I have a confession to make: I don’t have a Facebook page. A few years ago I was encouraged to sign up by friends and colleagues when Facebook was primarily used by university students and lecturers. I resisted on the grounds that I was busy enough. I also reckoned that I knew enough people. In any case, if I wanted new friends and acquaintances it was best to meet them face-to-face.

Flickr/marcopako

I now realize that I am in a very small minority. A few weeks ago I asked a group of undergraduate students, aged between 19 and 34, how many had Facebook accounts. All of them put their hands up. Then I enquired whether any of them had accounts which had lapsed. It turned out that all of them had live accounts. This led me to ask how many in the class had used Facebook that day. All the students reported that they had logged on at least once before attending the lecture, which began at 11 AM.

I was intrigued. Although the group of students, mainly from the Greater London area, are not representative of the age (or social class) cohort within the general U.K. population, the fact that around 20 students in the lecture room were committed Facebook users is indicative of an extraordinary social phenomenon – the recent emergence of diverse social media platforms in connecting individuals – sometimes friends sometimes strangers – with one another.

A few days later, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Facebook has 900 million users worldwide and made a profit of around $1 billion in 2011. Social media is definitely here to stay.

So what to make of the news that Facebook has just raised the price at which it will make an entry into the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday from $28-$35 to $34–$38, which will value the company at over $100 billion?

Certainly, the growth in value of Facebook, which only launched in 2004, is extraordinary by historical standards, especially when compared to companies operating in the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, a high-tech brand that has managed to keep growing while other social media sites like Bebo and MySpace have fallen by the wayside must be doing something right.

So is it down to good luck or good management? The latter I would say, especially because in the development phase in 2003 when it was known as Facemash, the social networking site developed by Zuckerberg, while he was a student at Harvard, was in competition with very similar services that were being created by contemporaries at other universities in the U.S.

Personality too has played a part in the spread of the Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who turns 28 next Monday, comes across as a slightly nerdy brand ambassador. Nevertheless, this is a strong positive for a generation of young people hooked on social media, who greatly admire symbol–generating and transforming trailblazers, who are not obliged to resemble Olympic athletes or football stars.

"Like" on Facebook. Flickr/Sean MacEntee

There is a further point. Zuckerberg and his fellow executives, now located in Silicon Valley, have been quick to correct any obvious marketing mistakes made by the company, especially when resistance from users has been observed concerning the use of the platform for the promoting and advertising of other companies’ products.

And it goes without saying that the 2010 movie The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, providing an account in 121 minutes of the origins of Facebook was a gift from the PR gods. Despite Zuckerberg’s protests that it contains many inaccuracies, for many people, the triple Oscar award-winning movie has created an unforgettable (and historically true) narrative of Facebook’s inception at the same time as it has generated demand for the product.

Nevertheless, the big question is: will Facebook continue to grow?

Evidently many investors think so otherwise there wouldn’t be upward pressure on the future share price. I see things differently from investors and analysts on Wall Street, however. Sure, Facebook will grow in the short term – perhaps even in the medium-term – not least because of the demand from youthful consumers in the emerging economies, but I am sceptical about the long-term prospects of the company.

Why? Cultural anthropologists know very well that all societies have age sets, which are building blocks for social organization. In modern, complex societies where the consumption of branded products, services and experiences is a central activity – consumption makes up just over two thirds of the economies of the U.K. and U.S., for example – targeting young consumers is critically important in generating a high level of demand in specific sectors like music, fashion and food production, though not houses, pensions and other forms of financial investment.

Facebook is an example of a new and incredibly successful branded service – Google is another and it should be noted with a much bigger constituency – that drives consumption in sectors that crucially places a very high value on novelty and innovation. Which raises a highly intriguing question: what is the lifespan of such products?

It’s not possible to give a precise answer not least because the consequences of the dynamic interplay between specific services and demand from subsets of consumers in the population is difficult to predict.

But what we do know is that computer science students and entrepreneurial types at U.S. universities including Stanford as well as in other parts of the globe, like the burgeoning high-tech cluster in Shoreditch in East London, look upon companies like Facebook and Google as old hat. It is, therefore, only a question of time before a new social networking experience is launched, which will not only be differentiated by content but more importantly will appeal to a younger but nevertheless economically powerful age set.

