Dynamic Anthropology: Tensions between Theory and Practice
When: October 5-7, 2011 Where: University of Helsinki
This conference invites participants to look beyond conventional divides and to explore and engage with theoretical, methodological, political and ethical questions from every perspective. Some suggested (but by no means limiting) topics include the discussion of new approaches to kinship, materialities, production and consumption or medical anthropology; discussion of new fields in anthropology such as ‘affect’, computer culture or global concerns; methodologies – from participatory action research to visual anthropology or discourse-centred perspectives on culture; exploration of concept metaphors such as nature, space, body and scale; or productive pathways to syncretizing anthropological theory and empirical data in specific research fields.
Interested in submitting a paper for the conference? See the call for papers.
See website for more details and information on how to register.
• On campus drinking culture Nearly 40 percent of U.S. college students engage in high-risk alcohol consumption. This rate has remained unchanged for 30 years. Each year 2,000 students die from alcohol related deaths, and an estimated 600,000 are injured while under the influence of alcohol. So begins Jim Yong Kim‘s editorial in the Washington Post, “Targeting Campus Drinking.” He has worked in Peru and Rwanda, and is a world-renowned expert on tuberculosis. He brings that experience to a major campus affliction through the Learning Collaborative methodology that weds research with practice through innovative strategies to change “alcohol culture.”
• Anthro of London bankers
What do bankers in the City of London do all day? The Guardian is launching an anthropological study of the Square Mile by Joris Luyendijk, a Dutch anthropologist. According to Luyendijk, “So what is a Dutch anthropologist doing talking to bankers in the City of London? That was certainly the first thing bankers themselves wanted to know before they would even consider meeting with me in secret.” The project includes a blog with profiles of several bankers. It’s meant to be interactive: you can comment!
• Anthro of Paris magicians
To find out how the craft of magic works, Graham Jones spent two years inside Paris’ thriving world of magic. Jones, a cultural anthropology professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, passed an examination to join France’s largest magic association. He recently published a book based on his research, Trade of the Tricks. “Magic is more than illusions,” Jones says. “It’s a whole repertoire of crafty interactions.”
• Anthro of drought and development
An article in the Nairobi Standard describes the work of cultural anthropologist Stacy Hope, who is in Kenya to help address the drought. To find out the root cause of drought in the country, she is conducting research focusing on the Turkana and Samburu people: “The study seeks to understand the lives of the Turkana and Samburu people vis a vis the environment. It will help Kenya manage drought from a social perspective,” she says.
• Eurozone decline and tourism in Mauritius
AW’s Sean Carey, of Roehampton University, published an article in the Mauritius Times on tourism expansion plans that may be thwarted by “the on-going economic turbulence in the eurozone, from where nearly two-thirds of tourists coming to Mauritius originate.”
• Fathering and plummeting testosterone
Findings from a localized study in the rural Philippines caught the attention of several mainstream media including front page coverage in the New York Times. The study measured testosterone levels in over 600 men for around five years and found that the testosterone of men who spend time in child care “plummeted.” Lead author of the study of Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern University.
The Society for Economic Anthropology Book Prize Committee is looking for the best book in economic anthropology published over the last 3 years.
The committee requests nominations for single or multi-authored non-edited volumes published between 2009 and 2011 (the prize covers the 3 year cycle) that focus on issues in economic anthropology.
Join us for a conference that examines and uncovers various systems of power. New paradigms of praxis must be about more than making power visible. Our challenge in this conference, then, is to both locate and redefine power. We invite academic and professional anthropologists, social scientists, activists, public health professionals, filmmakers, and educators to join us in this inquiry into power. We welcome panels, papers, and skill workshops drawing upon some of the following frameworks for challenging power — critical race studies, interrogations of the nonprofit industrial complex, anti-displacement, critical animal studies, environmental justice, education reform and policy, disability studies, activism-based research, and performance and queer studies — but we invite papers of all types and from all social justice movements.
Unlike many academic events built around formal papers, this conference will focus on bringing panelists and audience members together to discuss concrete ways social scientists can support, strengthen, and contribute to activist movements striving toward progressive political action. The conference will include panel sessions (structured discussion of ideas), skills workshops (presenters teaching concrete skills to audience members), and a film festival.
Please submit abstracts (one-paragraph descriptions) of what you are interested in presenting or a film you made and would like to show at the conference. Panelists and skills workshop presenters will be selected by a group of students and faculty to ensure the conference reflects a diverse array of social movements, backgrounds, and experiences. The submission deadline is September 16; participants will be notified of acceptance on a rolling admissions basis.
