Two articles in the latest issue of Nature prompted this note. The first claims that China’s historical culture inhibits science:

“Two cultural genes have passed through generations of Chinese intellectuals for more than 2,000 years. The first is the thoughts of Confucius, who proposed that intellectuals should become loyal administrators. The second is the writings of Zhuang Zhou, who said that a harmonious society would come from isolating families so as to avoid exchange and conflict, and by shunning technology to avoid greed. Together, these cultures have encouraged small-scale and self-sufficient practices in Chinese society, but discouraged curiosity, commercialization and technology. They helped to produce a scientific void in Chinese society that persisted for millennia. And they continue to be relevant today.”

The second article is titled, Research in Asia Heats Up: US Indicators Reveal Challenges and Opportunities as Science Momentum Shifts to China. It reports that:

“Asia, led by China, is on track to displace the United States as the world’s science and technology powerhouse. That message is loud and clear in the 2012 edition of Science and Engineering Indicators, a nearly 600-page snapshot of the state of global research that looks at education, academic infrastructure, the knowledge-based workforce and international markets.”

So what has happened to the two “cultural genes” of Confucius and Zhuang in China? And what is going on with what one might caricature as the U.S. “cultural genes” of curiosity, commercialization, and technology? Just thinking.

Filed under: technology by admin on January 27, 2012 | Social tagging: China > science
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By contributor Sean Carey

Mauritius is in the premier league of the world’s democracies, according to the newly released London-based Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index. The Index, which monitors 167 nations ranks the small Indian Ocean island, with a population of 1.3 million, 24th out of 25 “full democracies,” just ahead of Spain.

Norway is in first place followed by three other Scandinavian countries—Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Canada is eighth, Ireland is 12th, Germany is 14th, the U.K. is 18th, while the U.S. is ranked 19th.The remaining 90 countries which make it into the “democratic” category are divided into 53 “flawed democracies,” which includes France and Italy at 29th and 31st respectively. The next category consists of 37 “hybrid regimes” and includes Hong Kong (80th), Singapore (81st), Turkey (88th), Tanzania (90th) and Kenya (103rd). The remaining countries in the Index, including Bahrain, Chad, Fiji, Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea, are described as “authoritarian.”

The Index is based on five criteria: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. However, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that almost all of the “full democracies” belong to a group of the world’s advanced economies, whose populations are well-practiced in placing marks on ballot papers and tossing out unpopular or incompetent governments.

Little wonder, then, that Mauritius’s inclusion has caught the eye of some commentators. “In some ways, of the 25 ‘full democracies,’ Mauritius is now the most notable,” writes Neil Reynolds, economics correspondent for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. Reynolds cities Mauritius’s endorsement by the World Bank as the best among African economies, and its top position in the Sudanese-born telecoms billionaire Mo Ibrahim’s Index of African Governance.

Reynolds also goes on to note Mauritius’s ascent in the Index of Economic Freedom jointly produced by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. In 2010, it was in 12th place at 179 countries. In 2012 it had moved up to eighth place. The piece finishes with a rousing cry: “Economic freedom is as much a prerequisite for democracy as voting. Let’s hear it for the prosperous little democracy with a dodo on its coat of arms.”

But free-marketeers are not the only members of the economic tribe to endorse Mauritius. Last year, for example, Joseph Stiglitz, after a brief visit, wrote an article for The Guardian, heaping praise on the country for the provision of free education, transport for schoolchildren and free healthcare, including heart surgery. The former chief economist at the World Bank, and a leading light in the neo-Keynesian “third way” movement, reckoned that North America and Europe could learn lessons from Mauritius in terms of how the country managed “social cohesion, welfare and economic growth.”

Despite the brevity of his stay, the Nobel prize-winning economist was observant enough to point to some of the island’s problems, especially the colonial legacy in inequality in ownership of land and other forms of capital which differentially affects the life chances of various segments of the polyethnic population.

Then there is the vexatious issue of the US base on Diego Garcia, which was illegally detached before independence from the UK in 1968 and now forms part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. “The US should now do right by this peaceful and democratic country: recognise Mauritius’s rightful ownership of Diego Garcia, renegotiate the lease and redeem past sins by paying a fair amount for land that it has illegally occupied for decades,” argued Stiglitz. He should have added that those 1500 or so islanders, who were forcibly removed from the Chagos Archipelago in the late 60s and early 70s by the British authorities to make way for the military base and dumped in Mauritius and the Seychelles, should be allowed to return to their homeland if they so wish.

