Anthropological Contributions to Designing a Conflict Zone Livelihood Recovery Project in Afghanistan
When: Feb 7 Where:
Dinner: 5:30pm | Beacon Bar and Grill
Meeting: 7:00pm | Charles Sumner School, Rotating Gallery G-4 (ground floor)
In 2008 an anthropologist working for an international NGO co-designed a $60 million one year emergency agricultural recovery program for northern Afghanistan in response to drought and increasing food insecurity. At conclusion it had assisted 341,301 small farms (1.7 million individuals) to regain their own food security. Through cultural sensitivity and local knowledge, consultation and community involvement, the program maintained local dignity, self-determination, and participant ownership, while enhancing local productive relationships. This was the largest program of its kind ever implemented by the US government. Project success led to national expansion and time extensions that continue to 2011.
Mention the Maldives to many Europeans and most of them will think of a string of paradise islands. Along with other countries in the Indian Ocean like Mauritius and the Seychelles, the Maldives is renowned as a honeymoon destination replete with 5-star hotels and luxury spas. In fact, like Mauritius and the Seychelles the country derives most of its foreign currency from tourism.
Unlike secular Mauritius and the Seychelles, however, Islam is the official religion of the Maldives and public practice of other religions is forbidden. In order to exercise social and cultural control over relationships between the indigenous population and foreign visitors, authorities in the Maldives permit the development of tourist resorts on unpopulated parts of the territory, which consists of 1192 islands stretching 230 miles from south-west India. So far, this strategy has worked very well.
View of the Maldives. Flickr/nicadlr
After 30 years of autocratic rule, the Republic of Maldives became a multi-party democracy in 2008, headed by President Mohamed Nasheed. The newly-elected leader has been praised by other members of the international community for his achievements, especially in creatively publicising the effects of climate change and rising sea levels on low-lying island states in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. He has also indicated that he intends to open up the inhabited islands of the Maldives to tourists in order to attract more visitors from the new growth economies of China and elsewhere. “We’ve segregated ourselves in these little islands for too long,” President Nasheed told foreign journalists last year. “The tourists don’t get to see the real Maldives and Maldivian culture. In the past there was a desire to segregate the Maldives from certain influences, but it also kept us from ideas and knowledge. Maldivians are Muslims but modern. The time has come to end the segregation from the outside world.”
Now comes the news that Reporters Without Borders new press freedom index 2011-2012 ranks the country at 73 compared with its previous position of 51 in 2010. The reason for the drop? The NGO claims that the “rising climate of religious intolerance” in the country has had a significant impact on freedom of expression.
Like many other relatively closed Islamic societies that are opening up, the Maldives government, which is attempting to steer a middle course and maintain community cohesion, has found it hard to come to terms both with moderate and fundamentalist Islamic critics. Last September, in an attempt to wrong-foot opposition groups the Government issued new “religious unity” regulations, which prevents the media from producing programmes or disseminating unlicensed information that might be designed to “humiliate Allah or his prophets or the holy Quran or the Sunnah of the Prophet (Mohamed) or the Islamic faith.”
While this policy is relatively easy to enforce with traditional media like television, radio and newspapers the Maldives, like all governments, has found new media platforms much harder to control. Nevertheless, in November, the Islamic Ministry ordered that the website of Ismail “Hilath” Rasheed, a moderate Sufi Muslim, was being blocked on the grounds that it was a threat to the “Maldives’ young democracy.” On December 14, Rasheed was arrested and detained before being released on January 6 without charge after his involvement in a “silent protest” in the capital Male when he called for religious tolerance. The protest designed to coincide with Human Rights Day on December 10 was deemed by the country’s police as “unconstitutional,” although Amnesty International was quick to make Rasheed a “prisoner of conscience.”
On January 20, the Maldives police arrested Sheik Imran, a prominent Muslim cleric and leader of the opposition conservative Adhaalath Party (Justice Party). He had accused President Nasheed of encouraging “anti-Islamic waves” and to the “shores” of the Maldives called for the implementation of full Shari’a law. Interestingly, two days previously, the Maldives government issued a statement and warned foreign embassies that it was extremely concerned that “Islamic fundamentalism” could threaten the social fabric of the Sunni-dominated society, as well as the visitor economy, which contributes around 30 per cent or $1.5 billion to GDP.
