Teaching Sister Wives: An Exercise in Contextualization

Look!  Pretty, happy, polygynous women!  Sisters....belonging to one mister.  I don't know how many of you have been dealing with this one in your classes this past year.  I guess the show is now in its second or third (?) season on TLC.  I know that this past year, as we have covered the kinship/marriage chapter in both my Cultural Anth and General Anth classes that students have been bringing it up in class discussions (and to a lesser extent that Big Love show on HBO).  Of course, being as students are all unique and individual they have different takes on it but it does seem that by that point in the semester, most are afraid to be too judgmental because of me snarking at them about that whole cultural relativism thing for a few months.  There, also, seems to be a bit of that interpretive drift stuff involved:  the more you watch it the more you think that it seems reasonable.  Anyway, I have quite a few students who watch the show and find themselves wondering….”wait, is this good or bad?” 

Full disclosure:  I admit to being more than a little irritated by that smug, self-centered husband Kody the few times I have watched it.  (The things I do for my students.)  Dude is driving a two-seat Lexus convertible while his wives are making do with broke-down Suburban things.  But, except for those gosh-darn pesky feelings that the wives, occasionally, allow themselves to feel but then quickly tamp down; they are all so gosh-darn happy.  Get the point?

Anyway, Sister Wives has caused me to speak a bit more about polygyny both in my online and in my face to face classes.  What follows in the paragraphs below, more or less, are the issues I try to bring up to explain things.  But then I, eventually, realized after explaining all that in those paragraphs below, that it is a good moment to add two additional points to push them beyond a simple view of the role of cultural relativism in our discipline.  First, you can't really understand complex issues like polygyny (of for that matter polyandry) by only looking at the emic perceptions of the participants of from only the views of one extended family unit:  its is the society-wide perspective that, also, most be understood.  Let's all chant:  cultural context; cultural context; cultural context.  Second, maybe...just maybe...it is okay to judge or, at the very least, it is okay to explore the consequences of some behaviors on that wider group.  And then we can all be happy hating on Kody.  Works for me.

Here goes (and feel free to correct me when I am wrong.  I probably am.)

Polygyny has some interesting consequences for a society.  Since male/female ratios tend to be about 50/50 in the world when left to "natural" forces.  (Edited for clarification:  interesting aside:  the full complexities of human sex ratios still have some mysteries to be uncovered.) When one man marries say 4 wives, then three men, theoretically, do without.  If this is a repeated pattern in a society this tends to drive up the marriage age for men--they have to wait to get married and drives down the marriage age for women--they are married off young because they are in short supply and, thus, desirable.  Society-wide over time you get a pattern of older men with multiple wives and younger men without any wives.  This is what you see with the Maasai, for example.  And some men will, always do without.  Powerful older men end up dominating the society and women (girls) get apportioned to them.

The societal problem that often results (and all societies have problems that they deal with because of their structural organization; one of ours, for example is the race/poverty issue) is a large number of young men who can, potentially, cause trouble for their elders.  After all, the women may find them more attractive than their elder husbands.  The solution of the Maasai for many years was to send the young men away to do other things; cattle raiding/warfare, for example.  This used to work better for them in the past but now that you can't go out to kill a lion because of that whole endangered species thing, there are issues.  Thank goodness, there are jobs available for Maasai moran with American Express.

In America, there are a few areas where some Mormon sects (not part of the mainstream church) still illegally practice polygyny; like you see on the show Sister Wives.  Interestingly enough, those areas end up with a surfeit of young men.  These young men tend to be viewed by their small, local groups as "bad"; a convenient view for the elder men to encourage because they threaten those elders.  Social workers in Salt Lake City, for example, report that young men from these communities often show up in the city, chased out or dumped off by those older, more powerful men.  The guys are a problem because they often have not been educated in a way that employers find attractive.  Also, many of the young men have internalized the idea that they are “bad” so they tend to act out.  Here is a basic newspaper article published a few years ago from the Denver Post that lays out the issues in terms students can understand.  There is even a Wikipedia entry under "Lost Boys" on the subject.

And there is even a recently released film called Sons of Perdition which shows the consequences for children.  It was shown this month on Oprah Winfrey's new television network OWN.  A basic review of the documentary was published at the beginning of this month at the Washington Post.  It is on my list of things to watch this summer so I can't really comment, yet.

After all that, I try to get the students to discuss that "is it good or bad" issue after they realize that the show doesn’t show the full picture of polygyny.   Hopefully, while they may realize that anthropology doesn’t necessarily try to answer that question because of the dictate of cultural relativism BUT anthropology doesn’t argue that you don’t have the right as a person or as a society to make judgments.  In fact, one of the advantages of anthropology as a discipline is the way it forces you to look at issues not from a personal or individual point of view but from a society-wide perspective.  I think we would all agree that polygyny isn’t the “victimless” practice of free individuals making free choices that the show tries to depict.y

So, anyone else facing questions about the show?  Are you going with the "its all good" philosophy?