CAR’s mission is to build strong and active networks among practitioners, researchers, teachers, trainers, activists, policy makers, scholars and others interested in the anthropology of reproduction in its many permutations. CAR has members in countries across the globe and in professions at the center of and well beyond anthropology.
CAR’s Advocacy Committee encourages anthropologists to join with activists and to offer our skills, services, and research results to allies who work to improve reproductive health and rights around the world. CAR members speak many languages and are from and/or have worked in dozens of countries, including the United States. Our collective expertise covers issues such as mothering, childbearing, infertility, midwifery, contraception, abortion, adoption, new reproductive technologies, and the local effects of global policies.
Among other updates, they have added great new imagery to their site making it more engaging to a wider audience, added a New Publications page and expanded their Links page to include links to the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative, Raising Women’s Voices, and DONA International among many others.
Interested in becoming a member? See the Membership page for more information on how to join. Students and professionals, both within and outside of academia, are welcome!
Not Hollywood: Independent Film As Cultural Critique by Dr. Sherry Ortner
Date: Thursday, September 22nd Time: Lecture 4:00-5:30 pm, with reception to immediately follow Location: McShain Lounge
Georgetown University will celebrate the creation of its very own Department of Anthropology by throwing a big lecture and reception. Professor Sherry Ortner will give the Inaugural Lecture of the Department of Anthropology which will be followed by a reception.
Contact Kurt Muhlbauer at 202-687-4185 with any questions. Click here for more details.
Aims and scope
This peer-reviewed journal uses the social sciences to reflect critically on learning and teaching in the changing context of higher education.
The journal invites students and staff to explore their education practices in the light of changes in their institutions, national higher education policies, the strategies of international agencies and developments associated with the so-called international knowledge economy.
The disciplines covered include politics and international relations, anthropology, sociology, criminology, social policy, cultural studies and educational studies.
The readership spans practitioners, researchers and students. It includes undergraduates and postgraduates interested in analysing their experience at university, newly appointed staff taking a qualification in learning and teaching, staff of learning and teaching units, experienced teachers in higher education and researchers on university reform.
• The costs of war(s)
The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken 225,000 lives and will ultimately cost more than $3 trillion, according to a multidisciplinary study by professors at Brown University. The “Costs of War” study brings together the work of more than 20 economists, political scientists, legal scholars and anthropologists in what its authors say is the most comprehensive accounting of the fiscal and human toll of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. Catherine Lutz, professor of anthropology and international relations at Brown and a leader of the project, is quoted in the Chronicle for Higher Education as saying: “There has been a tremendous loss involved whether you’re talking about lives or money… The public needs to know these numbers, and sometimes they’re difficult to find. These aren’t the kinds of numbers that just pop up on Google.” PBS also covered the study. Blogger’s note: see the conversation with Catherine Lutz on anthropologyworks.com
• Debt is a hot anthro topic
You have to admit that cultural anthropology is a rising power (or something close to that) when a PhD in cultural anthropology, Gillian Tett, writing for the Financial Times, reviews a book entitled Debt, also by a cultural anthropologist. Tett is in fact the US managing editor and an assistant editor of the Financial Times, and she appears frequently on my weekday news feed, Morning Joe. Here’s what Tett says: “If you want to get a fresh perspective on the issue, take a look at a fascinating new book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber, a social anthropologist who teaches at the University of London. Admittedly, Graeber is not typical fare for your average Financial Times reader, let alone an economist or banker. A self-avowed ‘anarchist.’ Graeber holds radical political views and has previously published books with titles such as Direct Action: An Ethnography and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Still, Graeber’s book is not just thought-provoking, but also exceedingly timely.”
• Welcome students and why don’t you go away?
Cultural anthropology professor Paul Stoller, of West Chester University in Pennsylvania, published an essay in the HuffPo. His pitch is that his undergraduate students are too settled, too complacent, and they should go away — that is, study abroad and learn a language other than English. Stoller writes: “During the first class session of my introductory course in cultural anthropology, I always ask how many students speak a foreign language. In some classes a few students raise their hands, but more often than not, my introductory classes are filled with monolingual college students…I teach at a public university at which students can receive a quality education at a reasonable cost. Most of my students come from middle and lower middle class suburban households. Many of them have never traveled outside of the United States. Some of them think that once you leave America, the living conditions deteriorate and the world becomes dangerous. In January of this year, according to the State Department, 114,464,041, or 37 percent of Americans, held passports, meaning that about 2 of 3 Americans can’t even go to Canada or Mexico–or anywhere else beyond our borders.”
