the casting couch

The Guardian published commentary by David Graeber, professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, about his awakening to the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in the U.S.: “This is a very difficult column for me to write because it’s about my mother…Mom was a prodigy. Arriving in America at age 10, speaking not a word of English, she skipped so many grades she was in college by 16. Then she dropped out of college to help the family (it was the Depression) by getting a factory job sewing brassieres. The union had the crazy idea at that time to put on a musical comedy performed entirely by garment workers. The play (Pins and Needles) surprised everyone by becoming a smash hit on Broadway, with mom (then Ruth Rubinstein) as female lead…[she] was featured in Life, met FDR and Gypsy Rose Lee, and for three years hobnobbed with celebrities and was gossiped about in gossip columns. Then she went back to working in the factory again…When I later asked [why she left show business] she’d just say, “I lacked self-confidence.” But once I remember the phrase “casting couch,” came up and I asked her if such things had existed in her day. She threw her eyes up and said, “well, why do you think I never pursued a career in show business? Some of us were willing to sleep with producers. I wasn’t.” …In endless ways, the violence of powerful men plays havoc with our souls. It makes us complicit in acts of mutual destruction. It’s too late now for my mother. She died ten years ago…Let’s stop pretending these things can’t really be happening…

transgender health and social justice

National Public Radio (U.S.) carried an article about the challenges that socially excluded transgender people, waria, in Indonesia face in accessing health care. It provides a profile of Sandeep Nanwani, a doctor from Indonesia who is a candidate for a master’s in global health delivery at Harvard University. As part of his graduate studies field work, Nanwani provides medical care to many   waria in Yogyakarta. The article quotes Byron Good, professor of medical anthropology at Harvard University, who says the young doctor’s commitment to social justice is rare even among global health physicians. Good compared him to medical anthropologist and doctor Paul Farmer, who is known for his work providing health care to the rural poor in Haiti. “Sandeep has a remarkable commitment to the poor and to issues of social justice,” Good said. “It’s difficult to find physicians anywhere in the world like that.”

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Continue reading “anthro in the news 11/6/17” →

maintaining minimalism and equality

The Guardian published a piece by anthropologist James Suzman, author of Abundance without Affluence. He describes how the Bushmen long maintained social equality and abundance without overconsumption and damaging the environment and draws lessons from their culture for our times: “Crucially, their success was based not on their ability to expand and grow into new lands or develop new productive technologies, but on the fact they mastered the art of making a good living where they were. It is no coincidence that the continent with the evidence of the longest continuous human habitation is the only place unaffected by the extinction events that put paid 75% of the megafauna species – including mammoths, cave bears and sabre-tooth cats – when Homo sapiens expanded into Europe, Asia and the Americas.” Their minimalist consumption patterns were maintained through derision directed at boastful, self-aggrandizing people which had a social levelling effect.

clock time vs event time

Quartz carried an article about the sociological classification of people into those who follow clock time or event time. It includes commentary from Kevin Birth, professor of anthropology at Queens College (CUNY) in New York City. He notes that for most of human history, event time was the norm:  “Clock time really came into its own, he explains, when wage hours took over as a handy tool that employers used to start standardizing labor costs in the 18th century, when people began migrating for work. Suddenly, a day’s wages could equal a wide range of output depending on the length of “days” in locations at different latitudes. Employers began thinking in terms of wages per hour, and work days came to be demarcated by the clock, not the rising and setting sun.”

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Continue reading “anthro in the news 10/30/17” →

clarifying the “Nuclear Deal”

The Huffington Post published commentary by William O. Beeman, professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, clarifying the U.S. role in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), nicknamed the “Iran Nuclear Deal.” He writes: “Iran is on solid ground in claiming its right to nuclear development…Foremost, the United States government has no authority to interpret the NPT [Nuclear Proliferation Treaty], an international treaty, on its own with no input or ratification from the other nearly 200 signatories. Aside from that, however, if Washington takes the position that Iran does not have the right to enrich uranium under the NPT, it is acting unilaterally and is uncoordinated with its allies and with the very organizations it cites on this policy…”

