Reading the London Review of Books (January 3, 2013), I came upon this:Five years ago, I helped to unmask a corporate spy. Climate activism was at its peak: the second ‘climate camp’ had spent a week at Heathrow the summer before, and many environmental groups had reported an upsurge in membership. Ken Tobias was one such new member. He came to his first Plane Stupid meeting at a pub in Russell Square in December 2007. Posh, eager, with a Palestinian keffiyeh around his neck, Ken was fresh out of Oxford and very keen. He never missed a meeting, and was always offering to arrange extra ones. He thought environmental activism should take bigger risks, he said. It's the opening of Katrina Forrester's review of Eveline Lubbers' Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists. I noted the story back in 2008, and that part of what gave "Ken Tobias" away was how he dressed: he mixed the kufiya with Armani jeans and designer shirts. But as Forrester notes, "The press described him as more Austin Powers than James Bond, and even that may have been too much of a compliment." The other corporate and police spies described in Lubbers' book are much more sinister than the incompetent "Ken."The Guardian did a report on spying on activist groups in 2011, mentioning "Ken Tobias" (real name: Tony Kendall).

You might think you already know a lot about Scientology, what with the amount of celebrities that are part of the church. Trust me, you know nothing unless you read Lawrence Wright‘s Going Clear – Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief. The book is an expansion of Wright’s New Yorker article on Paul Haggis, who spent decades in Scientology only to be disillusioned and resigning from it over the Proposition 8 issue in California. Scientology was listed as a supporter of the ban on gay marriage, two of Haggis’s daughters are gay. He asked for the spokesperson of the organization to retract the support. This was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. [Although I cannot personally forgive Haggis for being the initiator of that appalling POS that was Walker: Texas Ranger.] The book, then, goes beyond Haggis although it starts and ends with him. Wright spends quite a bit of book space on Lafayette Ron Hubbard (LRH). He comes across as a highly creative, chronically lying, abusive con man who figured out how to make a ton of money and exploit a lot of people. His entire life seems to be one carefully constructed lie after another. I am not surprised he was friend with other right-wing unpleasant characters like Robert Heinlein. And he was a terrible, controlling and neglectful at the same time, husband and father, and a creepy character, what with the underage Messengers. “TO MAKE SURE his orders were carried out, Hubbard created the Commodore’s Messengers Organization. In the beginning, the Messengers were four young teenage girls, including Yvonne Gillham’s two daughters, Terri and Janis, who were thirteen and eleven years old; Annie Tidman, twelve; and, briefly, Hubbard’s youngest daughter, Suzette, who was thirteen at the time. Soon, several more teenage girls joined them, and Suzette went to work on the decks. Two of the girls were always posted outside Hubbard’s office, waiting to take his handwritten directives to the mimeograph machine or deliver his orders in person. He instructed them to parrot his exact words and tone of voice when they were delivering one of his directives— to inform the captain what time to set sail, for instance, or to tell a member of the crew he was “a fucking asshole” if he had displeased him. Hubbard allowed them to create their own uniforms, so in warmer climates they attired themselves in white hot pants, halter tops, and platform shoes. When the Commodore moved around the ship, one or more Messengers trailed behind him, carrying his hat and an ashtray, lighting his cigarettes, and quickly moving a chair into place if he started to sit down. People lived in fear of Hubbard’s teenage minions. They had to call the Messenger “sir” even if she was a twelve-year-old girl. (…) The relationship between Hubbard and these girls was intimate but not overtly sexual. They prepared his bath when he retired and would sit outside his room until he awakened and called out, “Messenger!” They would help him out of bed, light his cigarette, run his shower, prepare his toiletries, and help him dress. Some of the children had parents on the ship, others were there alone, but in either case Hubbard was their primary caretaker— and vice versa. When the girls became old enough to start wearing makeup, Hubbard was the one who showed them how to apply it. He also helped them do their hair.” (107) What is obvious is that the mistreatment that Hubbard inflicted upon his family are clearly reflected, on a larger scale, in the way the organization leaders treat their own members. As much as Wright takes pain to be objective in his depiction of Scientology – there is no mockery of the doctrine and beliefs – the Church comes off as a terrorist organization, and its leader as a violent bully. Frankly, I had no idea of the extent of the abuse and violence going on in there and it is appalling to me that such an organization still enjoys tax exemptions and is pursued criminally for things such as harassment, kidnapping and other charges. But the book is thoroughly sourced despite denials from Church officials. Again, at no point does Wright engage in derision of the belief system crafted by LRH. After all, as he points out, if one wants to make fun of beliefs, one can do so of any religion and Scientology has common elements with several of them. And actually, from Wright’s writings, it does look like LHR and the other organization leader truly believe their doctrine. So, it is not entirely a massive con game. Through and through though, the imprint of Hubbard on everything is obvious: “The years at sea were critical ones for the future of Scientology. Even as Hubbard was inventing the doctrine, each of his decisions and actions would become enshrined in Scientology lore as something to be emulated— his cigarette smoking, for instance, which is still a feature of the church’s culture at the upper levels, as are his 1950s habits of speech, his casual misogyny, his aversion to perfume and scented deodorants, and his love of cars and motorcycles and Rolex watches. More significant is the legacy of his belittling behavior toward subordinates and his paranoia about the government. Such traits stamped the religion as an extremely secretive and sometimes hostile organization that saw enemies on every corner.” (108) What LHR also initiated was the practice of punishing people for supposed bad thoughts against him or the organization. From people being thrown overboard one of the Church’s ships to solitary confinement to forced labor and imprisonment, to beatings, there is no end to the way the organization leaders, and especially its current Chairman of the Board (COB, as he is called) will torture, torment, bully, and brutalize. The depictions of the punishment inflicted upon members for the slightest (often arbitrarily defined) offense cannot be described as something other than torture. And child abuse started under Hubbard himself: “Hubbard increasingly turned his wrath on children, who were becoming a nuisance on the ship. He thought that they were best raised away from their parents, who were “counter-intention” to their children. As a result, he became their only— stern as well as neglectful— parent. Children who committed minor infractions, such as laughing inappropriately or failing to remember a Scientology term, would be made to climb to the crow’s nest, at the top of the mast, four stories high, and spend the night, or sent to the hold and made to chip rust. A rambunctious four-year-old boy named Derek Greene, an adopted black child, had taken a Rolex watch belonging to a wealthy member of the Sea Org and dropped it overboard. Hubbard ordered him confined in the chain locker, a closed container where the massive anchor chain is stored. It was dark, damp, and cold. There was a danger that the child could be mutilated if the anchor was accidentally lowered or slipped. Although he was fed, he was not given blankets or allowed to go to the bathroom. He stayed sitting on the chain for two days and nights. The crew could hear the boy crying. His mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, but Hubbard reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior. Other young children were sentenced to the locker for infractions— such as chewing up a telex— for as long as three weeks. Hubbard ruled that they were Suppressive Persons. One little girl, a deaf mute, was placed in the locker for a week because Hubbard thought it might cure her deafness.” (112) Wright follows these trajectories of LHR and Scientology relatively chronologically with certain recurrent themes that define the organization’s attitude towards the government, journalists, critiques and celebrities. The principles that the Church follows were all laid out by LHR himself: the belief in government conspiracies which triggered Operation Snow White. What is Operation snow White? Read and be shocked: “In Hubbard’s absence, Mary Sue exerted increased control over the church’s