On the page devoted to “culture” on the Maldives Tourism Board website –- the country’s tagline is “Always Natural” — the final paragraph reads: “Maldivians are quite open to adaptation and are generally welcoming to outside inspiration. The culture has always continued to evolve with the times… Most Maldivians still want to believe in upholding unity and oneness in faith, but recent waves of reform in the country have created a whole new culture of new ideas and attitudes. The effects of the modern world are now embraced, while still striving to uphold the people’s identity, traditions and beliefs.”
The Maldives, like many societies organized on the basis of kinship and religious faith, is attempting to solve the conundrum of how to allow measured social and cultural change that maintains community cohesion and generates economic growth when many of the drivers for those changes — secular and religious ideologies — lie outside its borders and therefore beyond its control.
• Big male sports in U.S. universities Orin Starn, a Duke University professor of cultural anthropology is a longtime critic of Duke’s participation in Division I athletics. As quoted in the New York Times, he objects to sports occupying “this gigantic place in the university landscape.” He calls basketball “a strain of anti-intellectualism” that claims too much time and attention. Starn, who teaches a course on the “Anthropology of Sports,” provides an anthropological interpretation: “Big-time sports have become a modern tribal religion for college students.” There are sacred symbols (team logos), a high priest (Coach K) and shared rituals (chants and face painting). “This generation loves pageantry and tradition. School spirit is in right now. Now it’s hip to be a joiner and it’s hip to be a sports fan.” Also, he observed, “these kids have grown up with the idea that sports are really a major part of American society and something they should care about.” [Blogger’s note: maybe this is a good time to look into big-time sports rejectionists…like students who don’t opt for the Greek system — how do they fare in terms of their future “success” and “happiness”?]
• More on macho
The Gazette (Montreal) carried an article about how the male stereotype of the “…all-powerful protector and provider is doing a disservice to men – pressuring them to conform and ultimately leaving many powerless to face the challenges of modern society.” Many academics working in the area of masculinity studies consider how the culture of maleness affects men. The article notes the work of Wayne Martino, of the University of Western Ontario, whose research on is on masculinity, gender and role modeling.
• And more…Oxford University report says it all boils down to macho
The New York Daily News, along with several other mainstream media outlets, carried a piece about “male warrior” behavior and its role in the world’s conflicts: “From the football field to the front lines, scientists are blaming conflict on what they call the ‘male warrior’ behavior, a natural instinct that causes men to be aggressive to ‘outsiders.'” According to the news, evolution shapes men to be fighters, while women have historically resolved conflicts peacefully. “Our review of the academic literature suggests that the human mind is shaped in a way that tends to perpetuate conflict with ‘outsiders,’” said professor and study author Mark van Vugt.
• But wait..possibly nice Norse marauders?
The Bronze-age Norse may have an inaccurately bad reputation. Archaeological research in the Outer Hebrides suggests peaceful intermixing and continuity of Hebridean culture. The research team has looked at hundreds of sites.
• Car flags, racism and push-back in Australia
An op-ed in the Herald Sun (Australia) states that Australia Day has developed into “kick an Australian Day.” “It is almost an industry. In the past few days you have been told that if you enjoy Australia Day, there’s a fair chance you are a drunk, a redneck, and flying the flag, not because you are proud, but because you are racist.” The author addresses a study by Farida Fozdar, a cultural anthropologist at the University of West Australia which revealed a correlation between showing an Australian flag on one’s car and racist attitudes. “She also found that 91 per cent of flag bearers thought migrants should adopt Australian values and only 76 per cent of non-flag wavers felt the same, which makes you wonder about the question. Why would anybody who embraces Australian values not think they were good for all? The problem here is fairness. Yes, it’s a nice headline for an academic, but it is offensive to anybody who flies the flag, and such a small sample is hardly definitive.”
• The immortal words of MM
The Hindu (India) carried an article recalling Margaret Mead’s wisdom. Sixty years ago, the world renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead recorded her essay for the series: “This I Believe.” She calls for understanding “the other” and not just trying to look for similarity in other cultures or to influence others into one’s own way of life: “I believe that to understand human beings it is necessary to think of them as part of the whole living world. Our essential humanity depends not only on the complex biological structure which has been developed through the ages from very simple beginnings, but also upon the great social inventions which have been made by human beings, perpetuated by human beings, and in turn give human beings their stature as builders, thinkers, statesmen, artists, seers and prophets.”
