“Pippa Middleton back on the market” – or how social elites maintain power by avoiding publicity

By contributor Sean Carey

The big romance is over and the mass media thinks it knows why. Pippa Middleton rose to national and international fame when she was maid of honor earlier this year as her older sister married Prince William, second in line to the British throne. She is reported to have been “dumped” by her long-standing boyfriend. A few days ago, press reports suggested that it was Pippa who had called time on the relationship with Alex Loudon, the 31-year-old former captain of England’s Under-19 cricket team turned corporate financier.

Pippa Middleton, June 2011. Flickr/erangi2

Now, it appears that it was the Old Etonian who tired of the pandemonium that attended the couple’s public appearances. “The plain truth is Alex adored Pippa but he couldn’t stand the circus that now surrounds her,” an unnamed friend of Loudon’s told a Mail on Sunday reporter. “Nothing is straightforward anymore.” But there is a further twist. One of Pippa’s friends disclosed that Loudon’s parents did not see the 27-year-old party planner as “wife material.”

 

The split has set up a feeding frenzy of speculation in the U.K. and international media. “Pippa Middleton lovers of the world, rejoice! The Duchess of Cambridge’s younger sis is reportedly back on the market,” shouts the headline in msnbc.com. “The Duchess of Cambridge’s foxy little sister was the world’s most sought after woman even when she had a boyfriend,” declares an article in the Daily Mail before revealing that Justin Timberlake, is among Pippa’s legion of admirers. “We American males love Pippa,” gushed the U.S. pop and movie star.

“Could flirty Prince Harry be in with a shot at the other Middleton girl?” asks Newsweek. We shall soon find out.

For what it’s worth, my guess is that the chances of happy, freewheeling bachelor, Harry, third in line of succession to the throne, dating his older brother’s sister-in-law are close to zero. Even if attracted to one another, surefooted Buckingham Palace officials will have already warned off the pair from doing anything that might jeopardize the British monarchy which, after a rocky period, when its popularity seemed to be on a permanent downward trajectory, has been reinvigorated by the global appeal of the newlywed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

We have been here before. In 2007, Prince William “dumped” Kate Middleton before they got back together and decided to tie the knot at Westminster Abbey. But with Pippa and Alex, chances of reconciliation before a fairytale wedding seem to this anthropological observer to be very slim indeed.

Why? The reason lies not, as the many headlines suggest, in Alex Loudon’s personality or psychological profile. He is variously described as “quiet” and “reserved.” But rather because of his membership in the British upper, upper class who tend to live on relatively isolated estates in the Home Counties. True to the stereotype, Alex’s parents live at Olantigh Towers near the Kent village of Wye.

A key cultural characteristic of the British aristocracy is understatement. Although members of this group nearly always maintain reciprocal links with a local population through charitable works and “open days,” they also strongly adhere to a value which is the antithesis of a global celebrity culture in which middle class Pippa is now deeply immersed.

British aristocrats have a degree of social visibility and interaction with subordinate social groups, but it is highly ritualised. In this way, their reputation is controlled and protected.

The British aristocracy is not unique in its rejection of ostentatious social display. While some social and political elites feel confident enough to flaunt their wealth because it is perceived to enhance status, others deliberately under-communicate it for fear of the trouble it might cause.

In Mauritius the Franco-Mauritians known locally as “les grands blancs,” make up less than 2 per cent of the 1.3 million population. As a legacy of colonialism, they remain in control of most of the important sectors of the Indian Ocean island’s $10 billion economy such as sugar and associated agro-businesses, tourism, the export processing zone (EPZ), and commercial services.

Members of this group typically avoid attracting attention. They do not run for political office, which would raise their public profile and flag up their commercial interests, or drive big, expensive cars, which would increase their visibility on the streets.

The reason is not hard to fathom. The best strategy for any minority group, which maintains a considerable economic surplus and which is keen to retain its high position relative to other groups in socially complex societies is for its members and associates to operate as anonymously as possible. Other options of course include direct intimidation or violence.

Back to Pippa. The real reason why global celebrity Pippa Middleton is back on the market is because she is a global celebrity.

