ASS Extended: Health, Body, and Consumption
CALL FOR PAPERS
ASS – Anthropology Students’ Sessions was established in October 2010 as weekly self-organized activities
ASS Extended: Health, Body, and Consumption, 29th – 30th of March 2013
In our globalized societies there are coexisting different medical systems and other knowledge about health that on one hand compete for their believers and on the other influence each other and due to ongoing syncretism and hybridization we are faced with more and more methods and techniques of taking care for our health and body. This is not only changing the conceptions of health and disease and the perceptions of our bodies but it also influences our daily lifestyles. On every step we hear about “healthy life style” and “healthy body” – and about the ways to achieve them: which physical activities to pursue, what kind of food to eat, and which philosophy to follow. What is often forgotten in this context is that all theories and practices concerning care for our health and body are deeply embedded in economic and political spheres. A believer is at the same time a consumer and the experts’ advices are at the same time marketing.
The goal of ASS Extended is to share and confront different critical views on this complex system, to explore it from different angles, to teach and learn about different segments and aspects of it through workshops, paper presentations, films, discussions, or any other form you can think of.
All additional information will be sent to you via e-mail and will be available on anthropologystudentssessions.blogspot.com.
The Submission
You are invited to submit an abstract of your paper or a film that you would like to have screened (it can be your own work but not necessarily); a short description of a round-table or a workshop; or an explanation of any other idea that you have for the activity that would contribute to the knowledge on the topic of Health, Body, and Consumption. The submission should not be longer than 200 words.
Please, add the title of and form of your contribution (presentation, workshop, film, etc.), your full name, information about your education (or in which discipline you feel comfortable in), and your e-mail address.
The deadline for the submission is 31st of January 2013. Send it to ass.collective10_aet_gmail.com. We will inform you whether you have been selected as soon as possible.
There is no participation fee. ASS Extended will be held in [A]Infoshop, part of the autonomous cultural center Metelkova, Ljubljana. There will be a cooked meal provided each day of the conference. However, we regret we cannot assure you an accommodation, but can send you the information about inexpensive options.
Anthropology Students’ Sessions Collective
Ljubljana (Slovenia), December 2012
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Ethno::log: CfP ASS Extended: Health, Body, and Consumption
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Language Log: Innovation, rules, and regulation
John McIntyre, "I said pound sand, sticklers", 12/27/2012:
Yesterday I sent out this tweet: "Just waved through a singular 'they.' Pound sand, sticklers."
The singular they was in a sentence on The Sun's editorial page: "Although experts say only a tiny proportion of seriously mentally ill people ever resort to acts of violence, the odds of someone doing so are greatly increased if they aren't in treatment or refuse to stay in it."
John goes on to observe that the argument over singular they is "a typical liberal/conservative divide, of the kind common in disputes over usage":
The lefty is all enthusiastic about some novelty, and the righty resists until the novelty either drops off or becomes established. It's an evolutionary view of the operation of language.
But in this case the polarities are reversed. [I am] arguing for a long-established usage in English, and the sticklers are holding fast to a rule that is a relative novelty.
I made a similar argument in "Regardless whether Prudes will sneer", 12/10/2012:
[M]any people seem to believe that opinions about linguistic usage reflect attitudes towards innovation. The story goes like this: A new word, a new form, or a new construction is invented; at first, most people reject the innovation and deprecate the innovators; but the innovation spreads all the same; eventually it becomes normal and accepted, and no one even remembers that there was a problem. While this process is underway, one side supports tradition, insists on standards, and mutters about Kids Today; the other side supports innovation, points out that many of the Best People Are Doing It, and mutters about peevish old snoots.
Historical processes of that kind certainly do happen […]. But overall, as an explanation of attitudes towards linguistic variation, this story is a failure. Usage peeving, though usually claiming to protect traditional usage, in fact aims to eliminate older forms at least as often as it tries to hold the line against newer ones.
And the insistence on regulation by prescriptive "rules", in whatever relationship to the direction of linguistic history, is another interesting inversion of the standard political metaphors as applied to matters of usage. Consider this passage from Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1: Rules and Order, p. 10-11:
[Constructivist rationalism] produced a renewed propensity to ascribe the origin of all institutions of culture to invention or design. Morals, religion and law, language and writing, money and the market, were thought of as having been deliberately constructed by somebody, or at least as owing whatever perfection they possessed to such design. . . .
Yet . . . [m]any of the institutions of society which are indispensible conditions for the successful pursuit of our conscious aims are in fact the result of customs, habits or practices which have been neither invented nor are observed with any such purpose in view. . . .
Man . . . is successful not because he knows why he ought to observe the rules which he does observe, or is even capable of stating all these rules in words, but because his thinking and acting are governed by rules which have by a process of selection been evolved in the society in which he lives, and which are thus the product of the experience of generations.
It would be hard to find a better statement of the descriptivist attitude towards linguistic norms.
But Hayek is using a general discussion of "all institutions of culture" to argue for a libertarian approach to economic and social policy, avoiding central planning and minimizing coercive regulatory intervention. Hayek was "one of Ronald Reagan's favorite thinkers" and an important influence on Margaret Thatcher – I think it's fair to associate these attitudes with the right-hand side of the political spectrum over the past half-century or so.
Projecting political, social, and cultural philosophies onto a single dimension necessarily yields odd juxtapositions. But if we insist on doing it, we should try to be clear about the process and the results. Today, most people who know what the words mean would align "descriptivism" and "prescriptivism" as left and right respectively, I suppose because they associate the elitist and authoritarian aspects of prescriptivism with the political right. But the right has no monopoly on class-consciousness or on coercion. And in this case, I feel that the natural projection falls in the opposite direction.
For more on this, see:
"Authoritarian rationalism is not conservatism", 12/11/2007
"The non-existence of Kilpatrick's Rule", 12/14/2007
"James Kilpatrick, Linguistic Socialist", 3/28/2008
"Querkopf von Klubstick returns", 6/10/2008
"Peever politics", 11/20′/2011
"Rules and 'rules'", 5/11/2012
"Bottum's plea", 7/16/2012
Update — Given some of the comments, I should amplify my remark about sociopolitical dimensionality reduction. In addition to the "Nolan Chart" dimensions of personal freedom and economic freedom, there are dimensions of tradition/innovation, elite/demotic, rational/mystical, and so on. (And of course, every coordinate system for this space carries debatable descriptive and evaluative assumptions.) If you insist on somehow projecting everything onto a single "left/right" dimension, there is certain to be lots of confusion and little enlightenment.
My main goal here is to get (some) people to think in a fresh way about what sort of "rules" linguistic norms really are.
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Erkan in the Army now...: Cengiz Aktar: Göktürk-2, Roboski, 3. Havaalanı
Göktürk-2
Göksel bir heyecan sardı ortalığı, öyle ki ahali zor zapt edilir oldu. 450 okkalık Göktürk-2 “dost” Çin diyarından fezaya yolcu edildi. Nevzuhur millî heyecana ve de meydan muharebelerine sebebiyet veren bu peyk neyin nesiymiş merak ettim. Türkçede doyurucu mufassal bilgiye ulaşmak mümkün değil. Alışık olduğumuz gizlilik. Uyduyu birlikte ürettikleri anlaşılan TUSAŞ ve TÜBİTAK’ın websitelerindeki bilgi az www.tai.com.tr ve www.uzay.tubitak.gov.tr Yurtdışı kaynaklarda, örneğin Pakistanlı uzman sitelerde daha fazla bilgi var. Bilgisayar sistemleri ve software’in millî olduğunu öğreniyorsunuz. Güneş panellerinin Alman SpaceTech Immenstaad şirketince, optik resim sağlayıcısının ise Güney Koreli bir şirketçe imâl edildiğini de. E peki nedir bu millîlik iddiası o vakit? Ardından gelen “vay siz ne hakla bu millî başarıya gölge düşürme cüretini gösterirsiniz” ayarı? “Tamamen burada üretildi” iddiasına ne gerek var. Dünyada her parçası, her ar-ge çalışması millî olan bir ürün kaldı mı Allah aşkına? Bu iddia şimdi millî araba üzerinden yürüyor.
