Upcoming event of interest at GW

The CIGA Seminar Series Presents
Tibet and the Politics of Exile in the New Millennium

Samdhong Rinpoche, Tibetan Prime Minister in Exile

by Samdhong Rinpoche, Tibetan Prime Minister in Exile

A distinguished scholar and leading Tibetan public intellectual, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche has served as the first elected Tibetan Prime Minister in Exile from 2001 to 2011. He was professor of Tibetan studies and director of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India, from 1971-1988. In 1990, he was a member of the Drafting Committee Constitution of the Future Polity of Tibet and Law for the exiled Tibetans. From 1991 to 1995 he was appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama as one of the deputies of the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies and was later unanimously elected as its Chairman. Samdhong Rinpoche was born in eastern Tibet in 1939. He received his Geshe Lharampa degree in 1968 and his Ngarimpa degree in 1969.

Opening remarks by:
Tashi Rabgey
Visiting Scholar, CIGA, George Washington University
Fellow in Public Intellectuals Program, National Committee on US-China Relations
Director, Tibet Sustainable Governance Program, University of Virginia

Thursday, July 14, 6:30 – 7:45 pm
Reception beginning at 6:00pm
1957 E Street NW, Room 213, Harry Harding Auditorium, The Elliott School of International Affairs

RSVP requested: bit.ly/mVTf4G

CIGA is part of the Elliott School of International Affairs and its Institute of Global and International Studies

Anthro in the news 7/11/11

• To tell the truth or not the truth: a complicated question
Cultural anthropologist Mike McGovern, assistant professor at Yale, published an op-ed in The New York Times in which he provides context about Guinea and why someone from Guinea might choose to misrepresent his or her background in order to get out. As you might imagine, McGovern’s essay is about the DSK case. His description of the grim poverty and violence in Guinea, fueled by big mining, adds a new level of understanding, no matter what happened at the Sofitel: “As the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn seemingly disintegrates, he is enjoying a political renaissance at home, yet I keep asking myself: does a sexual harassment encounter between a powerful and wealthy French politician and a West African hotel cleaning woman from a dollar-a-day background not in itself constitute a gross abuse of power?”

• Men just want to cuddle, maybe
A new study by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University finds that more frequent cuddling and kissing in a long-term relationship predicts happiness for men but not for women. They study included 1,000 heterosexual couples in the United States, Japan, Brazil, Spain, and Germany. Cynthia Loyst, a Toronto-based relationship expert comments that the finding may relate to the fact that cuddling and kissing may lead to sex…in other words, they are not ends in themselves for men. Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, links cuddling to the release of oxytocin. Beyond kissing and cuddling, the study also addressed orgasm. Findings are published in the journal, Archives of Sexual Behavior. [Blogger’s notes and queries: I would love to know what a “relationship expert” is and how you get to be one, and I definitely plan to check out the article in hopes of finding if there are country-specific, culture-specific patterns that exist).

• Labels matter
Cultural and linguistic anthropologist William Beeman wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in response to a columnist’s essay, Where Words Can Never Do Justice. Beeman objects to the phrase used in your column, referring to certain readers who objected to Israel’s use of lethal force against protesters in the Golan Heights as “pro-Palestinian.” Beeman says: “There is no reason to label people who object to misleading, skewed reporting in this case as ‘pro-Palestinian.’ Any fair-minded reader might come to the same conclusion, whatever his or her views. I have long felt that The New York Times is consistently biased in its reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and your column only reinforces that impression.” Beeman is professor of anthropology and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota and an expert on Middle East culture, society, and politics.

• Water, water is not everywhere anymore
The first of a three-part Washington Post series on water reviews three new books on the topic including archaeologist Brian Fagan’s Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind. Fagan is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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

The grand challenges in global mental health

A consortium of social science and medical researchers, advocates and clinicians announced the major research priorities over the next 10 years for addressing mental illness around the world. They call for urgent action and investment. Medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman, of Harvard University, is a member of the group. Nature carried a report on the consortium’s conclusions.

depression
Depression. Flickr/shattered.art66
Table 2 presents the 25 Grand Challenges related to mental, neurological and substance-abuse (MNS) disorders.