A final thought. When I asked my students who was certain that they would still be using Facebook in 20 years time, no one put a hand up.

I rest my case.

• What do the evangelicals want?
Cultural anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, professor of cultural anthropology at Stanford University, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times discussing views of evangelical Christians in the United States and how candidates in the upcoming U.S. presidential election might better communicate with them. Luhrmann is author, most recently, of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.

• Kinship studies revisited
The Irish Times carried a review of a new book by cultural anthropologist Maurice Godelier, Directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in France. The review is written by Fiona Murphy, a cultural anthropologist and co-author of Integration in Ireland: The Everyday Lives of African Migrants. She says: “It is this constellation of world views and ways of being that we meet in Maurice Godelier’s powerful and often provocative new book, The Metamorphoses of Kinship. In this timely and challenging study, Godelier heralds the revival of kinship studies within the discipline of anthropology… The book argues that kinship, once the key focus of anthropology, is no longer visible on university course lists; not vanished or vanquished, he insists, however, but merely transformed.”

• Breast is best but for how long?
USA Today joined the discussion in response to a Time magazine cover photo this week of a mother nursing her 3-year-old son. Noting that breast-feeding children older than one year is rare among mothers in the United States, and mentioning some online comments calling it “perverted” and “dangerous” to nurse a 3-year-old, it then turns to discussion of cross-cultural practices. The article quotes Katherine Dettwyler, professor of anthropology at the University of Delaware: “It’s normal for our species. It’s not perverted; it’s not sex; it’s not women doing it for some perverse need. It’s normal like a nine-month pregnancy is normal.” Her research on breast-feeding around the world shows that most children are breast-fed for three to five years or longer in sharp contrast with babies in the United States.

• Forensic anthropologist meets mystery writer
The Independent carried a double interview with Sue Black, professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology at the University of Dundee, and mystery writer, Val McDermid. Black has led the way in human identification in conflict zones such as Kosovo and has appeared in the BBC2 factual series, History Cold Case. Black comments, “I don’t read crime novels – it’d be like a chef watching food programmes – so I didn’t know much about Val until I was asked to do a radio programme with her about death and dying, in the late 1990s. We were chatting away before we went on air when I made the mistake of saying, ‘If at any point in the future you need to ask me about anything, feel free.’ You make one offer and she’s in there.”

• What a dive
The New York Times Science blog covered the work of Lisa J. Lucero, professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is studying ancient Maya underwater offerings in central Belize under the auspices of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, National Institute of Culture and History.

• Party time
According to an article in the The Observer (England), the prehistoric basis for rave festivals was established during the neolithic in England: “They were the stone-age equivalent of Glastonbury festival. People gathered in their hundreds to drink, eat and party every summer at revelries lasting several days and nights. Young men met women from nearby communities and married them. Herds of cattle were slaughtered to provide food.” This picture of ancient British bacchanalia has been created by researchers led by Professor Alasdair Whittle of Cardiff University and Dr. Alex Bayliss of English Heritage. They have built up a detailed chronology of the first farmers’ arrival in Britain and have shown that agriculture spread with dramatic rapidity. In its wake, profound social changes gripped the country, culminating in the construction of causewayed enclosures where chieftains or priests held revelries to help establish their power bases. As a result of their successes, Whittle and Bayliss have won a £2m grant from the European Research Council to date neolithic sites across the continent. The aim is to show the technique’s power to create precise chronologies of ancient events, as it has for stone-age Britain.

• First documented case of female trafficking?
According to a report in The Independent, a newly deciphered clay tablet lists 60 women who were probably prisoners-of-war or victims of an Assyrian forced population transfer program. Cambridge archaeologist Dr. John MacGinnis found, moreover, that 45 of the names bore no resemblance to Middle Eastern names already known to scholars. The unique nature of the tablet’s 45 mystery names is seen by scholars as evidence of a previously unknown language, perhaps that of people living in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. According to the report, “The 60 women (including the 45 with evidence of the previously unattested language) were almost certainly being deployed by the palace authorities for some economic purpose (potentially a female-associated craft activity like weaving). Indeed the text mentions that some of them were being allocated to specific local villages.”

