Tag: Navajo

Anthro in the news 10/14/13

Gregale cliffs lampedusa
North-Eastern cliffs of Lampedusa, photo by Arnold Sciberras/Wikipedia

• We need a bigger boat

The Wall Street Journal and other mainstream media reported on the second incident of a capsized boat near Lampedusa, in the Mediterranean.

The article quotes Maurizio Albahari, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, who says that the sinking on October 3 hasn’t deterred smugglers from bringing refugees into Europe from the Libyan coast:

“And it cannot possibly deter migrants who have gone through countless stages of peril and exploitation in their own country, especially in Syria and the Horn of Africa.”

• On U.S.-Afghan relations

In an article analyzing current U.S.-Afghan relations and the troop draw-down, Global Post referred to the work of cultural anthropologist Thomas Barfield of Boston University.

Barfield notes that Karzai faces a political conundrum, that: an Afghan ruler, “to be successful … will need to convince Afghans that he will not be beholden to foreigners even as he convinces these same foreigners to fund his state and its military.”

And, pondering the future stability of the country, Barfield is quoted as saying: “In the absence of [a strong leader] and the departure of foreign forces, Afghanistan will not survive as a unitary state. The most likely event in that case would be a sundering of the country along regional lines.”
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Tourism, human rights, and who is in control

By Barbara Miller

Lead articles in the travel sections of the Sunday August 24 issues of The Washington Post and The New York Times raise some interesting questions about tourism in relation to indigenous peoples.

Both articles offer food for thought for anthropologists who work with indigenous peoples to protect, preserve, and “manage” their cultural heritage and for cultural tourists who want to avoid harming indigenous peoples and fragile environments. The articles also provide a useful source for classroom discussions around issues of heritage, rights, and responsibility.

The Washington Post article is about possible human rights abuses of Padaung women in northern Thailand. Their necks are elongated by wearing a stack of brass coils. They have long been an attraction to outsiders — photographers, journalists, tourists, and other voyeurs. Human rights activists and some eco-tourist company owners have expressed concern that unscrupulous businessmen are keeping Padaung women in “human zoos” across a wide area of northern Thailand.

The author of the article visited one village in which the women told him they are paid to live there and wear traditional clothing including their brass rings. It’s a village created for and sustained by tourists. The author asks: “So it is unethical to visit the long-necked women?” (p F4). The author notes that the women he talked with said that their life in the fake village where they earn money is preferable to poverty.

The New York Times article on the Navajo highlights the value, to indigenous people, of controlling tourism including the narrative conveyed to the tourists in terms of the complicated concept of “authenticity” and the profits generated from tourism. The contrasts with the situation of the Padaung women are clear. While the Navajo in this article are also putting parts of their culture on display for outsiders, they are in control of what to make publicly available and how, including an emphasis on respect for heritage and environmental concerns which responds to a new generation of tourists.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Padaung could be liberated from the “businessmen” and become in charge of their heritage and its consumption by outsiders?

Image: “Padaung Village,” licensed under Creative Commons from Flickr.