Call for papers: “Madness” and culture

Transgressive Culture – ‘Madness’ and Culture
Deadline for submission: Feb 19

Transgressive Culture is a new electronic and print peer-reviewed journal and book series published with Gylphi, with an international editorial board that includes Ken Gelder (University of Melbourne) and James Kincaid (University of Southern California). Details of the ‘addiction edition’ can be found here: http://www.gylphi.co.uk/transgressive/index.php.

We invite submissions of critical and creative work within the broad area of ‘Madness’ and Culture. Submissions may wish to consider the following areas – though we are open to ideas from outside this list:
–How should and can madness in the 21st century be conceptualized, and who should be in charge of such conceptualization?
–How madness is represented in new media forms, such as blogs or advertisements?
–How can or does music, literature and the arts transgress traditional or clinical formulations of mad experiences?
–Are service users transgressing and transcending their own experiences through their documentation and reiteration in art and literature?
–How does psychiatry deal with those who transgress the boundaries of The Good Patient?
–To what extent can creativity and madness be delineated as interdependent in the 21st century?
–Does the media continue to play a role in creating and maintaining public perceptions of madness and how should this be addressed in terms of stigma and inequality?
–How are contemporary mental health movements, such as the Recovery movement, reconfigured or represented in literature and culture?

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Brown rice in India?

Ever since hippies in the West discovered brown rice, those of us (speaking for myself at least) who remember books such as Diet for a Small Planet and Victory through Vegetables, have welcomed brown rice to our table.

For me, at least some of the time, a steaming bowl of white basmati or jasmine rice is still more enticing to me than its chewy brown counterpart. I think this is a personal failing rather than something to do with brown rice.

How interesting, then, to stumble on an article published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association describing perceptions in South India about brown rice. It is written by S. Kumar, a social scientist and R. Mohanraj, a psychologist, both living in Chennai, India, and several other colleagues in India and at Harvard University in the United States.

The study is based on qualitative research — focus group interviews with 65 South Indian adults. The sample included men and women, people who were and were not overweight, and people who did and did not live in a slum situation in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The focus groups were homogeneous by gender.

Findings: overall, participants favor eating rice and rice-based foods. So far so good, but what about color preferences? In general, rice that is not white or long-grained is considered to be inferior.

Knowledge of brown rice and its nutritive properties was limited, though some people were aware of the health benefits of brown rice. The interviews suggest that old people with health problems might be more likely to accept brown rice than healthy, young people. So…it’s sort of medicinal and taste/quality are less important in that case.

Participants did have suggestions for promoting brown rice. They include: having the government and health officials endorse it and educate people about its benefits, advertize recipes with brown rice as an ingredient, have celebrity film actors endorse it, and give out free samples.

Notably, across “non-slum and slum groups,” women were more open to trying brown rice than men. But even the most open-minded women suggested that it would be a slow process to make brown rice an accepted part of the everyday diet.

Upcoming event on Burma

Burma: Political Reforms and the Impacts on Humanitarian Efforts

When: Friday, January 13 | 12 noon
Where: FHI 360, 8th Floor Board Room
1875 Connecticut Ave., NW
Washington, DC

Lynn Yoshikawa, Advocate, Refugees International

Lynn Yoshikawa has just returned from a Refugees International trip to Burma to talk to aid workers and displaced people about the ongoing conflicts and human rights abuses, which have forced millions from their homes. As the US and Burma continue to develop their relationship, Refugees International advises that strong US and UN engagement will be key to transforming Burma’s damaged political system into one that ensures the rights of all its citizens.

More info.

Upcoming book launch on customary justice

Customary Justice and Rule of Law in War-Torn Societies

When: Thurs, Jan 12 | 9:30am-11:00am
Where: United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
2301 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037

Citizens of fragile and conflict-affected states confront threats to their security and livelihoods on a daily basis. Nearly 1.6 billion people are forced to live in the midst of violence perpetuated by a diverse array of actors – from political extremists to transnational criminal syndicates. Too often these most vulnerable and marginalized are left without a voice in their personal and political future and are denied adequate forums for addressing their grievances.

The United States Institute of Peace leads the way in developing innovative thinking about rule of law in fragile and conflict-affected countries. USIP’s most recent publication – Customary Justice and Rule of Law in War-Torn Societies – moves the field toward empirically-based solutions to justice reform issues, by expanding the justice landscape to look at the evolving role that non-state actors play in resolving conflicts in communities and providing forums for locally relevant outlets of justice.