Oysa pek kimse Avrupa Araştırma Alanı’na Çerçeve Program ile dâhil olan Türkiye’nin verdiği katkı payı kadar dahi proje üretemediğine şaşırmıyor. İhraç malları içinde ithalatın anormal büyüklüğüne de… Haydi, olumlu bakalım diyeceğim ama o da kolay değil. Bütçe sunumunda son on yılda dolar bazında üç misli zenginleşildiğini muştulayan Mehmet Şimşek “ülke olarak katma değer zincirinde yukarı seviyelere çıkmak için son 10 yıllık dönemde Ar-Ge ve inovasyona önem verdik. Bu dönemde Ar-Ge harcamalarının GSYH içindeki payını yüzde0,53’ten yüzde 0,84’e çıkardık” dediğinde üzülmemek mümkün değil. Hele bu “muazzam” artışı destekleyen Tübitak’ın hazırladığı “gurur” tablosunu görünce.
Göktürk-2’yi araştırırken silahlı kuvvetlerin İtalyan Telespazio ve Fransız Thales Alenia Space şirketlerine daha gelişmiş bir uydu ısmarladığını öğreniyorsunuz. 2014 sonunda anca hazır olacakmış. Cihan’ın haberine göre TSK Fransız şirketine İsrail toprağını da görüntüleme olanağı illâki olacak demiş. Pazarlıklar sürüyormuş. Eh ne de olsa daha birkaç sene öncesine kadar Anadolu üzerinde uçuş eğitimi yapan İsrail Türkiye’yi ezberlemişken mütekabiliyet talebi anlaşılır bir şey. Ama bu, askerî alışverişin ve ordudaki İsrail “sevgisinin” bittiği anlamına gelmiyor. Kimse kusura bakmasın, bugün için “İsrailsiz” bir TSK düşünmek zor diyor uzmanlar. Veri babında, İsrail’in ar-ge harcamasının millî gelir içindeki payı % 4.5!
Roboski
Ne acı tesadüftür ki göksel işlerin uyandırdığı millî hissiyat bir diğer “göksel” meseleye yansıyabilmiş değil. Geçen sene bugün gökten yağan ateşle 34 vatandaş katledildi. Faili meçhuller arşivine intikal etmek üzereler. Aksini söyleyen ayarı veya dayağı yiyor. Roboski dese de yiyor, Uludere dese de yiyor. Sözün bittiği yer herhalde Roboski gibi bir yer. Bu kötü hafızanın, bu adaletsizliğin emirle silinebilmesi mümkün mü?
3. Havaalanı
Göklerden açıldı ya konu… Mâlum bir diğer millî heyecan da azman İstanbul’un 3. Havaalanı projesi. “Üçüncüsü yapılınca birincisi kalabilir mi acaba” diye soruyordu bir kuşkucu dostum. Hakikaten, nisbeten yakın mesafede olacakları için ilkinin arazisi muhtemelen tokileştirilecek. Havaalanına ayrılan 9200 hektarlık alanın 7800 hektarı çam, ladin, meşe, kayın, ardıç, erguvan, söğüt ve kavak ağaçlarından oluşan ormanlık alan. Ama orman tahribatının en aza indirilmesine özen gösterilecekmiş. Taksim’de olduğu gibi 7800 hektarı başka yere dikecekler zahir. Projenin Çevresel Etki Değerlendirmesi (ÇED) çalışmasını her zamanki gibi mühendislik şirketleri yapıyor. Süresi bir buçuk ay! Bir an evvel bitse de inşaata başlasak… Tamamen kamulaştırılacak dört köyden Tayakadınlı İnci Dede, “Bu projeyle talih kuşu konacakmış. Biz istemiyoruz” demiş.
Bir diğer itiraz İstanbul Kuş Gözlem Topluluğu’ndan. İKGT her sene yüz binlerce kuşun o bölge üzerinden göç ettiğini, civardaki Terkos Gölü ve diğer gölcüklerin on binlerce kuşun kışlağı olduğunu hatırlatmış. Sulak alanlara verilecek tahribata ilâveten uçakların tırmanması sırasında motora kuş girme olasılığının çok yüksek olduğunu vurgulamış. Bir buçuk ayda kuş göçlerine dair ayrıntılı ÇED hazırlanamaz, en az bir yıl ayrıntılı sayım ve izleme gerekir demiş. Var mı dozer sesleri arasında bu sesleri duyan?
Bu yazı ilk olarak Taraf’ta yayınlandı. Yazarın izniyle burada da yayınlanıyor…
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Neuroanthropology: Neuroanthropology – 2012 in Review
Neuroanthropology had a banner year in 2012. The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology came out, as did the special issue on “Neuroanthropology and Its Applications.” The AAA session on “Brains in the Wild: The Challenges of Neuroanthropology” was a wild success. Microblogging neuroanthropology on Facebook got off the ground quickly, and the Neuroanthropology Facebook Group has become a wonderful site to share ideas and research, and to discuss the latest developments in anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience.
Two classes – one graduate, one undergraduate – were taught on neuroanthropology this year. There was another special issue on neuroanthropology put together by a separate group of scholars in the spring, and Greg and I were thrilled to have neuroanthropology be an important part of the Culture, Mind and Brain conference. And the blog itself continued on strong.
So let’s break that down. (1) Scholarship. (2) Teaching. (3) Conferences. (4) Social Media. And (5) the Blog. And lots of links in each section.
Scholarship
The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology (MIT Press) laid out the theoretical foundations for the field and featured ten case studies from different anthropologists showing this new approach in action. Dirk Hanson and Peter Stromberg have both written positive reviews of the book. It took years of work to create this volume, and Greg and I once again want to thank everyone involved!!
Neuroanthropology and Its Applications presented neuroanthropology as an applied field and featured nine papers that showed applied neuroanthropology in action. I also posted on further ideas about applied research and developing interventions, and also featured a wonderful video, with important applied and theoretical implications, in So He Gave Me These Sounds.
The journal Anthropological Theory also had a special issue on neuroanthropology with four main articles Juan Dominguez, Robert Turner, Charles Whitehead, and Stephen Reyna, and an extensive commentary by Andreas Roepstorff and Chris Frith. It’s great to have an extended and growing group of scholars in this area.
Stephen Reyna wrote on Boas’s Dream and the Emergence of Neuroanthropology in Anthropology News. I too wrote on the founding figure of American anthropology and this modern effort at holistic anthropology in the companion piece Franz Boas and Neuroanthropology.
Sarah Mahler published her book Culture as Comfort. A real cross-over, as it integrates human development, neuroanthropology, and applied cultural work into one package to illustrate what culture is, how it works, and how we can better engage with our cultural comforts and discomforts in an increasingly multicultural world. A good book for introductory classes, applied settings, and popular reading.
Finally, Ben Campbell, a contributor to The Encultured Brain, gave the “Neuroanthropology Perspective” (pdf) in Evolutionary Anthropology’s great journal forum on What Makes Us Human?
Teaching
Two classes at two universities used The Encultured Brain as the basis for teaching neuroanthropology. Jason DeCaro taught an undergraduate class in neuroanthropology at the University of Alabama this fall.
ANT 474 Neuroanthropology. This course provides an introduction to evolutionary and biocultural approaches within anthropology to the central and peripheral nervous systems and their interconnections. Topics include the evolution of the brain; how culture and social structure shape the brain, its development, and its activity; and anthropological perspectives on connections among culture, behavior, brain, mind, and body.
