President Jim Yong Kim and Chief Economist Kaushik Basu discuss “Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?” on Thur. Nov.15 at 9:45am in in MC13-121 Auditorium
Please use the Visitors Center to pick-up your building pass. Bring your ID.
The Visitors Center is located on the the corner of the building on 18th and H street.
RSVP to infoshopevents@worldbank.org or click here.
Continue reading ““Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?””
Don’t have plans for this summer? Here’s one possibility:
GW Department of Anthropology
Hortense Amsterdam House
2110 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052Jonathan Higman, Office Supervisor
Kristina Short, Executive Aide
Mon. Nov 12 at 12:30PM in J1-050 Auditorium
RSVP to infoshopevents@worldbank.org or click here.
Continue reading “DC event of interest: “Child Exploitation and Trafficking: Global Challenges and U.S. Responses””
Should government aid be conditional upon human rights or economic reform? How can a gap year truly make a difference? Do religious groups use charity as an evangelistic tool? Can Corporate Social Responsibility change the world? Is the very idea of International Development ethical?
Join the debate at the Cambridge International Development Conference this December in a conference which will examine the ethics of International Development. Be inspired by the decision-makers and thinkers of today as they explore the ways in which we can improve our approach to International Development.
1st December 2012 at Cambridge University Law Faculty.
This journal invites submissions for its launch issue to appear in spring 2013. For further information see the website or for inquiries, please contact Dr P. Khosronejad,Department of Social Anthropology,71 North Street, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland KY16 9AL.
Shirley Fiske an environmental anthropologist and research professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, published a letter to the U.S. presidential candidates in CounterPunch. It begins:
“We are in the final week of the Presidential campaign of 2012, buffeted by a massive storm that wreaked havoc in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast. SuperStorm Sandy has demonstrated the devastation that nature can bring even with the best public compliance behavior and sophisticated forecasts and warnings.”
Fiske goes on to argue that anthropology can play an important role in climate change studies and policy:
“Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ as policy experts have termed it and solutions are not easy; but we can’t afford to let climate and adaptation fall off the policy agenda. Anthropologists and other environmental social scientists can help by describing how climate changes are affecting communities and their capacity to sustain lives and livelihoods. We can help work with communities to strengthen their resilience in the face of adverse change by improving adaptive capacity. And, we can help work with governments to shape policy that reflects the cultural guideposts that are central to actually achieving intended results. But it is far harder to do our work if climate policy becomes a policy of neglect, if no one is listening to the plights of real people, and our leaders aren’t talking about either climate change or infrastructure.”
The full article is available here.
Fiske is also Chair of the American Anthropological Association Task Force on Global Climate Change and a former NOAA program official, and senior legislative advisor in the U.S. Senate, working on climate, oceans, fisheries, public lands and energy issues. Contact her at sjfiske@gmail.com
• Politics as performance 
U.S. presidential campaigns provide a unique window into society and reveal the obsession with celebrities, according to a new book by two U.S. linguistic anthropologists. Michael Lempert, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Michigan and Michael Silverstein of the University of Chicago are authors of Creatures of Politics: Media, Message and the American Presidency. They “dissect” the construction and presentation of a presidential candidate’s “message,” which includes appearance, style of speech, gesture and their packaged biography. Lempert is quoted as saying, “Basically, we’ve come to rely on the characterizations of candidates that this system has invented to help us make sense of which candidates we should support…We not only have debates, but endless debates about the debates.” The debates are a form of theater to take the measure of the candidates their appearance, their pronunciation, their use of gestures, even their gaffes, which explains why George W. Bush, famous for his trouble with language, could be perceived to have done well in the 2004 presidential debate with John Kerry. According to Silverstein, “Kerry was, ironically, viewed as being the more patrician — his extended family was wealthy, but his parents were upper-middle class — based on his grammar and elocution.” As reported in the Washington Times, Silverstein says that the candidates take their cues from celebrities.
• (A) mazing corn
The New York Times carried an article describing how many American corn farmers are looking to corn mazes and tourism to make ends meet. Corn mazes have become so popular in the past decade that those who engage in the craft hold annual conventions. Mazes are enhanced with zip lines, live zombie scarecrows, and corn cannons that can shoot an ear of corn across a field. People buy tickets online or pay on hand-held devices, sometimes handing over $20 or more. The article quotes Kendall Thu, a cultural anthropology professor at Northern Illinois University and editor of the journal Culture & Agriculture: ”Corn mazes are similar to the cultural connections farmers markets and C.S.A.’s are creating between two worlds” [C.S.A.’s are community-supported agriculture programs in which customers buy produce from farmers in advance]. Unlike farmers markets with their upscale appeal in urban areas, corn mazes are popular among suburban people who long for an imagined country experience.