For more information on speakers and how to RSVP, click here.

Mauritius takes a step towards gender equality in politics

By contributor Sean Carey

Mauritius continues to change. The Indian Ocean island, famous for its white coral beaches and azure seas, has come a long way since independence from the U.K., in 1968. The transformation of the economy from a reliance on sugar exports to Europe to one that is forecast to grow by 4.1 percent in 2012 through tourism, financial services, business outsourcing and high-end fashion products continues despite the economic turbulence affecting most of the advanced economies.

1/3 — New gender law specifies that at least one-third of candidates in local elections must be women

Some local commentators argue about how Mauritius should best position itself in the global economy as power shifts from West to East and elsewhere – for example, should it stay with its traditional trading partners in Europe, should it seek to forge new alliances among the growth economies of Asia, or should it try and do both? The last seems to be the favourite option at the moment. Nevertheless, the ethnically diverse country of 1.3 million people maintains an excellent reputation with outside agencies, including Moody’s which recently reaffirmed its “investment-grade credit status.”

But change in economic activities is not the only game in town. Because of cross-cutting ties of social class, kinship and ethnicity, the country, which boasts a free press and independently-owned radio stations (though no independently-owned, local television stations), is one of the liveliest democracies in the world.

Now gender has become part of the formal political mix. As of January 1, a new gender law specifies that at least one-third of candidates in local elections must be women. Elections, which are held every five years, are due in April.

Whereas in larger countries like the U.S. and U.K., local representatives are often remote and have an abstract relationship with electors, this is not the case in Mauritius, which measures 787 square miles. Customary expectations ensure that routine face-to-face encounters and public meetings in the capital, Port Louis, and other towns and villages are an important part of the way politics is conducted — including how support for parties and political leaders is measured.

In his New Year address, the Mauritian Prime Minister, Dr. Navinchandra Ramgoolam, welcomed the change to the electoral system: “We must ensure that the number of women candidates rises considerably,” he said. Currently, around 6.5 percentof local councillors are women, so an increase in their number in the near future is almost inevitable.

However, the Dublin and London-educated Prime Minister has been more circumspect as to whether changes at the local level should be rolled out for general elections. At the moment, 13 out of 70 deputies in the Mauritian parliament are women, but only two of them have made it to the 25-strong Cabinet.

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Anthro in the news 1/9/12

• Is it time to ban plastic surgery?
The Los Angeles times carried an article by Alexander Edmonds, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and author of a book called Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Here are some extracts from the article: “The faulty breast implants made by the French company Poly Implants Protheses, or PIP, have grabbed headlines around the world in recent weeks, and it’s no wonder. The prostheses are more prone to rupture than other models, and they contain an industrial grade of silicone never intended for use in a medical device. The scandal is also global in scope. Sold in 65 countries, the implants were re-branded by a Dutch company registered in Cyprus, offered on credit in Venezuela and smuggled into Bolivia, where they were bought by medical tourists….Some plastic surgeries similarly lie in a gray zone between necessity and medical enhancement. For example, breast reduction is seen by many in the United States as medically justifiable. But in Brazil the operation often has mainly a cosmetic aim (small breasts are an erotic ideal, while larger breasts are seen as matronly)…But while medical advances can result in safer cosmetic procedures, they can also contribute to their normalization. Yesterday’s vanity is often today’s health, or at least well-being. As beauty becomes a more visible part of medicine, health risks may become less visible. And that is a big risk.” This article has been picked up by the Korea Herald.

• Golf, sex and racism
A new book by Orin Starn looks at the “Tiger Woods incident” in the context of golf, race and celebrity culture in the United States. Starn is professor and chair of cultural anthropology at Duke University. The book is called The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal. According to the reviewer, “Starn comes by his interest in Woods honestly. He began golfing at 12 with his grandfather, played on his college golf team and has a 5 handicap. In a conversational voice, he explores golf’s history and how using social media helped him get at the range of responses the public had to the Woods incident.”

• American football, military values, and violence
The Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted Peter Wogan, associate professor of anthropology at Willamette University in Oregon, in an article about football and American culture. Building on his “Tackle This” post for Anthroworks,Wogan comments to El Pais on how American football links with military tactics and values: “It’s two groups of men, coordinated and synchronized, who have to advance together, as one. …The players [like soldiers] stay on the field to save their buddies, so I don’t think the violence is gratuitous” [Blogger’s note: thanks to Peter Wogan for bringing the El Pais article to my attention and for translating this quotation into English].