Filed under: foreign/other by admin on January 26, 2012 | Social tagging: democracy > Mauritius
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Anthroworks presents its favorite 2011 North American dissertations in cultural anthropology. In compiling this list, I searched the “Dissertations International” electronic database that is available through my university library. The database includes mainly U.S. dissertations with a light sprinkling from Canada. I used the same search terms as I did in previous years.

True confession: these are my picks, and they reflect my preferences for topics — health, inequality, migration, gender, and human rights. Somebody else’s picks would look quite different. But this is the anthroworks list!

The 40 dissertations are arranged in alphabetical order according to the last name of the dissertation author. Apologies to the authors for my reduction of their published abstracts to a maximum of nine lines.

I would like to convey my congratulations to all 2011 anthropology Ph.D. recipients. I hope they go on to a successful career in — or related to — anthropology.

An Analysis of Cultural Competence, Cultural Difference, and Communication Strategies in Medical Care, by Marisa Abbe. Case Western Reserve University. Advisor: Atwood Gaines.

This research expands the knowledge of the role of language, culture, and cultural difference in medical encounters. Minority populations suffer disproportionately from the burden of disease in American society. A common reason cited for health inequalities is that the U.S. health care system, in its “one-size-fits-all” approach, is inadequate to meet the needs of minority patients. A proposed solution in biomedicine is cultural competence. This dissertation investigates how Anglo-American clinicians and Mexican immigrant patients communicate in a medical setting. It is based on ethnographic research at the People’s Clinic, a free clinic in a metropolitan area in Texas. I examine how patients communicate information and whether their narratives cause barriers to treatment. I propose ways to redefine cultural competence of medical practitioners.

We Are Phantasms: Female Same-Sex Desires, Violence, and Ideology in Salvador, Brazil, by Andrea Allen. Harvard University. Advisor: Michael Herzfeld.

In this dissertation, I explore the paradox of lesbian intimate partner violence in Salvador, Brazil. My ethnographic fieldwork allows me to examine how lesbians and other women with female lovers act against “state interests” through their involvement in romantic and sexual relationships with other women, but nonetheless reproduce dominant Brazilian cultural norms through their involvement in intimate partner violence and sexual power relations. I focus on four themes: social violence perpetrated against lesbians in Brazilian society; women’s same-sex desires and sexual practices; infidelity, jealousy, and intimate partner violence in lesbian relationships; and the government’s response to intimate partner violence within Brazil.

An Ambivalent Embrace: The Cultural Politics of Arabization and the Knowledge Economy in the Moroccan Public School, by Charis Boutieri. Princeton University. Advisors: Abdellah Hammoudi, Lawrence Rosen.

This dissertation is based on fieldwork in urban Moroccan high schools. I explore the relationship between Arabization (post-Independence nationalizing agenda) and public education. I argue that tensions traversing the public school relate to Morocco’s ambivalent cultural politics in the postcolonial period and to the social fragmentation this cultural politics has encouraged. Through classroom observations, discussions with students, teachers and parents and curricula analysis, I trace the Arabized school’s ambiguous bilingualism between French and Arabic and narrate how school participants encounter their colonial heritage as re-articulated in the discourse of development. These dynamics reconfigure the school from a mechanism of social and symbolic engineering to a space where the cultural politics of Morocco is debated.

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Filed under: cultural anthropology, education, updates and publications by admin on January 24, 2012
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• Ships crashing in the day
Canada’s Globe and Mail carried an article on what big cruise ship crashes mean for the industry: “The crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship [...like that of the Titanic] a century ago, is more about the overriding ambiguity of the image — the mismatch between the insulated adventure we’re buying and the rocks and icebergs that still can get in the way.” The article quotes Erve Chambers, professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland: “With both disasters, the same delusion is at work…These ships are so big and so powerful that they are seen to prevail over nature.” [Blogger's note: these comments remind me of how delusion is a key factor in "modern life," along with denial -- consider Tea Party beliefs and values].