• Evidence of prehistoric Irish tsunami
Archaeologists in the Burren in County Clare have unearthed one of the oldest records of human life ever found in Ireland and may also have found that they were wiped out by a tsunami. Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish cooking area or “midden” located on Fanore Beach have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old – hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen. Excavation on the site has also revealed a mysterious black layer of organic material which archeologists believe may be the results of a Stone Age tsunami which bashed the West Clare coast. Field monument advisor for Co Clare Michael Lynch said: “It is possible this is the result of a major climatic event, a massive storm or possibly a tsunami, or some other major event of that sort which would have thrown up a large amount of debris all at the one time.”

• Nut cracking culture
The Huffing Post carried an article about findings that chimpanzee groups have distinct “cultural” practices related to nut-cracking. “In humans, cultural differences are an essential part of what distinguishes neighboring groups that live in very similar environments,” study researcher Lydia Luncz, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said in a statement. “For the first time, a very similar situation has been found in wild chimpanzees living in the Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, demonstrating that they share with us the ability for fine-scale cultural differentiation.”

• Kudos
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, the Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education at New York University, has been appointed dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, starting in September. Suárez-Orozco was educated in public schools in Argentina and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received an A.B. in psychology, an M.A. in anthropology and a Ph.D. in anthropology. With a body of scholarly work focusing on mass migration, globalization and education within the arenas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, Suárez-Orozco will draw on a global perspective to inform his leadership.

Ideal Candidate Profile:
–Degree: Ph.D. in Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Cultural/Human Geography or similar
–Experience: research or academic in Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, Cultural/Human Geography or similar. Publishing experience, preferably in editorial acquisition, would be an asset
–Languages: native or fluent English, other languages would be an asset
–Skills: computer and internet proficiency
–Personality: strong communication skills, good negotiator
–Requirements: home computer and Internet connection

Role of Associate Editor:
–Research and identify book topics with strong sales potential and recruit experienced and competent authors
–Recognize potential new authors
–Cultivate working relationships with them
–Obtain proposals from potential authors
–Determine the quality of the proposals
–Find and liaise with reviewers
–Present the proposals to Versita
–Assist Versita in evaluating book proposals and manuscripts
–Review the final manuscript
–Seek assistance from reviewers, if needed.

Compensation for Associate Editors will be based on the number of books published. Candidates interested in the position are requested to send their CV and list of publications (both documents in English) to Dr. Kathryn Lichti-Harriman: klichti@versita.com

When: Wednesday, May 16 | 5:00pm-6:30pm
Where: Room 505
1957 E St, NW
The Elliott School of International Affairs

RSVP

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Uyghurs of Kazakhstan, like many others in the former USSR, began to resurrect and re-invent traditional cultural practices that had been repressed during the Soviet period as either contrary to socialist atheism or as remnants of a “feudal past.” These traditions included daily practices and rituals based in local communities as well as the informal structure of neighborhood governance that regulates such practices.

Since the 1990s, the importance of these neighborhood structures and practices to Uyghur daily life in Kazakhstan have gradually increased, and most recently the informal structure of neighborhood governance has even been scaled up to create a Republic-wide organization that represents Uyghur interests to the government of Kazakhstan. This lecture will discuss the evolution of local Uyghur neighborhoods in Kazakhstan over the last twenty years, focusing on these communities’ roles in both cultural resurrection and political mobilization.

The Council on Anthropology & Reproduction (CAR) Award is one of very few awards given to edited volumes, yet it helped establish and foment topics of reproduction as central fields of anthropological inquiry. The “Most Notable Recent Collection” Award seeks to recognize and celebrate recent (published within 3 years of the nomination deadline) collections of anthropological works addressing: human reproduction, reproductive technologies, population policy, birth control and contraception, pregnancy, the study and application of genetics, childbirth, adoption, and the roles of parents, among others.

Entries are evaluated on a variety of factors including: overall contribution to anthropology & reproduction, usefulness for teaching, current and historical value for both academic and advocacy work, the strength of the nomination letters, the quality and depth of analysis within the chapters, and the coherence of the volume as a whole.

