Anthro in the news 2/4/13

• 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.”

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Anthro in the news 1/21/13

• Revenge against French fueling conflict in Mali and Algeria

Mali. Source: CIA Factbook. The contested region is in the north.

An article in The Star (Toronto) about how Mali’s conflict spilled across its borders into Algeria this past week quoted Bruce Whitehouse, a cultural anthropology professor at Lehigh University, and a Fulbright scholar who has lived in Mali.

He says: “They want to get back at the French desperately and they have a history of carrying out a tit-for-tat response when it comes to French intervention …They clearly want to portray what they’re doing as a direct and balanced response to what’s being directed against them … It will bring a lot more pressure from the United States and European governments to get involved … (It) might be a good thing from Mali’s point of view. Algeria has what’s reckoned to be the most capable military there and they have experience and they know the terrain.”

• Mali: Where music is dangerous

An opinion piece in the Cyprus Mail says that Islamic extremism is stopping the music in Mali:

“We all have a favourite album. Mine is Talking Timbuktu, the collaboration between the great Malian musician Ali Farka Tourι and Ry Cooder. Arguably it’s some of the best guitar playing you’ll ever hear. Ali died in 2006, but his son Vieux carries the sound onward, that curious mix of African soul and heart with a blues base.

“So it was with utter horror that I heard Lucy Durán, who hosts the BBC programme World Routes and teaches the anthropology of world music at SOAS (University of London), say in an emotional comment this week that one of the terrible side effects of the extreme Islamic fundamentalism now invading northern Mali is the silencing of music. Outlawed under Sharia law, all instruments, radio, CD players have been destroyed, and as Lucy chillingly said, those seen playing guitars were threatened with having their fingers cut off.”

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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.