operations. Hubbard had already appointed her the head of the Guardian’s Office, a special unit with a broad mandate to protect the religion. Among its other duties, the GO functioned as an intelligence agency, gathering information on critics and government agencies around the world, generating lawsuits to intimidate opponents, and waging an unremitting campaign against mental health professionals. It was the GO that Hubbard tasked with Snow White. Under Mary Sue’s direction, the GO infiltrated government offices around the world, looking for damning files on the church. Within the next few years, as many as five thousand Scientologists were covertly placed in 136 government agencies worldwide. Project Grumpy, for instance, covered Germany, where the Guardian’s Office was set up to infiltrate Interpol as well as German police and immigration authorities. In addition, there was a scheme to accuse German critics of the church of committing genocide. Project Sleepy was to clear files in Austria; Happy was for Denmark, Bashful for Belgium, and Dopey for Italy. There were also Projects Mirror, Apple, Reflection, and so on, all drawn from elements of the fairy tale. Projects Witch and Stepmother both targeted the UK, the source of Scientology’s immigration problems. Project Hunter was the United States, where Scientologists penetrated the IRS, the Justice, Treasury, and Labor Departments, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as foreign embassies and consulates; private companies and organizations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Better Business Bureau; and newspapers— including the St. Petersburg Times, the Clearwater Sun, and the Washington Post— that were critical of the religion. In an evident attempt at blackmail, they stole the Los Angeles IRS intelligence files of celebrities and political figures, including California governor Jerry Brown, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, and Frank Sinatra. Nothing in American history can compare with the scale of the domestic espionage of Operation Snow White.” (123) Another principle is the harassment of critiques. Anyone critical of the organization, journalist or former member, will be followed, have their trash searched, their pets disappeared, will be accused of all sorts of “perversions”, and ultimately be buried under an avalanche of lawsuits that will drive them to bankruptcy if they don’t settle or recant. That is actually what happened to the IRS when Scientology’s tax exempt status was in question. In that sense, it is truly a terrorist organization. But it is not just critiques that are subject to such treatment. Members themselves are subject to blackmail and intimidation. After all, the practice of auditing means that the organization has files on all its members, confessing to their most intimate ideas, fantasies, etc. All things that can be potentially embarrassing if they were not kept confidential. This gives the church tremendous power over its members it they decide to step out of line. And if they do, all sorts of punishments are meted out, from soviet-style confessions, to debasing treatments, to physical punishment. It is actually by punishing many people at the same time that the church gets a lot of free labor. If church members try to leave, it will be very hard. They will have to “blow”, that is, to escape and disappear because big guys from the church will go after them and intimidate them into returning or use physical force if necessary. And if people do end up leaving, the church will bill them hundreds of thousands of dollars for the “training” they have received (even though people have already paid for that). Scientology’s interest in Hollywood celebrities was also part of LHR’s big plan: “When the Church of Scientology was officially founded in Los Angeles, in February 1954, by several of Hubbard’s devoted followers, there was already a history of religious celebrities and celebrity religions. The cultivation of famous people— or people who aspired to be famous— was a feature of Hubbard’s grand design. He foresaw that the best way of promoting Scientology as a ladder to enlightenment was to court celebrities, whom he defined as “any person important enough in his field or an opinion leader or his entourage, business associates, family or friends with particular attention to the arts, sports and management and government.”” (138) It’s not hard to see why. After all, we know, since Max Weber, that one cannot inherit charisma. Charisma usually disappears when the charismatic leader dies. Any organization faced with this problem can either routinize it and anchor the organization into bureaucratic processes (which the church has done) or, it can “borrow” charisma, something that Hollywood celebrities certainly have. After all, the doctrine of scientology is about saving the entire world, so, one needs big “influencers”. Borrowing celebrity charisma turns out to be especially necessary when an aging LHR disappeared in 1980 (to avoid lawsuits from several countries) and died in 1986 (I didn’t know what had happened in that 6-year period). The importance of celebrities is fairly developed in the book in the chapters dedicated to the church’s treatment of Tom Cruise. It is both fascinating and creepy. The enlisting of celebrities has helped the church weather bad publicity that comes up on a regular basis, whether it was the IRS suits, the Lisa McPherson suspicious death, to Cruise’s comments on Brooke Shields and psychiatry, and regular scandals that plague the church. At the same time, the church, at least in the US, is relatively protected as it has received support from Bill Clinton to former education secretary Rod Paige who was receptive to Hubbard’s ideas on education and was lobbied by scientology to include some of these ideas in NCLB. After reading all the accounts of the free or poorly paid labor the church extracts from its members, it is no wonder it is such a wealthy organization that it can bury its enemies in lawsuits. Permanent staff (Sea Org members) are paid $50 a week (minus fees for punishment), are poorly clothed and fed and housed in collective barracks. “The contrast with the other Sea Org members is stark. They eat in a mess hall, which features a meat-and-potatoes diet and a salad bar, except for occasional extended periods of rice and beans for those who are being punished. The average cost per meal as of 2005 (according to Marc Headley, who participated in the financial planning each week) was about seventy-five cents a head— significantly less than what is spent per inmate in the California prison system. When members join the Sea Org, they are issued two sets of pants, two shirts, and a pair of shoes, which is their lifetime clothing allotment; anything else, they purchase themselves. Although the nominal pay for Sea Org members is fifty dollars a week, many are fined for various infractions, so it’s not unusual to be paid as little as thirteen or fourteen dollars. Married couples at Gold Base share a two-bedroom apartment with two other couples, meaning that one pair sleeps on the couch. In any case, few get more than five or six hours of sleep a night. There are lavish exercise facilities at the base— an Olympic pool, a golf course, basketball courts— but they are rarely used. Few are permitted to have access to computers. Every personal phone call is listened to; every letter is inspected. Bank records are opened and records kept of how much money people have. Cultural touchstones common to most Americans are often lost on Sea Org members at Gold Base. They may not know the name of the president of the United States or be able to tell the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. It’s not as if there is no access to outside information; there is a big-screen television in the dining hall, and people can listen to the radio or subscribe to newspapers and magazines; however, news from the outside world begins to lose its relevance when people are outside of the wider society for extended periods of time. Many Sea Org members have not left the base for a decade.” (273) That is indeed in contrast with the first class, lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the top if the church’s hierarchy and the celebrities who received indeed star treatment when they stay at the facilities.  And, of course, since many children are born to parents who are in the church, they get to work as well, receive limited education, all in breach of several states’ child labor laws. Overall, it is a very well-written, well-sourced, and very informative book on this organization. I am curious as to whether Wright will be subject to the same harassment to which other journalists have been subjected when they investigated the church or whether he will be sued into bankruptcy. Because, even though Wright really does not come down hard on the organization, the church still comes off as monstrous. As I mentioned earlier, if you thought you knew all there is to know about scientology, you do not unless you read this book. From a sociological point of view, it is a fascinating read as a study in the creation of a religious social movement, based on charismatic leadership and the one-man creation of an entire universe of belief.