Nomination letters may be brief but should explain the impact of the volume on your own work, your teaching and students, and how you consider the volume to be influential within the field. For a list of previous winners, further information on the Award, or to submit nomination letters, contact CAR Book Committee Chair, Carolyn Smith-Morris, smithmor@smu.edu.

Award will be announced at the CAR and SMA business meetings at the American Anthropological Assn. meetings in November 2012.

Around 10,000 Indian, Bangladeshi, Nepalese and Pakistani restaurants and takeaways in the U.K. routinely serve up curry to a significant proportion of the country’s 62 million population. Curry is probably the nation’s most popular food. According to one recent estimate the sector is worth around £3.6 billion annually and employs some 80,000 people.

Powdered turmeric. Flickr/megabeth

No surprises, then, that British newspaper editors are interested in publishing “curry” stories. In the last week alone, two reports about the likely role that curcumin, the bioactive substance which gives turmeric its yellow colouring, plays in human health have made the headlines.

The first story came from a study carried out at the Shobhaben Pratapbhai Patel School of Pharmacy and Technology Management in Mumbai. Researchers combined curcumin with piperine, an extract of black pepper, and the flavonoid quercetin, which is found in a wide variety of fruit and vegetables as well as black and green tea. The combination of the three substances called CPQ had a dramatic effect on blood glucose, body weight, cholesterol and triglycerides in “low-dose streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.”

Co-author of the study, pharmacist Dr Ginpreet Kaur, who has a long-standing interest in metabolic syndrome — one of the most significant health problems among populations in advanced and developing economies — stated that CPQ “significantly decreases glucose transport, causing a decrease in its uptake. It is probably due to the presence of flavonoids in the combination which get attached to glucose transporters.” In the published paper, the authors soberly conclude that more work is required on CPQ “with the aim to elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanism involved with the usage of these nutraceuticals for the prevention of metabolic syndrome.”

Tumeric root. Flickr/Steenbergs

The popular press in the U.K., however, felt under no obligation to go along with the conventionally restrained language of the scientists in India. Under the headline “Fight the menace of obesity and diabetes… with turmeric” the Daily Mail suggested “if you wish to get rid of those extra kilos or are desperate to control your diabetes and cholesterol, then head straight to your kitchen spice cabinet.” It was only towards the end of the article on the “miracle in the kitchen” that a note of caution was sounded: “Medicinal properties of curcumin cannot be fully utilised due to its limited bioavailability in the body. To be effective as medicine, one would have to consume several spoonfuls of turmeric in one dose.”

Turmeric, a member of the ginger family, is cultivated widely throughout the tropics. It grows to around 90 centimetres (3 feet) in height. Most of the world’s supply of the herb originates in India, where in addition to its culinary and medicinal uses, it is also employed in Hindu wedding ceremonies and other religious rituals.

Both turmeric and curcumin are classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). They are widely available as over-the-counter supplements in pharmacies and health food shops worldwide. For those wishing to try it, the good news is that very few adverse effects have been reported for either turmeric or curcumin in clinical trials. Attempts to restrict the use of turmeric and curcumin through the issue of patents by Western biotechnology companies –- “bio piracy” in other words –- led in 2011 to the setting up of a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) by the Indian Government in order to “prevent misappropriation of traditional knowledge belonging to India at International Patent Offices.”

Brick Lane

The second news story concerned the potential role of curcumin alongside chemotherapy for treating bowel cancer. Around 40,000 people in the U.K. are diagnosed with the disease each year. Thirteen years ago, researchers in the Oncology Department of the University of Leicester noted that only two of 500 patients diagnosed with colon cancer were of South Asian heritage, even though 20 per cent of the city’s population came from this group. Why the discrepancy? The scientists hypothesized that turmeric may be playing a causal role given its anti-inflammatory properties and popularity in traditional Indian medicine (Ayurveda) and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for treating a wide variety of ailments, including arthritis, allergies, bronchitis, liver disorders, intestinal worms, and colic.

A team of researchers headed by Professor Will Steward at the University of Leicester’s Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) has received a grant of £1.1 million from Cancer Research U.K. and the National Institute for Health Research to build on what they and other researchers around the world have discovered in the meantime.

