration, transnational motherhood and care networks between New York and Mexico.
Robin Shaffert holds a Law degree from University of Michigan. She is a Policy Director at Caring Across Generations. Ms. Shaffert has extensive experience in employment law and disability rights issues.

The Roundtable will be moderated by:

Natacha Stevanovic-Fenn holds a PhD in sociology from Columbia University. Her area of interests includes migration, remittances, international development, gender and culture. She currently teaches a class on Migration, Gender, and International Development at the Elliott School for International Affairs, in the GGP.

This event is sponsored by George Washington University’s Global Gender Program which is part of the Elliott School’s Institute for Global and International Studies

Anthro in the news 3/11/13

• On gender equality in Cuba

A report on the status of women in Cuba, “Women’s Work: Gender Equality in Cuba and the Role of Women Building Cuba’s Future,” credits the leaders of the revolution with mandating and enforcing rules and laws guaranteeing gender equality and women’s rights, which have made Cuba among the highest-ranking nations in the advancement of women.

An article in The New York Times discussing the report quotes María Ileana Faguaga Iglesias, a Cuban cultural anthropologist and historian who argues that the story of Cuba’s progress toward gender equality is overstated. She expressed the frustration of highly educated women: ”We have to distinguish that access to university studies does not necessarily give us power … What’s more, to be in positions that are supposedly positions of power does not necessarily permit the exercise of power.”

Still, Cuba ranks high in international surveys on women. The World Economic Forum’s 2012 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Cuba 19th among 135 countries, up one notch from 2011, one of only two Latin American nations in the top 20 (Nicaragua ranked ninth). By comparison, the United States fell to 22 from 17 in the survey, which measured the health, literacy, economic status and political participation of women.

• Women on Wall Street

In an interview on the Bill Moyers report, cultural anthropologist Melissa Fisher comments that women could not have entered the U.S. professional workforce in significant numbers without the liberal feminist movement’s insistence on the opening up of formerly male bastions, such as finance. In her book Wall Street Women, Fisher charts the evolution of the first generation of career women on Wall Street. She is a cultural anthropologist and visiting scholar in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/11/13” →

Upcoming event: The Social Dimensions of Resilience

The Environmental Change and Security Program will host The Social Dimensions of Resilience at the Wilson Center on:

Monday, March 18, 2013
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
5th Floor Conference Room

Featuring: Roger-Mark De Souza
Vice President of Research and Director of the Climate Program, Population Action International

Elizabeth Malone
Senior Research Scientist, Joint Global Change Research Institute

Betty Hearn Morrow
Professor Emeritus, Florida International University
Moderator: Laurie Mazur
Author, ECSP Consultant

RSVP Here

From the Haitian earthquake to Superstorm Sandy, recent years have presented many “teachable moments” about the need for greater resilience in the face of disaster. To date, much of the conversation on resilience has focused on making infrastructure more robust—by, for example, building seawalls to protect against storm surges. But resilience has social dimensions that are at least as important. Social factors largely determine the extent to which people and communities respond to and recover from changes in the environment, whether gradual (such as climate change) or more abrupt (such as hurricanes). This panel will explore the social dimensions of resilience, including the role of equity–especially gender equity–and inclusive governance. Panelists will present research and initiatives that link reproductive health to climate adaptation, and showcase current projects in Malawi, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and the Caribbean that take a holistic approach to cultivating resilience.

Location: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. (“Federal Triangle” stop on Blue/Orange Line). A map to the Center is available at WilsonCenter.org/directions. Note: Photo identification is required. Please allow additional time to pass through security.

Ed Liebow speaking at WAPA meeting on March 5

Ed Liebow, Executive Director, American Anthropological Association, will speak on “Crafting a Long-Range Plan for the Association’s Future” on Tuesday, March 5, 7pm, at the Charles Sumner School, Washington, DC. Liebow is the new Executive Director of the AAA. Charles Sumner School is located at 1201 17th St NW (corner of 17th St and M St NW). The entrance to the meeting area is on 17th St under the black metal stairway. Directions from Metro Red Line: From Farragut North station, take either L St exit, walk one block east to 17th St, turn left and walk 2 blocks north. Enter the building through the double doors under the black metal staircase. Meeting room Rotating Gallery G-4 (ground floor). Pre-meeting: Beacon Bar & Grill (one block north of Sumner School), 1615 Rhode Island Ave NW. Directions from Metro Red Line Farragut North station: take either L St exit, walk one block east to 17th St, turn left and walk 3 blocks north (one block past Sumner School). All are welcome.

You can now sign up for WAPA’s Google discussion group right from WAPA’s home page. Participants can communicate directly with each other about events, publications, and other information of interest to practicing anthropologists. Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up.

Anthro in the news 3/4/13

• Economic anthropologists sought to enrich poor numbers

According to a book review in The Financial Times, “A tendency to issue doubtful data is rooted in colonial days and still creates problems for the [African] continent, according to an important study: Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled By African Development Statistics and What To Do About It, by Morten Jerven. The review goes on: “There are lies, damned lies and then there are African statistics. If economic figures everywhere are a work in progress — regularly rebased and updated to take into account fresh data — those from Africa are the most open to question and the most unreliable in their revision.”