Cross-cutting themes:

  • research should take a life-history approach
  • suffering from MNS disorders includes family members and communities and thus requires health-system changes
  • all care and treatment interventions should be evidence-based
  • environmental factors such as extreme poverty, war, and natural disasters have important but poorly understood affects on MNS

In conclusion, the report notes that the greatest challenge would be the elimination of MNS disorders. A truly great challenge.

But a challenge that is not likely to be met in the next 10 years given the way things are going with the last factor listed above. Therefore, why not devote the bulk of the research funds to addressing the mental health risks from poverty, war and natural disasters? And, on the way, maybe we should do something about poverty and war?

Will travel for health

sweat lodge
Miwok sweat lodge. Flickr/Jason Holmberg.
A special edition of the journal Body & Society is devoted to contemporary “medical migrations,” or travel in search of a medical cure for a health problem. Elizabeth Roberts and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, both medical anthropologists, are the guest editors.

In their introductory essay, they state that increasing numbers of people are now crossing national borders and travelling great distances for solutions to health problems. They construct a vast frame for “medical migrants,” which includes not just elites shopping globally for the best health care and newest drugs, but also victims of torture and human rights violations who seek to protect their health and prolong their life by gaining asylum outside their home country.

Also included are medical tourists who take risks to access illegal health services, such as organ transplants and the spiritually motivated travelers who make pilgrimages to American Indian sweat lodges in the desert. Medical trials that roam the globe in search of subjects are also in the frame.

The collection of essays promises to break new ground in thinking about “medicine on the move.”

Methods and language opportunity in the Andes

Climate and Culture Change in the Andes: August 2011
When: August 4th – 24th

The Center for Social Well Being is now in its 10th year offering our 3 week training program in interdisciplinary qualitative field methods, as well as Spanish and Quechua language classes, in the Peruvian Andes. The combined undergraduate and graduate level seminar is held at the center’s rural base, an adobe lodge on an ecological ranch in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range of the Callejón de Huaylas, 7 hours northeast of Lima. Coursework provides in-depth orientation to theory and practice in field investigation that emphasizes methods in Participatory Action Research and Andean Ethnography centered on themes of Climate Change with respect to Ecology, Health, Education, Community Organization and related topics.

Students have the opportunity to actively engage in ongoing investigations in local agricultural communities to develop effective field research techniques, and to acquire language skills. In addition, the program provides excursions to museums, archaeological sites, glacial lakes and hotsprings; optional recreational activities include hiking, mountain biking, rafting, kayaking, rock climbing and trekking.

Total cost is $3,200 US dollars. This includes all in-country travel, food and accommodations at the rural center, and course materials. The program is under the direction of Applied Medical Anthropologist, Patricia J. Hammer, Ph.D., and Ecologist, Flor de María Barreto Tosi.

For an application contact: phammer@wayna.rcp.net.pe. Further information available at: www.socialwellbeing.org

Anthro in the news 7/5/11

• How much are the wars costing: guess again
President Obama recently cited a price tag of $1 trillion for America’s ongoing wars and one reason to bring troops home from Afghanistan. According to a study just released, is a gross underestimate and the total is more like $3.7-4.4 trillion, not to mention the human lives lost. The report, “Costs of War,” pulls together thinking of more than 20 academics convened by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. Catherine Lutz, head of the anthropology department and co-director of the study, told Reuters news that many people want to know if it’s been worth the costs.

• Khmer Rouge leaders on trial
Four of the surviving top members of the Khmer Rouge’s ruling elite are about to face justice. The tribunal started in 2006. Its first defendant was Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch. Up to 16,000 people were tortured under Duch’s command and later taken away to be killed. Alex Hinton, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and Director of the
Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights, is quoted in the New Zealand Herald. Hinton says that Duch’s case has “enormous symbolic value” because his role was so closely associated with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, but the current case is even more significant because it will put the four most senior surviving Khmer Rouge leaders on trial for the first time: “We will learn much about their thinking, the way their regime worked, and, ultimately, how their programme of mass murder was enabled and unfolded.”