Here’s how Jason described the outcome:
Outcome of first ever UA Neuroanthropology class: out of 11 undergrads, two now plan to pursue this line of research in grad school, and one is constructing an honors thesis around it. That’s what I call a successful debut. Thanks to Daniel Lende, Gregory J Downey, and the contributors to The Encultured Brain, the outstanding foundational textbook which helped create all this excitement.
I taught a graduate class in Neuroanthropology here at the University of South Florida, and it also was a success. Here’s my description:
This class will provide students with a comprehensive overview of the emerging field of neuroanthropology. Students will learn the basics of neuroscience and how anthropologists can effectively draw on this research for their own work. Students will also learn ways to critically interrogate neuroscience, both the actual studies and the increasing popular use of “the brain” in political and popular discourses. The course will also cover the distinctive anthropological elements for doing neuroanthropology research. Students will be expected to develop their own research ideas – from synthetic to critical – as part of pushing forward this new field of scholarship.
Chris Lynn, also at Alabama, gave a great talk on teaching undergraduates neuroanthropology at the AAA session “Brains in the Wild.” Chris described his hands-on, project-based approach to involving students in actively learning and doing neuroanthropology, drawing on the infrastructure at Alabama that includes the Human Behavioral Ecology Research Group and the Developmental Ecology and Human Biology Lab.
I’d love to see Chris make his talk available online at some point, perhaps as a blog post. In lieu of that, Chris does discuss how he improved his teaching with his post Notes on Improving a Graduate-Level Course in the Principles of Physical Anthropology.
What Chris described at the AAAs brought to mind some of my own collaborative projects, including my community-based health research at Notre Dame, the medical anthropology wiki done with graduate students, and having students create blog posts as part of their coursework.
Conferences
“Brains in the Wild: The Challenges of Neuroanthropology” was an invited session at the 2012 American Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco. The session featured Greg and myself, along with Sarah Mahler, Chris Lynn, and Jeff Snodgrass. Max Stein, a graduate student at Alabama, wrote up a great summary of the session in his post, Brains in the Wild: Update from the AAAs.
In the true spirit of anthropology, each author deals with culturally-shaped aspects of peoples’ lives: Lende with addiction, Mahler with enculturation, religion as resilience for Snodgrass, and conceptualizations of self for Downey. These clearly fit within broader, classic themes in anthropology, but what about their approach makes these analyses markedly ‘neuroanthropological’? …
All their efforts share an explicit intention of rejecting classic distinctions between biology and culture in exchange for one that fuses the two, and human behavior, especially ritual, is proposed as a way to link them. Furthermore, collective knowledge and norms which direct behavior need to be examined to answer ‘why’ people behave a certain way, such as seeking illegal substances to feed an addiction because it is socially acceptable to a group of addicts, even though it may be stigmatized outside of such a group…
Consensus is also reached with respect to how anthropologists can make their voices heard, and the first step is multifactorial, interdisciplinary research. One of the most important suggestions is to not fear science, but embrace it.
I want to highlight writing from each of the other presenters – Sarah, Jeff, and Chris. That will give you a real sense of how they each are doing neuroanthropology.
Sarah wrote a March post on her Culture as Comfort site entitled Personality Stability, Cultural Flux. It opens:
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how our minds carve out the sensation of stability and continuity in a world of continual flux. What continual flux, you ask? Well, at a minimum there is day into night, season into season, life into death, etc. all the time. Children grow up, neighborhoods change and so on. That’s not counting changes in world affairs, technology, climate and so on. Let’s leave those to the side for a moment and just think about the first fluxes.
Think in terms of circularity – that these changes are not linear but circular and repeated; thus, the stability we feel despite all this change might be derived from the predictability of these cycles. And I argue that predictability is really the key factor for the brain. Without predictability our brains would devote too much energy to trying to figure things out constantly, over and over again. When most of what we experience is packaged into known routines which are stored and recalled when needed, then we don’t have to spend that energy re-analyzing similar experiences as they occur. That’s how, as I like to say, “new” becomes “known.”
Jeff wrote about his World of Warcraft video game research in a post over on Somatosphere called Toward a Neuroanthropology of Immersive Online Gaming and Cyberdependence.
Perspectives and tools are now available to assess whether problematic online gaming resembles an addiction to substances that have a clear neurological and biochemical basis. Further, given what we now know about substance abuse and addiction and contextual learning, neuroanthropology would be particularly well-placed to address issues related to problematic online play and to make clinical recommendations that could importantly shape future versions of the DSM.
But to effectively assess the character of problematic online play requires looking at three mutually determining levels of analysis: biological (brain), psychological (mind), and contextual (sociocultural). In reference to theory, the challenge is to model the way these three levels interact with each other to produce specific kinds of compulsions. Methodologically, we need to precisely and systematically measure phenomena on each of these levels in order to understand their interrelationships. In discussing these issues of theory and method, I present my vision of a neuroanthropology of “cyberdependence.”
And Chris penned one of my favorite posts of the year with Remembering Brent Colyer: Serotonin, Alcoholism, & Evolution. His dear friend had just died from alcohol poisoning. Chris works to understand what might have happened and why, and also to remember this person who shared so many years of life together.
I want to write around Brent, as a way to process his death, & because I think it’s relevant, though I don’t know precisely why. I think I need to do this because we were once best friends, & I think it’s important to invoke him as an integral influence on my life. We wrote for the high school newspaper together. We came of age together. I followed him to New York City. We started a band together. We were roommates, co-workers, brothers-in-arms. He was among the people I’ve been closest to in my life. He remembered things about me that even I don’t know or had forgotten; & so with his death a part of me has died, & it feels that way. So I need to do something commemorative & integrative with what there is of him that is still with me. I’ll start with how he died & what we celebrated together when we were young.
Neuroanthropology was also part of another conference this year, the great Culture, Mind and Brain conference put together by the Foundation for Psychocultural Research and UCLA. Greg gave one of the first talks in the opening session, “Why Culture, Mind and Brain?” Besides featuring neuroanthropology and The Encultured Brain, Greg discussed research by Joe Henrich and Steven Heine with his talk, Weird Enough for You Yet? You can get a sense of Greg’s talk from his extensive 2010 post, We agree it’s WEIRD, but is it WEIRD enough?
I wrote summaries of Day One (think genetics and epigenetics) and Day Two (think stress and culture & mind). Work from the session I organized on stress, trauma, and resilience was just featured in the New York Times, and I wrote a commentary and summary and also embedded the video from this session in the post, Trauma – The Importance of the Post-Trauma Environment.
Social Media
Neuroanthropology took Facebook by storm this year. Well, maybe storm is an exaggeration, but there’s been great growth on that platform. We started micro-blogging on Neuroanthropology Facebook, sharing links and short commentaries on research and news (similar to the old Wednesday round ups). The site has grown quickly, with 1400+ likes at present. You can get an overview of the micro-blogging through the end of October with the post, Neuroanthropology on Facebook – A Round-Up of the Good Stuff.
Chris Lynn took the lead on forming a Neuroanthropology Facebook Interest Group. That has reached 750 members! It’s a great place to discuss ideas and share links to the latest research. A very interactive site, with a wide range of people taking part, including interested members of the public, undergraduates, and even full professors.
Finally, Greg recently started a Neuroanthropology Scoop.It, a visually appealing way to share links and short commentaries. It definitely looks pretty, and Greg gives a great selection of neuroanthropology-related material there.
The Blog
Neuroanthropology PLOS had a great year. 350,000 pageviews, with 220,000 visitors from 197 different countries and territories. 22% of visits were by returning visitors, and for 32,000 of the pageviews, people stayed 10 minutes or more on site. There is a core audience out there reading what we write. We thank you, and also thank the great people at PLOS. It was wonderful to meet you in person this year!