• Pay higher tuition in Florida to take anthropology?
An editorial in the Orlando Sentinel commented on a recent plan for higher education in Florida as short-sighted, discriminatory, and financially backward: :It should come as no surprise that a state task force, created by Gov. Rick Scott to study the public university system, is suggesting Florida place a priority on students interested in pursuing degrees in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. But it’s shocking to hear the group’s proposal — lower tuition for in-demand degrees. Just last year, University of Florida President Bernard Machen suggested the opposite. In the face of a $300 million cut to the university system, Machen asked lawmakers for the flexibility to increase tuition for high-demand degrees that lead to high-wage jobs.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/5/12”
• U.S. adults occupying Halloween
In the U.S., adults are making this holiday all about them. On Wednesday night in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a record 2 million people, about 90 percent of them grown-ups, are expected to gather and act like kids. A record $8 billion will be spent by U.S. consumers this Halloween, most by adults, for adults. Seven years ago, when the National Retail Federation asked adults if they planned to celebrate Halloween, 52.5 percent said yes. This year, it’s 71.5 percent. Consumer anthropologist Robbie Blinkoff is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “I call it Occupying Halloween…We need to creatively express ourselves to find pure joy.” A decade ago, fewer than three in 10 costumes purchased at Halloweenexpress.com were for adults. Now, it’s more than six in 10.
• Halloween is big business in Hong Kong
Halloween now eclipses Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival in Hong Kong as businesses seize the opportunity to make scary amounts of money from this Western festival. When cultural anthropologist Joseph Bosco moved to Hong Kong from the United States more than 20 years ago, Halloween was a non-event; a Western festival celebrated by the mainly American expatriate community. Bosco, an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is quoted in China Daily: “You might find a few costumes in a small section at Toys R Us, but that was about it.” Now, 20 years later, the picture today is very different. Pumpkins, jack-o’-lanterns, ghosts, ghouls and monsters are everywhere this month. Restaurants offer specially-cooked up spooky dishes, shopping malls are decked out in Halloween decorations, bars invite customers to get into the spirit by dressing up, toy shops hosting Halloween parades, while ghosts, vampires and werewolves take center stage as the main attraction at theme parks. “Travel on the MTR over the next week and you see families with little kids dressed up in costume on their way to Halloween events, which I don’t remember seeing at all when I first got here,” said Bosco. The Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) may declare the city as Asia’s Halloween Capital and run special promotions in the six week run-up to the main event, to entice visitors from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, South Korean and the Philippines. More from Bosco: “I think people see it as being cosmopolitan. They know foreigners do this and want their kids to see it and participate in it and somehow be linked to this worldwide culture; the same way they do for Christmas…But what is surprising is that it has become so popular given that ghosts are not something you play around with in Chinese culture.”
• From Haiti with love
In an article in The Huffington Post, Mark Schuller, assistant professor of anthropology and NGO leadership development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti, asks how U.S. foreign aid should be reformed. “For those who have the time and resources to read it, I recently published a case study begun as my doctoral thesis in 2000 of two Haitian women’s NGOs, both working on HIV/AIDS prevention (in the interest of disclosure: all my royalties will be donated to grassroots groups in Haiti).” He offers a list of summary recommendations to the United States Agency for International Development.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 10/29/12”
President Merrill Eisenberg announced today (October 16) that the deadline for receipt of abstracts for the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Denver (March, 2013) has been extended to October 31, 2012. This announcement provides an additional two weeks to prepare and submit an abstract for the Meeting.
President Eisenberg announced the decision after learning of several recent developments. The Denver Meeting has attracted the interest of a large number of international colleagues and they had requested an extension of the deadline. There were also some delays with the on-line abstract submission system over the past week-end because of the heavy traffic. She added that the extended deadline will address these issues and assure that members and colleagues will have sufficient time to pre-register and submit abstracts.
The delays encountered with the on-line system over the past week-end have been resolved. We encourage you to to register and submit abstracts by going to the SfAA 2013 Annual Meeting web site at:
http://www.sfaa.net/sfaa2013.html
If you have already registered for the SfAA 2013 Annual Meeting, thank you. See you in Denver!
SfAA Office
Mark Schuller, assistant professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership Development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti, is the author, most recently, of Killing With Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs (Rutgers, 2012). He will be doing readings from his book at the following locations in early November:
anthropologyworks 