• David Graeber, the Occupy movement, and debt
An article in the New Yorker magazine called “Pre-Occupied: The origins and future of Wall Street,” focuses on the Zucotti Park occupation in Manhattan. It mentions the formative role of anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and notes his communications with Berkeley activist, Micah White. White recently nominated his entry on Wikipedia for deletion on the grounds that he is “non-notable.” The Guardian (London) carried a review article called “Books for Giving: Economics”. One of the books reviewed is Graeber’s monumental study called Debt: The First 5,000 Years. The reviewer says that is has become “one of the year’s most influential books.”

• Drug wars in Mexico threaten potters’ art and livelihood
The Dallas News carried an article about the loss of pottery sales and traditions in Chihuahua, Mexico, due to drug-related violence. It focuses on the small village of Mata Ortiz, located 150 miles from the U.S. border. It is home to some of the most prominent potters in the world. But the drug wars have driven the tourists away. The article mentions anthropologist Spencer MacCallum who has studied and written about the potters of the village. He says that the consequences for the potters are “devastating.” He notes: “With no demand for their pottery and nobody coming, I hate to see fine artists working on the road-building up in the sierra.”

• Pop-up shopping in London
Sean Carey, our contributing blogger, published a piece in the New Statesman on what is reputedly the first pop-up shopping mall. With his usual, on-the-ground lively reporting, Sean takes us to Boxpark: “It’s midday, and I am walking along Shoreditch High Street headed towards the northern end of Brick Lane. I turn into Bethnal Green Road. There is a lot of activity going on — lots of young people of various nationalities purposefully moving stuff around while others stand back and survey the results of their endeavours. I wonder what’s happening as this is normally a dead area — except on evenings at weekends, when the affluent young people of London and their counterparts from overseas come out to play and move between the various bars, clubs and restaurants in Greater Shoreditch.” There’s more, and it’s interesting, so read on.

• Take that anthro degree and…MA grad in anthropology is a documentary film-maker
Life and its various forms have always fascinated Rajive McMullen, an Indo-Canadian research scholar at the Punjab University, India. McMullen earned BA and MA degrees in anthropology from the University of Toronto. After 15 years away, he returned to India and made an anthropological documentary called The Lover and the Beloved: A Journey into Tantra, released earlier this month. The film portrays tantriks, aghoris and other holy seekers of northern India who call themselves the disciples of Guru Gorakhnath, believed to be an incarnation of Lord Shiva. The film offers a dramatic insight into tantriks’ ideas about the life cycle, especially about death. Express India quotes McMullen as saying, “It is a realistic attempt to understand both the practice and the illusive theory behind Indian Tantrism, and is intended to challenge widespread Western misinterpretations of this stream of thought.”

• Take that anthro degree and…sports/anthropology major now co-founder of Afrikids Ghana
The Daily Telegraph (London) ran a long article about AfriKids, and NGO that works in Ghana to prevent the infanticide of physically deformed infants, child labor, homelessness, and human trafficking. One of the organization’s co-founders is Georgie Feinberg, who lives in Buckinghamshire. During part of her gap year, at the age of 18, she went to Accra and volunteered in a children’s home. She returned to England and earned a BA in sports and anthropology at Oxford Brookes University. She also raised L30,000 for the children’s home. She returned to Ghana, and from then on became a driving force in creating AfriKids Ghana.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 12/5/11” →

• Forensic anthropologists testify in child murder trial in Scotland
BBC News reported on a trial in Scotland involving testimony from two forensic anthropologists: Sue Black, a professor of human anatomy and forensic anthropology at Dundee University and Dr. Cunningham, a lecturer in anthropology at Dundee University. Both worked on a report which was presented in court.

• Forensic anthropologists working on murder cases in Texas
Dr. Jennifer Love is forensic anthropology director of the identification unit at the Harris County Medical Examiners Office. She and other forensic anthropologists are looking into several murder cases from as far back in 1981.

• First international student at Sikkim University
The Telegraph (India) reported on Sikkim University’s first foreign student. Tatsuki Shirai from Japan joined Sikkim Government College last year to study sociology and the Eastern Himalayas. The student came to Sikkim on a scholarship from the Hitosubashi University in Tokyo. He will return to Hitosubashi University next year to complete his undergraduate program in sociology and cultural anthropology.

• Arab spring of archaeology in Egypt?
Nature carried an article about the politics of doing archaeology in Egypt under the reign of Zawi Hawass. According to the article, “Many archaeologists working in Egypt are reluctant to speak about Hawass on the record out of fear that he could regain influence in the country. But in private, several researchers say that Hawass was intolerant of opposition and blocked excavation permits to those who published results or theories that clashed with his own.” Megan Rowland of the University of Cambridge, who recently completed a master’s degree on the political significance of Egypt’s antiquities during the revolution, is quoted as saying that “researchers who crossed Hawass became targets of intense criticism or had their permits revoked.”