The Association for Feminist Anthropology welcomes sessions to be considered for inclusion in AFA’s programming for the 111th AAA Annual Meeting. The AAA meeting theme this year is “Borders,” so AFA particularly welcomes panels that take up “borders” from a feminist anthropological perspective.
National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), one of two national laboraties in ChinaTwo articles in the latest issue of Nature prompted this note. The first claims that China’s historical culture inhibits science:
“Two cultural genes have passed through generations of Chinese intellectuals for more than 2,000 years. The first is the thoughts of Confucius, who proposed that intellectuals should become loyal administrators. The second is the writings of Zhuang Zhou, who said that a harmonious society would come from isolating families so as to avoid exchange and conflict, and by shunning technology to avoid greed. Together, these cultures have encouraged small-scale and self-sufficient practices in Chinese society, but discouraged curiosity, commercialization and technology. They helped to produce a scientific void in Chinese society that persisted for millennia. And they continue to be relevant today.”
“Asia, led by China, is on track to displace the United States as the world’s science and technology powerhouse. That message is loud and clear in the 2012 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators, a nearly 600-page snapshot of the state of global research that looks at education, academic infrastructure, the knowledge-based workforce and international markets.”
So what has happened to the two “cultural genes” of Confucius and Zhuang in China? And what is going on with what one might caricature as the U.S. “cultural genes” of curiosity, commercialization, and technology? Just thinking.
Mauritius is in the premier league of the world’s democracies, according to the newly released London-based Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. The Index, which monitors 167 nations ranks the small Indian Ocean island, with a population of 1.3 million, 24th out of 25 “full democracies,” just ahead of Spain.
Norway is in first place followed by three other Scandinavian countries—Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Canada is eighth, Ireland is 12th, Germany is 14th, the U.K. is 18th, while the U.S. is ranked 19th.The remaining 90 countries which make it into the “democratic” category are divided into 53 “flawed democracies,” which includes France and Italy at 29th and 31st respectively. The next category consists of 37 “hybrid regimes” and includes Hong Kong (80th), Singapore (81st), Turkey (88th), Tanzania (90th) and Kenya (103rd). The remaining countries in the Index, including Bahrain, Chad, Fiji, Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, are described as “authoritarian.”
EIU Democracy Index 2011
The Index is based on five criteria: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. However, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that almost all of the “full democracies” belong to a group of the world’s advanced economies, whose populations are well-practiced in placing marks on ballot papers and tossing out unpopular or incompetent governments.
Little wonder, then, that Mauritius’s inclusion has caught the eye of some commentators. “In some ways, of the 25 ‘full democracies,’ Mauritius is now the most notable,” writes Neil Reynolds, economics correspondent for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. Reynolds cities Mauritius’s endorsement by the World Bank as the best among African economies, and its top position in the Sudanese-born telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim’s Index of African Governance.
Reynolds also goes on to note Mauritius’s ascent in the Index of Economic Freedom jointly produced by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. In 2010, it was in 12th place of 179 countries. In 2012 it has moved up to eighth place. The piece finishes with a rousing cry: “Economic freedom is as much a prerequisite for democracy as voting. Let’s hear it for the prosperous little democracy with a dodo on its coat of arms.”
But free-marketeers are not the only members of the economic tribe to endorse Mauritius. Last year, for example, Joseph Stiglitz, after a brief visit, wrote an article for The Guardian, heaping praise on the country for the provision of free education, transport for schoolchildren and free healthcare, including heart surgery. The former chief economist at the World Bank, and a leading light in the neo-Keynesian “third way” movement, reckoned that North America and Europe could learn lessons from Mauritius in terms of how the country managed “social cohesion, welfare and economic growth.”
Despite the brevity of his stay, the Nobel prize-winning economist was observant enough to point to some of the island’s problems, especially the colonial legacy in inequality in ownership of land and other forms of capital which differentially affects the life chances of various segments of the polyethnic population.
