Arlington National Cemetery, U.S. Photo courtesy of National Park Service
Just published: findings on “Long-Term Impact of War on Healthcare Costs” from an eight-country comparative study. No surprises. War hurts and war costs. I think we can safely assume that the impact of war on healthcare costs also indicates long-term impact of war on people’s very health in the first place.
But that’s too simple a conclusion to need stating. Or maybe it isn’t so simple. Since in some cases, a “good” war that pre-empts mass murder and genocide, launched at the right time, could prevent death and suffering in the short-term and the long-term.
According to an article in The Huffington Post by Jim Yong Kim, “One bit of bad news for millions of Americans during the Super Bowl was that chicken wings were suddenly more expensive. The cause, in part, was the U.S. drought last summer. The drought was the most widespread in more than 50 years, and it drove up the cost of chicken feed. In all, 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded in the United States. The bad news for the 850 million undernourished people around the world is that erratic weather is affecting food production globally. High and volatile food prices have become the new normal, and more and more extreme weather events are partly to blame. Climate trends have already affected food production around the world, driving up prices for everything from bread and tortillas to chicken wings.” Kim is president of the World Bank, a medical doctor, and cultural anthropologist.
• Take care of this land
Dame Anne Salmond
Dame Anne Salmond published an op-ed in The New Zealand Herald, entitled “Let’s Look after Our Beautiful Land.” She writes, “Around the world, consumers are demanding that food, wine and timber are sustainably produced…But at home, domestic policies that head in the opposite direction put both at imminent risk. The Resource Management Act, for example, is being reviewed to weaken rather than strengthen environmental standards. The Department of Conservation is being eviscerated. The global Forestry Stewardship Council standards for sustainable production of timber are being flouted, with officials turning a blind eye. The Land and Water Forum, which aimed to agree on higher water-quality standards, has been hijacked.No wonder the integrity of our “clean, green” reputation is being assailed by news forums around the world. Expect much more of this in future…Industry, national and regional government and ordinary Kiwis need to link arms, get behind our 100 per cent Pure New Zealand brand and make it real. This is where we need some big ideas…” Dame Anne Salmond is a distinguished professor of Maori studies and anthropology, University of Auckland. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/11/13”→
Marking the 20th anniversary of the Lavender Language Conference, the program will feature an array of special events celebrating two decades of scholarship and activism in LGBTQ languages and linguistics.
Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference at American University
Dates: Friday, February 15 through Sunday, February 17
Location: 6th Floor, Butler Pavilion, 4410 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC
To register, visit the American University website.
See also the best cultural anthropology dissertations of 2011, 2010, and 2009.
Again, this year, I did a key term search in Dissertation Abstracts International to find dissertations completed in 2012 that address topics related to the anthropologyworks mission and heart.
Trophies. Flickr/Snap®
I searched for anthropology dissertations related to human rights, justice, migration, gender, health, violence, conflict, environment, and energy. As someone commented last year, this post could be called “Best cultural anthropology dissertation abstracts” since I do not read every dissertation listed. It’s true — I choose my favorites on the basis of their abstracts, assuming that an abstract does have something to do with the body of the dissertation.
So, here are my 64 picks for 2012: cultural anthropology dissertations, mainly in the U.S., that address issues that I think are really important. I am sorry that I cannot provide a more global list, since so many excellent and important dissertations are written outside the U.S./Canada. Maybe others will address this gap?
All the best to my readers, and Happy New Year 2013!
Living in Limbo with Hope: The Case of Sudanese refugees in Cairo, by Gamal Adam. York University. Advisor Daniel A. Yon. This dissertation, about Sudanese refugees in Cairo, highlights the resilience and hope that distinguish refugees’ lives. The research has resulted in three key findings. First, the refugees have adopted a resource pooling strategy, which includes living in larger households, exempting the newcomers from rent and purchase of food for some time, and ensuring that the individuals who have more resources contribute more. Second, the traditional gender roles have changed and in some cases reversed, many spouses have separated, and children have lost the rights of play and education. Third, refugees are hopeful in celebrating events and setting plans for a better future despite the turbulent experiences they have gone through; most of them are resilient people who encourage each other and are rejuvenated by speeches delivered during various events which they celebrate.
Documenting and Contextualizing Pjiekakjoo (Tlahuica) Knowledges through a Collaborative Research Project, by Elda Miriam Aldasoro Maya. University of Washington. Advisors: Eugene Hunn and Stevan Harrell. People in Pjiekakjoo (Tlahuica), Mexico, have managed to adapt to the globalized world. They have developed a deep knowledge-practice-belief system, Contemporary Indigenous Knowledges (CIK), that is part of the biocultural diversity of the region in which they live. I describe the economic, social and political context of the Pjiekakjoo, to contextualize the Pjiekakjoo CIK, including information on their land tenure struggles, their fight against illegal logging and policies governing the Zempoala Lagoons National Park that is part of their territory. The collaborative research is influenced by the ideas of Paolo Freire and, as a translational work, it draws on the New Rationality proposed by Boaventura De Sousa Santos that appeals for cognitive justice.
