• Social knowledge for good social policy Sean Carey, cultural anthropologist at Roehampton University and frequent guest blogger at anthropologyworks, published an article in the Guardian on how social anthropology speaks to big social questions such as multiculturalism and public services. The message: find out how communities work before forging policy. He takes you to Brick Lane in London’s East End for an example of successful multicultural policy.
• How is flood insurance working for you?
A Louisiana Sea Grant is supporting a two-year study by anthropology and geography faculty and students from Louisiana State University. The goal is to learn how flood insurance affects residents of SW Louisiana and how people view flood insurance. Findings will lead to improved relationships between people and the federal agencies that administer the National Flood Insurance Program.
• Cruel cuts
In Scotland, following announced plans of cutting anthropology courses at Glasgow University, playwright Sir Tom Stoppard put his name on an open letter against the cuts. The letter was also signed by several hundred academics.
• A smooth stone between the bricks The Washington Post profiled the research of Mark Leone, archaeology professor at the University of Maryland, on African slaves’ lives in America and their religious beliefs. Leone and his team have been working at the Wye plantation, outside Easton, Maryland, for six years. Findings include West African-style charms buried at the entrance to the slave quarters and a smooth field stone laid within the brickwork of a furnace. The stone may have been related to the Yoruba belief of a connection between the stone and Eshu-Elegba, the deity of fortune.
• From the field: excavating Maya civilization
In its “scientists at work” column, the New York Times blog featured two archaeologists at the Maya site of Ceibal, Guatemala: Takeshi Inomata, professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, and Daniela Triadan. The site was first excavated in the 1960s. Inomata and Triadan discuss the changes in excavation methods since then and the importance of building relations and working collaboratively with local Maya people.
The Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, Germany, seeks to appoint three post-doctoral research fellows in Urban Anthropology or Sociology, each for three years. The anthropologists / sociologists will be employed to conduct research respectively in the following locations: New York (likely Astoria in Queens), Johannesburg (likely Hillbrow) and Singapore (likely Jurong West).
Further details of the project can be found at www.mmg.mpg.de or through enquiries to the Secretary of the Department for Socio-Cultural Diversity, Jutta Esser (esser@mmg.mpg.de).
Applicants should send a cover letter, CV and names & contact details for three referees to Jutta Esser by 25 February 2011.
In 1980, a Mauritian sociologist friend confidently told me that a branded fast food culture as found in North America and Europe would never take off in his homeland. He reasoned that the population was already well served by street sellers, who produced classic Mauritian snacks like vegetable samosas, pakora and gateaux piment, the small marble sized balls of crushed yellow lentil, spring onions and herbs including a good amount of fresh, green chilli, which are deep fried and have a wonderful crunchy texture.
Two decades later the street sellers or “hawkers”, as they are called by government bureaucrats, are still around. Most of them are Hindu or Muslim men. Some have fixed spots by the roadside, where they used bottled gas canisters to heat vegetable oil and cook their products, while others use mopeds or motorbikes, with a box attached at the back to carry already cooked items, so that they can better locate customers at bus stations, especially at morning and evening rush hour, and coastal areas.
RedCape. Credit: James Guppy, Creative Commons, Flickr
But the street sellers are no longer the only game in town. The idea that branded fast food would not take off in Mauritius was a highly plausible theory at one stage of the country’s development; however, it wasn’t long before it was disproved, undone by a growing middle class in pursuit of a marker of their steadily growing affluence. And what better way to celebrate rising status than by adopting the fast food culture of the world’s advanced economies? In 1983, Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC) opened its first outlet in Mauritius. The company, which now has 14 stores spread across the palm-fringed Indian Ocean island targets the local population rather than the near one million tourists, who visit each year and are largely catered for by the hotels in which they reside. Over the years, the steadily expanding KFC chain has been joined by Burger King, Nando’s and Pizza Hut, as well as a wide variety of local competitors.
Interestingly, McDonald’s was a relatively late entrant to the Mauritian fast food market. It opened its first store in the capital, Port Louis, in 2001 but it is only now that it has firm plans to open a second store in a shopping mall, Jumbo Phoenix, in the Vacoas-Phoenix conurbation, a predominantly Hindu area. Moreover, its choice of location near an International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) temple (mandir) has stirred up a great deal of controversy not only in the neighbourhood but throughout the island.
European and North American-born Hare Krishnas, who had first arrived in Mauritius in 1974 to target local Hindus, the descendants of indentured labourers who make up just under half of the island’s near 1.3 million population, went on to establish a three-story settlement just off the main road in Phoenix in 1984, on a six-acre plot of former agricultural land. But while some ISKCON temples use locations in big cities – the building in London’s Soho is a good example – to illustrate to potential converts the stark contrast between a spiritual and a materialistic lifestyle, those in rural or semi-rural areas consciously use the tranquillity as an important element in creating a sacred space.
Hot & Crispy. Credit: Velkr0, Creative Commons, Flickr
Moreover, given the significance of the ritual purity/pollution rule, which as Louis Dumont pointed out in his anthropological classic, Homo Hierachicus (1966), is central to traditional Hinduism, including its sannyasin-led sectarian movements, it is hardly surprising that ISKCON devotees in their semi-rural Mauritian location object to the sale and smell of cooked tabooed animal products near its premises.
ISKCON has now received the backing of most Hindu institutions on the island, including Arya Saba, Mauritius Marathi Mandali Federation, Ram Sena, the Sanatan Dharma Temples Federation, and Hindu House. A crowd of several hundred people, some holding placards in either French or English, held a demonstration outside the proposed 150-seater McDonald’s on 9 February (see a video clip from the demonstration here.) The secretary of the ISCKON society, Srinjay Das, stated that his organisation was not against economic development “but we are only asking for respect of our culture. We venerate cows and a McDonald’s outlet selling beef burgers in front of our sacred land is not correct.” He went on to say ISKCON intended to go to court in an attempt to block the opening of the new store (an injunction was duly lodged at the Mauritius Supreme Court on 11 February). Perhaps more ominously, the President of Hindu House, Veerendra Ramdhun, said that it was important that both parties come to terms and agree a solution. He issued this warning: “We are living in a democratic country. We need to make sure that there is peace. We do not want to create disorder. We only want to agree on a solution.”
The United States’ perspective on gender in the military and the security sector as a whole is substantially different from how many other countries, particularly African countries, view their security. On January 19th, the US Institute for Peace (USIP) held a panel on mainstreaming gender in the military and the security sector, which lead to a broader discussion of perceptions and reform of the security sector.
According to Lt. Colonel Shannon Beebe, many Africans view their security in terms of human security: poverty alleviation, health, environmental shock / natural disasters, and reforms, instead of the traditional United States view of security as physical security: types of force and real threats. This perspective provides an opening for women to enter into the military; integrating gender in African militaries allows women to help with many of these alternate types of security concerns, including water and sanitation, health, and infrastructure.
The evolution of security perspectives stems from integrating women in the military. As the military becomes more gendered and diverse, it can focus more on issues of human security. In Senegal, studies show that having a president interested in gender issues helps move this issue forward. National strategies on equity and equality, cooperation with the Senegalese Ministry of Gender, and involving women in the process of integration all contributed to the success of mainstreaming gender in the military.
Panelists from the United States offered a different perspective. Although women participate in many roles of the armed forces in the United States, there are some areas, such as the Special Forces, that remain closed to women. Colonel David Walton, an instructor from the special warfare school, conceded that gender mainstreaming is not really taught to Special Forces trainees because of time constraints that require prioritizing the curriculum. Gender needs to be incorporated into the military from the ground up, in order to emphasize its importance and ensure its incorporation into every aspect of military training and daily life. All of the panelists echoed the sentiment that making gender a separate issue would be inefficient and ineffective.
• The language(s) of protest in Egypt
“Speaking truth to power” takes on cultural context in the 18 days of the Egypt uprising, so writes Ben Zimmer in “How the War of Words Was Won.” There are parallels to the use of language in other political uprisings. But the Egypt protests are distinct in many ways, such as the uses of “high” and “low” Arabic, and the use of other languages, notably English. Zimmer quotes Niloofar Haeri, professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, on the use of English as a way to “assert that the country is modern and its citizens know the global language.”
• Bt cotton controversy
Cultural anthropologist Glenn Stone, professor at Washington University, is publishing an article on Bt cotton in India in the March issue of World Development. Physorg comments on his study which used a different strategy to assess the performance of Bt seeds. One question is whether or not Bt seeds reduce the need for chemical pesticides.
• Zora Neale Hurston anniversary
2011 marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston is most known as an African-American writer. But she was also a doctoral student of cultural anthropology at Columbia University. Rachel Newcomb, associate professor of anthropology at Rollins College, Florida, writes about how Hurston has been “misunderstood, rejected, neglected, and then embraced…”
• Outrun: one more reason Neanderthals didn’t make it
Study of the performance of heels of modern-day distance runners in comparison to the heels of Neanderthals indicates that Neanderthals were good walkers but not good runners.
• Stone tools out of Africa to Arabia
Coverage by NPR of the discovery of modern stone tools in the Arabian peninsula includes comments by several archaeologists including Alison Brooks, professor of anthropology at George Washington University. She says that “it’s an intriguing find” and it should spur new research in new “places and directions…”
• Lucy: these arches were made for walking
New analyses of the fossilized foot bone of Lucy, the world’s most famous complete hominid fossil skeleton, indicate that she had arches in her feet. That means she had lost grasping ability in her big toe. But she was better able to walk upright.
Cultural anthropologists have described and analyzed holidays as windows into local culture as well as indexes of larger global processes. As far as I know, Christmas is the only holiday so far that has generated an entire edited volume. A quick search into published work by cultural anthropologists yielded very little. One insightful article, by a journalism/communications scholar, talks about the creation of Valentine’s Day in Ghana.
Assortment of Valentine's Day chocolates. Credit: ccharmon/Flickr
Valentine’s Day is rapidly globalizing but not without resistance and reformulation, as the links below illustrate. Is it a Hallmark card event? Maybe a card is required but that may not get you very far. Chocolates? Cut flowers? Dinner out? And who pays? What’s the short-term result on Feb 14 and the longer-term effects?
Valentine’s Day in India: the younger generation in India loves the concept of Valentine’s Day, yet there are many political groups who condemn it as an alien concept
Single on Valentine’s Day?: in Malaysia and Russia religious authorities are attempting to crack down on the decadent Western celebration of couples “being gross with each other”
I’m delighted to learn that Slate’s Maura R. O’Connor mentioned Alex Dupuy’s “Ideological dogmatism and United States policy toward Haiti,” guest posted on anthropologyworks, in her article “Does International Aid Keep Haiti Poor? Why Is Haiti Growing Mangoes When It Needs Rice?”
This post is not a content analysis of the recent tweets about Egypt. Their volume is staggering and would demand a more rigorous analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, than is possible at this time. Just click on the hash tag “#Egypt,” wait a minute to refresh, and you will have hundreds of new tweets in dozens of different languages.
There are calls to action, directions for protesters, jokes, cracks about Anderson Cooper, links to video and photo galleries, and the latest in negotiations between the Mubarak regime and the White House. One thing worth noting though: for all that Twitter activity, the pro-Mubarak crowd has been notably quiet, even silent at times.
Anti Mubarak demonstration at Tahiri Square, 2/1/2011. Credit: darkroom productions/Flickr
Setting aside the trends and messages of the thousands (millions?) of tweets out there, it is fascinating to look at the flexibility and agility of the protest itself. Despite government crackdowns and blockages of webpages – as early as the first day of protesting – and cell phone networks, the flow of news and information never ceased.
Even after the government effectively shut off the entire internet, tweets continued to pour in, live from Tahrir Square and other locales across Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez.
Four of five cell phone providers in Egypt were shut down within three days of the first major protest on January 25. Internet then followed, causing a 90 percent drop in data traffic to and from Egypt. The only company to remain in operation was Noor, also incidentally the provider for the Egyptian Stock Exchange.
We are still witnessing the reaction to and consequences of the service stoppages. In the New York Times, Jim Cowie of Renesys, a New Hampshire company that monitors global internet traffic, commented, “In a fundamental sense, it’s as if you rewrote the map and they are no longer a country.”
Such drastic overstatements misunderstand the impact of the internet blockage and its relation to the protests. What map was being “rewritten,” exactly? Protests hardly seemed to slow despite the lack of mobile phone and internet access, and, while Egyptians may not have been able to live-blog from the 6th of October Bridge on their smart phones, the world outside Egypt did not want for eyewitness, up-to-the-minute reports. If there was indeed a new map, Egypt and Tahrir Square were at the very heart of it.
Tweeters in turn reacted strongly to assertions like Cowie’s, rejecting the power of Twitter and Facebok to fuel the revolution.
@SultanAlQassemi There was no twitter, mobile phones, Satellite TV, internet, facebook, sms or youtube when Romanians overthrew Ceausescu in 1989. #Jan25
@altivexfoundry#Egypt #Tunisia “It was not a twitter revolution … It was a revolution … Covered by twitter” #jnb5feb
@asteris Won’t be RTing anything w. words Twitter (or Facebook) & revolution adjacent to each other; disrespectful towards the brave ppl of #Egypt
• Yemen: revolution not just a tweet away CNN called on Daniel Martin Varisco, professor of anthropology at Hofstra University, for commentary about political upheavals in the Middle East and the Maghreb. Varisco points to contrasts between Tunisia and Yemen: Yemen’s population is more rural, Yemen’s literacy rates are lower, and Yemen has the presence al Qaeda. Compared to Egypt, Yemen’s President Salah does not rule by the iron fist but rather by playing off internal rivalries. Blogger’s note: Something to watch out for: Yemen’s per capita gun ownership is second highest in the world after the United States.
• Prisons without walls
In Mexico, some prisons are under control of criminal gangs. Cartel vehicles arrive and load up gang members who walk past guards to freedom, according to the Washington Post. The article quotes prison expert Elena Azaola Garrido, a researcher at Mexico’s Center for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, who comments on a recent prison break-out: “It seems like an extreme, shocking incident, but to a lesser extent it’s happening all around the country.”
• Where’s mummy? Secrets of the Silk Road, a much anticipated exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Archaeology, opened Saturday with many people in attendance in spite of the absence of the centerpieces: two mummies from China. The Museum had to resort to a fall-back plan. It created two dummy mummies for display in lieu of the real mummies. The media is not saying why China banned the display of the mummies after many months of negotiation with the Museum. An article in the Washington Post points out that the mummies are from China’s Xinjiang province, with its large Uighur population, and the mummies exhibit Caucasian features. The silent message of the mummies is that they may not be sufficiently “Chinese.”
• Reburial of human remains in question
Many archaeologists in the UK are concerned about the implications of 2008 legislation introduced by the Ministry of Justice requiring all human remains excavated in England and Wales to be reburied within two years of recovery. Archaeologists say that two years does not give them enough time for study. An extension has been granted. The Ministry has no guidelines about where or how remains should be reburied, or what records should be kept.
• Our shrinking brains Human brains have been shrinking over the past 30,000 years. Brian Hare, assistant professor of biological anthropology at Duke University, says that shrinking size does not mean that intelligence is declining. Instead it may be that intelligence and skills are developing in more sophisticated dimensions. Further, if even less comforting, studies of brain size of other domesticated animals show similar decreases. Blogger’s note: in the hominid fossil record, Neanderthals have the largest brains. Just imagine Neanderthal Jeopardy.
Understanding and Supporting Community Responses to Urban Violence When: Thursday, February 10th, 2011 from 12pm-2pm Where: MC 13-121
The World Bank
Chair: Sarah Cliff, Director, World Development Report
Presenters: Alexandre Marc : Cluster Leader, Conflict Crime and Violence Team, Social Development Department (SDV), World Bank Alys Willman: Social Development Specialist, Conflict Crime and Violence Team, SDV, World Bank
Discussants: Junaid Ahmad: Sector Manager, Africa – Urban & Water, World Bank Rodrigo Serrano: Senior Social Development specialist, LAC, World Bank
For millions of people around the world, violence, or the fear of violence, is a daily reality. Much of this violence concentrates in urban centers in the developing world. Cities are now home to half the world’s population and expected to absorb almost all new population growth over the next 25 years. In many cases, the scale of urban violence can eclipse those of open warfare; some of the world’s highest homicide rates occur in countries that have not undergone a war, but that have serious epidemics of violence in urban areas. This study emerged out of a growing recognition that urban communities themselves are an integral part of understanding the causes and impacts of urban violence and of generating sustainable violence prevention initiatives.
anthropologyworks 