• Our babies our politics: Republican presidential candidates big on babies

An article in the New York Times pointed to the high fertility level of several of the Republican presidential candidates. Both Rick Santorum and (dropout) Jon M. Huntsman Jr. each have seven children. Mitt Romney is the father of five as is Ron Paul. But Newt Gingrich and (dropout) Rick Perry have only two children each. The article quotes Jenell Paris, who teaches anthropology at Messiah College in Pennsylvania:  “For evangelicals, an anticontraception position is not seen as exclusively Roman Catholic, as it would have been in the past.” She pointed to several developments in evangelical culture to explain this shift toward an anticontraception position.

• Teenagers talking online

The New York Times Sunday style section carried a major article about Danah Boyd as someone who has gained fame as an anthropologist of youth online communication. Boyd is senior researcher at Microsoft, an assistant professor at New York University, and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. She publishes in academic outlets, she speaks in important public venues, she teaches, and she tweets. The article describes her support for teens’ access to the online world as a supportive space: “The Internet was my saving grace…I would spend my teenage nights talking to strangers online, realizing there were other smart kids out there.” Her views and insights offer a tempering perspective to parents and others who worry about the dangers that lurk online.

• Binge drinking

The Atlantic carried an article critiquing the recent CDC definition of binge drinking. The author writes: “To describe drinking solely in terms of statistical correlation to problem behaviors may undermine the complexity of what it means to drink and even to drink a lot. Anthropology may offer a more nuanced view than the CDC’s focus on epidemiologic and economic risk factors. If, as the CDC suggests, alcohol causes problem behavior, other cultures should have the same lack of moral inhibition when they drink.” The author, a craft bartender in Washington, DC, cites the work of cultural anthropologist Dwight Heath: “…perhaps the foremost expert on drinking and culture — and a professor of anthropology at Brown University — describes drinking as a bio-pyscho-social experience in his International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture. Heath describes cultures that, despite drinking almost lethal amounts of alcohol, sit peacefully while imbibing, with no instances of violence, crime, or suicide. Many examples of peaceful, safe drinking exist (even within our culture) and show that, while the act of drinking alcohol engenders certain physical effects, our cultural interpretation and psychological state determine what those effects mean.” The author concludes: “The last thing I wish to do is minimize these problems or even suggest that alcohol is without sin, but there’s no way to understand the true impact of alcohol within society without understanding how culture shapes its use. If I’m a binge drinker, then so be it. I’m a binge drinker. But this only obscures real problem uses of alcohol since, as a binge drinker, I seem to be doing just fine.” [Blogger's note: I am thrilled to report that an M.A. student taking my medical anthropology seminar contributed research for the article in the Atlantic: congratulations to Clare Kelley].

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Filed under: anthro in the news by admin on January 23, 2012
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Deadline: March 1

The California Series in Public Anthropology is continuing its International Competition in 2012. It seeks proposals for short books oriented toward undergraduates that focus on how social scientists are facilitating social change. They are looking for accessible, grounded accounts that present compelling stories, stories that inspire others.

The proposals should describe a book that will be relatively short – around 100 pages – with a personal touch that captures the lives of people. The core of the book should involve stories of one or more social scientists as change agents, as making a difference in the world.

The University of California Press in association with the Center for a Public Anthropology will award publishing contracts for up to three such book proposals independent of whether the manuscripts themselves have been completed. The proposals can describe work the author wishes to undertake in the near future.

Interested individuals should submit a 3-4,000 word overview of their proposed manuscript detailing (a) the problem addressed as well as (b) a summary of what each chapter covers. The proposal should be written in a manner that non-academic readers find interesting and thought-provoking.

Submissions should be emailed to: bookseries@publicanthropology.org with the relevant material enclosed as attachments.

Filed under: updates and publications by admin on January 22, 2012
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Sustainable creativity in healthcare
When: May 16-18
Where: Lyric Theatre Belfast

The aim of the conference is to explore, celebrate, share and gain in-depth knowledge of international working models of best arts in health practice and research development. Exploration of the Arts Care model of engagement will provide delegates with insight into how an arts organisation can successfully develop authentic creative communities within healthcare environments.

For more information, click here.