Career Women in Contemporary Japan: Pursuing Identities, Fashioning Lives, by Anne Stefanie Aronsson. Yale University. Advisor William Wright Kelly. This dissertation explores what motivates Japanese women to pursue professional careers in today’s neoliberal economy and how they reconfigure notions of selfhood while doing so. I ask why and how it is that one-fourth of women stay on a career track, often against considerable odds, while the other three-fourths drop out of the workforce. I draw from interviews gathered during fieldwork in Tokyo between 2007 and 2010 with 120 professional women ranging in age from early twenties to mid-nineties. I organize these interviews along two main axes: the generation when each woman entered the workforce, and the work sector she entered. I look at five work sectors – finance, industry, entrepreneurship, government, and academia – that attract women because of the new career prospects that emerge as the sectors’ institutional policies change.
“If ih noh beat mi, ih noh lov mi” [If he doesn’t beat me, he doesn’t love me]: An ethnographic investigation of intimate partner violence in western Belize, by Melissa A. Beske. Tulane University, advisor Shansan Du. I examine the cultural underpinnings which normalize gender-based intimate partner violence (IPV) in western Belize and efforts of local activists to diminish the problem. I use multiple methods to investigate why women in heterosexual dyads have come to begrudgingly accept or even justify abuse by their male partners with discourses that conflate “love” and “violence.” Joining forces with former NGO colleagues, I initiated a sustainable survivor assistance program. Continuing to incorporate new members since my time in the field, the group now offers occupational and educational assistance to survivors leaving abusive relationships, and the shelter has expanded as well and thus remains a vital resource for women across Belize and surrounding countries.
Infected Kin: AIDS, Orphan Care and the Family in Lesotho, by Mary Ellen Block. University of Michigan, Advisor: Elisha Renne. This interdisciplinary dissertation in anthropology and social work examines the intersections of HIV/AIDS and kinship and its impact on orphan care and the family in rural Lesotho. It is based on fieldwork in the rural district of Mokhotlong, Lesotho. I find that HIV is a fundamentally a kinship disease and therefore: interventions for AIDS orphans need to include caregiver support; the household should be considered as a salient unit of analysis, evaluation and intervention; and biomedical or biocultural interventions for HIV/AIDS that need to incorporate the underlying theoretical framework of HIV as a kinship disease in order to be effective.
To label Paul Farmer as a practitioner or theorist of any one field would be a disservice to the multi-faceted nature of his commentary and points of view. A self-described physician and medical anthropologist by training (Farmer 2001 [1999], 2005), Farmer’s career experiences highlight his other important roles as an academic, humanitarian activist, diplomat, and voice of the poor. Evidence of each can be found when tracing the development of Farmer’s theories through analysis of selected works published since the 1990s. Depending on the function and audience of the work, and its place in his timeline of experience, each book highlights different concepts, practices, and forms of theory.
Paul Farmer/Wikipedia
The categorization of Farmer’s writings into early, middle, and late periods helps to demonstrate the development and evolution of his core theories, how they build on each other, and how their progression is affected by each of his varied perspectives and audiences.
Analysis of selected works by Farmer traces the development of his main theories and arguments as they build on each other over time. Over the last two decades, Farmer’s central theories have evolved from studies of social suffering to practical analysis of political, social, and economic inequality and structural violence, and to pragmatic solidarity and the provision of tools of agency and targeted solutions to suffering stemming from tuberculosis (TB), HIV/AIDS, and poverty. The use of ethnography, local and international history, and the practice of actively bearing witness to violations of health as a human right facilitate what has become a collective, comprehensive approach and body of theory associated with Farmer. Consideration of his central concepts, writing style, and practical experiences serves to demonstrate how his unique approach came to be associated with the household name he is today.
Western Carolina University in Collowhee, North Carolina, invites applications for a visiting assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology with a specialization in environmental anthropology, beginning August, 2013. Applicants should have a PhD in Anthropology (in hand by time of appointment) from an appropriately accredited institution. The successful candidate will have ethnographic experience and will be qualified to teach an upper-level course in environmental anthropology as well as other courses focused on their regional or topical interests. Application details are available here.