Then there is the vexatious issue of the US base on Diego Garcia. The island, along with 54 other atolls that make up the Chagos Archipelago, was detached in breach of international law before Mauritius’s independence from the UK in 1968 to form the British Indian Ocean Territory. “The US should now do right by this peaceful and democratic country: recognise Mauritius’s rightful ownership of Diego Garcia, renegotiate the lease and redeem past sins by paying a fair amount for land that it has illegally occupied for decades,” argued Stiglitz. He should have added that those 1500 or so islanders, who were forcibly removed from the Chagos Archipelago in the late 60s and early 70s by the British authorities to make way for the military base and dumped in Mauritius and the Seychelles, should be allowed to return to their homeland if they so wish.
Anthroworks presents its favorite 2011 North American dissertations in cultural anthropology. In compiling this list, I searched the “Dissertations International” electronic database that is available through my university library. The database includes mainly U.S. dissertations with a light sprinkling from Canada. I used the same search terms as I did in previous years.
True confession: these are my picks, and they reflect my preferences for topics — health, inequality, migration, gender, and human rights. Somebody else’s picks would look quite different. But this is the anthroworks list!
The 40 dissertations are arranged in alphabetical order according to the last name of the dissertation author. Apologies to the authors for my reduction of their published abstracts to a maximum of nine lines.
I would like to convey my congratulations to all 2011 anthropology Ph.D. recipients. I hope they go on to a successful career in — or related to — anthropology.
An Analysis of Cultural Competence, Cultural Difference, and Communication Strategies in Medical Care, by Marisa Abbe. Case Western Reserve University. Advisor: Atwood Gaines.
This research expands the knowledge of the role of language, culture, and cultural difference in medical encounters. Minority populations suffer disproportionately from the burden of disease in American society. A common reason cited for health inequalities is that the U.S. health care system, in its “one-size-fits-all” approach, is inadequate to meet the needs of minority patients. A proposed solution in biomedicine is cultural competence. This dissertation investigates how Anglo-American clinicians and Mexican immigrant patients communicate in a medical setting. It is based on ethnographic research at the People’s Clinic, a free clinic in a metropolitan area in Texas. I examine how patients communicate information and whether their narratives cause barriers to treatment. I propose ways to redefine cultural competence of medical practitioners.
We Are Phantasms: Female Same-Sex Desires, Violence, and Ideology in Salvador, Brazil, by Andrea Allen. Harvard University. Advisor: Michael Herzfeld.
In this dissertation, I explore the paradox of lesbian intimate partner violence in Salvador, Brazil. My ethnographic fieldwork allows me to examine how lesbians and other women with female lovers act against “state interests” through their involvement in romantic and sexual relationships with other women, but nonetheless reproduce dominant Brazilian cultural norms through their involvement in intimate partner violence and sexual power relations. I focus on four themes: social violence perpetrated against lesbians in Brazilian society; women’s same-sex desires and sexual practices; infidelity, jealousy, and intimate partner violence in lesbian relationships; and the government’s response to intimate partner violence within Brazil.
An Ambivalent Embrace: The Cultural Politics of Arabization and the Knowledge Economy in the Moroccan Public School, by Charis Boutieri. Princeton University. Advisors: Abdellah Hammoudi, Lawrence Rosen.
This dissertation is based on fieldwork in urban Moroccan high schools. I explore the relationship between Arabization (post-Independence nationalizing agenda) and public education. I argue that tensions traversing the public school relate to Morocco’s ambivalent cultural politics in the postcolonial period and to the social fragmentation this cultural politics has encouraged. Through classroom observations, discussions with students, teachers and parents and curricula analysis, I trace the Arabized school’s ambiguous bilingualism between French and Arabic and narrate how school participants encounter their colonial heritage as re-articulated in the discourse of development. These dynamics reconfigure the school from a mechanism of social and symbolic engineering to a space where the cultural politics of Morocco is debated.
• Ships crashing in the day
Canada’s Globe and Mail carried an article on what big cruise ship crashes mean for the industry: “The crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship […like that of the Titanic] a century ago, is more about the overriding ambiguity of the image — the mismatch between the insulated adventure we’re buying and the rocks and icebergs that still can get in the way.” The article quotes Erve Chambers, professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland: “With both disasters, the same delusion is at work…These ships are so big and so powerful that they are seen to prevail over nature.” [Blogger’s note: these comments remind me of how delusion is a key factor in “modern life,” along with denial — consider Tea Party beliefs and values].