• DNA sheds light on ancient “twin” burial
Two infants buried together nearly a thousand years ago in a single grave found at what is now the Angel Mounds State Historic Site in Indiana have long been thought to be twins. Scientists using an automated DNA sequencing system at the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute at Indiana University-Bloomington have learned that they were not biologically related. Charla Marshall, adjunct professor of anthropology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, led the team of researchers. Marshall and three co-authors report their findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

• Ancient tuna fishing
The New Scientists reports on findings that deep sea tuna fishing occurred 42,000 years ago in island southeast Asia. Sue O’Connor at the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues found evidence in deposits at the Jerimalai shelter on Timor-Leste, including 38,000 fish bones from 23 different taxa, including tuna and parrotfish that are found only in deep water. ABC Australia carried an interview with some of the researchers about fish hooks found at the site.

• Software to help locate fossils
According to a piece in Science Daily, Glenn Conroy, professor of  physical anthropology and colleagues at Western Michigan University, have developed a software model that mimics the workings of the human brain. So far it has proved productive in pinpointing fossil sites in the Great Divide Basin, a 4,000-square-mile stretch of rocky desert in Wyoming

• In memoriam
Allen R. Maxwell, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alabama, died November 16, 2011, at the age of 71 years. He retired from the University of Alabama in 2010 after 36 years of service to the department of anthropology. Maxwell was recognized for raising the national academic profile of the department, beginning with a major revision of the anthropology curriculum when he joined the faculty in 1974. Maxwell published more than 80 scholarly articles or book chapters and gave 68 major conference presentations. His work as an ethnographer and linguist centered on the peoples of Borneo, especially Brunei and Sarawak. He enjoyed an international reputation for the depth of his understanding of Borneo’s many cultures.

• Understanding Afghanistan: how and for whom
The New York Times book review Sunday section carried a two-page review, with a color illustration, of three books on Afghanistan — two of them by cultural anthropologists: Noah Coburn’s Bazaar Politics, “the first extended study of an Afghan community to appear since the Taliban fell” and Thomas Barfield‘s “ambitious history.” The reviewer mentions the U.S. military’s demand for “local knowledge” and how American anthropologists are resistant to providing it. Nonetheless, cultural anthropologists’ expert knowledge of aspects of Afghanistan’s social life could help in ways not directly related to military activities. [Blogger’s note: stay tuned for another important book coming out in January 2012 co-authored by cultural anthropologist Magnus Marsden and historian Ben Hopkins].

• Impact: reducing poverty’s health burden through primary health care
Paul Farmer, physician and medical anthropologist, is a co-founder of Partners in Health and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Farmer is one of the most prominently mentioned anthropologists in the mainstream media. In an op-ed this past week on sustainable health programs for the world’s poor, he writes: “Partners in Health, a nonprofit I’ve worked with for almost three decades, started by moving resources and primary care into a part of central Haiti where almost none existed. As TB, AIDS, cancer and other diseases emerged as leading killers, we did our best to combat them: Treating patients no matter the cause of the illness nor the cost of the remedy is what health-care workers are trained to do. Some of our AIDS and TB treatment efforts in rural Haiti and elsewhere achieved success rates rivaling those in hospitals in Boston. We witnessed another benefit: Delivering care for cancer, AIDS or multidrug-resistant TB improved a community’s general health. Fewer women died in childbirth, and infant mortality declined.”

• Advanced capitalism gets a look
AW’s contributor, Sean Carey of Roehampton University, published an article in the New Statesmen in which he offers insights into the worldwide demonstrations against bankers and capitalism in the world’s big economies: “Until recently, the world’s advanced economies had experienced nearly two decades of the biggest increase in prosperity in the history of mankind. This has been very fortunate for the majority of the population, especially those in the middle classes and above. As British anthropologist, Ernest Gellner, pointed out it in his acclaimed 1997 book, Nationalism, the material improvement in (most) people’s lives creates political and social legitimacy.” He goes on from there.

• Drug use in Manipur
A one-day seminar on the Impact of Drug Use in Manipur was jointly organized by the Department of Anthropology of Manipur University, India, and Community Network for Empowerment (CoNE). Speaking on the Social and Economic Impact of Drug Use in Manipur, M. C. Arun, a professor in MU’s dept of anthropology, said that the problems faced by the youth need to be addressed.

• American Anthropological Association considers ethics code revision
The Chronicle for Higher Education covered changes in the proposed new code with a focus on the “prime directive.” The previous code told anthropologists that they “have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work.” This means that an anthropologist’s obligation to the research population must override the goal of acquiring new knowledge. The proposed newer version has not yet been formally adopted. It explains that the primary ethical obligation is “to avoid doing harm to the lives, communities, or environments” that anthropologists study. “Dealing with ethics codes is complicated,” said cultural anthropologist David Price, a member of the committee charged with revising the guidelines and professor at Saint Martin’s University, in Washington. The word was echoed last week by fellow committee members at a panel on ethics at the annual meeting of AAA.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/21/11” →