• Beyond pabulum: Make the IPCC relevant through social science research

In an excellent article published in Nature, political scientist David G. Victor calls for expansion of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) process to include social science insights into controversial issues and stop providing cooked-down, irrelevant, “pabulum” findings and recommendations. Victor is a professor of international relations and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of California at San Diego.

Victor, who serves on the IPCC’s Working Group III, brings an insider’s perspective to the workings of the IPCC. He comments that it “…is becoming irrelevant to climate policy. By seeking consensus and avoiding controversy, the organization is suffering from the streetlight effect — focusing ever more attention on a well-lit pool of the brightest climate science. But the insights that matter are out in the darkness, far from the places that the natural sciences alone can illuminate.”

“The IPCC has engaged only a narrow slice of social-sciences disciplines. Just one branch — economics — has had a major voice in the assessment process. In Working Group III, which assesses climate-change mitigation and policy, nearly two-thirds of 35 coordinating lead authors hailed from the field, and from resource economics in particular. The other social sciences were mostly absent. There was one political scientist: me.”

Moving forward, Victor suggests that “…the IPCC must ask questions that social scientists can answer…if it engages the fields on their own terms it will find a wealth of relevant knowledge — for example, about how societies organize, how individuals and groups perceive threats and respond to catastrophic stresses, and how collective action works best.”

Cultural/social anthropologists can answer this call. Let’s hope the IPCC punches in our number. Victor, however, does not include anthropology on his A-list: “As soon as the new IPCC leadership is chosen later this year, the team should invite major social-sciences societies such as the American Political Science Association, the American and European societies of international law, the American Sociological Association and the Society for Risk Analysis to propose relevant topics that they can assess and questions they can answer.”

• Some bodies are allowed to go home

Chip Colwell, curator of anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, published an article in The Huffington Post about how white bodies, such as that of Richard III, are allowed to return home and be reburied without scientists making a claim on them.

The quiet about the reburial of Richard III “…stands in stark contrast to how so many regard the reburial of Native American human remains in museums. Around the world archaeologists have resisted the return of skeletons for decades — arguing that they are needed for science. Even nearly 25 years after the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act became federal law, only 27% of the Native skeletons in U.S. museums have been offered for return. More than 100,000 skeletons continue to sit on shelves. In Europe, only in the last few years have the first sets of Native American remains come home.”

Colwell is the author of the forthcoming book, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Treasures.

• The Battle of Okinawa lives on

The Epoch Times published Paul Christensen’s article that first appeared on TheConversation.com in which he writes about the Battle of Okinawa, a long and bloody encounter at the end of World War II. Christensen, assistant professor of anthropology at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, notes that April 1, 2015, marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the battle. The death count was more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers 12,000 Allied troops, and 150,000 Okinawan civilians. Moreover, untold people were wounded or captured as prisoners of war. Memories of the battle live on as well as resentment against both Japan and the United States for its continued military presence. The battle is not over. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 4/6/15” →