• Political change in rural Thailand
In an article about political change in rural Thailand, the New York Times quoted Charles Keyes, professor emeritus of cultural anthropology at the University of Washington. Keyes first studied village life in Thailand nearly five decades ago. Describing the contemporary transformation from ”peasants to cosmopolitan villagers,” he says ”…in Thai society…the social contract is being renegotiated.” He points out that the changes to village life and breakdown of a national political consensus are not just relevant to Thailand, but are a cautionary tale for other countries in Asia that are developing so rapidly: ”It’s definitely something the Chinese, for one, should be more aware of.”

• The cannibal war machine
Counterpunch published the text of a speech that Neil L. Whitehead gave at a conference on Sacred Empowerment at the University of Leeds, England, in June. Whitehead is a professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. He launched his talk by saying: “A critical anthropology then is not just telling alternative stories but also unveiling what the supermodern Cannibal War-Machine does not want to be shown…So the suggestion here will be that there is a deep historical and systemic relationship between the modern free-market, liberal democratic world order and the prosecution of war and other forms of military and police violence.”

• What is secularism?
The Guardian carried an essay entitled “what is secualarism” in which social anthropologist Chris Hann is quoted as saying that secularism is a “good idea.” Hann is director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany.

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Caste matters in Mauritius

By contributor Sean Carey

Around 20 years ago, I paid a visit to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI) in Mauritius to consult the records of Indians who were brought from the subcontinent to work as indentured labourers in the sugar plantations after slavery was abolished in 1835.

Before examining any documents, I was invited to meet one of the island’s leading experts on Indo-Mauritian culture. During our conversation, I raised the subject of caste and its contemporary significance among different groups of Hindus in Mauritius. “It doesn’t exist any more,” the scholar said. “Even in the village where I come from caste is not important — people marry who they like.” The scholar paused before declaring: “The only people who use caste are the politicians at election time.”

A group of Brahmins from the Parbu Caste in Bombay in the 1870s. Flickr/Museum of Photographic Arts

I was doubly surprised at these remarks. First, because among my fellow academics there is an ethic of not hiding sensitive or embarrassing facts. Second, on the basis of having made several trips to the Indian Ocean island, I was convinced that caste among the Hindu population is an important principle of social and cultural organization. Indeed, the big questions from an anthropological perspective were: how important and what were the variations, say, between towns and villages?

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Anthro in the news 6/27/2011

• The trauma of war and rape
In the first of a two-part story, CNN highlights the work of cultural anthropologist Victoria Sanford, whose research has involved listening to victim narratives of Maya women in Guatemala since her doctoral studies at Stanford University in the early 1990s. A Spanish speaker who had worked with Central American refugees, she befriended the few Maya in the area. “I was moved by their stories, but even more so because they were intent on someone hearing them,” she said, “And no one was listening.” She joined the nonprofit Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology investigative team and went to Guatemala. Sanford talked to the women, who told other women about her, and soon she was recording their stories. Over time, and after hearing many stories, Sanford suffered from a kind of “secondary trauma” including paralysis.

• Conflict in Uganda and a possible love complication
The New York Times quoted Mahmood Mamdani, professor anthropology and government at Columbia university, in an article about an ongoing bitter personal rivalry in Uganda that involves President Musaveni and his rival and former friend, Kizza Besigye. Things may be complicated, the article suggests, by a woman, Winnie Byanyima, who is married to the president’s rival but who may have had a romantic involvement earlier with the president. Other matters are likely part of the story as well. Mamdani comments that the government is “clueless” about how to deal with Besigye’s opposition movement. He didn’t comment on the love factor.

