• Remembering the mother of POTUS
An op-ed in the Washington Post explores the relationship between President Barack Obama and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a cultural anthropologist. It concludes that she shaped his “essence” in many ways including multilayered, multiethnic experiences and empathy. [Blogger’s note: on Mother’s Day, one can only wish she had lived to see her son’s presidency].

• What do the evangelicals want?
Cultural anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, professor of cultural anthropology at Stanford University, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times discussing views of evangelical Christians in the United States and how candidates in the upcoming U.S. presidential election might better communicate with them. Luhrmann is author, most recently, of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.

• Kinship studies revisited
The Irish Times carried a review of a new book by cultural anthropologist Maurice Godelier, Directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in France. The review is written by Fiona Murphy, a cultural anthropologist and co-author of Integration in Ireland: The Everyday Lives of African Migrants. She says: “It is this constellation of world views and ways of being that we meet in Maurice Godelier’s powerful and often provocative new book, The Metamorphoses of Kinship. In this timely and challenging study, Godelier heralds the revival of kinship studies within the discipline of anthropology… The book argues that kinship, once the key focus of anthropology, is no longer visible on university course lists; not vanished or vanquished, he insists, however, but merely transformed.”

• Breast is best but for how long?
USA Today joined the discussion in response to a Time magazine cover photo this week of a mother nursing her 3-year-old son. Noting that breast-feeding children older than one year is rare among mothers in the United States, and mentioning some online comments calling it “perverted” and “dangerous” to nurse a 3-year-old, it then turns to discussion of cross-cultural practices. The article quotes Katherine Dettwyler, professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware: “It’s normal for our species. It’s not perverted; it’s not sex; it’s not women doing it for some perverse need. It’s normal like a nine-month pregnancy is normal.” Her research on breast-feeding around the world shows that most children are breast-fed for three to five years or longer in sharp contrast with babies in the United States.

• Forensic anthropologist meets mystery writer
The Independent carried a double interview with Sue Black, professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology at the University of Dundee, and mystery writer, Val McDermid. Black has led the way in human identification in conflict zones such as Kosovo and has appeared in the BBC2 factual series, History Cold Case. Black comments, “I don’t read crime novels – it’d be like a chef watching food programmes – so I didn’t know much about Val until I was asked to do a radio programme with her about death and dying, in the late 1990s. We were chatting away before we went on air when I made the mistake of saying, ‘If at any point in the future you need to ask me about anything, feel free.’ You make one offer and she’s in there.”

• What a dive
The New York Times Science blog covered the work of Lisa J. Lucero, professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is studying ancient Maya underwater offerings in central Belize under the auspices of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/14/12” →

• The Occupy movement
May 1st is International Workers Day. This year it was also an occasion for the Occupy Wall Street movement to demonstrate and expand support for the movement. According to coverage by Voice of America, demonstrators in New York City started “banging drums early despite rainy skies.” According to one Occupy activist, “If the NYPD [New York Police Department] can’t stop us, Mother Nature can’t stop us…You can’t stop the truth.” VOA quoted David Harvey, an anthropology professor at the City University of New York: “We’ve got this situation where we don’t have the money power…The only power we have is people…”. The New York Times had the carried an article called, “Academics Enthralled by Occupy” in its Arts section where it quoted Jeffrey Juris, associate professor of anthropology at Northeastern University, who is studying the movement, as commenting the connections between research on the movement and being an activist: “Everybody I know doing this is an activist of some sort.” [Blogger’s note: other articles in the Arts section covered ballad singing, theater, and television. So what is serious research on a major political movement doing in the Arts section and being referred to as enthrallment? I guess the best response from the anthros is to say that coverage in the NYT Arts section is better than no coverage in the NYT].