Photo of R. V. Radev with signature: “For these who love to travel, i devote my travel notes.” The blogger Ruslan Trad has sent along an interesting piece regarding a Bulgarian traveler to Yemen, R. V. Radev, who published a book on his travels in 1906. If you can read Bulgarian, check out the original blog item. Otherwise, Ruslan has sent me a brief translated excerpt and some of the photographs, which I include here. “Much like the Bedouin in the vast desert – one of those few unknown patches on the Earth’s surface, unexplored by Europeans – the Arab of the Happy Arabian coast today fights a legendary battle that turns fighters into heroes, invulnerable even to the slashes of the vengeful, merciless blade of Istanbul. A revolutionary network with its center in Syria is redoubling its efforts and preparing to sweep over all of Arabia, which has an estimated population of 12 million. Standing in the path of these millions is nothing more than one or two hundred thousand government clerks, looters, Turks and a few garrisons, spread around fortified checkpoints – a battle that would take no more than a couple of days to reach a favorable outcome, were it not for the proverbial scuffles between the various chiefs of the numerous tribes inhabiting Arabia, or for Turkey’s underhanded tactics in handing out bribes – gifts to some, privileges and unlimited power to others. Turkey sows the seeds of rivalry among the Sheikhs so they would fight and destroy each other. Neither the masses, nor the intellectual class, the rich Arabs, seem to understand that it would take no more than a couple of hours to resolve the issue of freedom and independence for Arabia, for which so much blood has, and continues to be shed…” (more…)