The first project the team will carry out at Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital will determine whether curcumin can be used safely alongside conventional chemotherapy in the treatment of advanced bowel cancer. Previous studies have demonstrated that curcumin can enhance the ability of chemotherapy to kill bowel cancer cells in the laboratory. Forty patients are being recruited for the two-year trial, which will compare the effects of giving curcumin pills to three quarters of the patients a week before beginning conventional chemotherapy treatment.

Professor Steward commented: “Once bowel cancer has spread, it is very difficult to treat. The prospect that curcumin might increase the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapy is exciting because it could mean giving lower doses, so patients have fewer side effects and can keep having the treatment longer. This research is at a very early stage, but investigating the potential of plant chemicals to treat cancer is an intriguing area that we hope could provide clues to developing new drugs in the future.”

The British media have widely reported on the Leicester research. Although the tabloid language was evidently designed to grab attention of readers –- for example, the Daily Express began a piece with the line “powerful ‘curry pills’ could be the key to beating bowel cancer” –- it was clear that at least on this occasion journalists were careful not to over hype the story, probably out of fear of creating unrealistic expectations about treating the disease among desperately ill patients.

One thing is certain. At a time of severe spending cuts imposed as part of the U.K. Government’s austerity drive, any news stories about how the consumption of specific foods may lead to positive outcomes, will be welcomed by the Department of Health. Such stories may educate “hard-to-reach” groups and bypass the need for expensive nationwide advertising campaigns.

• Nepali youth drug addiction in Hong Kong
The South China Morning Post reported on drug use problems among Nepali youth in Hong Kong. Researchers at Chinese University have found that Nepalis have a bigger problem with drug abuse than do members of any other ethnic minority in the city. While drug abuse in Hong Kong has fallen in recent years, the number of Nepali addicts has risen. Most started taking drugs between 10 and 19, with more than 90 per cent of them hooked on heroin, according to a study led by anthropology professor Maria Tam Siumi: “The government’s anti-drug campaigns also don’t really reach them because of the language barrier…Their community is small and isolated, so there isn’t a way out for young people. They also do not have equal opportunities in education, employment or social and medical services.”

• Debt, social inequality, and politics in the U.S.
The Huffington Post published an article by Richard H. Robbins, Distinguished Teaching Professor in Anthropology at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, on debt as an issue in the U.S. presidential election: “What will likely be absent in the debate, however, is any consideration of the relationship of debt to the requirement for perpetual economic growth and its role in the dramatic increase in economic inequality in the United States and the rest of the world.” Robbins asks, “How did we get into this dilemma?”

• Rethinking marriage in the U.S.
The Huffington Post carried a piece by Richard Feinberg, professor of anthropology at Kent State University in which he places current political debates in the U.S. about same-sex marriage in the context of anthropology’s cross-cultural findings about the institution of marriage: “After years of argument a half-dozen states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage. Several more, including my own, are considering it. Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates, right-wing columnists and talk show hosts, evangelical pastors, and recently even Pope Benedict have called upon Americans to halt the spread of ‘immorality.’ Family values, we are told, require us to defend marriage as ‘traditionally defined.’ As an anthropologist I find this whole discussion rather odd.”

• Where is the language gene
NPR covered Dan Everett’s anti-Chomsky perspective that there is no innate language organ or module in the human brain dedicated to the production of grammatical language: “So goes the argument in Language: The Cultural Tool, the new book I’m reading by Daniel Everett. Next week, I’ll have more to say about the book itself; this week, I want to explore how Everett’s years of living among the Pirahã Indians of Amazonian Brazil helped shape his conclusions — and why those conclusions matter.”

• Social science research center in India includes anthropology
The Hindu carried an article noting that the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, which functions under the control of the Indian Council for Social Science Research and is financed primarily by the council and matching grants from the Government of West Bengal, includes faculty in the disciplines of economics, history, political science, sociology, social anthropology, geography, and cultural studies. The center sees substantial collaboration among its different disciplines in contrast to the traditional department-based academic approach. The center focuses on problems of the eastern region of India.

