Guest post by Anna Applefield
Global Pulse 2010 is a 3-day on-line “global conversation” on a variety of topics pertaining to development, including entrepreneurship, global health, education, and the comparative advantages of global or local approaches. It is hosted by the U.S. Agency for International Development and led by experts in their respective fields. Its aim [...]
In Haiti, Vodou priests (houngans) and priestesses (mambos) use a wide variety of plant species to treat illnesses. About 20 plants are employed as a vermifuge–a medicine that expels intestinal worms.
A recent study screened 12 commonly-used plants used in Vodou treatments for intestinal parasites to detect their effectiveness against infective-stage larvae of a species of [...]
• RFPs and deliverables in Haiti’s reconstruction
Mark Schuller zings the “blan developman” (foreign development experts) and “blan ONG” (NGO foreigners) for being part of a “ritual of rubber stamping a rushed, foreign-led, top-down process ” for Haiti’s rebuilding. In contrast, he praises the work of a partnership of universities, called INURED, in Cité Soleil. Schuller [...]
In the words of Nicholas Kristof, “The late James P. Grant, a little known American aid worker who headed Unicef from 1980 to 1995 and launched the child survival revolution with vaccinations and diarrhea treatments, probably saved more lives than were destroyed by Hitler, Mao and Stalin combined.”
The legacy of this “little known American” was [...]
The Internet has been labeled a modern day Pandora’s box. It can let loose on the Internet viewing public any and all knowledge and opinions. Anna Kata, a graduate student in anthropology at McMaster University, mined several Internet sites for the “social discourse” they establish concerning the dangers of vaccination.
As context, she reports that around [...]
Very interesting event over at George Mason University this week. Everyone’s welcome – this is not to be missed:
James Der Derian (Brown University) will screen and discuss his co-directed film:
Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic
Thursday March 25, 2010
4:30 p.m.
George W. Johnson Center, Room F
George Mason University
4400 University Drive
Fairfax, Virginia
• Yanomami blood rights and wrongs
Blood samples collected by American researchers in the 1960s from the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela are still in a lab at Penn State University. The Yanomami want their blood back. They believe that the dead cannot pass into the spiritual world until all traces of their physical existence, including their [...]
Spanish designer Miguel Adrover owns a galabia (pron. juh-LAH-bee-yuh), a long, loose-flowing gown, handmade for him by a tailor in Egypt. Wearing it in various places around the world provides Adrover with snapshot social insights. When he wears it in the Middle East, he is more integrated into society. Outside the Middle East, it signals: [...]
Farming, family and fertility were prevalent themes in the cultural anthropology of Ireland in the 1980s. Over the past two decades, however, cultural anthropologists have pursued a wider range of research topics including violence, politics, heritage and language, policy and transnational issues.
I constructed the following list of references using AnthropologyPlus for the journal articles [...]
• Yo-Yo Ma’s anthropological soul
Classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma is, according to an article in the Washington Post, “one of the most recognizable classical musicians on the planet.” Besides being a star of the musical world, he is also a social activist, in his own way. “I realized late in life,” Ma says, that my twin [...]
