Anthro in the news 5/12/14

David Graeber in the news

McMillan-photo — Cecily McMillan outside court as the jury was deliberating. Credit: The Villager.

An article in The Villager described recent developments in the case of a 2012 Occupy activist in New York City who has been found guilty of assaulting a police officer. A Manhattan jury on Monday convicted Cecily McMillan, a 25-year-old New School graduate student, of felony assault of a police officer. She has been remanded to custody at Riker’s Island without bail, pending sentencing on May 19. She could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison, but also could get probation with a suspended sentence and no jail time.

The article mentions David Graeber, an anthropology professor at the London School of Economics, often called an Occupy Wall Street founder and credited with coining the movement’s slogan, “We are the 99%.” He disagreed with the decision, saying the McMillan case sent a chilling message: “You do not have the right to freedom of assembly. Do not show up at a protest unless you are willing to face the possibility of torture, physical injury and years in jail.”

David Graeber in the news again

Should your job should exist? PBS Newshour interviewed David Graeber about his category of “bullshit jobs” Americans are now working more and more hours. But what, Graeber asks, do BS workers actually do: “It’s as if…we’ve created entirely new jobs to accommodate the workaday world. Administrators (think telemarketing and financial services) and the growing number of human resources and public relations professionals can’t pick up their own pizzas or walk their dogs.” Therefore, we have all-night pizza delivery men and dog-walkers, just to keep other people working. The interview follows up on an essay Graeber wrote in 2013 in Strike Magazine. Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/12/14” →

Anthro in the news 3/10/14

The past is also a victim in Syria

An article in The New York Times highlighted the loss of prehistoric and historic artifacts in Syria due to the ongoing conflict there. It mentioned the French archaeologists Pierre Leriche and Jean-Claude Margueron who both spent decades uncovering Syria’s rich past and how they find it too painful now to look at the present. Leriche and Margueron are just two of many archaeologists from Belgium, Britain, France, Italy and elsewhere who spent years uncovering Syria’s past. UNESCO experts and scholars in Syria describe it as a country in the process of obliterating its cultural history. The article quotes Pierre Leriche: “The situation now is absolutely terrible there.” He is a professor of archaeology at the École Normale Supérieure, one of France’s most prestigious universities, who worked for more than 25 years at a site on the Euphrates River. Noting reports of illegal excavation at about 350 places in that one site where he worked, he said: “They come with jackhammers. That means everything is destroyed.” Continue reading “Anthro in the news 3/10/14” →

Anthro in the news 5/13/13

• Go directly to jail: Prison sentence for Guatemalan dictator

Many major news media covered the sentencing of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt to a landmark 80 years in prison for genocide and crime against humanity. ABC News quoted Victoria Sanford, a cultural anthropologist at Lehman College, City University of New York, who noted that genocidal massacres occurred before and after Rios Montt, “but the bulk of the killing took place under Rios Montt.”

Sanford has spent about 50 months in Guatemala and participated in excavations in at least eight massacre sites. Several of the articles quote Helen Mack, a noted human rights activist, and sister of Myrna Mack, who was murdered in Guatemala in 1990 for her work on behalf of indigenous human rights .

• What would Paul Farmer say?

To Repair the World by Paul Farmer — U. of California Press

Time magazine carried an interview with medical anthropologist, medical doctor, professor, and health activist Paul Farmer, prompted by his new book, To Repair the World, a collection of his speeches including some of his commencement speeches.

The lead question is: “Are you ever tempted to tell graduates, ‘I could have saved thousands of lives with the money you spent on your degree?'”

Paul Farmer responds: “I don’t think of it that way. I think, Here’s a chance to reach out to people who probably are unaware — as I was at their age — of their privilege and to engage them in the work.” He was also interviewed on the Diane Rehm show.

• Presidential note of gratification

Leith Mullings, president of the American Anthropological Association, published an article in The Huffington Post, expressing her appreciation of President Obama’s acknowledgment of the importance of anthropology in a recent speech:

“As an anthropologist and president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), I was especially gratified to hear President Barack Obama acknowledge the discipline of anthropology and support its scientific integrity. In a speech at the 150th anniversary of the National Academy of Sciences, President Obama said:

‘And it’s not just resources. I mean, one of the things that I’ve tried to do over these last four years and will continue to do over the next four years is to make sure that we are promoting the integrity of our scientific process; that not just in the physical and life sciences, but also in fields like psychology and anthropology and economics and political science — all of which are sciences because scholars develop and test hypotheses and subject them to peer review — but in all the sciences, we’ve got to make sure that we are supporting the idea that they’re not subject to politics, that they’re not skewed by an agenda, that, as I said before, we make sure that we go where the evidence leads us. And that’s why we’ve got to keep investing in these sciences.'”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 5/13/13” →