Anthro in the news 4/7/14

• Cultural anthropologists fighting Ebola

National Public Radio (U.S.) reported on the role of cultural anthropology in efforts to prevent the spread of Ebola in Guinea.

Health specialists work in an isolation ward for patients in Guékedou, southern Guinea. Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images. — Specialists at a Guékedou, southern Guinea isolation ward. Seyllou/AFP/Getty

Doctors, nurses and epidemiologists from international organizations are flying in to help, along with cultural anthropologists. Understanding local beliefs can help get communities to trust international health care workers, says Barry Hewlett, a medical anthropologist at Washington State University. Hewlett was invited to join the Doctors Without Borders Ebola team during an outbreak in Uganda in 2000. There are anthropologists on the current team in Guinea as well.

Before the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders started bringing in anthropologists, medical staff had a difficult time convincing families to bring their sick loved ones to clinics and isolation wards. In Uganda, Hewlett remembers, people were afraid of the international health care workers: “The local people thought that the Europeans in control of the isolation units were in a body parts business … Their loved ones would go into the isolation units, and they would never see them come out.”

Health care workers did not always promptly notify relatives of a death because of the need to dispose of the body quickly, Hewlett wrote in a report on his experiences in Uganda: “The anger and bad feelings about not being informed were directed toward health care workers in the isolation unit … This fear could have been averted by allowing family members to see the body in the bag and allowing family members to escort the body to the burial ground.” In addition, Hewlett points out that the large tarps surrounding isolation units were removed so family members could see and talk with a sick relative.

Efforts to contain such outbreaks must be “culturally sensitive and appropriate,” Hewlett says. “Otherwise people are running away from actual care that is intended to help them.” Medical anthropologists can help doctors and other medical experts understand how a local population perceives disease, death, and loss.
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Anthro in the news 7/29/13

• Female genital cutting: a practice in decline

Several mainstream media sources discussed the findings of a comprehensive new assessment led by UNICEF about the practice of female genital cutting in Africa and the Middle East. The data indicate a gradual but significant decline in many countries.

Female genital mutilation Economist — Source: Economist

Teenage girls are now less likely to have been cut than older women in more than half of the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the practice is concentrated. In Egypt, for example, where more women have been cut than in any other nation, survey data showed that 81 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds had undergone the practice, compared with 96 percent of women in their late 40s.

Generational change appears to be playing an important role in the decline with the difference in Egypt especially marked: only a third of teenage girls who were surveyed thought it should continue, compared with almost two-thirds of older women.

Researchers say the progress in Kenya makes sense, given efforts there to stop female genital cutting starting in the early 1900s. But they were at a loss to explain why the rate has plunged in the Central African Republic, to 24 percent in 2010 from 43 percent in the mid-1990s. Concerning the findings about the Central African Republic, The New York Times quotes Bettina Shell-Duncan, a cultural anthropology professor at the University of Washington who was a consultant on the report: “We have no idea, not even a guess, noting that researchers need to study the causes of the decline there.

Blogger’s note: for a list of related readings, see the global∙gender∙current blog post.

• Indigenous people’s knowledge and climate change

An article on the importance of indigenous knowledge in addressing climate change in The Democratic Daily cites the work of Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Brazilian cultural anthropologist and emeritus professor of the Department of Anthropology at Chicago University and the University of São Paulo.

She says indigenous people have an important contribution to make to knowledge about climate change, and scientists should listen to them because they are very well informed about their local climate as well as the natural world. Their knowledge, she says, is not a “treasure” of data to be stored and used when wanted by others, but a living and evolving process: “It is important to understand that traditional wisdom is not something simply transmitted from generation to generation. It is alive, and traditional and indigenous peoples are continually producing new knowledge.”

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UNICEF report on female genital mutilation/ cutting

Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: A statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change is a new UNICEF report, released July 22, 2013. It offers a statistical overview of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in the 29 countries where the practice is concentrated.

As described in the report’s introduction: “This report draws on data from more than 70 nationally representative surveys over a 20-year period and presents the most comprehensive compilation to date of statistics and analyses on FGM/C… It reviews all available DHS and MICS data, along with other nationally representative datasets with information on FGM/C, and examines differentials in prevalence according to social, economic, demographic and other characteristics.”
The report covers all 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where FGM/C is concentrated and includes, for the first time, statistics from countries where representative survey data were lacking. It is also the first
publication to include new data collected on girls under 15 years of age, providing insights on the most recent dynamics surrounding the practice.

Importantly, as noted in the report’s introduction: “An innovative aspect of the analysis is the addition of a social norms perspective.” [Blogger’s note: This “innovative aspect’ may be at least partially thanks to cultural anthropologist, Bettina Shell-Duncan, who played a key role in the analysis and writing of the report].

Click here to read more.