• Our babies our politics: Republican presidential candidates big on babies John Huntsman and his family
An article in the New York Times pointed to the high fertility level of several of the Republican presidential candidates. Both Rick Santorum and (dropout) Jon M. Huntsman Jr. each have seven children. Mitt Romney is the father of five as is Ron Paul. But Newt Gingrich and (dropout) Rick Perry have only two children each. The article quotes Jenell Paris, who teaches anthropology at Messiah College in Pennsylvania: “For evangelicals, an anticontraception position is not seen as exclusively Roman Catholic, as it would have been in the past.” She pointed to several developments in evangelical culture to explain this shift toward an anticontraception position.
• Teenagers talking online Danah Boyd
The New York Times Sunday style section carried a major article about Danah Boyd as someone who has gained fame as an anthropologist of youth online communication. Boyd is senior researcher at Microsoft, an assistant professor at New York University, and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. She publishes in academic outlets, she speaks in important public venues, she teaches, and she tweets. The article describes her support for teens’ access to the online world as a supportive space: “The Internet was my saving grace…I would spend my teenage nights talking to strangers online, realizing there were other smart kids out there.” Her views and insights offer a tempering perspective to parents and others who worry about the dangers that lurk online.
• Binge drinking Prevalence of binge drinking among adults surveyed by landline telephone, by state. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United States, 2009
The Atlantic carried an article critiquing the recent CDC definition of binge drinking. The author writes: “To describe drinking solely in terms of statistical correlation to problem behaviors may undermine the complexity of what it means to drink and even to drink a lot. Anthropology may offer a more nuanced view than the CDC’s focus on epidemiologic and economic risk factors. If, as the CDC suggests, alcohol causes problem behavior, other cultures should have the same lack of moral inhibition when they drink.” The author, a craft bartender in Washington, DC, cites the work of cultural anthropologist Dwight Heath: “…perhaps the foremost expert on drinking and culture — and a professor of anthropology at Brown University — describes drinking as a bio-pyscho-social experience in his International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture. Heath describes cultures that, despite drinking almost lethal amounts of alcohol, sit peacefully while imbibing, with no instances of violence, crime, or suicide. Many examples of peaceful, safe drinking exist (even within our culture) and show that, while the act of drinking alcohol engenders certain physical effects, our cultural interpretation and psychological state determine what those effects mean.” The author concludes: “The last thing I wish to do is minimize these problems or even suggest that alcohol is without sin, but there’s no way to understand the true impact of alcohol within society without understanding how culture shapes its use. If I’m a binge drinker, then so be it. I’m a binge drinker. But this only obscures real problem uses of alcohol since, as a binge drinker, I seem to be doing just fine.” [Blogger’s note: I am thrilled to report that an M.A. student taking my medical anthropology seminar contributed research for the article in the Atlantic: congratulations to Clare Kelley].
The California Series in Public Anthropology is continuing its International Competition in 2012. It seeks proposals for short books oriented toward undergraduates that focus on how social scientists are facilitating social change. They are looking for accessible, grounded accounts that present compelling stories, stories that inspire others.
The proposals should describe a book that will be relatively short – around 100 pages – with a personal touch that captures the lives of people. The core of the book should involve stories of one or more social scientists as change agents, as making a difference in the world.
The University of California Press in association with the Center for a Public Anthropology will award publishing contracts for up to three such book proposals independent of whether the manuscripts themselves have been completed. The proposals can describe work the author wishes to undertake in the near future.
Interested individuals should submit a 3-4,000 word overview of their proposed manuscript detailing (a) the problem addressed as well as (b) a summary of what each chapter covers. The proposal should be written in a manner that non-academic readers find interesting and thought-provoking.
Sustainable creativity in healthcare When: May 16-18 Where: Lyric Theatre Belfast
The aim of the conference is to explore, celebrate, share and gain in-depth knowledge of international working models of best arts in health practice and research development. Exploration of the Arts Care model of engagement will provide delegates with insight into how an arts organisation can successfully develop authentic creative communities within healthcare environments.
True confession: these are my picks, and they reflect my preferences for topics — health, inequality, migration, gender, and human rights. Somebody else’s picks would look quite different. But this is the anthroworks list!
anthropologyworks 