Anthro in the news 7/18/11

UPDATE: Zahi Hawass has confirmed that he is losing his appointment as Egyptian Antiquities Minister in an ongoing cabinet shuffle.

• Whose lies are better?
Two weeks ago, cultural anthropologist Mike McGovern of Yale University published an op-ed in the New York Times about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case in which he argued for understanding of why the immigrant hotel maid would have lied on her asylum application. His position is that life in Guinea can be so difficult and dangerous that lying to get out can make sense, given the context. Now, Robert Fulford, professor of journalism at Massey College of the University of Toronto, claims that McGovern abuses the concept of cultural relativism and is building a culture of excuse-making. Blogger’s note: there appears to be the likelihood of lying on both sides of the case. Questions are: whose lies will be more damaging to the person’s credibility, and whose lies will be left to lie?

• Gillian Tett on the European financial situation
Cultural anthropologist Gillian Tett, an award-winning journalist at the Financial Times, where she is an assistant editor overseeing global financial markets coverage, appeared on the U.S. news television show, Morning Joe. She discussed the European financial situation and, particularly, Irish banking. And she actually managed to work in the word ‘anthropology’!

• Morocco’s Arab Spring
Paul Silverstein, cultural anthropology professor at Reed College, gave a radio interview about Morocco’s response to the Arab Spring movement. He also comments on Morocco’s new constitution that was overwhelmingly approved on July 1.

• Anthro of chess
Robert Desjarlais, a cultural anthropology professor at Sarah Lawrence College, has published a new book on chess, Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chess Board. The Boston Globe online included a piece on the book in its section on (guess what?) chess.
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Tweetography: the sounds of Egyptian silence

Guest post by Graham Hough-Cornwell

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, Feb 1, 2011. Photo Credit: darkroom productions, Creative Commons, Flickr — 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 6^th 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

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Upcoming event at GW

The Case of Organ Transplantation in Egypt: Reassessing Bioethics and Contemporary Islamic Thought

Sherine Hamdy, Kutayba Alghanim Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brown University; author, Our Bodies Belong to God: Bioethics, Islam, and Organ Transplantation

When: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 from 6:00 – 7:30 PM
Where: Lindner Family Commons, Room 602
1957 E Street, NW
Elliott School of International Affairs
George Washington University

Please RSVP here

Our Bodies Belong to God centers on why Egyptians were largely reluctant to accept transplant medicine. In the print news, on state television, radio, film, and in religious sermons, opinions clashed over this life-saving but death-ridden medical practice. Egypt’s organ transplant debate immediately presents a number of puzzles. Why did organ transplantation in particular, as opposed to other biotechnological practices, set off such a heated debate? Why was Egypt the pioneering Arab Muslim country in the field of transplant medicine, and yet the most resistant to passing a law?

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The politics of women’s clothing

By Barbara Miller

The Economist reports that Sudan’s criminal law forbids “indecent clothing in public” with little in the way of further details. Sudanese journalist Lubna al-Hussein was recently arrested in Sudan along with 12 women for being improperly dressed. Ten of the 12 accepted the charge, and each was punished with 10 lashes and was forced to pay a fine equal to U.S. $100. Ms. Hussein is contesting the charges. The problem seems to be that she was wearing trousers.

In Sudan women are flogged for wearing pants. In France, women appearing in public fully covered with a head-to-toe veil has become a volatile policy question for the government and an important cultural rights issue for Muslims along with the 2004 ban against girls wearing headscarves in schools. France has the largest Muslim population of any country in Europe. Muslims constitute about 10 percent of the national population.

How does all this square with liberté, egalité, and fraternité? Are such hard-fought-for values to be lost in the wake of contemporary concerns for “national integration” and “national security”? And how important a role, behind the veil of national policy, is being played by xenophobia and anti-immigrationist fears?

Image: Female students in Alexandria, Egypt. By Barbara Miller.