Anthro in the news 11/14/11

• Multiple realities and the Occupiers
ABC published an opinion piece by two cultural anthropologists, Ghassan Hage, professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne, and Gerhard Hoffstaedter, a researcher at La Trobe University who take up a lectureship in anthropology at the University of Queensland. They both do research on the politics of multiple realities. At the end of their essay, they say:  “…there is an important and growing body of work in anthropology showing that rather than being defined by individualism, or territorialism and private property, or instrumental reason, what marks our modernity is that it has increasingly limited us to become mono-realist…This is not to say that the Occupiers want to revert to a non-modern mode of existence. It is to assert that, the idea of societies that allow the co-existence of multiple realities is not a figment of someone’s utopian imagination. It is to assert that, as the saying goes: another life is possible.”

• On the European economy
The Guardian carried a debate between cultural anthropologist Gillian Tett, writer for the Financial Times, and a television journalist, Paul Mason. She is quoted as saying: “Just as the past four years have raised questions about the way modern finance works, they are raising profound questions about our systems of government: we have no institutions to plan for the future, nor institutions that can quickly respond to a crisis. This is one of the reasons faith in so many public institutions is collapsing, alongside faith in the bankers. It’s why you’ve got this Occupy Wall Street protest.” Go, Gillian!

• Paul Farmer on Cuba’s humanitarian role in Haiti
An article in the New York Times on Cuba’s health aid to Haiti quotes Paul Farmer — cultural anthropologist at Harvard University, doctor, United Nations deputy special envoy to Haiti, and co- founder of Partners in Health — who said the Cubans sounded an important early alarm about the cholera outbreak and helped to mobilize health officials and lessen the death toll.

• Speaking truth to Governor Scott about anthropology and anti-racism
Cultural anthropologist John Moore, emeritus professor at the University of Florida, wrote about the importance of anthropology in the Florida Sun. He traces the connections of anthropology to anti-racism. That’s important, and it affects us all including those in the sacrosanct STEM fields. Thanks, John.

• Review All-American Muslim
Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, assistant professor of anthropology and African American studies at Purdue University, published an article in Religion Dispatches magazine that offers a positive review of the new reality TV show, “All-American Muslim.” Set in Dearborn, Michigan, the show follows five Muslim-American families as they struggle to balance faith and nationality in a post-9/11 world.

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It’s the people…

An article in Nature reports that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation realizes the importance of social science insights and indigenous/local knowledge in generating innovative approaches to improving human welfare in developing countries and promoting the adoption of such approaches.

This is not news to cultural anthropologists. What is news is that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has adopted this “innovative” approach. That’s very good news.

Gates Foundation

It is always been a major challenge to get those in power, with money, at the top, to adopt a more grassroots, local approach. Now let’s see if big money can actually lead to big changes in people’s well being by listening to the people (and the people who study people first hand).

It is essential for the Gates Foundation to also support adequate funding for long-term monitoring and evaluation of social impact, not just recording stats on micro-outputs. We need to be able to see what various innovations accomplish five, ten, twenty years out. We need baseline studies now and follow-up studies on into the future. Local people could be trained to collect basic social data and enter it into a computerized database each week, week after week. In this way, development monitoring and evaluation becomes participatory and sustainable. It’s development for local people, with local people, and monitored by local people.

Sounds like the Gates Foundation may be on an important learning and listening curve. Stay tuned.

Irish fairies in decline?

By contributor Sean Carey

Some years ago, when I was an undergraduate I took an annual holiday in Ireland. My friends and I made our pilgrimage to Fouhy’s bar in Glanworth, a village around 30 miles from the seaside town of Youghal, where we always stayed. The pub was situated halfway along the main street, and despite fierce competition always drew a good crowd, especially at the weekends.

Irish grave decoration. Wikimedia Commons/Ardfern

Unlike the other nine pubs in the village, however, not all customers were locals. I remember walking through the door on one occasion, and seeing the legendary British businessman and horse racing owner Robert Sangster and his wife, Susan, sitting at the bar drinking Jameson’s Irish whiskey.