Photographing tourists taking photos at Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. Photo by David Thompson.The Salar de Uyuni tour in Bolivia is one of the obligatory stops in the South American tourist trail. A trip through a series of deserts, surreal rock formations, geysers, bright pink lakes with flocks of flamingos, culminating in a journey through the world’s largest salt flats, it is certainly one of the most bizarre, psychedelic landscapes on earth. Of course, given its visual advantages it’s also a potential smorgasbord of perspective-trick photos, where you can shoot yourself balancing on an orange, or standing on someone’s shoulder, whispering into their ear, or crushing someone under your foot. Think of it as the South American equivalent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, with everyone trying to keep the tower up with their hands. In the salt flats you step out of your 4×4 and the next hour is race to think of the most creative photo you can make from the sea of white and blue.Of course, as in Pisa, you shoot the scene even a few centimetres off, and suddenly the photo makes no sense. In fact, the image represents the view of no-one. It’s a memory you never actually experienced. Going through Uyuni made me start thinking about how we make these images. No matter whether in a salt flat or a city, a beach or a cemetery, we are inseparable from our cameras, yet the images are always removed from our own experience. It’s easy to dismiss it all as part of the fake, superficial nature of tourism itself, which is what most backpackers do. But it’s very easy for me to criticise backpackers, since we spend so much time criticising each other. So instead, I am going to try thinking more constructively about the whole thing.Everyone travels with cameras. Why? This is not a particularly recent phenomenon; the idea of taking a holiday without snapping photos has seemed unthinkable for many decades, and anthropologists and other social scientists have been studying the relationship between tourism and photography since the late seventies [1]. Photography has been with us for over a century, transforming our relationship with images – as Stewart Ewen argues, during the twentieth century we have become saturated with images which have become crucial in how we build our own identities, often becoming more important than the objects they are supposed to represent [2]. But technology also changes rapidly. The idea of travelling around with rolls of film, developing them only once you’ve returned home, and dutifully arranging them in albums to share with friends and family has rapidly become extinct. Not only digital photography but also Facebook (and more recently Instagram) have transformed how we take photos. It is a more instantly social activity, allowing people from all around the world to see our journeys and comment on them. It’s a way we can share our journeys and maintain a conversation with the world back home. [Read the rest of the article]: Happy snaps: A photo essay on photographyAuthor informationDavid ThompsonUniversity of Sydney at University of SydneyDavid Thompson has been travelling around South America since he completed his final-year undergraduate thesis on cosmopolitanism and consumption in Latin America at The University of Sydney, Australia, in late 2010. He has blogged about his ethnographic observations on the Occupy Rio movement, materiality and cosmopolitanism, and the vicissitudes of tourism on the Material World Blog and on Erin B. Taylor's blog.Original article: Happy snaps: A photo essay on photography©2013 PopAnth - Hot Buttered Humanity. All Rights Reserved.

Actually it’s called The World of the Soul: A Virtual Art Engineering Project (心灵世界：作为虚拟艺术工程) and it’s the first Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale. Interestingly, in addition to the usual OCAT sponsors, Southern Weekend and Youku, two leaders in China’s youth culture