• OWS and David Graeber’s claim to fame
The Daily Telegraph (London) carried an article on January 7 about the proliferation of writing about and for the 99 percent: “Under the banner of Occupy Writers, well over 3,000 writers have come out in support of the Occupy movement. Among them the likes of Jennifer Egan, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Salman Rushdie are very successful. Most writers, though, struggle even to earn minimum-wage rates from their trade. They cobble together careers through lecturing, copy-editing, penning the odd article…” The article goes on to refer to David Graeber’s book, Debt, as the “richest elaboration” of the critique of extreme capitalism.

• Class cancelled before it starts
Columbia University’s anthropology department planned to offer a class this spring that would be “a field-based course about Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement more broadly.” It was supposed to offer “training in ethnographic research methods alongside a critical exploration of the conjunctural issues in the Occupy movement.” According to the New York Daily News, “But then the adults stepped in and killed the idea.” The Columbia Spectator provides some background as of January 6: Associate Vice President for Public Affairs Brian Connolly said that Columbia’s Committee on Instruction has not approved the proposed class, which would allow students to conduct fieldwork at OWS protests. “A few news outlets reported that Columbia would be offering a new undergraduate course regarding Occupy Wall Street,” Connolly said in an email. “News reports and some departmental postings regarding the spring semester were premature.”

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Cultural anthropologist of 2011

There is no Nobel prize in anthropology and certainly not in the field of cultural/social anthropology which is not known for exciting “discoveries.”

Cultural anthropologists cannot match findings such as: Neanderthals are smarter than we thought, chimpanzees are smarter than we thought, construction of temples is older than we thought, when did people first make hot chocolate, etc.

In relation to current events, cultural/social anthropologists rarely get called on by the mainstream media to comment. Sociologists do better. For example, Andrew Foster of the University of Pennsylvania regularly comments on changing U.S. demographics, especially family patterns. Cultural anthropology is not very event-driven. Cultural anthropology is more about looking at things slowly and carefully and slowly and carefully and…which is not a bad thing.

Having scanned the mainstream media for mention of anthropologists over the past few years for the weekly “anthropology in the news” post, I can say for sure that the most popular anthropology topics are Neanderthals and chimpanzees. Within cultural anthropology, Paul Farmer has taken the lead in terms of coverage (until 2011), though he is almost never identified as an anthropologist.

But 2011 was different, very different.

Because of sustained visibility in the media in 2011, for inspiring the OWS movement, and for the publication of a masterwork called Debt, the anthropologyworks “cultural anthropologist award of 2011” goes to David Graeber.

Graeber published the largest stocking stuffer of a book with the unlikely title of Debt. It made it to many 2011 favorite book lists.

He was a leading non-leader of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

He was quoted often in the mainstream media and on many blogs.

If you haven’t already, please read Graeber’s 2004 pamphlet, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. It will be your appetizer (105 pages, small pages) for Debt (391 pages not counting notes and references for a total of 534).

Or, just search him out on the Internet. He’s there. And he has important things to say about “advanced”/”extreme” (blogger’s terms) capitalism and where it’s headed.

Anthro in the news 1/2/12

• “Aid from abroad can sometimes help”
In a review in the New York Times of a book on recent Haitian history, the reviewer addresses the differing effects of external and internal factors in explaining Haiti’s current situation. Near the end of the essay, the author that “…aid from abroad can sometimes help, as with the work of the estimable, Creole-speaking Dr. Paul Farmer and his Partners in Health Program…” Blogger’s note: Once again, Paul Farmer’s impact is noted without any mention of the fact that he is a cultural anthropologist. At least his Creole abilities made it into the article. That’s kind of anthro.

• Politics of culture in Indonesia
The Jakarta Post carried an article about a major “cultural project” the government is undertaking. It mentions anthropologist Jean Couteau’s criticism of the project for focusing only on Islamic and Malay traditions.

• New anthropology course at Columbia University on OWS
According to an article in CBS News, Columbia University will offer a new course next semester on Occupy Wall Street. The class will be run by the anthropology department and taught by Dr. Hannah Appel, a veteran of the Occupy movement. It will include class work at Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and fieldwork requiring students to become involved with the Occupy movement. The course will be called “Occupy the Field: Global Finance, Inequality, Social Movement.” Blogger’s note: what would Governor Perry say?