• Nepali youth drug addiction in Hong Kong
The South China Morning Post reported on drug use problems among Nepali youth in Hong Kong. Researchers at Chinese University have found that Nepalis have a bigger problem with drug abuse than do members of any other ethnic minority in the city. While drug abuse in Hong Kong has fallen in recent years, the number of Nepali addicts has risen. Most started taking drugs between 10 and 19, with more than 90 per cent of them hooked on heroin, according to a study led by anthropology professor Maria Tam Siumi: “The government’s anti-drug campaigns also don’t really reach them because of the language barrier…Their community is small and isolated, so there isn’t a way out for young people. They also do not have equal opportunities in education, employment or social and medical services.”

• Debt, social inequality, and politics in the U.S.
The Huffington Post published an article by Richard H. Robbins, Distinguished Teaching Professor in Anthropology at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, on debt as an issue in the U.S. presidential election: “What will likely be absent in the debate, however, is any consideration of the relationship of debt to the requirement for perpetual economic growth and its role in the dramatic increase in economic inequality in the United States and the rest of the world.” Robbins asks, “How did we get into this dilemma?”

• Rethinking marriage in the U.S.
The Huffington Post carried a piece by Richard Feinberg, professor of anthropology at Kent State University in which he places current political debates in the U.S. about same-sex marriage in the context of anthropology’s cross-cultural findings about the institution of marriage: “After years of argument a half-dozen states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. Several more, including my own, are considering it. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates, right-wing columnists and talk show hosts, evangelical pastors, and recently even Pope Benedict have called upon Americans to halt the spread of ‘immorality.’ Family values, we are told, require us to defend marriage as ‘traditionally defined.’ As an anthropologist I find this whole discussion rather odd.”

• Where is the language gene
NPR covered Dan Everett’s anti-Chomsky perspective that there is no innate language organ or module in the human brain dedicated to the production of grammatical language: “So goes the argument in Language: The Cultural Tool, the new book I’m reading by Daniel Everett. Next week, I’ll have more to say about the book itself; this week, I want to explore how Everett’s years of living among the Pirahã Indians of Amazonian Brazil helped shape his conclusions — and why those conclusions matter.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/7/2012” →

• Breivik trial in Oslo
Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology at Oslo University, figured prominently this past week in reports about the trial of Anders Behring Breivik which opened in Oslo last week. One issue revolves around the very conduct of the trial itself, as discussed in an article in the New York Times: the fact that the officers of the court took time to shake Breivik’s hand, offering courtesy and even deference to someone who had openly boasted of killing 77 people last summer. According to Eriksen, “The decency and openness of the trial is our defense against him.” Several media sources, including USA Today and the New Zealand Herald carried an article in which Ericksen comments that by treating the trial with “respect and decency,” Norwegians are showing defiance against Breivik by standing up for values at the core of their national identity. When Ericksen called Breivik “pudgy” in Norwegian media before the trial, Eriksen said some people took offense: “I received mail from people who said “you shouldn’t say that about his appearance. He has a mother. We have to treat him with respect.” In an interview with Eriksen that is videorecorded, he says that the self-confessed killer “…does not seem to be very successful in distinguishing between the virtual reality of World of Warcraft and other computer games, and reality.”

• The social life of AIDS
The New York Times published an extended review of a new book on AIDS in Africa by Craig Timberg, a journalist for The Washington Post, and Daniel Halperin, an epidemiologist and medical anthropologist. It leads with a quotation from physician/anthropologist/humanitarian activist Paul Farmer, who writes in “Partner to the Poor,” that “the failure to contemplate social and economic aspects of epidemics stunts our understanding of them.” The reviewer goes on to say that “Timberg and Halperin’s book constitutes a strong warning to those who would disregard the cultural specificities of those one is trying to serve, whether individuals or entire societies.”

• Military operations in Mali
After months of fighting in northern Mali, the Mouvement National de Libération de L’Azawad (MNLA) – National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad – declared an end to military operations. The rebels refer to the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu in northern Mali as Azawad. However, following international and regional condemnation of the movement’s declaration of independence on 6 April, several factions have emerged, exposing deep divisions among several groups. Africa News carried an interview about the current situation and prospects for the future with three specialists in Tuareg issues including Naffet Keita, professor of anthropology at the University of Bamako.