• Repatriation of indigenous artifacts in Australia
A lengthy piece in the Sydney Morning Herald presented divergent views on repatriation of indigenous artifacts in Australia. Ethnographer Arthur Palmer is one of the main voices informing the article. He finds the argument for repatriation of material culture from museums “overwhelming.”
Cultural anthropology is not, overall, an events-driven field of study as are journalism and political science. But if, in recent times, there was to be an event that would inspire cultural anthropologists to apply their research skills and analytical insights, 9/11 is high on the list. Cultural anthropologists excel at looking at the local and seeing the global connections, or vice versa. Cultural anthropologists are about connections — between people, ideas, states, policies, contagion, and more.
Ground Zero ten years after 9/11/2001
What follows is a mini-bibliography, the result of a quick search in AnthropologyPlus through my university library’s electronic resources. It is not comprehensive. It is just a sample. But it offers tantalizing and important insights into what a cultural anthropology perspective has to offer in understanding the 9/11 event. Please note that AnthropologyPlus does not pull books or reports — only journal articles.
Of the over 30 articles listed below, several are focused on New York City. A few examine social responses and reactions elsewhere in North America and in some other countries around the world. Only one article, in this sample, looks at women. Some examine expressive culture (music, art).
Kelly (2002) published the earliest article, in this sample, about 9/11. Then, there is a bulge of papers in 2004. This gap between the event and anthropologists’ ability to collect and analyze data reflects both the positives and the negatives of traditional cultural anthropology. It takes so long (the negative) to produce high quality data (the plus). Continue reading “Cultural anthropology of 9/11”→
The Costs of War is a report written by several professors and policy experts from around the country and centered at Brown University’s Watson Institute. One of the authors and co-director is Catherine Lutz, cultural anthropologist and chair of the department of anthropology.
If you take a look at the report, you might wonder: what does a cultural anthropologist have to contribute to this report? It’s mainly about numbers. For example, see Table 1, The Wars’ Dead, Estimates by Category of Person. And Table 5, The Budget and Other Economic Costs of War. But read carefully and you will find the anthropological touch… attention to the “people” affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in every section but especially in the section about what is missing in the analysis: the next steps.
I have no doubt that, were a cultural anthropologist not a part of the team, the report would have been far less sensitive to social issues. The editor of this blog was fortunate to have a brief telephone conversation with Catherine Lutz on September 10, 2011.
Barbara: What were your main contributions, as a cultural anthropologist, to the Costs of War Report?
Catherine: I don’t feel that my role was especially that of an anthropologist. I was simply acting as a scholar, producing knowledge and trying to keep the level of the investigation’s rigor high. As an anthropologist, though, I could focus on the need for “ground truth,” something that far exceeds the policy rhetoric that usually disappears most of the people involved in these issues.
Catherine Lutz
At the Watson Institute, we began the project and created a report and a website so that people can get comprehensive information about the wars, for citizens and also for journalists so they can get source their stories more accurately and get beyond official narratives. We suffer from a lack of scholars in the war zone, first hand ethnographic material. One reason, unfortunately, is that many Iraqi scholars have been killed over the last 8 years. There is not enough on-the-ground data about what has happened to people in these war zones. We had to depend on secondary data, existing reports such as federal budget data about what the U.S. was spending on the wars, the Pentagon budget, the State Dept budget, information from veterans organizations about disability claims, and UN data on refugee populations.
Barbara: Are you going to continue this line of research?
Catherine: Yes, absolutely, we want it to continue to be an up to date source of information for journalists, policymakers, and activists. It would also be ideal if information like this — and improving on this information — could become the basis for a national commission on how these wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan), happened, how they have been waged, and what their human costs have been. Minimally, there at least need to be Congressional hearings, as there eventually were around the Vietnam War. Some serious journalism has also begun.
Barbara: As a cultural anthropologist, how did you learn how to get your head into things like Pentagon budgets?
Catherine: The economists on our team did that remarkable work, and I learned from them how to understand it and summarize it for the press.
Barbara: What advice can you offer to students who might want to follow in your footsteps and become involved in the anthropology of the military/peace/war?
Catherine: I would just say don’t worry about whether they are doing anthropology, but instead just focus on creating knowledge that can be used to make the public conversation about issues of security and war more productive, and to prevent the long past and future nightmare of these wars from being disappeared from view.
Note: an article in a special section of the New York Times, on 9/11/11 on the costs of the ongoing wars cites Brown University’s Costs of War project as one of its sources.
anthropologyworks 