 

Why was Sangster and his Australian socialite wife in Fouhy’s? His horses had won two Epsom Derbys, four Irish Derbys, two French Derbys, three Prix de l’Arc de Triomphes and a Melbourne Cup. The venue, a typical village bar with sawdust on the floor, was undoubtedly a far cry from the couple’s more usual, opulent haunts in the Isle of Man and Barbados, where they lived as tax exiles.

Part of the answer is: Sangster owns a major share at a nearby thoroughbred stud and was on one of his periodic visits to check on his investments.

The main reason was that the couple were there for the same reason my friends and I were: the conversation in Fouhy’s positively crackled.

The owner of the pub was Eileen Fouhy, a diminutive, unmarried woman in her early 60s. She stood behind the bar and poured the drinks until the last customer went home at a time of his or her choosing (normally his). She would not allow television. She thinks it ruins people’s ability to communicate with one another.

Eileen is right, of course. Go into any bar or pub anywhere in the world where a television set is switched on and observe the many people gazing at the screen rather than into the faces of their fellow human beings, even if they are not interested in the program being broadcast.

One lunchtime I was the only customer in Fouhy’s. I was an anthropology student, so this was an ideal opportunity to find out something about local folk beliefs. I asked Eileen, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of local and national Irish history, whether belief in the existence of fairies had declined in Ireland in recent years.

"Fairy Glade" in County Cork, Ireland. Flickr/SageE

“It has,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “That’s because of the declining strength of Guinness. In the old days, I’d pour a pint and just like now there would always be some that would drip down the outside of the glass. But back then if you left it too long you’d have trouble picking it up — it would stick to the counter. That doesn’t happen nowadays.” She paused and added: “The stout is no longer what it was.”  It was a fantastic reply. What else could I do but laugh?

But the story, with its quicksilver wit, summed up why locals, second generation Irish, U.K.-based undergraduates, and two members of the super-rich called in at Fouhy’s bar.

I was reminded of that conversation this week when I listened to “Away with the Fairies” on BBC Radio 4. The presenter, Dominic Arkwright, began by asking whether fairies are now mainly perceived as “innocent, little butterfly creatures you see in Disney films, all wings gossamer and glitter” or “spirits which can be dangerous and malicious, not at all the sort of things you would want cavorting around at the bottom of your garden.”

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Anthro in the news 11/7/11

• David Graeber is “something of a star”
The Toronto Star describes David Graeber, an anarchist and cultural anthropologist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, as being “something of a star.” An article in the Sunday New York Times mentions his role in promoting a “horizontal” rather than a top-down “vertical” leadership structure in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Graeber is credited with coining the phrase “the 99 percent.”

• Anthro tribe will descend on Montreal next week
Gillian Tett, cultural anthropologist and writer for the Financial Times points to a hot topic of discussion at the upcoming annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Montreal: links of cultural anthropology and the U.S. military. She writes, “Last month, the AAA posted an article from Nature on its website that claimed that the US military has been employing the services of anthropologists in Afghanistan to improve its data-gathering techniques. In particular, during the past five years, it has apparently run so-called “human terrain analysis” programmes, to make its Afghan operations more culturally sensitive.” Leading spokespersons with critical views of such involvement who are likely to be on hand are David Price and Hugh Gusterson.

• Dumpster anthropology

The Seattle Times carried an article about the research project of cultural anthropology doctoral student, David Giles. For his dissertation at the University of Washington, he is practicing dumpster diving and getting to know regular dumpster divers in Seattle. His questions concern how cultural assumptions of what is appetizing lead to the disposal of edible food and how people make a meal of other people’s leftovers. He hopes his work will raise awareness of the volume of edible food that gets thrown out and will prompt people to think about how they might get more food into the hands of the hungry. “The first thing that hits you in the face is how good the stuff in the Dumpster is,” Giles said.”