So, finally, some of the top posts of 2012. I’ll focus on the major ones Greg and I posted over the year. There were some fun posts, on Zombie evolution and Michael Phelps and his taper, that were popular. But I’ll be more substantive here.
Daniel’s Top Posts:
(1) Inside the Minds of Mass Killers, which covered the Aurora Batman shootings. You can see the follow-up post on Newtown and Violence.
(2) American Anthropological Association Takes Stand against Open Access, followed shortly thereafter by American Anthropological Association Changes Opposition to Open Access (which also included my proposal for a common open-access book review site)
(3) Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Evolution of Inequality – Does Unfairness Triumph After All?
(4) Why Does the United States Rank So Badly in Health?
(5) Neuroscience and Race: Outlining the Neuroanthropology of Race
Greg’s Top Posts:
(1) Roid Age: steroids in sport and the paradox of pharmacological puritanism, with his follow-up piece on Olympic marathons and continued analysis of the sports and politics of athletic enhancement
(2) The long, slow sexual revolution with nsfw video
(3) Tanya Luhrmann, hearing voices in Accra and Chenai
(4) Not allowed to have a small heart: Tourette Syndrome
(5) ‘Man-sheep-dog’: inter-species social skills
Greg and I also had great fun doing a joint post together – a raucous conversation almost – on Thomas Friedman’s Lessons for Anthropologists. Greg followed that up with his own piece on the new PopAnth initiative and the future of popular anthropology more generally.
It’s been a great year. Thank you to everyone. Happy New Year!
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tabsir.net: A Conversation with Marjorie Ransom
[The following online video interview with retired diplomat Marjorie Ransom was made by Sama’a al-Hamdani and can be seen here. The description of the interview provided by Ms. al-Hamdani is reproduced below. For a website about Ransom’s work, click here. For an article about her work in Aramco World, click here.]
Many Yemenis feel that their country has been reduced to terrorism. However, many of those who have visited Yemen know that the country has a lot more to offer. At the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is one of the few countries that had a culture prior to Islam. Although it is not as prevalent as it used to be, one of the traditions that have survived is the production of unique silver jewelry.
Today’s guest, Ms. Marjorie Ransom, lived the life of a diplomat, traveling for years throughout the Middle East; settling twice in Yemen. Ms. Ransom and her late husband began collecting Yemeni Jewelry and in turn started displaying some pieces in American Museums, like the Bead Museum (DC), Jefferson County Historical Society (NY), Gibson Gallery of the State University (NY), and the Arab American National Museum (MI) (to view the latest exhibit, click here). Jewelry is not just a product of a decorative tradition but it is a historic art that captures the essence of Yemen.
In 2003, Ms. Marjorie Ransom decided to apply for a grant travel throughout Yemen to document this tradition. In October of 2013, the first comprehensive book on Yemen’s tradition of silver-smithing will be available through the American University of Cairo Press. This effort is the first of its kind.
In this interview, Ms. Ransom identifies some types and symbols of Yemeni jewelry. Ms. Ransom also brought several silver-smiths to the US whenever she hosted a Jewelry exhibit. She understands that this trade is becoming less common in Yemen and is one of the few people supporting its revival.
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Dynamic Relations: (Un)Focus Groups
I held my first focus group this week in Tama. I've come to call this my "control village" because I'm hoping to be able to conduct a comparative study on the environmental knowledge of climate change between this village and Weglega, which is currently receiving a pretty intensive water development project.Unlike the States, where I'd say we divide ourselves based on gender, race, politics, and to a lesser extent wealth, Tama divides itself by marital status, gender, and religion. The most salient groups are married Muslim men, married non-Muslim men (both Christian and animist), married women (of all religions), then unmarried boys and girls. For my first focus group, I wanted to speak with the women who are almost always the main agricultural laborers and, if you can get them in a group away from men, will tell you anything and everything.On the road to Tama.I don't now if the Conseil, the main political representative and authority in this (odd) village without a chief, misunderstood me or if it wasn't kosher to have a meeting with the women without first meeting the men, but when I arrived in Tama I found many men ready for my arrival. I planned the meeting at 9 but also planned to wait until 10 to get started. By 10:30, 20 men had gathered and 2 women. I decided to go ahead with the men even though all my questions--and vocabulary cram sessions the days before--were geared toward women.(As an aside: a focus group should be no more an 10 people and ideally between 4-8 in order to provoke discussion and provide a space where even shy people may speak. But I saw no polite way of limiting this number if invitees to these initial meetings.)I recognize I've made great progress in my Moore training. But I also know that I still have a long way to go. I finally have the tenses down and am building my vocabulary, but I stutter and stall like an old, beat up car when I speak. I form the words in my head, quickly running over the sentence to make sure it's grammatically correct before speaking. When the words come out I double check them to make sure the tones are right. The difference in a nasalized versus un-nasalized vowel can be an ocean of meaning. The result of all this scrutinizing and double-checking is VERY inelegant speech, which only makes me more self-conscious.We started the meeting and I immediately felt the pressure. I explained who I was and what I hoped to do in Tama. I did my best to explain what an Anthropologist is, and in Moore I got a sense of how utterly bizarre my line of work is. There's no word for culture in Moore. The best I could do was say I was interested in their traditions, a term which is itself a compound: "rog n miki" which literally translates to born to find/discover. So I say I'm interested in that which they are born to find; what is already here when they arrive; what is done by them, their parents and ancestors. Knowing that the words I had didn't quite fit my meaning, knowing that my language was elementary at best, knowing that there was already mis-communcation coming into the meeting culminated in me trying to keep my focus. Luckily, I acquired the help of a local teen who was able to translate for me through the rough spots. And in all, we talked for about 45min. By this time about 15 women showed up. I was feeling more confident and I figured, why the hell not? So we had a second focus group with the women that went much more smoothly. Despite my initial lack of focus I'm counting the focus groups as a success. I managed to acquire baseline data, I made additional contacts, I planned one-on-one interviews for the coming week as well as an additional focus group with the Muslim men. So it looks like big things are in the works for 2013!Bonne année, y'all!
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Somatosphere: 2012 in review by Eugene Raikhel
As 2012 draws to a close, we’d like to thank all of our editors, regular contributors and guests for their hard work on Somatosphere. We had a great year, and without all of your contributions, it wouldn’t have been possible. This year saw the launch of Transcriptions, a forum on HIV/AIDS, global health and the social sciences edited by Thomas Cousins and Lindsey Reynolds and hosted by Somatosphere. We also saw excellent contributions in all of our other sections, features, book reviews (edited by Todd Meyers), In the Journals (edited by Aaron Seaman) and Web Roundups (edited by Branwyn Poleykett). You can find all of these posts listed below, organized by section.
In 2013 – the 5th year for the site – we’ll have many new features, interviews and book reviews. Please visit us often and contact us at admin AT somatosphere DOT net if you are interested in getting involved.
Features, thoughts and research reports
Kalman Applbaum, Clean Pharma Crusader: Senator Chuck Grassley’s Enigmatic Campaign to Combat Rising Healthcare Costs
Mary Jean Hande, From Narrowed Veins to Liberation: An Anthropological Analysis of the Canadian Liberation Therapy Movement
Jeff Snodgrass, Toward a Neuroanthropology of Immersive Online Gaming and Cyberdependence
Elizabeth King, Social Vulnerability, Health Behaviors, and Political Responsibility: HIV Testing and Treatment for Female Sex Workers in St. Petersburg, Russia
Constance Cummings, DSM-5: Plus ça change…
Thomas Cousins, Release of Report on “HIV and the Law” by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law (cross-posted on Transcriptions)
Doerte Bemme and Nicole D’souza, Global Mental Health and Its Discontents
Silvia Camporesi, Caster Semenya and Athletic Excellence: A Critique of Olympic Sex-Testing
Kimberly Sue, Are IRBs a Stumbling Block for Engaged Anthropology?