In an op-ed in The New York Times, Kamari Maxine Clarke, professor of cultural anthropology at Yale University, argues that violence in Africa is rooted in greed, related to contested and highly desired natural resources, and corporate greed should be considered a war crime:
Gold dollar symbol/Wikipedia
“Violence in Africa begins with greed — the discovery and extraction of natural resources like oil diamonds and gas — and continues to be fed by struggles for control of energy, minerals, food and other commodities. The court needs the power to punish those who profit from those struggles. So do other judicial forums.
At a summit meeting here last week, leaders of the African Union proposed expanding the criminal jurisdiction of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to include corporate criminal liability for the illicit exploitation of natural resources, trafficking in hazardous wastes and other offenses.”
• Legal decision in Guatemala that genocide is genocide
According to an article in The New York Times, a Guatemalan judge ordered Efraín Rios Montt, the former dictator, and his intelligence chief to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with the massacres of highland Maya villagers three decades ago.
President Otto Pérez Molina, a former general, says he does not believe that the killings during the war amounted to genocide. A UN truth commission determined that the military had carried out “acts of genocide,” including in the Maya-Ixil villages during the war, in which 200,000 people died. As a legislator until last January, Mr. Rios Montt was protected from prosecution. Prosecutors filed charges when his term expired, but his lawyers’ appeals delayed the case.
Guatemala/CIA World Factbook
Scholars of Guatemala said that a number of factors combined to get the case to court, including the tenacity of the attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, and successful efforts to appoint more independent judges.
Victoria Sanford, an anthropology professor at the City University of New York who has written about Guatemala’s civil war, is quoted as saying: ”For Rios Montt to be tried breaks the wall of impunity … It says genocide is genocide and it is punishable by law.”
As context, the article points out: The National Football League brought in more than $9 billion in revenue in 2012, and tickets to its showcase event, this weekend’s Super Bowl, range from $850 to $1,250, and even more trough the online resale market. Meanwhile, corporations advertising on Sunday’s game paid a record $3.8 million (U.S.) for a 30-second slot. The NFL is the undisputed king of cash among North American pro sports.
Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, 2006/Wikipedia
But as the money piles up, so do lawsuits and workers compensation claims filed against the league and its teams by former players, who say they suffered irreversible brain injuries while playing in the NFL, and that the league and its teams never informed them about the lasting effects of football’s repeated head trauma.
Duke University cultural anthropology professor Orin Starn wonders if the legal action will lead to similar efforts to raise awareness among football players and fans: “Football is in the same situation; they’ve got a product that’s hazardous to your health,” says Starn, who specializes in the anthropology of sport. “It should come with a warning label stamped on the helmet. America is in massive denial about the blood cost of football.”
Welcome to the new quarterly electronic newsletter from the Society for Medical Anthropology: Second Opinion: News and Ideas. The first issue features details on a joint international conference with a thematic focus on “encounters and engagements” in Tarragona, Spain, recent awards and achievements of SMA members, and a new anthropology and medical health interest group.
• “Invisible cultural anthropologist” Jim Kim in the news
Anthro in the news picked up on two mentions of Jim Kim, medical anthropologist, physician, humanitarian development expert, and current president of the World Bank.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim/Moritz Hager, Wikipedia
First, his op-ed, “Make Climate Change a Priority,” appeared in the Washington Post opinion section in which he wrote: “As economic leaders gathered in Davos this week for the World Economic Forum, much of the conversation was about finances. But climate change should also be at the top of our agendas, because global warming imperils all of the development gains we have made. If there is no action soon, the future will become bleak. The World Bank Group released a report in November that concluded that the world could warm by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) by the end of this century if concerted action is not taken now.”
Second, an article in an economic/trade-focused forum discussed Kim’s visit to Tunisia to promote private sector development: “World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim today concluded a two-day visit to Tunisia during which the Group’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, announced a $48 million investment to support the growth of private entrepreneurs. Kim met the country’s leadership and civil society to discuss the reform agenda and Tunisia’s progress two years after its popular uprising. ‘We are here as strong supporters of the Tunisian revolution,’ said Kim. ‘[The people of Tunisia] went through some very difficult times, but in doing what you’ve done, you’ve inspired the entire world. [Now] we’ve got to make sure that Tunisia is successful in showing that Islam and democracy go together, that you can have economic development that includes everyone.'”
Kim emphasized ongoing World Bank Group support for Tunisia’s aspirations through programs that address improved governance and accountability, opportunities for women and youth, private sector job-creation and investments in interior regions. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 1/28/13”→
Anthropology of Tourism is a network of tourism scholars seeking to formally establish itself as an Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association. While this group is primarily for members of the AAA, others can join the network as “friends” of the Anthropology of Tourism.
anthropologyworks 