• Social class and trans fats in the U.K.
AW’s contributing writer, Sean Carey of the University of Roehampton, published an article in the Guardian on culture, class and trans fats. He notes that fried chicken and chips are an age-set marker for low-income British young people including those of immigrant groups. Carey quotes a 17-year-old Bangladeshi boy, who lives with his parents and four siblings in a council house in London’s Tower Hamlets, the second most deprived borough in the capital and the third nationally: “I only eat what my mother cooks for me at home – and fried chicken and chips that I buy at the local takeaway.” In Bangladesh, the traditional diet is based on fish and rice and is low in trans fats. Fried chicken and chips and other fast foods are very high in trans fats and are clearly associated with health problems later in life. Welcome to European civilization.

• Still dreaming of a visit from the mother’s son
The mother would be Stanley Ann Dunham and the son, President Obama. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald highlighted the Sydney connection of Dunham as recalled by a woman who took a weaving class with her in the 1960s at the University of Hawai’i and Dunham’s stated wish, at the time, of getting a job in Australia someday. That wish never materialized, and President Obama’s jettisoned trip to Australia last year has yet to be scheduled. Still dreaming.

• From major anthropology to major actor
Canadian actor John Ralston (Derek’s dad, Ming the Merciless, or the guy living in his car on HBO Canada) was a double major in English and cultural anthropology from the University of New Brunswick. He grew up steeped in anthropology due to his parents’ interest in the subject. Ralston is quoted in Canada’s Daily Gleaner as saying, “My whole family has taken anthropology. There would always be anthropology books around my house…”

• Hold my hand…for 1,500 years
Archaeologists have uncovered a 1,500 year-old tomb containing a man and a woman, facing each other and holding hands. Archaeologist, the excavation director, Donato Labate said, “I have been involved in many digs but I have never felt so moved.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 11/7/11” →

Upcoming event in NY on virtual humanity

Virtual Humanity: The Anthropology of Online Worlds

When: Wednesday, November 9, 2011 | 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Where: The New York Academy of Sciences
7 World Trade Center
250 Greenwich Street, 40th floor
New York, NY 10007-2157

Online games offer immersive, three-dimensional worlds populated by thousands of characters who form intense relationships, functional economies, complex societies, and rich cultures. Often these virtual connections not only mimic real-world interactions but sometimes even supplant them. But just how far can virtual worlds take us?

For this third installment of our fall series, Science & the City is bringing together an anthropologist and an online game designer to discuss how our humanity shapes, and is shaped by, our virtual experiences.

Join Thomas M. Malaby of the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Lee T. Guzofski of G2G Enterprises for this timely discussion about the ways in which natural reality blends and blurs with the virtual reality of online games.

A reception will follow.

For more information, visit website.

Talk on commercializing improved cookstoves at GW

The CIGA Seminar Series Presents

Arresting the Killer in the Kitchen:
The Promises and Pitfalls of Commercializing Improved Cookstoves

by

Rob Bailis, Assistant Professor, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

When: Thursday, November 3, 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Where: The Elliott School of International Affairs, Room 505
1957 E Street NW

Professor Bailis will review the impacts associated with dependence on solid fuels as a source of residential energy throughout the developing world and discuss the current state of household energy interventions.

Light refreshments will be available

RSVP requested: http://bit.ly/rkc49g

CIGA is part of GW’s Elliott School of International Affairs and its Institute of Global and International Studies

St. Paul’s anti-capitalist protest: Location, location, location

By contributor Sean Carey

“My congratulations to the encampment outside St Paul’s for sending almost the entire British establishment into a tizzy every bit as confused as some of the protesters themselves,” writes Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. The left-leaning newspaper’s award-winning chief political commentator goes on to express his amazement about the massive impact a small group of young, middle-class men and women equipped with nylon tents and hastily-made banners can have on the country as part of an anti-capitalist protest which has now spread to around 900 cities worldwide.

He continues:

“You have brought a frown to the forehead of the prime minister, hyperbolic froth to the lips of Boris Johnson [the Mayor of London], attracted the disdain of a pomposity of pontificators and thrown the state church into something approaching a constitutional crisis. It is twisted knickers time among pundits, politicians and prelates.” Perhaps mindful that Hallow’een was imminent, Rawnsley mischievously adds: “Imagine what might be achieved if this movement can get really serious and starts taking its protest more directly to the avaricious bankers, corporate larcenists and crony capitalists who are the central source of their discontent with how we live now.”