Nev Jones, Agency, Biogenetic Discourse and Psychiatric Disorder
Ita Irizarry, We’re Not the Enemy!: Mending Fences Between Researchers and the IRB (Response to Kimberly Sue, Are IRBs a Stumbling Block for Engaged Anthropology?)
Anthony Stavrianakis and Gaymon Bennett, On Concept Work
Nick Shapiro, On Collaborating with Journalists
Tazin Karim, Meducating Our Children: The Moral Influence of Adderall on Education, Parenting, and Treatment
Sadeq Rahimi, Subjectivity at the Intersection of Metaphoric and Metonymic Functions
Kalman Applbaum’s Risperdal on Trial series
Risperdal on Trial, Texas Style (January 11, 2012)
The Risperdal Trial in Texas, Continued: Establishing not just facts, but the yardstick by which facts are to be measured, and other matters (January 12, 2012)
A Matter of Trust: Clinical Trial Evidence vs. Physicians’ Judgment in the Courtroom (January 13, 2012)
The Banality of Corporate Corruption: Janssen’s Reimbursement Department on the Stand (January 15, 2012)
Lucre and the Law: A Money Narrative of Who Stands to Gain from Suing a Pharmaceutical Company (January 17, 2012)
Book Reviews
Claire Wendland, A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School; Reviewed by Liese Pruitt
Maurice Godelier, The Metamorphoses of Kinship; Reviewed by Leo Coleman
Sarah D. Phillips, Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine; Reviewed by Jessica Robbins
Georges Canguilhem, Writings on Medicine (translated and with an introduction by Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers); Book announcement by Eugene Raikhel
P. Sean Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba; Reviewed by Amy Cooper
Pamela E. Klassen, Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity; Reviewed by Wilson Will
E. Summerson Carr, Scripting Addiction: The Politics of Therapeutic Talk and American Sobriety; Reviewed by Jennifer Carroll
Transcriptions
In April, Thomas Cousins and Lindsey Reynolds launched Transcriptions, a collaborative online forum on the intersections of HIV/AIDS, global health, and the social sciences. Transcriptions provides a forum for recent journal publications (In the Journals), news from around the web and in print (Broadsheets), book reviews (On the Shelves), interviews with scholars (Dialogues), announcements regarding conferences, calls for papers, seminars, and other relevant events (Announcements). In addition to offering analyses of emerging issues, Transcriptions also hosts a number of series, including: Methodologies, Keywords, Infected Affects, History and HIV, and Social Dynamics of Biomedical Prevention.
Transcriptions – In the Journals (Thomas Cousins)
May
July Part I and Part II
Transcriptions – Broadsheets (Abigail Baim Lance)
May
June
Run-Up to the 2012 AIDS Conference (July 22-27, Washington D.C.)
After AIDS 2012: Tracking AIDS Conference 2012
November
Transcriptions – Methodologies
Sarah Bernays, Uncomfortable Research: Expectations and Experiences in Examinations of HIV/AIDS and ‘Hope’ in Serbia
Transcriptions – Keywords
Judy Auerbach, On “Activism”
Steve Robins, From Saving Lives to Cutting Costs? Challenges for a New Era for Activism
Transcriptions – Infected Affects
Hans Huang, HIV Testing, Neoliberal Governance and the New Moral Regime of Gay Health in Taiwan
Tsitsi Masvawure, “Abstinence doesn’t work, so use condoms”: Critical responses to Christian youth sexualities and HIV prevention in Africa
Transcriptions – Social Dynamics of Biomedical Prevention
Marsha Rosengarten, PrEP: Time to Rethink Prevention, Effectiveness, and Ethics?
Agata Pacho, Treatment as Prevention: Recognizing the Creative Potential of Antiretroviral Medications
Transcriptions – Features
Samuel Friedman, Recently-Funded Transdisciplinary Integrated HIV Prevention Project: Overview and Challenges
For more information on contributors to Transcriptions, go here; for more information on submissions, go here.
Conference Reports
Tazin Karim, Medical Imaginaries and Technological Futures: Transformations of Subjectivities in Biomedicine – Report of the activities of the Science, Technology and Medicine Interest Group at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science
Constance Cummings, Report from the Annual Meeting of One Mind for Research Campaign: Curing Brain Disease
Jennifer Carroll, Ann Dill, Jonathan Stillo, and Hubert Wierciński, Reports from the Second Annual Health in Transition Conference
Matthew Schneider, Report from the Conference on Structural Competency held at NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis on March 23, 2012
Constantin Tranulis, Report from the 8th International Conference on Early Psychosis
Lectures – Video and Audio
Didier Fassin, “On Resentment and Ressentiment” – Roger Allan Moore Lecture delivered on February 3, 2012 at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Ian Hacking, “The New Me: What Biotechnology may do to Personal Identity” – Derry Interdisciplinary Lecture delivered on October 24, 2011 at Huron University College
Plenary sessions (on genetic/reproductive technologies and social issues) of the 2010 and 2011 Tarrytown Meetings.
Tanya Luhrmann, “Hearing Voices in Accra and Chennai: How Culture Makes a Difference to Psychiatric Experience” – lecture delivered at the interdisciplinary conference on Culture, Mind and Brain: Emerging Concepts, Methods, and Applications
Laurence Kirmayer, “Revisioning Psychiatry: Cultural Phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience, and Global Mental Health” – talk given at the Comparative Human Development Department, University of Chicago
Global mental health videos – hosted by McGill University’s Division of Transcultural Psychiatry
In the Journals
January (Amy Cooper)
March Part I (Melanie Boeckmann) and Part II (Klaartje Klaver)
April (Aaron Seaman)
May (Lara Braff)
July Part I and Part II (Melanie Boeckmann)
August (Aaron Seaman)
September Part I (Melanie Boeckmann) and Part II (Aaron Seaman)
October Part I (Lara Braff) and Part II (Aaron Seaman)
Special Journal Issues
“Reinvigorating Dialogue between Phenomenological and Psychoanalytic Anthropologies”: a special issue of Ethos (Eugene Raikhel)
“The Anthropology of Pharmaceuticals: Cultural and Pharmacological Efficacies in Context”: a special section of Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry (Eugene Raikhel)
“Rethinking Cultural Competence”: a special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry (Aaron Seaman)
“Ethnographies of Suicide”: a special issue of Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry (Aaron Seaman)
“Emotions, Health, and Well-Being”: a special virtual issue of Social History of Medicine (Aaron Seaman)
“Irrational Reproduction: New Intersections of Politics, Gender, Race, and Class Across the North-South Divide”: a special issue of Anthropology & Medicine (Aaron Seaman)
“Medicine, Bodies, Politics, Experimentation and Emergence”: a special issue of Body & Society (Aaron Seaman)
“Communities and Global Mental Health”: a special section of Transcultural Psychiatry (Eugene Raikhel)
Web-Roundups
January (Branwyn Poleykett) Cosmetic surgery, securitization of scientific data
June (Cassandra Hartblay) Dr. Jim Yong Kim at the World Bank and Dr. Robert Spitzer’s revocation
July and August Mega Roundup (Eugene Raikhel and Judith Mazdra) the Aurora shootings, the Olympics, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Jonah Lehrer, mental health, health care, and much, much more…
October (Melanie Boeckmann) Big Data, and the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE)
November (Cassandra Hartblay) Hurricane Sandy relief and Marijuana Legalization
December (Branwyn Poleykett) Global disease burden
Teaching Resources
Resources for Teaching Medical Anthropology (Eugene Raikhel)
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The Blog: [Book Review] Tuff City: Urban Change and Contested Space in Central Naples
My review of Nick Dines' Tuff City: Urban Change and Contested Space in Central Naples is available via the Open Anthropology Cooperative Press. You can read/download the full review here and discuss it over at the OAC. Tuff City, Berghahn, 2012.) on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/118352410/Book-Review-N-Dines-Tuff-City-Berghahn-2012" style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">View full screen version
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Language Log: Human behavior is behind so much of what we do in our lives
I happened to catch this Q&A on the radio today, at the start of program segment about a course on "Shakespeare and Financial Markets":
Q:
All right, right away can you make the link for us between Shakespeare's writings and economics?