• Human sacrifice in ancient Mexico confirmed
This announcement was the media hit (in anthropology) of the week. Many media outlets reported that researchers in Mexico found blood cells and fragments of muscle, tendon, skin and hair on 2,000-year-old stone knives, calling it the first conclusive evidence from a large number of stone implements pointing to their use in human sacrifice. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the finding clearly corroborates accounts from later cultures about the use of sharp obsidian knives in sacrificing humans. Other physical evidence such as cut marks on the bones of ancient human skeletons had previously offered indirect proof of the practice.

• What big eyes you have and how fast you run!
According to a report in Science Daily, Chris Kirk, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, has found that maximum running speed is the most important variable influencing mammalian eye size. “If you can think of mammals that are fast like a cheetah or horse, you can almost guarantee they’ve got really big eyes,” says Kirk. “This gives them better vision to avoid colliding with obstacles in their environment when they’re moving very quickly.” Kirk and doctoral student Amber Heard-Booth have written a paper that is forthcoming in the journal Anatomical Record. Heard-Booth presented the findings at the 2011 American Association of Physical Anthropology Meeting, where she was awarded the Mildred Trotter Prize for exceptional graduate research in evolutionary morphology.

• Kudos
The University of Alaska Anchorage is awarding Rosita Worl, President of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, with an honorary doctor of sciences degree at the university’s 2012 commencement ceremony. Worl said, “I am honored to receive this award from an Alaska institution I hold in such high esteem.” She served as an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska Southeast for many years. Worl is an Eagle from the Shangukeidí Clan and the House Lowered from the Sun in Klukwan. She is the grandchild of the Lukaax.ádi. She holds a doctoral degree in anthropology from Harvard University and received the 2008 Solon T. Kimball Award from the American Anthropological Association for her pioneering work in Applied Anthropology. Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1980 to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska.

Steven Leigh, an associate dean at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign whose research focuses on human and primate evolution, will be the next dean of the University of Colorado’s College of Arts and Sciences. Leigh’s appointment is effective July 1.

• The social life of AIDS
The New York Times published an extended review of a new book on AIDS in Africa by Craig Timberg, a journalist for The Washington Post, and Daniel Halperin, an epidemiologist and medical anthropologist. It leads with a quotation from physician/anthropologist/humanitarian activist Paul Farmer, who writes in “Partner to the Poor,” that “the failure to contemplate social and economic aspects of epidemics stunts our understanding of them.” The reviewer goes on to say that “Timberg and Halperin’s book constitutes a strong warning to those who would disregard the cultural specificities of those one is trying to serve, whether individuals or entire societies.”

• Military operations in Mali
After months of fighting in northern Mali, the Mouvement National de Libération de L’Azawad (MNLA) – National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad – declared an end to military operations. The rebels refer to the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu in northern Mali as Azawad. However, following international and regional condemnation of the movement’s declaration of independence on 6 April, several factions have emerged, exposing deep divisions among several groups. Africa News carried an interview about the current situation and prospects for the future with three specialists in Tuareg issues including Naffet Keita, professor of anthropology at the University of Bamako.

• From the kula to Wall Street
An article in The Guardian discussed the contributions of several cultural anthropologists to understanding contemporary financial markets, noting that an “…anthropological perspective on how bankers function can help challenge our reliance on discredited neoliberal economics.” Specific mention was made to Karen Ho‘s work on the culture of Wall Street and Gillian Tett who has been hailed as “the most powerful woman in newspapers.”

• Norwegian king connecting to youth
Among current debates about Norway’s multiculturalism, King Harald V has sent a clear message by paying a visit to youths in Groruddalen. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, professor of social anthropology at Oslo University, commented on the King’s fourth visit to the area in less than a month: “Groruddalen has long been considered as a stepchild in Norwegian society” and “The fact the King is travelling here at this time is a clear message from the Royal family about the kind of society they want…he is showing that he is king for all people.”

• Just a routine blood test
AW’s contributing blogger, Sean Carey, went in recently for a routine blood test. His test results are fine, but he came out with some observations on how routine blood tests are now conducted in the U.K., especially the implications for personal privacy vs. community. His comments, which include a nod to the great French sociologist Emile Durkheim, are published in The Guardian. Carey recommends that the NHS employ social anthropologists to make sure practices and policy changes do not have undesired results, including too much privacy.