• Debt relief as step number one
According to David Graeber, an anthropologist at Goldsmiths College of the University of London, the first act of many successful rebellions in history was to annihilate the records of debt owed. In his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Graeber describes how “cancelling the debts, destroying the records, reallocating the land, was to become the standard list of peasant revolutionaries everywhere”.

• A new age category: middle childhood
The Science section of the New York Times carried a front page article on “middle childhood” which researchers say begins around 5 or 6 years and ends with the teen years. It discusses findings from the September issue of the journal Human Nature. “Middle childhood has been very much overlooked until recently,” said David Lancy, an anthropologist at Utah State University and a contributor to the special issue, “which makes it all the more exciting to participate in the field today.” An underlying message is that there is something biological going on around the age of 5-6 years that enables children to be more like adults. Therefore, in many societies, boys and girls start take on some adult roles around this time such as sibling care, gathering wood, herding, or agricultural work. But taking on such tasks for “middle-aged children” is not universal, as demonstrated by the article about the Pumé, a foraging group in west-central Venezuela. Among the Pumé, preadolescent girls do little in terms of work, while their brothers do more. Girls chat with each other and do beadwork.

• Thinking like a Neanderthal
The New York Times carried a review of a new book, How to Think Like a Neandertal, by Thomas Wynn, an anthropologist, and Frederick Coolidge, a psychologist, both at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Their book goes beyond the physical evidence to speculate about Neanderthals. They suggest that Neanderthals were empathetic, possessed some language, were companionable, attached to family, able to plan ahead, and had impressive mechanical skills.

• Thinking like a chimpanzee
Not so dumb either, are wild chimpanzees according to new a study showing that chimpanzees monitor the information available to other chimpanzees and inform group members of danger. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the University of St. Andrews, Great Britain, set up a study with wild chimpanzees in Uganda. They found that chimpanzees were more likely to send an alarm call about a snake to unaware group members than to aware group members. Thus, they recognize awareness and unawareness in others, and they can share new information with others by means of communication.

• In memoriam
Khoo Khay Jin died in December in Penang, Malaysia. Khay Jin, a leading public intellectual, had an M.Phil. from Columbia University and spent a large part of his career (1975-1995) as a lecturer in anthropology and sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang. He taught rural sociology and peasant societies, economic anthropology, Southeast Asian ethnography, the sociology of development, ethnic relations, social theory and the philosophy of social science. Khay Jin was a multi-talented person. He was a gifted child prodigy in mathematics and music, and played the piano in his younger days under the name of Philip Khoo.

Anthro in the news 12/26/11

• In-sourcing life-saving peanut food
The Guardian mentioned the role of Paul Farmer, medical anthropologist, physician, and health activitist, in an article about ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs). RUTFs are small packets of a peanut butter-like paste, fortified with minerals and vitamins. Products such as Plumpy’nut can reverse child malnutrition within weeks. But most RUTFs are produced in the US or Europe, then bought by aid agencies such as Unicef, and transported to reach those in need. Some social enterprises question this business model and seek to promote production in developing countries. Partners in Health, leads the way. It has been producing RUTFs in Haiti since 2006.

• U.S. public universities in crisis
Nancy Scheper-Hughes published an essay in the Chronicle for Higher Education on the current crisis in U.S. public universities: “Although public universities are under attack throughout the United States, the University of California is taking a particularly hard beating, metaphorically and literally…state support for the University of California is steadily shrinking, undergraduate tuition has almost doubled since 2007, and classroom spaces once reserved for California residents are being sold to affluent students from out of state and abroad. Diversity is good for any institution, but a diversity limited to those who can buy it is not diversity at all…”

• The meaning of money
Cultural anthropologist David Graeber of Goldsmith’s College, London, reflects on the meaning of money in the Guardian: “It affects every aspect of our lives, is often said to be the root of all evil, and the analysis of the world that it makes possible – what we call “the economy” – is so important to us that economists have become the high priests of our society. Yet, oddly, there is absolutely no consensus among economists about what money really is.”

• Russian middle class protesting
The Times of India carried an interview with Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov who teaches social anthropology at Cambridge University, England. Currently in Moscow, he spoke about anti-government protests in Russia, a changed public mood and influences like the Arab Spring and a global economic slowdown.

