• You gotta shop around

A new study suggests that a woman who marries multiple husbands at the same time (polyandry) creates a safety net for her children. A research are the University of Missouri (MU) finds that multiple husbands ensure that children are cared for even if the fathers die or disappear. Although polyandry is taboo and illegal in the United States, certain legal structures, such as child support payments and life insurance, fill the same role for American women that multiple husbands do in other cultures. “In America, we don’t meet many of the criteria that tend to define polyandrous cultures,” said Kathrine Starkweather, doctoral student in MU’s Department of Anthropology. “However, some aspects of American life mirror polyandrous societies. Child support payments provide for offspring when one parent is absent. Life insurance allows Americans to provide for dependents in the event of death, just as secondary husbands support a deceased husband’s children in polyandrous societies.” Starkweather and her co-author, Raymond Hames, professor of anthropology at the University of Nebraska, examined 52 cultures with traditions of polyandry. “This research shows that humans are capable of tremendous variability and adaptability in their behaviors,” said Starkweather. “Human marriage structures aren’t written in stone; throughout history, people have adapted their societal norms to ensure the survival and well-being of their children.”

• It’s the Olympics stupid

Anthroworks contributor Sean Carey published a piece in The Independent about Olympian greatness, and he manages to bring Claude Lévi-Strauss into the discussion.

• A culture judged to be “boring”

The Baining, and indigenous group of Papua New Guinea, have the reputation among some researchers of being the dullest culture on earth. In the 1920s, the famous British anthropologist Gregory Bateson spent 14 months among them, until he finally left in frustration. He called them “unstudiable,” because of their reluctance to say anything interesting about their lives and their failure to exhibit much activity beyond the mundane routines of daily work, and he later wrote that they lived “a drab and colorless existence.” Forty years later, Jeremy Pool, a graduate student in anthropology, spent more than a year living among them in the attempt to develop a doctoral dissertation. He too found almost nothing interesting to say about the Baining, and the experience caused him to leave anthropology and go into computer science. Cultural anthropologist Jane Fajans of Cornell University studied the Baining in the late 1970s and again in the early 1990s. In an article in Psychology Today, Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston University, describes Fajan’s findings about child socialization among the Baining. [Blogger’s note: I wonder what a Baining person who came to my university for a year of participant observation would say about undergraduate culture and everyday life…]
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 08/06/12” →

• Dream on, Europe

An article in the Financial Times by cultural anthropologist Gillian Tett has attracted several responses. She argues that a sense of positive energy and mission is missing in Europe now.  One response notes that Europe has been dreaming for a long time. [LINK 2]

• It’s the debt, stupid

The Indian Express carried a review of cultural anthropologist David Graeber’s recent book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years:  “Graeber proposes that the notion that money was invented to simplify barter is an academic fiction. The record suggests that it was invented to quantify debt, which is therefore the foundational economic concept. Debt, created by the first agrarian empires, predated markets, he argues. And the rise of markets was powered by indebtedness, whose most extreme forms are indentured or bonded labour and slavery, a contract in which the slave owes everything, including life and limb. The role of slavery in the rise of empires, from Athens and Rome to the US before abolition, is well-documented. And the indebtedness that mercantile Europe visited upon Africa has lasted for over a century. Shamed by that legacy, Europeans like Bono and Bob Geldof are still trying to have Africa’s loans written off. ”

• Take that anthro degree…

…and become a tv and film star. Having slaved away for the past four years working on her doctorate from the Auckland University of Technology, television and film personality Ella Henry says the best part of the experience is simply getting it done. The 57-year-old has graduated with a Ph.D, in Maori Development. This is her third degree, having picked up a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology and a Masters of Commerce from the University of Auckland in the 1990s. Henry has a long history working in film, television and radio in New Zealand. She was a part of a group who established Nga Aho Whakaari, the association of Maori in film, video and television. Henry has worked at Radio Waatea and has appeared in Maori Television”s Ask Your Auntie programme. She is the chairwoman of the Association of Women in Film and Television NZ and was awarded the Mana Wahine award at the Mana Wa
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 07/30/12” →

• Murder scene photos, journalism, and violating a taboo

Recently 12 black-and-white crime scene pictures of Michaela McAreavey appeared in the Mauritian Sunday Times. McAreavey was murdered in Mauritius while on her honeymoon in January 2012. Included were pictures the hotel room and bathroom where she was murdered and close-ups of the injuries to her. Sean Carey, anthropology works contributor, wrote for The Independent about how to understand the publication of the pictures. First, he points to a long-standing tradition of publishing gore in Mauritius by “la presse sensationnelle” to boost circulation. This factor may be particularly relevant for the Sunday Times which is a new entrant in an already crowded field. Carey points out that, “cultures differ in how pictures of the dead are perceived, but, by and large, murder victims are in a special category. Certainly from a mainstream European (and North American) perspective, graphic representations of the fatally injured or murdered are taboo. Even if available they are never published – witness the furore when the paparazzi photographed Princess Diana as she lay dying in a wrecked Mercedes in the Alma underpass in Paris in August 1997.” Second, he asks: who leaked the photographs?

• Very old bras

Turning from the present to the past, a discovery in Austria shows that 600 years ago, women wore bras very much like those of today. The University of Innsbruck said that archeologists found four linen bras dating from the Middle Ages in an Austrian castle. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset. Instead, it appears the bra came first, followed by the corset, followed by the reinvented bra. Although the linen garments were unearthed in 2008, they did not make news until now says Beatrix Nutz, the archaeologist responsible for the discovery. [Blogger’s note: just wondering why it took four years to bring this finding to the public…]

• Pre-Roman olive trade and a fancy little pet dog

Britons were importing olives from the Mediterranean a century before the Romans arrived in 43 CE, according to archaeologists who have discovered a single olive stone from an excavation of a well Hampshire. Assuming that people did not import just one olive, more will likely be found. Professor Mike Fulford of Reading University, who is leading the excavation, reports another luxury import, the skeleton of a tiny dog: “It was fully grown, two or three years old, and thankfully showed no signs of butchery, so it wasn’t a luxury food or killed for its fur…It was found in the foundations of a very big house we are still uncovering…it may turn out to be the biggest iron-age building in Britain, which must have belonged to a chief or a sub chief, a very big cheese in the town.”

• Very old drought management

Excavations at the pre-Columbian city of Tikal, by a multi-university team led anthropologists at the University of Cincinnati, have identified landscaping and engineering feats, including the largest ancient dam built by the Maya of Central America. Findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research sheds light on how the Maya conserved and used their natural resources to support a populous, highly complex society for over 1,500 years despite environmental challenges, including periodic drought. The paper is authored by Vernon Scarborough, UC professor of anthropology; archaeologist Kenneth Tankersley, UC assistant professor of anthropology; Brian Lane, former UC master’s student in anthropology now pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Hawaii; John Jones, associate professor of anthropology, Washington State University; Fred Valdez, professor of anthropology, University of Texas-Austin; and several other researchers. A CNN blog post highlights the study’s relevance to contemporary drought management.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 07/23/12” →

• Democracy in a new light
Rick Salutin, Toronto-based writer, is writing about democracy in a two-part essay called democracy disconnect. In part 1, he travels to talk with democracy protestors in Greece, then moves on to visit cultural anthropologist Sir Jack Goody, of Cambridge University, to ask him about the concept of democracy. True to his anthropologically informed, expansive thinking, Goody stretches out the term and notes that “our” [Western] conception of it has been “very narrow.” The article includes several paragraphs of Goody’s commentary.

• Digital dividing London
Sean Carey, aw’s regular contributor, published an article in The Guardian discussing East London as the new economic center of gravity in the U.K.’s capital and showing how the poor are losing out in the process. In the Shoreditch area, which borders the City of London, a cluster of small digital firms has grown over the last decade. Why have they come to this part of the city? Carey offers insights and explores the implications of this move-in of largely white, professional firms into a previously more ethnically diverse area. Carey also manages to weave anthropologist Ernest Gellner into the report.

• Anthro major may be reinstated
According to an article in The Gainesville Sun, Florida State University trustees are expected to reinstate the school’s anthropology program and major. The university stopped offering the major following state funding cuts in 2009. Florida governor Rick Scott brought anthropology into the national spotlight in 2011 when he said that Florida didn’t need any more anthropology majors.

• Forensic anthropologist aids sexual abuse conviction
In Edinburgh, a High Court judge branded Alexander Mortimer, a former nursery worker, a danger to children and made an order preventing him from ever working with youngsters again. He was caught after intelligence led police to raid his home and seize computer and phone equipment. They found 17,967 photos and 582 video clips, some of which had been made by Mortimer, showing him abusing two young boys. Mortimer suffers from eczema and a slight deformity of one finger. Forensic anthropologist Professor Susan Black compared photos of Mortimer s hands with images from his computer and found similarities.

• Destructive collections
An article in The New York Times on antiquities collections, the elusiveness of provenance, and the challenge of long-term preservation of sites and objects, quotes Ricardo Elia, archaeology professor at Boston University, as saying:  “…artifact collecting destroys far more than it saves.”

• British Archaeology Awards
According to BBC News Cambridgeshire, a project exploring the prehistoric Fenland took the top prize in this year’s British Archaeological Awards. Discoveries at the Must Farm Excavation, made by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, include nine Bronze Age log canoes dating to the first millennium B.C.E. The Thames Discovery Programme won the Best Community Archaeology prize for “communicating an understanding and informed enjoyment of the historic Thames, the longest open-air archaeological site in London, to the widest possible audience” and for training more than 300 volunteers in archaeological techniques.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 07/16/12” →

• Too soon to celebrate in Haiti
Mark Schuller, professor of cultural anthropology at CUNY, published an article in the Huffington Post reminding us that nearly 400,000 people in Haiti are still living in tattered tents: “For those who haven’t been to Haiti for a while, or for those who have never been but have seen the hell on earth portrayed in the media, the fact that Champs-de-Mars and other plazas in Port-au-Prince are no longer home to thousands of people is a symbol of progress. Celebrating this “liberation” of public spaces, President Martelly is planning a Carnival des Fleurs, a tradition under Duvalier, scheduled to begin July 29, a day after the anniversary of the 1915 U.S. invasion.” Schuller has conducted fieldwork in several tent camps.

• Putting global finance in perspective
The Guardian published an interview with Gillian Tett, U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times and a social/cultural anthropologist with a PhD. from Cambridge University. It reports that the banking world ignored Tett when she predicted the credit crisis two years ago. The interview probes how Tett’s training in social anthropology alerted her to the danger. She is quoted as saying, “I happen to think anthropology is a brilliant background for looking at finance…Firstly, you’re trained to look at how societies or cultures operate holistically, so you look at how all the bits move together. ..one of the reasons we got into the mess we are in is because they were all so busy looking at their own little bit that they totally failed to understand how it interacted with the rest of society.”

• The invisible anthropologist leading the World Ban
The New York Times reported on Jim Yong Kim‘s statement that the World Bank may have more to offer to struggling countries in terms of its expertise than monetary loans. His background as a social/medical anthropologist was not mentioned. [Blogger’s note: before Kim’s appointment, my sense is that the media wishing to damn him mentioned him being an anthropologist — this part of Kim’s education and experience was rarely brought up as a positive factor. Now that he has taken over the directorship, let’s watch to see how often his anthropological expertise is mentioned in the media — as a positive or negative factor.]

• Scandinavian buns and more
The Times (London) carried a playful article about Signe Johansen , “the Nordic Nigella, or the Stieg Larsson of Scandi baking,” connected to her forthcoming cookbook, Scandilicious. AW mentions this coverage because Johansen, at age 18 years, left Norway for Cambridge where she  did a B.A. degree in social anthropology and then an M.A. in food anthropology.

• Oldest cave art in Wales
Dr. George Nash, from Bristol University’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology  discovered a cave engraving by chance. He found 14,505-year-old cave art while taking students on a field trip in Cathole, South Wales. What looks like a child’s stick drawing of a stag or a reindeer can be seen in scratched red lines on the limestone wall of the cave. He said: “…I was just very lucky and I think that’s what all discoveries are..I had been going there for 20 years and never seen this engraving.”

• Very old skeleton in Sri Lanka
Colombo welcomes archeologist Jay Stock who will conduct studies on a pre-historic human skeleton recently discovered at Pahiyangala in Kalutara district of Western Province. Stock is professor in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge. He will lead the research on the skeleton which is believed to be 37,000 years old, along with a team of Sri Lankan archaeologists led by Dr. Shiran Daraniyagala. The skeleton is considered as the oldest human skeleton found in South Asia. It is believed to be of a woman aged between 18 to 30 years.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 07/09/12” →