• College student drinking
The Boston Globe covered an ongoing project at Dartmouth College in which some anthropology students are trying to figure out why many college students drink excessively.

• New book on older workers
The San Francisco Chronicle carried an article about a new book by Caitrin Lynch, associate professor of anthropology at Olin College of Engineering. Lynch examines a Boston-area company that seeks out older workers and finds in its unusual business model important lessons for a society in which workers increasingly find themselves employed beyond traditional retirement age. The book, Retirement on the Line: Age, Work, and Value in an American Factory, is the result of five years of research, including joining the production line. “Retirees and older adults…simply want to continue to live and to be part of life, where life itself means community engagement and contribution,” writes Lynch, who notes the strong connection between work and personal identity in American society.

• Anthropology and degree-relevant jobs
Frank Bruni published an op-ed in the New York Times on the value of a college degree in the job market. Noting that, “…for a long time and for a lot of us, ‘college’ was more or less a synonym for success. We had only to go. We had only to graduate. And if we did, according to parents and high-school guidance counselors and everything we heard and everything we read, we could pretty much count on a career, just about depend on a decent income and more or less expect security. A diploma wasn’t a piece of paper. It was an amulet.” He then proceeds to “single out philosophy and anthropology because those are two fields — along with zoology, art history and humanities — whose majors are least likely to find jobs reflective of their education level, according to government projections quoted by the Associated Press.”

• Take that anthro degree and…
…and become a famous author. The Huffington Post published an interview with Jessica Maria Tuccelli, author of Glow. In response to this question: With a degree in anthropology and a background in acting, you bring a unique combination to the table. How do the two fields help the characters come to life? Jessica replies: “To quote Margaret Mead, ‘Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.’ The skills I acquired in my training at MIT and in the field allowed me to draw from my personal experience with the local people and transform that into the historical foundation and background for my characters. Acting allowed me to inhabit my characters. Perhaps it is an unconventional approach to writing, but it is vital to my method of creating for the page as well as the stage. Experience and imagination are like the reactants in a chemical equation, the writing is the product.”

• Early anthropology’s headhunting on display
A new exhibit in Dunquin, Ireland, will display photographs taken in remote parts of the west of Ireland between 1891 and 1900, in The Irish Headhunter exhibition. The pictures were taken by Dublin physician and anthropologist Charles R Browne, who was instrumental in developing anthropology in Trinity College Dublin’s anatomy department. Browne surveyed communities on the western seaboard, starting with the Aran Islands, using the anthropometric methods of the time to measure and then classify humans and racial types. “Alive or dead, the head of the Irish peasant was a source of intense interest to Browne and his associates,” writes curator Ciarán Walsh in his introduction to the exhibit.

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:

Using a finger to operate the iPad. Flickr/kennykunie

“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.

But it’s more complicated. Daisey had to rework this long-standing “Technology Scene” to reflect the complexities of the computer age and China-U.S. relations. He does this by focusing on a powerful symbol: hands.

Promotional poster for the 1922 documentary Nanook of the North. Wikimedia Commons.

The focus is on the Chinese man’s hands because that’s the focus of our own experience with Apple’s products. (I use collective terms like “our” as shorthand; obviously everyone doesn’t feel or experience the same things.) The iPad experience is very tactile; it’s all about gently touching and tapping and sliding your fingers on a very smooth surface. Touchscreens and Apple hand-held products have now been around long enough that it’s easy to forget how special this sensuous interaction with technology is, but others certainly noticed when the iPod, the pioneer of these devices, first came out. As one tech writer noted at the time, “Owners love to touch it [their iPod]; during interviews I notice that discussing an iPod will trigger an urge to take it out of purse or pocket and fondle it…[P]eople can’t keep their hands off it” (Steven Levy, The Perfect Thing, p. 90). Daisey’s description recalls such initial reactions: “he strokes the screen with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth.”

Calling it “magic” also works because the whole scene has a hint of the revolutionary adaptations of technology going on today in medical science. Giving this Chinese man the use of his hand again through an iPad brings to mind “miraculous” bio-tech inventions, such as prosthetic limbs that move in response to brain activity, or computers that detect eye movement and allow ALS patients to type.