Were the various beneficiaries of global capitalism identified by Rawnsley quaking in their boots or enjoying a nice round of golf before a traditional Sunday lunch somewhere in the Home Counties on a pleasant autumnal day? Despite the protests, life probably went on as usual. Nevertheless, as Rawnsley rightly observes, something is going on, but what exactly?

Capitalism is Crisis tents at St Paul's in London. Flickr/zoer

Another intriguing question is why the encampment in the churchyard of St Paul’s is causing so many social actors so many problems and causing the chattering classes to chatter quite so much.

Believe me, the U.K. mainstream media — newspapers, radio and television and its digital equivalent blogs, Facebook, YouTube and especially twitter — are full of stories about the encampment outside the Church of England cathedral, designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the great Fire of London, and seat of the Bishop of London.

Last Thursday the current occupant, Dr Richard Chartres, who has been at the receiving end of criticisms from those on both sides of the argument, felt obliged to say: “The Church’s own role in this has now inevitably come under scrutiny. Calls for the camp to disband peacefully have been deliberately interpreted as taking the side of Mammon, which is simply not the case. The original purpose of the protests, to shine a light on issues such as corporate greed and executive pay, has been all but extinguished – yet these are issues that the St Paul’s Institute has taken to heart and has been engaged in examining.”

Continue reading “St. Paul’s anti-capitalist protest: Location, location, location” →

Anthro in the news 10/31/11

• The anthropologist behind Occupy Wall Street
Several mainstream media outlets carried stories about cultural anthropologist David Graeber, said to be the anthropologist behind Occupy Wall Street. As reported in Business Weekly and other sources, David Graeber says he had three goals for the year: promote his book, learn to drive, and launch a worldwide revolution. The first is going well, the second has proven challenging, and the third is looking up. Graeber has published innovative theories on exchange and value, exploring phenomena such as Iroquois wampum and the Kwakiutl potlatch. His pamphlet, Toward an Anarchist Anthropology, is widely read. An American, he teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London.

• Drug trafficking and rising femicide in Latin America
Drug trafficking does not offer job opportunities where one wants to promote gender equality. These job are very dangerous and may be particularly dangerous for women. The Honduras Weekly quoted cultural anthropology professor Howard Campbell of the University of Texas-El Paso on the current and historic roles of women in drug trafficking in Latin America as both mules and bosses. The article also points out the high mortality rates of women involved in drug trafficking. Disposable workers in the interest of criminal capitalism.

• What’s that thing you are holding?
The Chronicle for Higher Education profiled cultural anthropology professor Balmurli Natrajan‘s course where he shows his students a simple object, usually a pen. “What do you see?” he asks. At first, they describe the obvious: a pen. Then he urges students to think about the pen’s life. What is it made of? Where did it come from? “They start seeing that there are human beings, dead and alive—some of them barely alive—that have actually gone into the making of that object,” explains Natrajan. “They start excavating some of those things that are hidden.” Natrajan has been teaching anthropology courses at William Paterson University, in New Jersey, for more than six years, but he says this course is easily the most beloved by his students. It’s called “Global Transformations and the Human Condition.”

• Forensic anthro identifies victims of ethnic warfare
Foreign Policy magazine carried an article including video clips and impressions from a trip to Tuzla and Srebrenica to meet with investigators and victims of the July 1995 massacres. Journalist Michael Dobbs went to the DNA tracking facility in Tuzla operated by the International Commission on Missing Persons. A clip shows an interview with an ICMP forensic anthropologist describing the laborious process of matching DNA samples to an individual victim. It’s all in the numbers.

• Fox News Latino covered findings by Japanese archaeologist
Archaeologist Saburo Sugiyama found that the architects of the ancient city of Teotihuacan based their designs on a numerical measure equivalent to 83 centimeters (32.68 inches). Teotihuacan is the largest city built by indigenous peoples in Mexico.

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