book review and author interview

The Sunday Times (South Africa) carried a review of a new book, The Truth about Crime, by Jean Comaraff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology at Harvard University, and John Comaroff, professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology at Harvard University, along with a brief interview with the two authors. The reviewer says: “In this book, renowned anthropologists Jean and John L. Comaroff make a startling but absolutely convincing claim about our modern era: it is not by our arts, our politics, or our science that we understand ourselves – it is by our crimes. Surveying an astonishing range of forms of crime and policing – from petty thefts to the multibillion-dollar scams of too-big-to-fail financial institutions to the collateral damage of war – they take readers into the disorder of the late modern world. Looking at recent transformations in the triangulation of capital, the state, and governance that have led to an era where crime and policing are ever more complicit, they offer a powerful meditation on the new forms of sovereignty, citizenship, class, race, law, and political economy of representation that have arisen.”

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Continue reading “anthro in the news 10/23/17” →

educated brides sought, but not working wives

Japan Today published an opinion piece co-authored by cultural anthropologist Rachael Goodman, postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. She and her co-author base their comments on ethnographic fieldwork in Uttarakhand, a state in northern India: “Even in remote rural areas of Uttarakhand, an Indian state in the foothills of the Himalayas, most young women now earn bachelor’s degrees while their mothers often did not finish high school and their grandmothers were lucky to attend primary school at all… many families expect prospective brides to have college degrees, even if the groom does not. Educated women are seen as higher status and are expected to raise children who will be even better educated…Rather than leading directly to increased participation in the formal labor market, the greater interest in educating girls has changed the landscape of arranged marriage…While expectations for brides have changed, those for wives have not.”

sexual harassment in anthropology

Newsweek reported on the occurrence of sexual harassment in many professional contexts, outside of Hollywood. The article mentions a new study of sexual harassment in anthropology fieldwork and academia co-authored by Robin Nelson, assistant professor of biological anthropology at Santa Clara University and quotes her as saying: “We have that same dynamic happening in academia and academic fieldwork [as in Hollywood].”

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Continue reading “anthro in the news 10/16/17” →

colonies of the U.S.

The Washington Post published a piece by David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University. He writes: “Why, in 2017, decades after the civil rights and decolonization eras, does the United States still have colonies and citizens who lack full democratic rights by law? The answer is largely simple, but troubling: Because the desires and power of the United States military have overwhelmed the desires and rights of colonized peoples.”

testing the social fabric in Puerto Rico

The New York Times carried an article about a strengthened sense of community in Puerto Rico following the recent hurricanes with a cautionary note about limits to that solidarity given the challenges. The article quotes Diana Lopez Sotomayor, professor of anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico’s Rio Piedras Campus, who is among those who fear that the social fabric may begin to fray if residents are forced to deal with months without reliable employment, food, and energy: “There is a new feeling in Puerto Rico, a new ‘nosotros’ [sense of we]. “More people in the street are saying, ‘Buenos Dias, Como estas?’ You’re in a queue for hours, and of course you become friends. In the same lines are rich and poor. It’s breaking the barriers of class.” However, she added, “When people are starving they will get violent. If things don’t get better the new ‘nosotros’ is going to break down.”

Continue reading “anthro in the news 10/9/17” →

San Diego State University anthropologist Matthew Lauer is teaming up with scientists and islanders alike to figure out how fishing practices influence coral reef health.

As climate change dramatically alters the dynamics of sea life in and around coral reefs, it is important not to forget that humans, too, feel the effects of an altered reef ecosystem. Although we aren’t sea creatures, the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people around the world depend upon the fish and other marine life that coral reefs sustain. A $1.6 million grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to San Diego State University anthropologist Matthew Lauerand colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Florida State University will help investigators explore the complex interplay between fishers, their communities and coral reef ecology.

Fishers on the island of Mo’orea, French Polynesia, in the South Pacific Ocean tend to prefer algae-eaters like parrotfish. Too few parrotfish mean that algae can grow unchecked, smothering the reef and robbing it of nutrients, potentially permanently damaging or killing the coral population. How exactly these fishers choose their quarry, monitor fish populations and think about the dynamics of their catch—and how this interdependent food web will respond to pressures such as climate change—is an unsolved question.

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Anthropologist Graham Jones has turned a fascination with magic into a career.