Morten Jerven Poor Numbers — Credit: Cornell University Press

The reviewer considers Poor Numbers to be an important contribution to the subject. Morten Jerven, an assistant professor at the school for international studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, builds the case for renewed scrutiny. Pointing to “huge discrepancies and alarming gaps” in African figures, he writes: “Datasets are like guns. Someone will use them if they are left lying around.”

And, further [and now we are getting to the connection with anthropology], Jerven calls for a focus on strengthened national statistical capacity, the use of “economic anthropologists,” and greater transparency on the underlying assumptions and weaknesses of existing data.

As Jerven rightly concludes: “Numbers are too important to be ignored, and the problems surrounding the production and dissemination of numbers are too serious to be dismissed.”

• The real news in anthropology is not about Chagnon

In the Huffington Post, Paul Stoller, professor of anthropology at West Chester University, comments on the latest “flare up” in the news surrounding Napoleon Chagnon‘s memoir, Noble Savages (and see below in this aitn). He states: “In the sweep of time, though, Chagnon’s work is but a blip on the screen. In the nanosecond reality of the media universe, Chagnon’s ideas and struggles will quickly revert back to what they are: ‘very old news.’ The real news…is the ongoing work on structures of poverty and social inequality, work that exposes how contemporary economic practices trigger widespread real world suffering. That scholarship produces results that are politically threatening to men like Rick Scott, Scott Walker and Rick Perry. That’s why they’re slashing higher education budgets. What better way to undermine anthropology, sociology, and the humanities and protect their economic and political interests?”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/4/13” →

Live chat this Wednesday about World Bank gender norms study

Gender Report Cover Patti Petsch, consultant with the World Bank, invites you to her blog and a live chat on Wednesday, March 6, 11:00 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time).

The chat will be about a recent report on gender norms and social development.

World Bank Vice President Rachel Kyte and Jeni Klugman, director of gender and development at The World Bank, will join in.

Please join the chat and ask questions.

You can also submit questions in advance.

Preventing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations

A November 2012 conference at Wilton Park, England, addressed “Preventing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.” Key points from the conference are provided in a report that concluded:

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams speaks at a 9/25/12 event. Credit: UN Women Gallery

“Preventing sexual violence in conflict and challenging the culture of impunity is a global responsibility and is vital to building sustainable peace. There is increased international momentum, appetite and ambition to address this issue and end the scourge. The Foreign Secretary, in his keynote address outlined the UK government’s approach; stating that the approach will be: ‘increasing our support to UN efforts, raising the profile of the need to confront sexual violence in conflict in every way we can, and proposing new action that we hope will be adopted by many nations in a new collective effort for our generation.’ The Foreign Secretary affirmed; the need for justice to be viewed in its fullest sense and for the sexual violence agenda to be part of a broader effort to empower women through women’s rights, participation and education. In conclusion, to advance the preventing sexual violence in conflict agenda requires; better coordination between the humanitarian, development and security sector; national ownership and a shift in the balance of shame from survivors to the perpetrators.”

The Elliott School’s Global Gender Program is committed to promoting research, teaching, and engagement to build sustainable peace and prevent sexual violence. Please join us for our celebration of International Women’s Day on Monday, March 4 when speakers from around the world will join Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams in advancing peace and gender equality.

Ainu food on offer in Tokyo restaurant

Thanks to RocketNews (“yesterday’s news from Japan and Asia today”), readers can learn about Ainu indigenous food, at least as it is provided at Tokyo’s only Ainu restaurant. Great photos are included showing dishes such as rataskep, ohaw, and mefun. The author’s favorite is kampoca rataskep (pictured here), made with sweet Japanese squash: “It’s like having all the sweetness of nature melt on your tongue! But the flavor is balanced with roasted pine nuts and some medicinal plants in the rue family.” Enjoy!

Jody Williams: Nobel Peace Prize laureate, activist, and author

The 10th woman in the world to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Jody Williams has recently published her memoir, My Name Is Jody Williams: A Vermont Girl’s Winding Path to the Nobel Peace Prize.

As Eve Ensler says in her foreword to this book, “Jody Williams is many things — a simple girl from Vermont, a sister of a disabled brother, a loving wife, an intense character full of fury and mischief, a great strategist, an excellent organizer, a brave and relentless advocate, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. But to me Jody Williams is, first and foremost, an activist.”

From her modest beginnings to becoming the 10th woman — and third American woman — to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Jody Williams takes the reader through the ups and downs of her tumultuous and remarkable life.

In a voice that is at once candid, straightforward, and intimate, Williams describes her Catholic roots, her first step on a long road to standing up to bullies with the defense of her deaf brother Stephen, her transformation from good girl to college hippie at the University of Vermont, and her protest of the war in Vietnam. She relates how, in 1981, she began her lifelong dedication to global activism as she battled to stop the U.S.-backed war in El Salvador.

Jody Williams at GW: She will deliver the keynote lecture at GW on Monday, March 4, at 10 a.m., for the Global Gender Program’s celebration of International Women’s Day. She will address the role of civil society in preventing violence against women.