Anthro in the news 3/11/13

• On gender equality in Cuba

A report on the status of women in Cuba, “Women’s Work: Gender Equality in Cuba and the Role of Women Building Cuba’s Future,” credits the leaders of the revolution with mandating and enforcing rules and laws guaranteeing gender equality and women’s rights, which have made Cuba among the highest-ranking nations in the advancement of women.

An article in The New York Times discussing the report quotes María Ileana Faguaga Iglesias, a Cuban cultural anthropologist and historian who argues that the story of Cuba’s progress toward gender equality is overstated. She expressed the frustration of highly educated women: ”We have to distinguish that access to university studies does not necessarily give us power … What’s more, to be in positions that are supposedly positions of power does not necessarily permit the exercise of power.”

Still, Cuba ranks high in international surveys on women. The World Economic Forum’s 2012 Global Gender Gap Report ranked Cuba 19th among 135 countries, up one notch from 2011, one of only two Latin American nations in the top 20 (Nicaragua ranked ninth). By comparison, the United States fell to 22 from 17 in the survey, which measured the health, literacy, economic status and political participation of women.

• Women on Wall Street

In an interview on the Bill Moyers report, cultural anthropologist Melissa Fisher comments that women could not have entered the U.S. professional workforce in significant numbers without the liberal feminist movement’s insistence on the opening up of formerly male bastions, such as finance. In her book Wall Street Women, Fisher charts the evolution of the first generation of career women on Wall Street. She is a cultural anthropologist and visiting scholar in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.

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Anthro in the news 3/4/13

• Economic anthropologists sought to enrich poor numbers

According to a book review in The Financial Times, “A tendency to issue doubtful data is rooted in colonial days and still creates problems for the [African] continent, according to an important study: Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled By African Development Statistics and What To Do About It, by Morten Jerven. The review goes on: “There are lies, damned lies and then there are African statistics. If economic figures everywhere are a work in progress — regularly rebased and updated to take into account fresh data — those from Africa are the most open to question and the most unreliable in their revision.”

Morten Jerven Poor Numbers — Credit: Cornell University Press

The reviewer considers Poor Numbers to be an important contribution to the subject. Morten Jerven, an assistant professor at the school for international studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, builds the case for renewed scrutiny. Pointing to “huge discrepancies and alarming gaps” in African figures, he writes: “Datasets are like guns. Someone will use them if they are left lying around.”

And, further [and now we are getting to the connection with anthropology], Jerven calls for a focus on strengthened national statistical capacity, the use of “economic anthropologists,” and greater transparency on the underlying assumptions and weaknesses of existing data.

As Jerven rightly concludes: “Numbers are too important to be ignored, and the problems surrounding the production and dissemination of numbers are too serious to be dismissed.”

• The real news in anthropology is not about Chagnon

In the Huffington Post, Paul Stoller, professor of anthropology at West Chester University, comments on the latest “flare up” in the news surrounding Napoleon Chagnon‘s memoir, Noble Savages (and see below in this aitn). He states: “In the sweep of time, though, Chagnon’s work is but a blip on the screen. In the nanosecond reality of the media universe, Chagnon’s ideas and struggles will quickly revert back to what they are: ‘very old news.’ The real news…is the ongoing work on structures of poverty and social inequality, work that exposes how contemporary economic practices trigger widespread real world suffering. That scholarship produces results that are politically threatening to men like Rick Scott, Scott Walker and Rick Perry. That’s why they’re slashing higher education budgets. What better way to undermine anthropology, sociology, and the humanities and protect their economic and political interests?”

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Anthro in the news 2/18/13

• Gas company targets a protected park in the Peruvian Amazon

An article in The Guardian reported on how an energy company is eyeing the gas reserves of a Peruvian Amazon park where biodiversity exceeds any other place on earth and which is home to indigenous people who have little contact with the outside world.

Pluspetrol's Pagoreni-B gas well, part of the Camisea project in the Amazon jungle near Cuzco, Peru. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle/AFP — Pluspetrol's Pagoreni-B gas well near Cuzco, Peru. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle/AFP

The report is based on a leaked document. The revelation about Manu national park follows rumors and reports in Peru that the government is to create a gas concession bordering or including parts of the park, but which have not been publicly confirmed.

The Guardian quotes anthropologist Daniel Rodriguez, who has worked with indigenous federation Fenamad: “This is the first time we’ve seen evidence for plans to expand hydrocarbon activities into Manu.” Manu is home to 10 percent of the world’s bird species, 5 percent of all mammals, and 15 percent of all butterflies. Unesco has declared the park a World Heritage Site and biosphere reserve.

• Becoming a mother without a husband in Vietnam

The New York Times reported on northern Vietnamese war widows becoming mothers without husbands in order to avoid living without a child and dying a lonely death.

The article focuses on women in one village who “upended centuries-old gender rules and may have helped open the door for a nation to redefine parenthood.” Having endured the war, they developed a new strength and were determined not to die alone. They asked men, whom they did not interact with afterward, to help them conceive a child. The practice was known as “xin con,” or “asking for a child,” and it meant breaking with tradition, facing discrimination and enduring the hardships of raising a child alone.

“It was unusual, and quite remarkable,” said Harriet Phinney, an assistant professor of anthropology at Seattle University who is writing a book on the practice of xin con in Vietnam. Purposely conceiving a child out of wedlock, she said, “was unheard-of.” It was a product of the mothers’ bravery and a postwar society that acknowledged the unique situation of women across Vietnam, including thousands of widows who were raising children alone.
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