• Culture and asthma
Cultural context and behavior shape the diagnosis and treatment of asthma according to David Van Sickle, medical anthropologist and asthma epidemiologist of Reciprocal Labs in Madison, Wisc. Van Sickle’s fieldwork in India revealed that physicians were hesitant to diagnose patients with asthma because of social stigma.

• Treating autism: two cases in Croatia
Drug Week covered findings from a study conducted in Osijek, Croatia, which discusses the treatment of autism in a boy and a girl with risperidone. K. Dodigcurkovic and colleagues published their study in Collegium Antropologicum.

• Profile of a forensic anthropologist
The Gainesville Sun carried a profile of Michael Warren, an associate professor of anthropology and director of the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Florida. He has conducted hundreds of forensic skeletal examinations for the state’s medical examiners and has participated in the identification of victims of mass disasters and ethnic cleansing, including the attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina and the recovery and identification of the victims found within the mass graves of the Balkans. He recently testified in the Casey Anthony murder trial.

• Medieval persecution
The remains of 17 bodies found at the bottom of a medieval well in England could have been victims of persecution, new evidence suggests. DNA analysis indicates that the victims were Jewish. They were likely murdered or forced to commit suicide. The skeletons date to the 12th-13th centuries, a time of persecution of Jewish people in Europe. Professor Sue Black leads the research team. She is a forensic anthropologist in the University of Dundee’s Centre for Anthropology and Human Identification.
Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/27/2011” →

Anthro in the news 6/20/11

• Colbert reporting
Stephen Colbert interviewed Janny Scott, author of the biography, A Singular Woman, about President Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, who was a cultural anthropologist. In her interview and in her book, Scott complicates the image of Obama’s mother as simply “a white woman from Kansas.” Blogger’s note: cultural anthropology does complicate things, and such complication is our blessing and our curse.

• Complicating lap dancing
Judith Hanna, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Maryland, is an expert on dance. Her latest research is about lap dancing. If the Fox report is to be believed, Hanna sees lap dancing as a form of expressive art. Blogger’s note: interesting that Fox Business news picked up on this research.

• Sweat lodge rights
Religious conflict among the Cree brought the destruction of an aboriginal sweat lodge in a Quebec village by Christian Cree. Christian Cree feel that sweat lodges and other forms of indigenous practices such as pow-wows are not acceptable Cree practices. Ronald Niezen, cultural anthropology professor and chair of the anthropology department at McGill University, is quoted as saying that “the two resurgent faiths are coming into collision.” He explains the context: Christian missionaries taught that shamanic practices were wrong and created an older generation of devout Christians.

• Skirts rising
In Myanmar, desire for power is at the heart of the ruling generals’ decades-long fight against revealing female clothing, said Monique Skidmore in an article in the Los Angeles Times. Skidmore is an anthropology professor at Australia’s University of Canberra. She is quoted as saying that the ruling generals’ “…focus on ‘traditional values’ reflects a quest for legitimacy and an ongoing attempt to persuade the Burmese population they are guardians of the past and therefore fit rulers of their future.” In spite of the generals’ wishes, women’s hemlines are rising. Blogger’s note: odd as it may seem, cranking up a hemline may be as revolutionary for women in Myanmar as getting behind the wheel of a car in Riyadh. Context is so important.

• Kids should have chores as well as computers
Biological anthropologist Meredith Small, professor at Cornell University, entered the “Room for Debate” section of the New York Times with her piece on why American kids should have chores. She bases her comments on findings about children doing chores at early ages in non-industrial cultures and thereby learning to be responsible members of their households.

• Sail on Kon Tiki
In 1947, explorer Thor Heyerdahl claimed that Easter Island’s statues were similar to those at Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, indicating a connection from the New World to the Pacific. He sailed a raft from Peru to Easter Island to prove that Easter Island could have been colonized from America. Professor Erik Thorsby of the University of Oslo in Norway has found genetic evidence to support elements of Heyerdahl’s hypothesis. He collected blood samples from Easter Islanders. While most of their genes were Polynesian, a few carried genes found only in indigenous American populations. Findings appear in the New Scientist.

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 6/20/11” →