Devlet koruma refleksi   Kabine değişikliği sonrasında AK Parti sözcüsü Hüseyin Çelik : “Kiminle ilgili inceleme ve soruşturma izni istenmişse, Muammer Bey vermiştir, yargı bunu reddetmiş, iptal etmiş. Daha önce de ben bunu savundum. Muammer Güler’i, Hrant Dink’in katili gibi göstermeye çabalayan adamlar var, kesinlikle haksızlık yapıyorlar. Hrant Dink’in katledilmesi kesinlikle bizi çok üzen bir meseledir. Ve sonra, savcı ve hâkimin birbirine ters düşerek verdikleri cezalar kamu vicdanını asla tatmin etmemiştir. AİHM’e ailesi müracaat etti, Türkiye mahkûm edildi, hükümetimiz savunma bile yapmadı. Ve savunma yapmayacağımızı söyledik. Sonra, ‘örgüt vardır,’ denmesi bizi memnun etti. Sonra Muammer Bey’e ve Ramazan Akyürek’e meseleyi yıkmaya çalışıyorlar, ikisinin de bu işte en ufak bir dahli yoktur. Bütün belgeleriyle bunu herkese ispatlamaya ben hazırım.”   Mesele üzülmek veya alttan almak değil. Mesele sağır sultanın duyduğu, dünya âlemin gözü önünde işlenmiş bir suikast karşısında adalet! Bakalım adaletin tecelli etmesi için gereken yapılmış mı? Cinayet sonrasında Dink ailesi avukatlarının sayısız girişimi oldu. Verdikleri bilgiye göre, cinayet esnasında İstanbul Emniyeti’nde görevli Celalettin Cerrah, Şammaz Demirtaş, Ahmet İlhan Güler, İbrahim Şevki Eldivan ve Bülent Köksal hakkında mülkiye müfettişlerinin soruşturma açılması gerektiği yolunda olumlu görüş bildiren 11 mart 2010 tarihli son raporundan sonra Muammer Güler soruşturma izni vermemiş. Buna mukabil avukatlar ocak 2011’de kasten öldürmenin ihmalî davranışla işlenmesi ve terör örgütüne yardım yataklık suçlamalarıyla 24 kamu görevlisi hakkında dava açılmasını talep etti. Soruşturma hâlâ sürüyor.       Bugün Cerrah Osmaniye Valisi, Güler 1. sınıf emniyet müdürü olarak Araştırma ve Planlama Kurulu uzmanı. Hrant’ı İstanbul Valiliği’ne çağıran Vali Yardımcısı Ergun Güngör Yalova Vali Yardımcısı. Katille bayraklı hatıra fotoğrafı çektiren Asayiş Şube Müdürü Yakup Kurtaran Malatya Emniyet Müdür Yardımcısı. Geçen yıl 17 ocak günü 25 duruşmadan sonra karara çıkılan ve yakın zamanda Yargıtay Başsavcılığı tebliğnamesiyle devletin dahi içine sinmediği anlaşılan skandal davada iki tetikçi dahil dört kişinin dışında ceza alan yok.   “Devlet için kurşun atan da şereflidir, kurşun yiyen de…”     Tansu Çiller “atasözü”nün mükemmel özetlediği, vatandaşın değil devletin korunduğu ve bunun için her fiilin mubah olduğu bir memlekette yaşıyoruz. “Hikmet-i hükümet”, “kurumsal taassup”, “kol kırılır yen içinde kalır”, “memurun hesap vermezliği”, ne derseniz deyin, bu memlekette böyle berbat bir âdet var. Öyle berbat ki devlet bile bundan utanır hâle geldi. Yetmiyormuş gibi, ağır tahrik indiriminden başlayan taltif, iyi tayin ve terfiye kadar uzanan bir mükâfat çetelesi de vardır devletin.    Bu anlamda yeni İçişleri Bakanı enkazın en azından bir bölümünü devraldı. Enkazın derin konusu Dink davası. Nitekim Hrant Dink ister istemez memleketteki bütün adalet arayışlarının bir nevî sembolü olmadı mı?   İlâveten tarihî rekor kırmış bulunan tutuklu sayısı.  Gazeteci, öğrenci, Kürt yönetici, kaşının altında gözü olan her kesimden insan içerde. Asker devletinden polis devletine geçildiği kuşkusunu kanıtlayan bir dolu emare var. Polis fezlekeleri iddianamelerin yerini almış durumda. Emniyet ile Adalet arasındaki hassas dengenin altüst olduğu bir dönemdeyiz.     Toplumsal tepki de giderek artıyor. Mazlumder ve Baran Tursun Vakfı’nın başlattığı imza kampanyası 2007’de polisin yetkisini artıran Polis Vazife ve Selahiyet Kanunu’nun gözden geçirilmesini talep ediyor. Son beş yılda polisle tartışan, “dur” ikazına uymayan ve öldürülen sayısı, 28’i gözaltında olmak üzere 128! Açılan davalarda adaletten bahsetmek mümkün değil.www.dikkatpolisgeliyor.com     Bu vahim gidişatın beslendiği temel sorun Kürt çatışması. Çatışmanın çözüm yoluna girmesi ise vatandaşın bekasının devletten önce geleceği yeni bir paradigmaya işaret ediyor. Yeni bakanı bekleyen en hayatî şantiye bu. “Güneydoğu’da barış güvercinleri uçurtacağız. Herkesin mutlu, güvenli ve refah içinde olması için çalışmalarımıza hızlı bir şekilde devam edeceğiz” demiş. İnşallah! Hrant da “güvercinlere dokunmazlar herhalde” demişti, ardından güvercinler uçurtmuştuk cenazesinde, altı sene sonra güvercinleri korumaktan aciz, hâlâ şahinlerle cebelleşiyoruz.  Bu yazı ilk olarak Taraf’ta yayınlandı. Yazarın izniyle burada da yayınlanıyor.

Closer Blog: Dutch sociologists R. Eising, G. Kraaykamp, P. Scheepers and P. Thijs, have now published a data guide: Religion in Dutch Society - Documentation of a national survey on religious and secular attitudes and behaviour in 2011-2012. This Data Guide provides the documentation of the research design, the sampling method, and the variables of the national Dutch survey Religion in Dutch Society 2011-2012. Freely available now.Read more: Religion in the Netherlands – The Rough Data

After having reflected so much on the conditions and history of camps for Roma in Italy (and France...), I decided to expand my reflections globally and comparatively. 'URBAN CAMPS FROM A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: resources, livelihoods and governance' is the title of a session I am co-organizing at the next RC21 conference (Berlin, end of August) The last day for sending abstract is January 31,

Reblogged from our friends at the fantastic Material World Blog. Aliine Lotman (Anthro Dept, EHI, Tallinn University) “Until the 19th century, the term ‘to consume’ was used mainly in its negative connotations of  ‘destruction’ and ‘waste’.  Tuberculosis was known as ‘consumption’, that is, a wasting disease.  Then  economists came up with a bizarre theory, which … Continue reading »