Filed under: events, health by admin on January 21, 2012
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2012 UBC Anthropology Graduate Conference:

Culture and Change: Towards a Dynamic Anthropology
When: March 2-3
Deadline for submission: Jan 31

The Anthropology Department at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, is pleased to announce the 2012 graduate student conference.

Anthropologists recognize that cultures are dynamic and changing. Recent global events, such as the uprising in Egypt and the Occupy Movement, have pushed these notions of social dynamism to the forefront of public consciousness. How do global forces combine with local dynamics to shape the futures of communities around the world? Scholars from the traditional fields of anthropology, as well as geography, political science, law, and other disciplines are engaging with this question in new ways.

We cordially invite graduate and undergraduate scholars across disciplines including but not limited to sociocultural, linguistic, and museum anthropology, archaeology, sociology, geography, history, and political science, to join us for an exploration of these themes. Please submit paper and poster abstracts by January 31st, 2012, to anthconfubc@gmail.com. Abstracts are limited to 150 words. Please include 3 or 4 keywords below the body of the abstract.

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Filed under: cultural anthropology, events by admin on January 20, 2012
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By contributor Sean Carey

One of the great success stories of the travel sector in recent decades has been the development and growth in ecotourism, which is currently estimated to be worth around $60 billion annually. Companies, which operate in diverse environments, including cities, villages, religious sites and wildlife sanctuaries, have realized that to be perceived by consumers as “eco-friendly” bestows considerable status, especially where it has become the dominant benchmark of the new visitor economies in countries like Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenya, Madagascar and Nepal. In these nations ecotourism contributes a significant amount to GDP, at the same time as it brings in much-needed foreign currency.

However, ecotourism is not always a progressive force. For example, the sector has sometimes been accused of profiteering at the expense of environmental degradation and hiding its sins behind “greenwashing.” Ecotourism has also been accused of the violation of human rights by colluding with the displacement of indigenous peoples — the shocking fate of the Maasai when the Masai Mara National Reserve in south-west Kenya was established in 1948 being a prime example.

Some cultural anthropologists have added to the criticisms. For example, Carrier and Macleod claim that the distinction between ecotourism and mass tourism is difficult to sustain when “the destinations and experiences sold to tourists are abstracted from their contexts, thus inducing a distorted image of them and of ecotourism itself” (p. 315).

 

So, the purity of the “ecotourism” brand image has been damaged to some extent: it is no longer self-explanatory (and self-justifying), and many consumers are now uncertain about whether to trust the claims being made. Is there now a gap in the marketplace? The people behind Ethical Traveler, a small, non-profit organization that is part of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute, certainly think so. It has the tagline “Empowering Travelers to Change the World.”

Ethical Traveler has just issued its fifth annual “top ten” list of the developing world’s best ethical destinations for 2012. They are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Latvia, Serbia and Uruguay and four island states, Bahamas, Dominica, Mauritius and Palau. All except the Bahamas, Mauritius and Serbia appeared on the 2011 list.

Using data from institutions like Freedom House, Millennium Challenge Corporation and the World Bank, three initial criteria — “environmental protection”, “social welfare” and “human rights” –- were used to draw up a shortlist of 30 countries. Then a more in-depth study was carried out to identify the actions of governments over the previous 12 months, in particular to find out whether policies implemented have improved or degraded the welfare of the population and the environment. This makes the Ethical Traveler list of approved ethical destinations broader in scope than many mainstream eco-tourism locations, which tend to have a much narrower remit focused on environmentalism.

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Filed under: development, environment, indigenous people, tourism by admin on January 19, 2012
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• The invisible anthropologist speaks about Haiti
Paul Farmer, rarely identified in the media as a cultural anthropologists as well as a doctor and humanitarian health advocate, was quoted on the front page of the Washington Post, above the crease, in an article about Haiti two years after the disastrous earthquake: “‘Recovery is here. It is painfully slow, it is agonizing to watch, but it is recovery,’ said Paul Farmer, a Harvard physician who has spent three decades in Haiti and whose group, Partners in Health, is opening a modern, 320-bed public teaching hospital an hour north of the Haitian capital.”