A:
I- I think it's uh clear when you delve into Shakespeare –
and of course I've spent a lifetime looking at Shakespeare
and also you know being in the financial markets –
human behavior is behind so much of what we do in our lives,
and also most important in our decision making,
and Shakespeare held up a mirror to humans and
showed us how we behave, probably one of the first artists to really capture that.
And when you look at some of the mistakes,
both policy-wise and also by investors in the last twenty or so years,
you see a lot of those behaviors,
and so drawing out those connections is part of what made the course I think for-
for me and also for the students a lot of fun this year.
The literal meaning of behavior is something like "the manner of conducting oneself" or "the way in which someone behaves", and "human behavior" is therefore, roughly, "the way that people act". So can we rescue "Human behavior is behind so much of what we do in our lives" from tautology? After all, "human behavior" is literally just a polysyllabic term for "what we do in our lives".
It's possible that the speaker meant only to move from the personal ("what we do in our lives") to the universal ("human behavior" in general). But I think that something more is going on.
A Google Books search for "human behavior" turns up contexts like this, from the publisher's description of a textbook for medical students on Human Behavior:
… the biopsychosocial model in medical practice; culture, ethnicity, and the practice of medicine; psychoanalytic psychology; human sexual development and physiology; childhood and adolescent development; medicine and the family; the psychology and psychobiology of developmental trauma; and neurobiological aspects …
And of course there's B.F. Skinner's famous (or infamous) Science and Human Behavior, "a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and the possible ways in which human behavior can be predicted and controlled". Or G.K. Zipf's Human behavior and the principle of least effort, where according to its abstract
After a brief elaboration of principles and a brief summary of pertinent studies (mostly in psychology), Part One (Language and the structure of the personality) develops 8 chapters on its theme, ranging from regularities within language per se to material on individual psychology. Part Two (Human relations: a case of intraspecies balance) contains chapters on "The economy of geography," "Intranational and international cooperation and conflict," "The distribution of economic power and social status," and "Prestige values and cultural vogues"—all developed in terms of the central theme.
As a result of decades of such use in academic contexts, it seems that for some people, the phrase "human behavior" has come to mean something like "psycho-social analysis of motivation and interaction".
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hawgblawg: Marilyn Monroe & James Dean in kufiya
It makes sense that this t-shirt, of Marilyn in a kufiya, would be from a clothing line produced by Iranian designers living in New York City. Check out Nimany's other stuff, it's fantastic. Most of it with terrific calligraphy. (The back of this shirt says Marilyn, written in Arabic script.)And now that we have learned that Marilyn was a Commie symp, this is all the more appropriate. Even if she was sympathetic to Zionism.I've seen nothing to suggest that James Dean had any "Communist" sympathies, but it nonetheless makes some sort of sense that an icon of disaffected youth would be posthumously kufiya-clad.
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C L O S E R: European Sexual Nationalisms: The Culturalization of Citizenship and the Sexual Politics of Belonging and Exclusion
Closer Blog: In this contribution Paul Mepschen and Jan-Willem Duyvendak argue that representations of gay emancipation are mobilized to shape narratives in which Muslims are framed as non-modern subjects, which best be understood in relation to the ‘culturalization of citizenship’ and the rise of Islamophobia in Europe.Read more: European Sexual Nationalisms: The Culturalization of Citizenship and the Sexual Politics of Belonging and Exclusion
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Language Log: Prestigious nonsense, tendentious frames
Kimmo Ericksson, "The nonsense math effect", Judgment and Decision Making 7(6) 2012:
In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted an online experiment with 200 participants, all of which had experience of reading research reports and a postgraduate degree (in any subject). Participants were presented with the abstracts from two published papers (one in evolutionary anthropology and one in sociology). Based on these abstracts, participants were asked to judge the quality of the research. Either one or the other of the two abstracts was manipulated through the inclusion of an extra sentence taken from a completely unrelated paper and presenting an equation that made no sense in the context. The abstract that included the meaningless mathematics tended to be judged of higher quality.
Here's a bit more detail about the irrelevant equation:
This reminds me of what Yeats wrote in 1930 to his son's (imaginary) schoolmaster:
Teach him mathematics as thoroughly as his capacity permits. I know that Bertrand Russell must, seeing that he is such a featherhead, be wrong about everything, but as I have no mathematics I cannot prove it.
Yeats was over-optimistic about the power of mathematics to prove Russell wrong, I think, but he was right to see that unilateral conceptual disarmament is a bad move.
A similar effect exists in other cases where prestigious nonsense impresses those who don't understand it very well — Eriksson's bibliography includes Deena Weisberg et al., "The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations", Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (20) 2008, discussed in "Blinded by neuroscience", 6/28/2005, and "Distracted by the brain", 6/5/2007.
By the time such dimly-understood techno-stuff makes it into the popular press, the effect is often systematic misinterpretation rather than mere awe — especially when publicists (or researchers themselves) encourage it. Daniel McKaughan and Kevin Elliott put an oddly positive spin on such effects in "Voles, Vasopressin, and the Ethics of Framing", Science 7 December 2012:
Recent discussions about the biological determinants of behavior in voles provide an opportunity to reflect on how scientists can frame information in ways that are both illuminating and responsible.
By modulating the density and distribution of vasopressin receptors in specific regions of the brain, scientists can get ordinarily “promiscuous” montane voles to behave more like “monogamous” prairie voles. By the time this research was reported in the popular media, it had become a story about the discovery of a “gene for” “monogamy,” “fidelity,” “promiscuity,” or “divorce” in humans.
Consider the major frames we identified in the media coverage of this research: (i) “genetic determinism,” the idea that a single gene controls even complex social behaviors such as sexual monogamy; (ii) “triumph for reductionism,” the suggestion that soon we will understand love in terms that refer exclusively to physics and chemistry; (iii) “humans are like voles,” a parallel allowing wide-ranging extrapolation; (iv) “happiness drug,” the idea that applying lessons learned from this research to biotechnology efforts could save a relationship or marriage; and (v) “dangers of social manipulation,” which has led to stories about trust sprays of potential use to the military, department stores, politicians, and stalkers.
These frames, albeit crude and oversimplified, can help members of the public understand how research relates to broader social trends, issues, and debates. By paying close attention to the dominant frames used in highly publicized cases like this one, scientists can take advantage of these strengths while preemptively highlighting their potential weaknesses. For example, to correct a common source of misunderstanding in the “humans are like voles” frame, experts could emphasize that ordinary usage of terms such as “monogamy” can differ substantially from their technical applications in biology. (Spending 56% of the time with one's spouse, 19% of the time alone, and 25% of the time copulating with strangers would not qualify as monogamous by ordinary human standards.)
For some further details on neurotransmitters and pair-bonding in voles and men, see "'Cause after all, he's just a vasopressin receptor", 9/5/2008. And combining the rhetorical force of neurotransmitters and mathematical formulae, we present "The Agatha Christie Code: Stylometrics, serotonin, and the oscillation overthruster", 12/25/2005.
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tabsir.net: Not Qualified: Exposing the Deception Behind America’s Top 25 Pseudo Experts on Islam
[Click here to download the recent publication of the Muslim Public Affairs Council exposing the lack of credentials of the [mis]leading Islam[ophobic] experts.]
For the benefit of national security and the American public at large, we must ensure that those people speaking about terrorism perpetrated in the name of Islam are qualified. At a minimum, individuals who speak about Islam and its co-opting by violent extremists need to be properly informed and qualified.
To date, groundbreaking research into the anti-Muslim hate industry has been conducted by the Center for American Progress and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their research focuses primarily on anti-Muslim hate activists’ sources of funding and their possible connections to other forms of hate. No study that we know of has focused on the qualifications of the so-called experts on Islam and Muslim violent extremists.
This study seeks to fill in this research gap by focusing the academic qualifications of 25 individuals who comprise some of the most vocal voices and activists in the anti-Muslim circuit. We specifically focus on highly visible personalities who engage in anti-Islam rhetoric and who frequently and inaccurately speak not only about extremist Muslims, or even Muslims at large, but who also claim to be knowledgeable about the fundamental beliefs and tenets of the Islamic faith.
The study asks the question: Do these individuals have the formal academic credentials to back their explicit and implicit claims of expertise on Islam?
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Erkan in the Army now...: Serhatcan Yurdam’dan Roboski/Uludere anmaları derlemeleri
#RoboskiBirYilOldu | Şişli’de Roboski Anması
#RoboskiBirYilOldu | Taksim’de Roboski Anması
#RoboskiBirYilOldu | Roboski’de Meşaleli Yürüyüş
Foto-Makale: Katliamın Yıldönümünde Roboski
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xirdalium: stan lee cameos
Two days ago, on 28 December 2012, ↑Stan Lee celebrated his 90th birthday:
In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books.
Above is a montage of ↑his cameo appearances in Marvel superhero movies. A belated happy birthday to Stan Lee and many more cameo appearances to him!
via ↑entry at ↑slashdot
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anthrocharya - Anthropological Musings and Other Thoughts: Sexual Violence in Delhi: autoethnographic thoughts
Growing up in Delhi can be quite an experience. It’s big, loud, dirty, and noisy. Delhi must be learned. It must be negotiated. I grew up in Delhi. I navigated public transport, walked through dusty streets, drove from one end … Continue reading →
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Aidnography - Development as anthropological object: Links & Contents I Liked 56
Hello all!As the year is coming to its end, a special period of reflection for many of us seems to be setting in over the final stretch of 'the holidays'. So I started combing through my every-increasing list of interesting and noteworthy links and decided to compile a slightly more special link review before the regular one will resume on Thursday. My aim is to share new links, but being selective in as much as I think that many of these issues have been part of bigger issues and/or are likely to 'stick around' in forthcoming debates in 2013.This review features thoughts on participation, the value of global summits, politics in the 'post-2015' age, the future of philanthropy and Afghanistan, higher education funding, abolishing academic tenure as well as book recommendations.Looking forward to a share-ful and networked new year!New on aidnographyMy development blogging review 2012DevelopmentParticipation for development: a good time to be aliveThe 1990s were a time when people and participatory approaches were being mainstreamed; in the 2000s the pendulum swung back towards things and preset planning and continues to swing in that direction. (...)So why is this a good time to be alive as a development professional? The fourth trend – the quiet revolution of proliferating Participatory Methods (PMs) – is one reason. We now have an extraordinary variety of PMs. The named brands of the 1990s – PRA, Appreciative Inquiry, Reflect and many others – survive but increasingly now practitioners adapt and improvise their own ways of doing things to meet their particular contexts and needs. ICTs, most notably mobile phones, but also Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and other technologies, have added to the ever richer range of participatory methods that can be combined with others.On the one hand, it is difficult to disagree with Robert Chambers' optimism and enthusiasm. And he is right that participatory methodologies have become more widespread. But on the other hand the big challenge I see for the future is that you as a big, hardly accountable aid organization still get away with almost everything - from bad fundraising practices, to debates void of complexities, unaccountable governance structures and ritualistic policy processes that consist of conferences, high-level meetings and the odd 'declaration'. And much of organized civil society, namely NGOs, have become firmly embedded in this system. Also, as the current 'impact' discussion highlights, there is a powerful 'new dawn' of ever-more sophisticated numbers on the horizon that is gaining momentum in evaluations, RCTs and complex statistical models that are far from participatory outside the computer labs of mostly elite Western institutions...Afghanistan for Rent – A Decade of Missed OpportunitiesAs a result, Afghanistan today is hardly any closer to a sustainable peace. The future promises to be even bleaker. Well-connected Afghans, warlords, the Taliban and other insurgents jostle for power, and are positioning themselves to benefit from the country’s impressive natural resources. Foreign companies from China, India, the United States and Europe have targeted mineral resources including copper, iron, tungsten, gold and even the rare earth minerals, vital for computer chips. When the majority of NATO forces pull out in 2014, ordinary Afghans will hardly be the ones to benefit. Bitter ethnic and religious strife is emerging as a catalyst for an even more ruthless civil war. After seven years working with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Reto Stocker, who was the ICRC’s chief delegate in Kabul until October 2012, warned: “Life for ordinary Afghans has taken a turn for the worse.”For many obvious reasons, Afghanistan will be on the 'watch list' of developments to watch next year. Long-term analysts Peter Jouvenal and Edward Girardet provide a detailed background to historical developments, the current stalemates and a way to move forward that would include a Switzerland-backed transparent negotiation process.Africa: Books New & NotableThis annual books issue contains 22 books that have come to my attention that seemed to me to be of particular interest. It's hardly a systematic selection, and I've only read a couple of them so far. But they cover a wide range of topics, and I think most AfricaFocus readers will find at least of a few of them well worth their time. An excellent list with great recommendations!Favorite books of 2012 When I enrolled in graduate school this fall, I vowed to only add books to my Goodreads shelf if they were books I would have chosen while browsing through a bookstore. It seemed unfair to add every book on every syllabus to my "Books I Read in 2012" shelf. The collage that emerges is one that feels true to life: collections of essays, memoirs, reflections on photography, travelogues, love, conflict theory, social justice, feminist literature, more essays. Here are some favorites among them. I love people who love books! Roxanne Krystalli's list is a great one to share and enjoy! Merry/Happy ChristmasIt’s a Christmas miracle: Your sneak preview of the [DRAFT] first chapter of the sequel to Disastrous Passion. Will Mary-Anne and Jean-Philippe’s love survive the rigors of itinerant aid worker life? Will the refugees in Dolo Ado get their NFIs? What will the title be? Find out the answers to these and many, many more pressing questions, probably some time in February 2013.Another volume of 'Disastrous Passion' will be launched in early 2013! Excellent news. If you have not picked up the first novel (I can't imagine any legitimate excuse for that...), check out my review from earlier this year.Do global summits help to tackle poverty?But there's far more to summits than the formal communique. Sometimes the text can obscure the real story and the long-term significance of the meetings. There are three other very good reasons why summits matter. (...)Third, and probably most important, the voice of civil society is vital at global events because it enables us to confront the stories our leaders want to tell their public, and to tell home truths about the progress made and the action needed. Civil society mobilisation and media work can do much to shift the terms of debates on, for example, the true causes of global hunger and the inadequacy of debt relief.I found Stephen Hale's praise for global summits rather naive and full of an enthusiasm for global processes that sounded so mid- to late 1990s... Global summits and conferences have become so ritualized that they are mostly mere performances, a kind of policy-porn that pretends to depict meaningful relationships rather than just handshake and signature signing money shots...Curtain Down and Nothing Settled. Global Sustainability Governance after the ‘Rio+20’ Earth SummitThe United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, held in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, was probably the largest event in a long series of mega-summits on environmental protection and sustainable development. Roughly 44000 participants descended on Rio de Janeiro to take part in ten days of preparatory committee meetings, informal consultations, side events, and the actual conference. Yet despite this unprecedented high attendance by participants from governments and civil society, the outcome of the conference is less than what many had hoped for.From the working paper (page 18):Yet the question remains whether such discursive developments cannot be achieved by other means. There are two possible alternatives to global mega-summits. One option is more specialized