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office 

Many MIT professors were in a classroom or lab when they first encountered the subjects they now study. Not anthropologist Graham Jones. He found his life’s work in a New York City magic store.

The year was 2001, and Jones was a graduate student. A class he was taking on the transmission of knowledge in society assigned students to videotape people who teach skills to apprentices. So Jones, literally looking around the streets of Manhattan for ideas, wound up in a magic shop, inspired and relieved: At least he would have enough material to complete the assignment.

What Jones didn’t realize was that he had encountered the subject that would fuel his academic career — all the way to MIT, where he received tenure earlier this year.

“I had a powerful feeling that magic is a beautiful thing: It’s fun, and I’m interested in it and excited by it, so I’m just going to run with it,” Jones recalls.

Continue reading “magic, a microcosm of modern culture” →

nuclear orientalism

The Ramapo News (Suffern, New York) published an op-ed about U.S.-North Korea relations which points to the relevance of what Hugh Gusterson, professor of anthropology at George Washington University, wrote about in his 1999 article Nuclear Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination: … “‘nuclear orientalism’ — the perception that western leaders of nuclear powers are calm and rational while their counterparts in the east are impulsive and dangerous. And while Donald Trump may yet prove to blow the lid off this charade for all time, it is still the predominant assumption.”

debt justice for Puerto Rico

Forbes published commentary by Adriana Garriga-López, associate professor of anthropology at Kalamazoo College:  “The U.S. owes Puerto Rico more than just aid and support after a disaster like this. Hurricane Maria’s destruction has laid bare the political subjugation Puerto Rico has experienced since 1898. This imbalance of power has led to a flawed relationship in which the U.S. prioritizes Puerto Rico’s credit obligations—held primarily by vulture funds from the U.S.—over its inhabitants’ quality of life. The U.S. owes Puerto Rico a serious attempt at restructuring this relationship to ensure justice for Puerto Ricans…It is time for the U.S. to not only forgive Puerto Rico’s fiscal debt, but pay off its moral debt to its southern neighbor.

Continue reading “anthro in the news 10/2/17” →

Written by: Sean Carey

“Do you think Uber will close?” asked Mr. Uddin, a worried 52-year-old British Bangladeshi Uber driver.

“I’ve just heard on my car radio that more than 600,000 people have signed a petition against its closure and the number is growing all the time,” I replied, in an attempt to provide him with some moral support. “My guess is that although the [London] Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has said he backs TfL’s [Transport for London] decision not to renew Uber’s licence, with that number of people campaigning against closure he will be very keen find a way to solve the problem and continue to let Uber operate. I mean that’s what politicians who want to get re-elected do – they respond to popular opinion, don’t they?”

Continue reading “Uber and Mr. Uddin” →

disaster capitalism

The Sun Sentinel (Florida) published commentary by Yarimar Bonilla, associate professor of anthropology and Caribbean studies at Rutgers University and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. She mentions a fieldwork interview she had with a financial manager on the island who advised her to buy stock in Home Depot in anticipation of a hurricane, because such disasters bring in federal money. And, indeed, not one but two hurricanes hit Puerto Rico in September. She writes: “But if history is any indication, they [the funds] will do little to alleviate long-standing disparities or to remedy the conditions that put Puerto Rico at greatest risk. More likely, the expedited management of emergency money will only serve to fuel the drive for increased privatization and the gutting of public services…Vulnerability is not simply a product of natural conditions; it is a political state and a colonial condition.”

street fashion in Tokyo

An article in Japan Today highlighted a book on Tokyo street fashion by Philomena Keet, a freelance researcher and writer with a Ph.D. in anthropology from SOAS University in London: “Tokyo’s fashion-obsessed inhabitants are the subject of Keet’s latest book, ‘Tokyo Fashion City,’ which is part guide book and part fashion photography album…The book effectively takes readers on a stroll through eight districts of Tokyo that each have a reputation for an interesting fashion scene, be that cutting-edge, traditional or the embracing of a subculture.” The article includes commentary by Keet: “Some Japanese are so fanatical about what they wear that they will push the boundaries of a certain style, often creating new sub-subcultures…It also means that rarely does a ‘style tribe’ totally disappear, as there are likely to be at least a handful of hardcore fans keeping it alive somewhere…”

Continue reading “anthro in the news 9/25/17” →