Thank you to reader and archaeologist Hugh McKenzie for highlighting the Wade Davis book The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. The audio portion of the lectures is archived at the CBC Massey Lectures link below, and the book gets fantastic reviews on Amazon. So, first some links to The Wayfinders by Wade Davis and then good stuff from the anthropology blogs. The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World Wade Davis Every culture is a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? Anthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world’s indigenous cultures. In Polynesia we set sail with navigators whose ancestors settled the Pacific ten centuries before Christ. In the Amazon we meet the descendants of a true Lost Civilization, the people of the Anaconda. In the Andes we discover that the Earth really is alive, while in the far reaches of Australia we experience Dreamtime, the all-embracing philosophy of the first humans to walk out of Africa. We then travel to Nepal, where we encounter a wisdom hero, a Bodhisattva, who emerges from forty-five years of Buddhist retreat and solitude. And finally we settle in Borneo, where the last rainforest nomads struggle to survive. Understanding the lessons of this journey will be our mission for the next century. For at risk is the human legacy–a vast archive of knowledge and expertise, a catalogue of the imagination. Rediscovering a new appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit, as expressed by culture, is among the central challenges of our time. House of Anansi Press, 2009. The 2009 CBC Massey Lectures, “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World”, Wade Davis Of the 7,000 languages spoken today, fully half may disappear in our lifetimes. This does not have to happen. The other cultures of the world are not failed attempts to be modern, failed attempts to be us. Each is a unique and profound answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? When asked that question the peoples of the world respond with 7,000 sources of knowledge and wisdom, history and intuition which collectively comprise humanity’s repertoire for dealing with all the challenges that we’ll face as a species in the coming centuries. Every culture deserves a place at the council of the human experience. CBC Massey Lectures, 2 November 2009 On Learning Entitlement or the Seminar That Changed Me, Gina Athena Ulysse I had signed up for this interactive seminar with a focus on expertise, thought leadership and impact. The target audience was mostly women. The premise: white upper class males write 80 percent of opinion pieces submitted to newspapers. The goal of the seminar was to impart those under-represented in the media with skills that encouraged them to become contributors and in the process move the dial to diversify public debate. Gina Athena Ulysse – Huffington Post, 28 January 2013 Our Babies, Ourselves, Meredith Small That’s how fast these cultural traditions and policies can change, and how deep the effects can be. Because no one really thinks about this intersection between biology and culture, and what happens when you mess with Mother Nature. Note: Recently added Meredith Small’s new blog to the big Anthropology Blogs 2013 list. Thanks to Erin Taylor of PopAnth for the alert! Our Babies, Ourselves, 27 January 2013 Watching teeth grow, Peter Reuell For more than two decades, scientists have relied on studies linking tooth development in juvenile primates with their weaning as a rough proxy for understanding similar landmarks in the evolution of early humans. New research from Harvard, however, challenges that thinking by showing that tooth development and weaning aren’t as closely related as previously thought. Harvard Gazette, 28 January 2013 The limits of Karl Polanyi’s anti-market approach in the struggle for economic democracy, Keith Hart It is odd that Polanyi sometimes reduces the structures of national capitalism to an apolitical “self-regulating market.” For his analysis of money, markets and the liberal state was intensely political, as was his preference for social planning over the market. His wartime polemic, reproducing something of his opponents’ abstractions, was more a critique of liberal economics than a critical account of actually existing capitalism. This would explain the lingering confusion over whether he thought a “disembedded” market was possible or was just a figment of liberal ideology, market fundamentalism. Similarly, we might argue today either that neoliberalism did effectively disembed the market economy or that its claim to have done so was a mystification of the invisible political processes of rentier finance in which markets are still embedded. In either case, the post-war turn to social democracy or “embedded liberalism”–the apogee of national capitalism–was hardly anticipated by The Great Transformation. We should not repeat this error when we draw inspiration from Polanyi in the struggle for economic democracy today. Note: Thank you to Ryan Anderson at Savage Minds for highlighting this piece and my Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History – Geography, States, Empires. The Memory Bank, 16 January 2013 Social Media in the Classroom, Adam Van Arsdale I want you to engage with the subject of this class, the people active in the field, and all things anthropology ALL THE TIME! Use technology to help. Note: Be sure to revisit the always-helpful Best practices and tips for Twitter in the higher-ed classroom by John Hawks. The Pleistocene Scene, 29 January 2013 Overview: OSEA Field Study Abroad Trainning Programs OSEA offers intensive, on-site fieldwork training in ethnography, teaching English as a Second Language, and intensive Maya language learning. Different programs are available to suit the needs and interests of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professionals and other persons who are not students who have a need to develop new skills in interdisciplinary research methodologies. The OSEA training programs are designed to be flexible while retaining a structure for hands-on, interactive learning for small groups. OSEA Ethnography Field School and Teaching English Service Learning include introduction to Maya for fieldwork and Spanish refresher coursework. All programs include Educational Excursions within the Yucatán and Field Trips to Chichén Itzá. The Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology, Summer 2013

Thanks to Jerry Zolten, the author of "'I Ain't Lyin'!: The Unexpurgated Truth about Rudy Ray Moore" (Living Blues, May-June 2001), who I quoted in an earlier post about turbans and Rudy Ray Moore. Zolten told me about the 'fifties doo-wop group from Philadelhia, The Turbans.The Turbans had a national hit in 1955 with "When You Dance." You may have heard the song, as I had, but I didn't know, or remember, the name of the group associated with the tune.Another great song from The Turbans, released in late 1955 in the hopes of following up the success of "When You Dance," is "Sister Sookey." Alas for The Turbans, it didn't chart. But it does have a great line: "and that girl she's gone to Egypt." That may be the only "Orientalist" theme in any of The Turbans songs. The group eventually split up, in around 1962.Love those turbans.