• Pentagon cuts are not so deep
TRNN interviewed Catherine Lutz about proposed cuts to the Pentagon budget. Lutz, a cultural anthropologist, is Thomas J. Watson Jr. professor of anthropology and international studies at Brown University where she is also chair of the anthropology department and director of the Watson Institute’s Costs of War study. In the interview, she states that “… the big picture hasn’t changed strategically. They’re still—the Pentagon and the Obama administration are still trying to position the U.S. military as the force which can do it all and be everywhere 24-7 to try and monitor and manage or control events… The budget itself has some decrease that’s going to occur, but this is quite small. When you control for inflation, it will be on the order of 4 percent over the next five years in comparison with last five…”

• Ritual sacrifice in context of globalizations and big business pressure
An article in the Daily Mail (London) about the recent “sacrificial” murder of a young girl in rural India quotes Subhadra Channa, professor of anthropology at Delhi University. Channa says that ritual sacrifice has been a tradition in India’s central belt in the past but that it may now be fuelled by attempts by big business to take land: “The tribal people feel really threatened. They are feeling helpless in the face of a big power,” she said.

• Mozambique sees relevance of anthropologists
The Africa news carried an article about a new agreement linking the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) and the Mozambican Ministry for the Coordination of Environmental Action that will engage the university in training environmental staff who will monitor new “mega-projects” in the country such as natural gas projects in the Rovuma Basin. The Vice-Chancellor of the University commented on the availability of knowledge at UEM and the need to integrate knowledge into policies: “It is who we train, just to cite a few examples, architects, doctors, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental engineers and educators…”

• Take that anthro degree
…and become a research biologist who makes fascinating discoveries about nonhuman primate sociality. Susanne Schultz graduated with a B.Sc. in anthropology from the University of California at Davis. She went on to earn an M.A. in ecology and evolution from the University of Stony Brook and then a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Liverpool. She is currently pursuing several research projects at Oxford University’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology under funding from a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship through 2013. BBC picked up on a publication in Nature in which Schultz discusses the importance of being “flexibly social” in human evolution.

…and become a writer. With his B.A. in cultural anthropology from Wesleyan University, Sebastian Junger has gone to become a world-famous writer and documentary film-maker. He is the author of two books — The Perfect Storm and War — and co-producer, with the late Tim Hetherington, of the documentary film, Restrepo. He is also a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. This past week, he contributed a piece called In War, We All Desecrate the Enemy, in the Washington Post. In it, he discusses the four U.S. marines who urinated on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. [Blogger's note: please read his essay, read his book War, and watch Restrepo. Then you will even more surely understand Junger's point in the WaPo article that the act of desecration of the four marines is one in which we -- in war-supporting countries -- all participated].

…and become a realtor. In Nashville, Tennessee, Jessica Averbuch is a partner and managing broker in a Nashville real estate. She holds a B.A. in anthropology from Washington University, St. Louis, and an M.A. from the University of Texas. She moved to Nashville with her husband who is chief financial officer of the company and also runs the mortgage company. She comments on why she likes her work: “The relationships. It’s a business, but it is very personal. In my new role as broker, the agents in my office are my clients, so that creates a whole new set of relationships. It’s an opportunity to train and mentor and help them develop their businesses.” In addition, “I’m really involved in the community. I’m on the board of Renewal House, which serves women battling addiction. I spend a lot of time on that.”

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Filed under: anthro in the news by admin on January 17, 2012
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An article in Nature discusses the findings of economists that the monetary costs of disasters are rising mainly because more investments are being made in disaster-prone areas: “Almost two-thirds of 2011’s exceptionally high costs are attributable to two disasters unrelated to climate and weather: the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March, and February’s comparatively small but unusually destructive magnitude-6.3 quake in New Zealand.”

The article goes on to say: “That conclusion is backed up by a forthcoming study — supported by Munich Re — by economists Fabian Barthel and Eric Neumayer at the London School of Economics. Their analysis of events worldwide between 1990 and 2008 concludes that ‘the accumulation of wealth in disaster-prone areas is and will always remain by far the most important driver of future economic disaster damage’” (F. Barthel and E. Neumayer Climatic Change in press).

Some discussion then follows about the possibility that climate change is also involved in terms of precipitating weather-related disasters.

The article, in all, says nothing about the….what should we call them….human costs?

Filed under: environment by admin on January 15, 2012 | Social tagging: disasters
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