• From the kula to Wall Street
An article in The Guardian discussed the contributions of several cultural anthropologists to understanding contemporary financial markets, noting that an “…anthropological perspective on how bankers function can help challenge our reliance on discredited neoliberal economics.” Specific mention was made to Karen Ho‘s work on the culture of Wall Street and Gillian Tett who has been hailed as “the most powerful woman in newspapers.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/30/12” →

• WB choice
Many articles in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere discussed the announcement of Jim Yong Kim as the next president of the World Bank. While many did not mention the fact that Kim has a medical degree and a doctorate in anthropology, some did. The news from Africa News (Lagos) was not positive, as highlighted in the headline: “World Bank – Okonjo-Iweala Loses to America’s Kim.” The article comments, “The World Bank, yesterday, chose Korean-born American health expert Jim Yong Kim as its new president, maintaining Washington’s grip on the job and leaving developing countries questioning the selection process.” [Blogger’s note: No one should disagree on that point, and my bet is that the next round will be more open, as it should be for the IMF presidency as well]. The Guardian (London) presented a more favorable view, quoting the outgoing World Bank Group President, Robert Zoellick, in congratulating Jim Yong Kim for being chosen to become the 12th president and offering his support in ensuring a successful handover: “I am pleased to work with Jim Yong Kim during the transition. He is an impressive and accomplished individual. Jim has seen poverty and vulnerability first-hand, through his impressive work in developing countries.”

• New policy research institute at Oxford will include anthropologists
Oxford University has opened a new economics research institute to help prevent future global financial meltdowns and euro-zone debt crises. The INET@Oxford centre will be part of the Oxford Martin School, a research unit that seeks solutions to the world’s most pressing problems in medicine, environment and technology, among others. It will draw on the expertise of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a New York-based non-profit think-tank founded by the business magnate George Soros. The center aims to promote “urgently needed” innovative thinking on economics and educate the next generation of economists, business leaders and politicians. Among the academics involved are physicists, psychologists, anthropologists and biologists. Professor Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin School, said the centre hoped to make “major advances in key areas of economic theory and policy” and would focus on some of the greatest economic challenges we face, “from avoiding future financial crises to ensuring that the positive potential of globalisation is realised and its risks mitigated”.

• Women having a baby at 40 find happiness
Once older mothers get through IVF and warnings of difficult pregnancies, what follows is a joyful elixir of youth, according to a new study covered in the Guardian. The subject of pregnancy at 40-plus tends to be described in terms of risk and negatives, with the emphasis on getting safely through delivery. Andrea Cornwall, professor of anthropology and development at the University of Sussex, says that younger women face “…a minefield of expectations in figuring out when and whether to have a child…And when they do have children, theirs is all too often the lot of a constant juggling of career and childcare, and niggling resentments as once-equal relationships are frayed with the encroachment of gender gaps in pay, in domestic labour and in self-esteem. Not so the older woman. Motherhood can be a satisfying new direction after years in the working world, a welcome addition to a secure and settled career. Among older mothers there is a joy and a lightness of being that comes of having had the time to enjoy other pleasures, and now being able to savour this one.”

• Kalinga tattoos
Analyn ‘Ikin’ Salvador-Amores is the first Filipina scholar to obtain a masters degree and a doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Hertford College, Oxford University. She was supported by the International Fellowships Program of the Ford Foundation. A native of Baguio, she pursued a research topic closest to her heart, Kalinga’s traditional tattoos in diaspora. She told ABS-CBN Europe during her graduation rites in Oxford: “I feel there is greater contribution when I return to the Philippines because we become cultural leaders in our own fields and anthropology is a discipline that needs beefing up in the country. Philippines is a very anthropologically interesting place to study, especially in the Cordillera region.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/23/12” →