Finally, something that I can agree with. If we want to fetishise numbers we should at least try to get them right. Morten Jerven at FP: Today, due to the uneven application of methods and poor availability of data, any ranking of countries by GDP is misleading. The basic problem is that many countries have been using outmoded data and methods. Nigeria’s astonishing upward revision is due to the fact that, until quite recently, the authorities there were still using data and methods from 1990, and have only recently decided to update them. The new methods are capturing a whole range of fresh numbers, such as data from telecommunications (mobile phones) and the service sector. Needless to say, while we wait for the new figures, any comparison between Nigeria’s GDP and another country’s are meaningless. In research conducted for Poor Numbers I surveyed methods and data in use in national statistical offices in Sub-Saharan Africa. For many countries no official information was obtainable. The IMF Statistics Department periodically reminds authorities to update their baseline statistics every five years (in accordance with international best practice). But within the past seven years, limited resources and data availability have meant that only seven countries (Burundi, Ghana, Malawi, Mauritius, Niger, Rwanda, and Seychelles) were able to follow suit. Of the 34 countries for which information was available, 21 reported having a base year that is within the last decade, while 13 countries have base years from the 1980s and 1990s. This means that our last reasonably accurate picture of these economies is more than a decade old. By comparison, most Western economies update their base years on an annual basis. Yet the available figures do suggest one likely finding: Many economies in Africa today may be richer than we think. Some of them, like Nigeria, probably are. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we don’t really know for sure. The African growth and income evidence does not tell us as much as we would like to think — and for some countries it’s seriously misleading. It’s disturbing to think that, as recently as last year, we were still working under the assumption that Ghana was a poor country. Now we’ve discovered that we have to re-examine all our ideas. For both Nigeria and Ghana, the implications are that a large amount of economic activity has gone missing since the 1990s, making it impossible to write the history of those countries based on the official statistics. Were the estimates made in the 1990s exhaustive? When did the economy grow and at what rate? What policies caused the growth? And we have not even added the informal economic activities within and across countries. And by the way, if you see any figures for those, for obvious reasons, doubt them.   Update Lee Crawfurd just told me on Twitter that informal activities are captured in household consumption data. That is an excellent point, although the collection of household data – income and consumption – are problematic for different reasons. See section 29 of this UN Economic and Social Council doc on poverty and the informal sector [pdf].

from the dextrous camera trigger/edit digits of Kevin Molin and NyX: a Nocturnal in the Centre for Cultural Studies, this: Filed under: cultural studies, politics

Putting the world’s scholars and organisations at your fingertips, the Iranian Studies Directory (ISD) is a pioneering initiative to develop a comprehensive reference and research facility that will open up the fields of Persian and Iranian studies to academics, teachers, students, curators, professionals and lay enthusiasts across the globe. If you are in any way involved in the world of Iranian or Persian studies, get networked now! Register with this public resource and connect yourself to other professionals and institutions in your field throughout the world.

Word cloud of the student projects in the seminar "Identity, sociality & communality in times of digital media technologies" at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna.

And the winner is … Islamophobia from tabsir.net by tabsir The moral ambiguity of Homeland or Argo is a fitting tribute to the reality of US Middle East policy by Rachel Shabi, The Guardian, Monday 14 January 2013 Bigelow: “I’m a pacifist,” so your “Zero Dark Thirty” criticisms are invalid from Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin Kathryn Bigelow: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ torture criticism is invalid, because “I’m a pacifist.” The problem isn’t so much that torture scenes existed; but that their presence in a faux-documentary made the case that real-world use of torture was justified. Argo helmer Ben Affleck has an opinion. (latimes.com) Best movie posters of 2012 from kottke.org by Jason Kottke From MUBI Notebook’s Adrian Curry, a round-up of the best movie posters of 2012. Django in chains: American racism and the bootstrapping myth from open Democracy News Analysis – by Matthew Cole The ideology of Tarantino’s new film resists the necessary dismantling of white supremacy – the system of structural racism that privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or absence of racial hatred. Atom Egoyan: Life and His Cinema from U.S.A.K. Blog Prof. Dr. Sedat LAÇİNER EARLY YEARS Mr. Egoyan was born in 1960 in Cairo (Egypt) as the first child of Joseph and Shushan Yeghoyan. Then the family was in the furniture business. However, his parents were interested in arts. Joseph Yeghoyan, in his youth, had studied painting in the Art Institute of Chicago. Sources say that the reason behind the family naming their first-born ‘Atom’ was the building of the first nuclear reactor in Egypt (Siobhan Rossiter, ‘Atom Egoyan’, Northern Stars,www.northernstars.ca/directorsal/egoyanbio.html; ‘All about Atom’, [http:] Turkish films easily accessible on the web from Hurriyet Daily News TurkishFilmChannel, a Seattle-based distribution company for Turkish films online, has recently opened… Islamist salvation makes way to prime time with TV series from Hurriyet Daily News The popularity of the new TV series, ‘Huzur Sokağı (Serenity Street), adapted from a ‘salvation novel…

I’m giving a Phyloseminar next Tuesday at 17:00 GMT. “Testing hypotheses about cultural evolution” Anthropologists had a name for the non-independence-of-species-problem way back in the 1880s. Solving “Galton’s Problem”, and the promise of comparative methods for testing hypotheses about cultural … Continue reading →

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) Committee on Public Policy (CoPP) has established a biennial award, the AAA Anthropology in Public Policy Award, to honor anthropologists whose work has had a significant, positive influence on the course of government decision-making and action. Public policy is broadly defined to include measures created by any level of government [...]