• Two anthro books named best of the year
In The Australian, writer Peter Carey, states his preferences: “In a period where all our old assumptions must be in question, it can be a tonic to read the works of those who have never shared them. I’m speaking about anarchists, who seem to be finding new readers every day. Here are two books so brimful of ideas they made my heart sing, both by anarchists, one an anthropologist and the other a geographer. The geographer is a Yale professor, James C. Scott, who made me think about the Marsh Arabs and the Asian hill peoples with new respect in The Art of Not being Governed. David Graeber is an anthropologist, an American professor from Goldsmith’s in London, who has been widely credited with inventing the great slogan for Occupy Wall Street: “We are the 99 per cent.” His new book Debt: The First 5000 Years speaks very clearly to our present world. It is a history of social and economic transactions, an interrogation of debt, tribute, gifts, the curiously economic language of religion, the fairytales we have told ourselves about the origin of money (and on, and on.) Not every argument is concluded or tied together, but line for line it is lucid. Graeber’s knowledge in encyclopedic. He offers more astonishments than I can count.” [Blogger’s note: Scott is an anthropologist/political scientist].

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/26/11” →

Lap-dancing and moralities in a global world

By contributor Sean Carey

I am driving along Mile End Road in east London around midnight with a Bangladeshi friend. I am giving him a lift home, after we had paid a brief visit to a “gentlemen’s club” located on the border between Tower Hamlets and the City, the so-called Square Mile, London’s preeminent financial district. “Well, I can now say that I am not very keen on lap-dancing clubs,” my friend informs me.

We had just spent around 45 minutes in the club. The venue opened two years ago. It is one of 11 currently licensed lap-dancing clubs in Tower Hamlets. Only those 18 or over can cross the threshold. The club opens in the late afternoon and closes at 3AM, Monday to Friday. Young, predominantly white men –- “City boys”, as they are known — with high levels of disposable income sit either at the bar, tables or in armchairs –- and can either talk amongst themselves or engage in conversation with around a dozen “girls” who are looking for clients. For a fee of £20, a striptease can be performed in an alcove at the back of the club. A “private” room is also available. The club takes a proportion of the women’s earnings and, along with the sale of alcohol, is a key revenue stream. “Do you ever have any trouble,” I ask the owner. “Never,” he replies. “Everyone is as good as gold. In any case, we have really good security.” He then indicates two very large men, one black one white, at the club’s entrance. He pauses and adds: “The only trouble we have is with the local authority.” More on this later.

My friend is nominally Muslim –- he visits the mosque only occasionally and is largely secular in outlook. He likes the U.K. and London in particular. Apart from his early years, he has spent most of his life in Tower Hamlets. He very much admires open and tolerant multicultural societies. “Each to his own,” could sum up his personal outlook in terms of how people organise their personal lives. But perhaps he has reached the limit of tolerance after a visit to the lap-dancing club. And even a relatively weak religious identity clearly plays a part in how he evaluates such cultural forms. “Everyone likes to have a good time, have a drink and meet people, but perhaps it would be better to meet somewhere else.” He paused for a moment to reflect. Because we had also visited a Bangladeshi-owned “Indian” restaurant earlier in the evening he then added: “On the other hand, running a restaurant which serves alcohol is also prohibited in the Koran.” He was obviously wrestling with the metaphysical problem of adjudicating between making a living from two types of businesses that according to Islamic law are forbidden (haram).

I asked: “From a Koranic point of view which is worse: running a restaurant which serves alcohol, or running a lap dancing club?”

“Difficult to say,” he answered. “Both are bad.”

I felt the issue could be explored further. “All right, but leaving aside for the moment how you view it, tell me how most Bangladeshis, either in the U.K. or in Bangladesh, would see the situation? Would they see owning a lap-dancing club as worse, the same or somewhat better than owning a restaurant which serves alcohol?”

Put this way, my friend was able to answer very quickly: “Oh, in both countries they would see the lap-dancing club as worse.”

How did my friend and I end up making our first visit to a lap-dancing club? We had been visiting a Bangladeshi-owned “Indian” restaurant in the Aldgate area to talk about my friend’s recent move to Sylhet, Bangladesh, to set up a business in the part of the country from which he originates. He wanted to run some ideas about marketing and branding past me.

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