But there’s something more culturally specific going on here as well. The graceful, soft touch of the iPad seems very…well, Chinese. According to an American stereotype, Chinese have delicate hands and excellent fine-motor skills, as seen in chopsticks, intricate written characters, and calligraphy, as well as all those Chinese factories where tiny electronic parts are assembled by hand. As Daisey says in the show, “I have seen the workers [in China] laying in parts thinner than human hair, one after another after another.”

So this is another level of symbolism. Daisey’s image makes visible what is going on in the production of these sleek Apple devices, a transnational organ transplant in which graceful Chinese hands are transformed into graceful American hands. The difference is that whereas the transplant of graceful fingers usually flows from China to the United States, in this case it flows back to its source: thanks to the iPad, even a Chinese man with a mangled hand can re-acquire graceful dexterity. American audiences can agree that this is “a kind of magic.”

If this is starting to sound too anthropomorphic, that’s as it should be. Anthropomorphism of machines is a fine and necessary tradition, from Hal in Space Odyssey to R2D2 in Star Wars and the disabled soldier in Avatar. These movies are just us humans trying to make sense of the world, using narrative to think through our complex, boundary-crossing relations with computers.

E.T. movie poster

And if what I’ve said sounds too positive, don’t worry; it’s not all good magic. In Daisey’s formulation, the mangled hand is a patently obvious symbol for the harmfulness of sweatshop labor and the global economy. I would just add that the mangled hand could also be a symbol for what’s mangled in our own world: the constant distractions of iPhones, iPods, and iPads, which tear us away from people in the same room with us; the snark and flame wars that proliferate online, where you often can’t identify people or hear the tone of their voice. (This unease with virtual communication may be more pronounced among Daisey’s audience, people who attend live theatre.)

So maybe the best movie analog here is Edward Scissorhands or E.T.—movies about figures with magical appendages. Edward has scissors for hands and E.T. has a finger that glows, and both came to heal broken, consumerist societies.

The Chinese man is presented in a healing role as well. When he says, “It’s magic,” he exonerates and heals all the Americans who love their iPads and low prices, but feel guilty about it. The old man is saying, “Don’t feel bad. I, too, would have bought an iPad. Who can resist magic?”

Daisey seems to have understood what every magician knows: the magic trick will only work if you get the audience to follow your hands.

Peter Wogan is  Professor of Anthropology at Willamette University, co-author of Hollywood Blockbusters: The Anthropology of Popular Movies (2009), and author of blockbusteranthropology.blogspot.com, where he tries to make sense of sharks (“Jaws”), baseball (“Field of Dreams”), and model families (“The Godfather”), among other things.

Acknowledgments
For their helpful suggestions, I want to thank Sam Pack, David Sutton, and Russell Voth.

Further Reading
Lee Drummond, American Dreamtime: A Cultural Analysis of Popular Movies, and Their Implications for a Science of Humanity, 1996.

This whole book, one of the first to make me think about the human-machine issue in movies, can be downloaded for free at the bottom of the home page on Drummond’s website

See especially Chapter 4, “The Story of Bond” [yes, as in the gadgets of Bond, James Bond], and Chapter 5, “Metaphors be With You: A Cultural Analysis of Star Wars.”

Sam Pack, Constructing “The Navajo”: Visual and Literary Representations From Inside and Out. Wicazo Sa Review 15(1): 137-156. (2000)

Peter Wogan, “What’s So Funny about First Contact?” Visual Anthropology Review 22:14-33, 2006.

In this article, I analyze a documentary about first contact in the 1930s between Australian goldminers and aboriginal peoples in Papua New Guinea. I analyze Westerners’ fascination with technology as a ritual of supremacy, but also as a source of “wonder,” and I place the discussion within the Obeyesekere-Sahlins debate over rationality.

World Bank Photo Collection. Flickr/Creative Commons

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The Red Shoes. Flickr/Creative Commons

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Bradley Blake, a retired anthropology professor at New Mexico State University, died on March 15 at the age of 81 years. Lois Stanford, an associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, commented that “He is an important part of the history of this department, and there is not a corner of the state of New Mexico where you cannot run into someone who had some contact with Brad Blake when he was director of the museum.”