iPad – anthropologyworks

• Violence in Africa begins with greed

In an op-ed in The New York Times, Kamari Maxine Clarke, professor of cultural anthropology at Yale University, argues that violence in Africa is rooted in greed, related to contested and highly desired natural resources, and corporate greed should be considered a war crime:

“Violence in Africa begins with greed — the discovery and extraction of natural resources like oil diamonds and gas — and continues to be fed by struggles for control of energy, minerals, food and other commodities. The court needs the power to punish those who profit from those struggles. So do other judicial forums.

At a summit meeting here last week, leaders of the African Union proposed expanding the criminal jurisdiction of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to include corporate criminal liability for the illicit exploitation of natural resources, trafficking in hazardous wastes and other offenses.”

• Legal decision in Guatemala that genocide is genocide

According to an article in The New York Times, a Guatemalan judge ordered Efraín Rios Montt, the former dictator, and his intelligence chief to stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with the massacres of highland Maya villagers three decades ago.

President Otto Pérez Molina, a former general, says he does not believe that the killings during the war amounted to genocide. A UN truth commission determined that the military had carried out “acts of genocide,” including in the Maya-Ixil villages during the war, in which 200,000 people died. As a legislator until last January, Mr. Rios Montt was protected from prosecution. Prosecutors filed charges when his term expired, but his lawyers’ appeals delayed the case.

Guatemala CIA World Factbook — Guatemala/CIA World Factbook

Scholars of Guatemala said that a number of factors combined to get the case to court, including the tenacity of the attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, and successful efforts to appoint more independent judges.

Victoria Sanford, an anthropology professor at the City University of New York who has written about Guatemala’s civil war, is quoted as saying: ”For Rios Montt to be tried breaks the wall of impunity … It says genocide is genocide and it is punishable by law.”

• Crash course in blood football

The Toronto Star carried an article about how “the concussion issue threatens to sack NFL’s business model” given the impending threat to profits from brain injury lawsuits.

As context, the article points out: The National Football League brought in more than $9 billion in revenue in 2012, and tickets to its showcase event, this weekend’s Super Bowl, range from $850 to $1,250, and even more trough the online resale market. Meanwhile, corporations advertising on Sunday’s game paid a record $3.8 million (U.S.) for a 30-second slot. The NFL is the undisputed king of cash among North American pro sports.

Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs, 2006/Wikipedia

But as the money piles up, so do lawsuits and workers compensation claims filed against the league and its teams by former players, who say they suffered irreversible brain injuries while playing in the NFL, and that the league and its teams never informed them about the lasting effects of football’s repeated head trauma.

Duke University cultural anthropology professor Orin Starn wonders if the legal action will lead to similar efforts to raise awareness among football players and fans: “Football is in the same situation; they’ve got a product that’s hazardous to your health,” says Starn, who specializes in the anthropology of sport. “It should come with a warning label stamped on the helmet. America is in massive denial about the blood cost of football.”

Continue reading “Anthro in the news 2/4/13” →

Guest post by Peter Wogan

We now know that Mike Daisey’s theatre show was based on solid research about Apple Inc.’s labor practices in China, but key scenes were manipulated or fabricated for dramatic effect. I’d like to explore what this scandal tells us about culture, magic, and technology.

Every tall tale requires an audience. And one that succeeds on a massive scale requires a storyteller with a subtle understanding of the audience’s unconscious needs and assumptions. So what were the cultural blindspots that Daisey played on? In particular, why was the scene of the Chinese man with the mangled hand considered to be one of the most moving parts of the whole show?

I’m referring to the scene where Daisey supposedly met an old Chinese man whose “right hand is twisted up into a claw” because it got crushed in a metal press while making iPads. In hushed tones, Daisey describes the man’s reaction when he got to use an actual, working iPad for the first time:

“I reach into my satchel, and I take out my iPad. And when he sees it, his eyes widen, one of the ultimate ironies of globalism—at this point there are no iPads in China. Even though every last one of them was made at factories in China, they’ve all been packaged up in perfectly minimalist Apple packaging and then shipped across the seas, so that we can all enjoy them.

He’s never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Kathy [Daisey’s translator], and Kathy says, “He says it’s a kind of magic.”” –Mike Daisey, excerpt played on the radio show “This American Life.”

Ira Glass, the host of “This American Life,” referred to this scene as “the most dramatic point in Daisey’s monologue; apparently onstage it’s one of the most emotional moments in the show.” Yet Kathy, Daisey’s translator, later said that this scene “is not true. You know, it’s just like a movie scenery.” She’s right—it has that Hollywood feel. So to figure out why this episode was so moving to audiences, aside from the obvious way that it elicits empathy for the injured man, the best place to begin is with movie tropes.

Daisey was echoing a familiar movie scene that depicts native awe in the face of Western technology. We’ve seen this image, for example, in The Gods Must be Crazy, where an African tribe is over-awed when they encounter a Coke bottle for the first time. Other such encounters can be found throughout Western cinema, from the gramophone that amazes the Eskimos in Nanook of the North to John Smith’s compass in Pocohantas. These scenes validate a Western sense of identity based on superior technology, and they play off the vicarious thrill of seeing others surprised by novel situations.

Continue reading “Magical iPads: Why did we believe Mike Daisey?” →