The Guardian began the year with a series of articles on innovation in global health. Devices such as “nanopatches” for pain free vaccinations that can be self administered are striking examples of technologies whose development and course to market can shed light on the role of design in possible futures of global health. As Peter Redfield has argued, these technologies materialize powerful desires for healthy futures – the nanopatch is evocatively described as “vaccine utopia“. A paper published this month by the WHO looks at some of the barriers to creating and producing medical devices for low-income countries. Also this month high profile stories about poisoning revealed the hidden histories of environment pollution and its continuing impact on global health in the present. Deborah Blum examined the potential links between lead poisoning and violence  [Wired]. On January 19th 140 countries signed up to the first legally binding treaty on the regulation of mercury [Nature]. Talks around the treaty turned on establishing and distributing responsibility for mercury emissions – a question complicated by the fact that mercury pollution is a result of both contemporary human activity and re-emission of mercury released into the environment over the last half century by global “historical polluters”. While governments sought to negotiate “flexibility” for developing economies, a UN report stressed that the burden of disease associated with mercury is shifting towards the global South, Julianne Kippenberg argued that in its current form the Treaty pays too little attention to health, allowing governments to define mercury exposure as a primarily environmental issue and to avoid responsibility for surveillance, public health campaigns and health care. Other items: The chemical pollution of the Zhonzhang River in China reminded Dan Fagin of the struggle to hold the chemical industry to account for industrial pollution in New Jersey [NYT]. Amnesia and the self that remains when memory is lost [The Atlantic] What the hell is in Beijing’s air? [Mother Jones] Is PTSD contagious? [Mother Jones] Seroxat, Vioxx and now Avandia, why is it so hard to bring cases against big pharma in the UK? [The Guardian] [The Guardian] The Red Umbrella Fund for sex worker decision makers announces the first grant recipients and denounces “rescuers” ; Laura Agustín blogs about HIV and Sex Work Morgan Stanley backs health care for underprivileged [Wall Street Journal] Polio eradication was an ideological project [British Medical Journal] Who will pay for chimp retirement? [NPR]

A banker from Africa has a revolutionary idea about how to reform high finance – ask him a question in the thread below, or tell us your views on how to reconnect the City with realityThe gap between high finance and the rest of society is one of the main themes of this blog. How to close it? Today's interviewee has a truly different perspective and hence a rather revolutionary proposal: why not go back to real banking?He was born and bred in Africa, where he started his career in finance. Later he moved to London and worked on a trading floor – though not as a trader. As he put it: "I am good at maths and had the intellectual capacity to trade collateralised debt oligations and other complex financial instruments. But it's just not real banking."The full interview is here, containing some deeply counterintuitive statements about how complex financial products might help development in Africa. The interviewee is coming into the threads to discuss these ideas, as well as his rather revolutionary suggestion to go back to real banking. What does he mean by that?Basically, he says, you should not be allowed into investment banking (the bonus-heavy areas of financial markets and deal-making) before working for a number of years in traditional banking. How would that work?"I went to work for one of the British banks [in Africa] and it was great. I would work in all of the areas of proper commercial banking, each time in a different country. So I'd spend three months in Ghana, in Kenya, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe. And learn about asset finance (helping companies buy equipment), trade finance (helping companies trade), balance-sheet advisory, structural financing ..."Later he sat on a trading floor in London and that was a big shock. "In London the actual economy was so far removed from your work it might as well not exist. Traders would come in, turn on the computer and on their screen they find money, right there. That creates such a different mentality from what I had been doing in Africa. That was very surprising for me to see, that you could be a trader without ever having seen what banking actually is. To this day I can go to Lagos and say: I built that shopping mall. And that bridge."He added: "These days bankers are recruited straight out of elite universities, they've never seen how you actually run a business. All the way to the top it's an insulated community."The interviewee believes that if young bankers were forced to work in the real economy during their formative 20s, we'd have a very different sector. Right now, he says, the outside world is trying to bring finance to heel with new regulation. That won't work:"All that happens with new, ever more complex rules is that people get very good at getting round them. More and more, success in investment banking amounts to being able to game the rules and get capital. Trading floor politicians, I call them."So here's his idea: "Change the hiring and recruiting. Send everyone into real banking first, before they can go into investment banking. So everyone starts in retail, where you actually see that old lady stumble in with her savings to make a deposit, see that local businessman struggling to run his company and pay wages. You make a number of real loans to businesses, proper commercial lending. Next you spend two years in restructuring, cleaning up after a bad loan – and you learn what happens when your bank lends money to the wrong party."And who knows, he continues, when the big players return to actual banking, they might see the massive opportunities in places such as Africa:"Africa desperately needs so-called 'deeper capital markets'. If more local people make local deposits, and they invest those in their own country, there are none of the currency or inflation risks you have with foreign investors. But since there are so few solid local places for the African middle class to invest in, most of it goes into real estate which then becomes massively overheated.Securitisation, currency and interest swaps … these instruments, if applied correctly, could do a massive good in Africa. Africa desperately needs 10, 20, 30 years' money – ie long-term investments – to build roads, railroads, bridges, airports, irrigation projects ...The City could do this. Go back to real banking."Read the full interview here, especially if you intend to leave a comment or ask the interviewee a question.• This banking blog features interviews with insiders across the industry. Here is a guide to help you find your way.This professor at an elite university trains the next generation of investment bankers: "They aren't here to learn, they're here to pass."This young mergers and acquisitions (deal-making) investment banker decided to quit the industry for some of the reasons discussed by today's interviewee: "When we'd discuss a pitch or potential project with the team, nine out of 10 times the first question would be, 'Where's the fee event?'"BankingBanking reformFinancial sectorEconomicsWork & careersJoris Luyendijkguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds