Presentation by Roberto Abadie
Wednesday, October 6, 11:30am-1:00pm
Washington, DC
American University (Main Campus)
East Quad (former SIS) Building Lounge
Directions: http://www.american.edu/maps
Questions: 202-885-1830
Continue reading “The Professional Guinea Pig: Big Pharma and the Risky World of Human Subjects”
• Hacker culture
Gabriella Coleman published an article in the Atlantic Monthly on the anthropology of hackers. A cultural anthropologist, she is assistant professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University in its School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The article is based on her undergraduate class on computer hackers and walks the reader through the 13 weeks of the class with a concluding note on what’s missing.
• Fighting for survival
The Kalinago people of Dominica are considering options for tribal survival including intermarriage policy, becoming a living museum, and ethnobotany projects. Dominican anthropologist Lennox Honychurch expressed a negative opinion about the living museum idea to Discovery News: “…Dominica has already been through colonization…This is not a living museum or zoo.” Jonathan Marks, a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte commented on the difficulty of preserving a culture through marriage and ancestry alone. The Kalinago say that they want to prosper in their own land in ways that are self-sustaining economically and culturally. But they could use some government help to do so.
• Listen to the music
Music Rising, founded in 2005 by U2’s the Edge, has formed a new partnership with Tulane University for a study of New Orleans and Gulf Coast music. Tulane anthropology professor Nick Spitzer is developing the curriculum which will be adapted for elementary and high schools. Spitzer is also the founder of the American Public Media radio program American Routes.
• She who makes engineers think differently
The only anthropologist working with Intel, Genevieve Bell, continues to get media coverage including, this past week, in Fortune magazine. Intel’s research head comments on how the company relies on her insights when they look at emerging markets. She’s serious, as you can see from this quotation from Bell: “If you do it right, if you make the thing in such a way that people love it, it will be part of everything…It sounds macabre, but it has to be so important that you bury people with it.”
• This land is my land
Ian Barber, senior lecturer in anthropology at Otago University, offers a new interpretation of the first Maori-white contact which was violent. Instead of Maori fear of strangers, Barber links the violence to Maori interests in protecting their food sources since the Dutch ship anchored near an important area of cultivation during the harvest season. Barber admits that the fact that the crew were not even allowed to land is puzzling. Blogger’s note: the only remaining “uncontacted” people who live on North Sentinel Island in the Andamans also violently resist attempts by outsiders to land on their island. Very smart people.
• Neanderthal techies
The joy of science is all about overturning previous perceptions. One of the biggies is that the Neanderthals were, well, losers. Now archaeologists and paleoanthropologists are gaining ground by being able to show how Neanderthals were actually pretty successful, more like us: creative techies. This week’s media covered Neanderthal technological innovations as big news in the archaeo world. The BBC quotes Julien Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado in Denver, who has led a team of researchers in a long-term study of Neanderthal tools in several sites in Italy: “Basically, I am rehabilitating the Neanderthals.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced this past week the launch of a new international alliance to supply improved cooking stoves to 100 million poor households by 2020. An article in the Economist describes how many programs to promote cleaner stoves throughout the world have failed: “Too much emphasis has gone on technology and talking to people at the top, too little to consulting the women who actually do the cooking.”
That statement, all told, is probably true. Nonetheless, a quick search in Google Scholar and my university library’s electronic databases reveals many relevant studies including some by cultural/social anthropologists. They address and document both the health risks especially for women and children of traditional cookstoves and perceptions of improved cookstoves.
The most fine-grained anthropology study that I have found is Patrice Engle and co-authors with some Maya people of Guatemala. She and her co-authors used observation and recall methods to learn about time spent over cooking fires. The results indicate that young mothers and young children (who are with the mother while she is cooking) spend the most time in the kitchen and are most at risk for smoke-related health problems. Women with co-resident husbands spend more time in the kitchen than women without husbands or whose husbands are away.
In terms of how to provide improved cookstoves, the best publication I know is by Rob Bailis and co-authors. They assess subsidized versus market-based stove dissemination and compare several contexts in which clean cooking technologies were promoted.
Cultural anthropologists and others who take a grounded approach to learning about important issues: get cooking on cooking! This topic connects to social and gender disparities, environmental pollution and sustainability, and the future of all of us.
Related Reading:
Dherani, Mukesh et al. Indoor Air Pollution from Unprocessed Solid Fuel Use and Pneumonia Risk in Children Aged under Five Years: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86(5):390-398, 2008.
Masera, Omar et al. Impact of Patsari Improved Cookstoves on Indoor Air Quality in Michiacán, Mexico. Energy for Sustainable Development 11(2):45-56, 2007.
Simon, Gregory. Mobilizing Cookstoves for Development: A Dual Adoption Framework Analysis of Collaborative Technology Innovations in Western India. Environment and Planning A42(8):2011-2030, 2010.
Troncoso, Karin et al. Social Perceptions about a Technological Innovation for Fuelwood Cooking: A Case Study in Rural Mexico. Energy Policy 35(5):2799-2810, 2007.
Guest post by Erica Buckingham
The country is Tanzania. The scene is a woman, Janet, experiencing intense pregnancy pains. The hope is that the regional clinic will deliver Janet’s third baby. The reality is that hers is a “high-risk” pregnancy, and the clinic does not have the proper equipment. The tragedy is that Janet does not have enough money to rent a van (estimated at the equivalent of $30) to drive for one hour to Mt. Meru, the closest hospital.
This situation is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Motivated by her own complications during labor, Christy Turlington-Burns filmed the documentary, No Woman No Cry which powerfully exposes the hardships faced by at-risk pregnant women in Tanzania, Bangladesh, Guatemala, and the United States. Known for her career as a model and as a maternal health advocate, Burns now brings attention to the shocking statistics and stories surrounding maternal health and mortality.
Fortunately for Janet, Burns’ crew was able to provide the necessary funds for transportation to Mt. Meru. Arriving at the hospital exhausted and dehydrated, the staff worked to induce her, and, three days later, Janet gave birth to a healthy baby boy. While her story ends on an uplifting note, most women in the same predicament are less fortunate.
On September 16, a brief preview of the film screened at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, and was followed by a panel discussion. The panelists included Suraya Dalil, Afghan Minister of Health, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, World Bank Managing Director, Purnima Mane, United Nations Population Fund Executive Director and Rep. Nita Lowey, Chair, Foreign Operations Subcommittee, U.S. House of Representatives.
Inspired by Burns’ work and the important issues the documentary addresses, the four panelists engaged in a lively discussion about the current status of maternal mortality, the improvements made in the last decade as well as the hope for continued progress in the future. The main message from these four prominent women leaders was the need for greater financial investment in maternal and child health.
Continue reading “No Woman No Cry: Maternal mortality in the spotlight”
• From the delta to the dump
Shame on Chavez: an article in the New York Times describes how many Warao Indians survive by foraging in the massive Cambalache dump of Cuidad Guayana, Venezuela, a city planned by experts from Harvard and MIT. According to Wikipedia, the Warao have for centuries earned their living fishing and gathering: “The Warao diet is varied with an emphasis on the products of the delta, mostly fish…many of their daily fruits and vegetables come from the wild orchards of the delta. In July and August, Warao feast on crabs…” According to the NYT article, many Warao now barely survive by finding discarded bits of food and partially finished beverage bottles in the dump. No country has a good record for treating indigenous people well. Even the Scandinavian countries have discriminated against the indigenous Saami. President Chavez, however, claims that empowerment of indigenous people is a pillar of his government. As quoted in the NYT article, Christian Sørhaug, a Norwegian anthropologist who has done fieldwork with the Warao for over a decade, says, “Cambalache is the worst place I have ever seen.” Anthroworks says: President Chavez, build that pillar and the Warao will come out of the dump.
• “We’ve seen university research before”
Rethinking race and hypertension: the Chronicle for Higher Education published a review article about the role of “race,” genes, culture and hypertension. Culture came out the winner (if one can call it that). Many anthropologists are cited along the way including Clarence Gravlee, Alan Goodman, Marvin Harris, Franz Boas, Connie Mulligan, and William Dressler.
• Love hurts
Oxford University researchers including Professor Robin Dunbar present findings that falling in love means the loss of two friends.
• Kudos
Alison Galloway, a forensic anthropologist, has been named to the number 2 position at the University of California at Santa Cruz. In the past several years, she has tackled both unsolved homicides and campus budget cut-backs. She will now oversee day-to-day operations of UCSC as the top academic and finance official.
• In memoriam
Alan Jacobs, professor of anthropology at Western Michigan University, died at age 80 years. His research focused on the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania. Besides many years of dedicated teaching at WSU, he also consulted for the World Bank, the International Livestock Center in Africa, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the U.S. Peace Corps.
Bernard James, professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, died at age 88 years. In addition to his academic contributions, James devoted substantial time to serving the city of Milwaukee. He wrote several novels, including one titled Greenhouse, set in the academia of a poisoned planet. He also created large abstract oil paintings.
Global Citizens in Pursuit of the Common Good
A Human Development Conference at the University of Notre Dame
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Ford Family Program in Human Development Studies & Solidarity announces a student research conference on topics vital to human development to be held at the University of Notre Dame on February 11-12, 2011. This student-organized event is co-sponsored by the Center for Social Concerns at Notre Dame and SIT Study Abroad, a program of World Learning.
• Consider trying this at home
In the Huffington Post, medical anthropologist and licensed midwife, Melissa Cheyney of Oregon State University, takes on a recently published article by Dr. Joseph Wax et al. in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The article argues strongly that hospital-based births offer the best way to ensure a safe delivery and avoid neonatal death. Cheyney zaps the article for flawed methods and for sending a message that is harmful to women. Along the way she critiques the American health care system and its failure to address the highest infant mortality rate among rich countries.
• Stop blaming the victim
Drug Week highlighted an article in Anthropology & Medicine by medical anthropologist Carolyn Rouse of Princeton University and colleagues on patient and practitioner noncompliance in the United States. The article argues that behavioral explanations for health disparities shift attention from structural issues such as health care rationing and the limits of therapeutic medicine.
• Anthro in the city
Cultural anthropology, via the work of Chicago sociologist Robert Parks, got a loud shout out in the first line of an essay in the New York Review of Books about the TV series, Treme, situated in New Orleans. As in The Wire, writer David Simon displays a strong ethnographic touch in depicting complexity, detail, and systemic relationships.
• Aboriginal contact art
Art in a rock shelter at Djulirri, in Australia’s Arnhem Land, is the oldest and largest collection of “first contact” art in Australia. It includes depictions of Southeast Asian sailing ships from the 1600s.
• Off road in Egypt leads to oasis city
Desert-road archaeology as practiced by John Coleman Darnell and Deborah Darnell of Yale University has produced a detailed survey of caravan routes and oasis settlements in Egyptian antiquity including the discovery of a major administrative settlement in the desert 300 miles south of Cairo that is more than 3,500 years old.
• The way you dance
An article in Science discusses findings from an experimental study by evolutionary psychologist Nick Neave of Northumbria University on male dancing and what females think of it. The study used male avatar figures dancing in videos watched and rated by a panel of heterosexual women. Key findings are that males wanting to be attractive to females while dancing should not flail arms and legs about. Helen Fisher, biological anthropologist at Rutgers University, comments that it makes evolutionary sense for a woman to care about how a man dances since dance moves show creativity which is associated with energy, optimism, and daring. Judith Hanna, cultural anthropologist at the University of Maryland at College Park, said the idea of using avatars is brilliant and has great potential for replication in other cultural contexts.
Guest post by Sam Beck
The European Union must be held accountable if European states continue to expel Roma from member countries. The expulsions are taking place because Roma have created settlements not only in designated campgrounds but also within urban boundaries. This is not new. However, the scale and density of such settlements disturbs the sensibilities of Europeans. This is not only a West European phenomenon. Events of intolerable discrimination are also taking place in East Central Europe and the Balkans from which many of these Roma originate. The history of anti-Roma sentiments in both East and West Europe is torturous and long-standing.
A rather unusual situation emerged in Romania where Roma have lived for hundreds of years, where to this day they appear in abundant variation, from people who have resumed migratory lives to people who have been settled at the margins of villages, towns, and cities for as long as anyone can remember. In Romania, Roma were enslaved and indentured for centuries. They played important roles as musicians, miners, and in producing objects necessary for an agrarian society, crafting metals and wood objects. Today, those that we call Roma, were involved in all sorts of labor, agricultural workers and house servants.
Some may no longer speak their Sanskrit based language, or if they do they speak it with lexical-items borrowed from Turkish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and so on. In Romania, many no longer speak Romani. In Romania, Roma may identify themselves with this “national” identity, or they may identify as “tsigani,” how others have named them. This is a term of derision. Some Roma have integrated themselves into the mainstream of Romanian society and melted into the Romanian ethnic identity. Some Roma sustain their identity and have experienced upward mobility in many different fields.
Roma were persecuted in the Nazi era, large numbers of whom lost their lives; their population decimated in great proportions to their total numbers, referred to as Prajmos. Oddly enough, when mentioned at all as a persecuted population in Germany’s ethnic cleansing effort they are lumped in with Jews, rather than being mentioned outright as a population. No museums exist for them and if there are memorials for them, I do not know of them. They have no homeland with which they can identify. There is no Israel that was created for them as it was for Jews. Their identities are claimed as citizens of their countries of origin.
• Peanuts for poverty and to heck with patents
The New York Times magazine featured an article on the rise of Plumpy’nut, a foil-wrapped peanut paste produced as a nutrition booster for starving people. A French company first started manufacturing and selling it. Now other manufacturers are making a similar product including Partners in Health in Haiti, founded by medical anthropologist/doctor/activist Paul Farmer. PIH, which calls its paste Nourmanba, is planning to expand its operations. Discussions are ongoing about whether the usual patent protections should apply to such life-saving products.
• On the bus
The state of Florida has the third most illegal immigrants in the US and is considering Arizona-style policies. Many recent immigrants are departing. The St. Petersburg Times quoted Ella Schmidt, cultural anthropology professor at the University of South Florida and an expert on US migration issues: “Every day people are leaving and going back home … especially those who came in the last five or six years.”
• The Hispanic paradox explained
Drug Week noted an ethnographic study of the Hispanic paradox. Hispanics in the United States are economically disadvantaged but their health profiles are equal to or better than Euro-Americans. Medical anthropologist Anna Waldstein and colleagues at the University of Kent did research on women’s popular medicine in a Mexican immigrant population in Athens, Georgia. Women’s home care and medical knowledge explain much of the so-called paradox. Findings are published in Medical Anthropology.
• Breaking up is hard to do
The Ottawa Citizen carried an article about cultural anthropologist Ilana Gershon‘s new book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Gershon, who teaches at Indiana University, interviewed undergraduates about what is a bad break-up and discovered a variety of perspectives about how the message should be delivered (in person, texted, or telephone) and who should post the official news on Facebook (the dumper, the dumpee, or whoever gets there first), among other factors.
• Community immunity against PTSD
Drug Week picked up on an ethnographic study of a new therapeutic program in Israel that seeks to prevent PTSD through building community resilience. The authors discuss the relevance of their results for other contexts such as Bali, Haiti, and Ethiopia. Findings are published in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.
• Boys being boys
Hemant Apte, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Pune, presented findings at the 26th Annual Conference of Sexology in Chennai, India, that women sex workers in their 50s are favored by younger men perhaps because they “pamper their young clients.”
This week’s anthropology in the news is the final posting made with the assistance of Graham Hough-Cornwell. For the past year, Graham has been a vital force behind the blog from inspiration, contributing his own posts, editing, photo-research, publishing posts, checking analytics, and more. He is now moving on to intensive study of Arabic this fall in Morocco and then perhaps to doctoral study in the history of the Middle East. Fare thee well, Graham, and don’t forget us!
• Read my lips
An article in the New York Times magazine about how language shapes people’s perception of reality rose to the top of the list of articles emailed, blogged, searched and viewed last week. It was all about linguistic anthropologist Benjamin Whorf‘s theory that language has the power to shape how people think. This is Anth 101 stuff, and if it can go big time in the mainstream media, then there is hope that other basic questions in cultural anthropology can similarly engage the public.
• Trafficked sex workers in China
Cultural anthropologist Tiantian Zheng, of the State University of New York at Cortland, spoke before the US Congressional Executive Committee on China. An expert on the sex trade in China, she said that police raids are counterproductive: “Usually when a woman is ‘rescued’ from the sex trade and put into police custody, she is subject to possible sexual assault by the police, deportation to her hometown, and forced relocation into more dangerous work areas. In my research on migrant sex workers in China, frequent police raids, crackdowns, and raid-and-rescue have pushed sex work underground and made it more dangerous.”
• What do Haitians want
The New York Times quoted Louis Herns Marcelin, cultural anthropology professor at the University of Miami, as saying that Haiti has become an “apartheid country” and most Haitians want “an opening out of the ghetto, an opening out of the permanent prison and segregation they are living in.”
• At the top of your game and being studied
Cambridge University cultural anthropologist Mark de Rond first studied the Cambridge boat race squad. Then military surgeons in Afghanistan. Now he is launching a study of comedians and doing fieldwork in Edinburgh during the Fringe festival. The Scotsman provides some insights about why he is focusing on comedians: “They are very smart…and go out in front of the audience and make themselves vulnerable…if things don’t go well…it affects them terribly personally.”
• DNA and the Dirty War in Argentina
Forensic anthropologists, aided by DNA technology and a growing database of DNA samples from victim’s relatives, have been able to speed up their identification of victims of state violence in Argentina.
anthropologyworks 