conferences that focus on one particular issue not covered by any existing negotiation (such as the climate or biodiversity convention). Examples could be global high-level summits on sustainability education, on the provision of food for 9 billion people, or on water. Focused summits could ensure a more concrete, and hence more sustainable, outcome. A second option is to grant sustainability more prominence in the United Nations General Assembly. The General Assembly still marshals the attendance and attention of most heads of state and government.Sustainability summits could thus well be integrated into the normal procedures of the General Assembly. Such a regular meeting could provide the trigger and momentum for advancement in discursive developments, as can be observed from summits in the past, without the high political, financial and environmental costs incurred with megaevents such as Rio+20. I am not convinced that the solution to mega events is more attention on slightly smaller conferences or the UN system. What Frank Biermann and Stephen Hale seem to largely ignore is the fact that the global elite is not really interested in sustainable 'solutions' to global problems and will wait until there is '100% scientific certainty' around issues that can never be achieved. so global summits will be with us for a while and they will continue to produce little tangible, enforceable and accountable results.How should research be shaping development beyond 2015?With the post-2015 development framework debate intensifying in this short film we asked a range of IDS experts how they think knowledge and research should be shaping the post 2015 development agenda. Respondents include Melissa Leach, Duncan Green and Richard Manning who reflect on the importance of science and technology, politics, gender, and climate change.This short 8-minute video from IDS is interesting for a few reasons: First, probably because of the shortness of the answers some ideas come across as a bit of policy 'bubble speak' along the lines of 'more of the same'. Second, even as Duncan Green calls for more 'real-time research', Richard Manning rightly points out that the MDGs were 'Made in New York' and Alyson Brody demands more influence from 'real people', we all kind of know that this is unlikely to happen and there is very little a research Think Tank like IDS can do to ensure that the post-2015 framework will be more meaningful than just 'MDG 2.0'-but these debates will obviously continue in 2013 and beyond...Philanthropy: You’re doing it wrongThe logic, after all, is simple and clear. The value to the charity of my labor is $x; so if I just donate $y>$x then the charity is better off. What’s more, the value of my time is $z>$x, so in a way I’m destroying value by volunteering. The problem with this logic is that it ignores the enormous value to the volunteer of volunteering. Volunteering is the best and most effective way of piercing the bubble that all wealthy people live in every minute of every day, and of giving such people a gut-level understanding of the problems the charity is trying to solve. On that level, volunteering is much more effective than some fact-finding poverty tour, where a bunch of rich donors or potential donors jet in to observe the Great Work Being Done in some far-flung country. The logistics involved in organizing such tours are substantial, and the good they do is minuscule. So if you want to see for yourself what an organization is doing, find out by doing that work yourself. But volunteering is also worthwhile for its own sake. It gives an extremely valuable perspective on life, one that’s hard to find elsewhere. And it can be incredibly rewarding, in ways both expected and unexpected. Find time to do it: almost nobody ends up regretting the time they spent volunteering. Really great essay by Felix Salomon on easy opt outs of meaningful philanthropy. How we are envisioning the future of giving and cooperation is definitely one of the topics this humble blogger will continue to pay attention to in the new year! AcademiaUniversities, “user pays”, and the death of personal responsibilityConsidering that personnel costs make up more than 80% of most institution’s budgets, when you cut the state appropriation to a public university by, oh, about half (such as has happened at the University of South Carolina) the result is inevitable: raising tuition to cover the missing revenue, and hiring fewer faculty to replace retirees…so students end up paying more while getting less and less face-to-face with faculty. This is not because public universities are “fat and lazy.” It’s because higher education, like so many other things in our society, has become a site of “user pays” mentality. Instead of seeing higher education as a societal good (educated workforce that brings/creates better jobs, more informed citizenry, more vibrant arts, etc.), we now see it as something that only the student should pay for.Ed Carr's timely reminder that issues around financing (public) universities, tuition cost and student debt have been a big topic this year and will likely stick around for another one...Why I Have a Big Problem With Academic TenureTenure is not viewed well by business leaders, taxpayers, and legislators as it leaves little disciplinary or removal remedy for ineffective teaching or research. A recent Wall Street Journal online survey shows responders oppose tenure 3 to 1. Subpar faculty are often used minimally in the classroom in an effort to reduce student complaints. Many things can and need to be done to increase the quality and reduce the cost of education. Addressing tenure in a constructive way is one of the major ones.If 'business leaders, taxpayers, and legislators' as well as respondents to a WSJ online survey oppose something the common sense rule of thumb is that it is probably worth saving...But there is obviously more to James Wetherbe's 'problems with tenure'. The problem with Wetherbe's piece is that he implicitly sees a future of positive competition and weeding out of 'lazy academics' when in reality he should know better that this is unlikely to happen. Many institutions will quickly turn into systems of 'permanent tenure review' where professors will spend even more time than many already do today to satisfy some form of evaluation matrix. In that sense, tenure may be far from perfect, but without it the hyper-flexibilisation of academic work will only increase. As basically every other sector where 'competition' has been introduced in the past 30 years shows, standards will be driven down. Not more 'better', motivated, engaged professors, but the complete adjunctisation of the system is likely to be the result. I do agree with James Wetherbe that tenure has little to do with 'free speech' today, especially with the historical religious connotation he mentions. But what tenure ensures in many cases (especially in the social sciences and humanities where 'industry relations' are not common) is the possibility to be at least some form of 'public intellectual' - even if that means in some cases that professors are not great teachers or publish a lot. In my view, the abolishing tenure debate is a thinly disguised attack on 'non-productive' disciplines and the remainders of public intellctualism that still exists!The Folly of Scientism The fundamental problem raised by the identification of “good science” with “institutional science” is that it assumes the practitioners of science to be inherently exempt, at least in the long term, from the corrupting influences that affect all other human practices and institutions. Ladyman, Ross, and Spurrett explicitly state that most human institutions, including “governments, political parties, churches, firms, NGOs, ethnic associations, families ... are hardly epistemically reliable at all.” However, “our grounding assumption is that the specific institutional processes of science have inductively established peculiar epistemic reliability.” This assumption is at best naïve and at worst dangerous. If any human institution is held to be exempt from the petty, self-serving, and corrupting motivations that plague us all, the result will almost inevitably be the creation of a priestly caste demanding adulation and required to answer to no one but itself.If you really have some spare time on your hand treat yourself to this excellent essay that engages with questions around the power of (natural) science: Both in the work of professional philosophers and in popular writings by natural scientists, it is frequently claimed that natural science does or soon will constitute the entire domain of truth. And this attitude is becoming more widespread among scientists themselves. All too many of my contemporaries in science have accepted without question the hype that suggests that an advanced degree in some area of natural science confers the ability to pontificate wisely on any and all subjects.I think this essay is important to understand why so much of development research and policies focuses on measuring, counting and 'proving'-which brings us back to the very beginning and Robert Chambers' reflections on participatory approaches...
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Arctic anthropology: Sámi herding, Utsjoki, Lemmenjoki Finland TV
For those interested in Sámi reindeer herding in northern Finland, and Utsjoki, and especially those who know German, you may be interested to watch a programme in the German second channel ZDF that they were sending for the end of … Continue reading →
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Jason Baird Jackson: Scott Zarrow (1958-2012)
I have lived in five cities. They all have their charms and I have a sense of connection to all of them, but Tulsa is special for lots of reasons. The internet means that I can listen to the Tulsa public radio station (KWGS is great) and keep up with the museum exhibitions at Philbrook [...]
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CONNECTED in CAIRO: 2012 In Review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 42,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 10 Film Festivals Click here to see the complete report.
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