Pushing back against Islamophobia

My daughter (readers of the blog know that she is a college student at the University of Texas) is in Beirut. She is in an intensive summer Arabic program at American University in Beirut. She has, also, been doing some research for her senior honors thesis in the History department at UT which she will be completing this coming year. I am very proud of her.

Back home, when I share that information, I am greeted with the type of comments and looks that define the world of an anthropologist outnumbered and outgunned in Texas, America, U.S.A....all the way....

Let's tell this one through visual culture, today. Here is what they are thinking:

and here she is in Beirut:

So far, so good. But then the summer is still young. Plenty of time for her to acquire a few labels. /sarcasm.

Seriously, though. I have the care of her car and I was pleased to find that she left behind some of her CD's acquired at UT. My current favorite is by Omar Offendum, a Syrian-American poet and rapper. I am trying to figure out ways to integrate his work into my Cultural class. Here is some of his work courtesy of YouTube. The first is a somewhat personal expression of the bicultural/bilingual realities of being an Arab-American. Some of you may recognize Paul Anka's Destiny being used here as the driving tract. Paul Anka was of Syrian/Lebanese descent:

Here is a clip of one of his live performances of Damascus:

And here he is performing his poetry which allows you to appreciate the beauty and complexity of his lyrical construction:

I speak no Arabic but this Arabic language version of Langston Hughes' The Negro Speaks of Rivers moves me as much as the original poem:

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

More to come....
Edited 10:20 to replace incomplete video posting with two live performance selections.

Twenty Minutes Not Wasted: How to Teach the Big Picture

Super great TED talk just up:




Now, I know you are going to think I am excited at the technological possibilities mentioned at the end--the ones for integrating many peoples into an Open Education experience. Or maybe you think I am worked up about the continuing relevance and power of LECTURE, even in the largest of groups. And, yes, that did totally work me up. BUT more hot than that was the wonderful teachable moment which shows to our students the relevance (that word again) of anthropology. It is so easy to add Anthropology into the mix here. Or add this into a course on Anthropology. Fundamentally, we want students to understand that the people's of the world are our window into viewing the different possibilities of the essence of an idea. What is marriage? How are differing views of its essence reckoned by the full spectrum of humanity? Way cool and, totally, usable for Distantly Learning.

Oh, and check out Michael Sandel's website at www.justiceharvard.org. He has a talk on cannibalism http://www.justiceharvard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=8which I am off to watch. You know how we Anthropologists love a good cannibalism lecture (stereotype alert).

Babies: The Film

For Mother's Day, my daughter and I went to see the new French movie, Babies, made by well-known international filmmaker, Thomas Balmes.

It was a rather remarkable and engaging "nature" film about the first year in the life of four infants from Namibia, Japan, the United States, and Mongolia. I say "nature" film because there is no narration in the film and the focus is at baby/subject-level. The focus means that you spend so much more time "seeing" the babies as unique and different personalities, even though the cultural content of their development is so radically different. The least ethnocentric of viewers will, probably, walk away with glimpses of Hattie's (U.S) calm, quiet self; Mari's (Japan) drive and determination and resultant frustration(my daughter shared this: the blowing of fuses when motor skills don't match internal desires?);Ponijao's (Namibia)languid curiosity, and Bayar's (Mongolia) limitless happiness and charm.

There is ample fodder for judgement and I imagine the less anthropologically-initiated will be shocked at the visible dirt which is the Namibian existence, the casual breast-feeding of Ponijao's mother, and the human/animal intimacies of life amongst pastoralists (both Namibia and Mongolia).

I have to admit to being less than pleased with one aspect of the film. Balmes has stated in interviews that he sought to show different societies in an almost hierarchy of relationships with nature from the stark existence of Namibia to the crowded quarters of Japan. He succeeds in that vision but the cost is a depiction of "Africa" which is going to be strongly re-enforcing the "primitive". The bleak Namibian desert landscape, the pastoral life, and remote location coupled with images of Ponijao casually picking a discarded bone from a pile of dirt and refuse and chewing on it in her first few months of life is really reinforcing the "savage" and not exactly a representational picture of life in Africa.

But the nice bit: pay close attention for you shall see that Ponijao is never alone. Surrounded constantly by her extended "family" it is impossible to determine the relations of the women and children who love and care for her. (Side note: no father is ever seen.) That resonates Africa for me. I was grateful for the short time my own daughter got (at the age of 4) to run with a pack and be cared for as one of many.

And then, I comforted, myself on the stereotype front, with a giggle: "we", the collective American generic, must suffer the vision of little Hattie struggling to escape baby sing-along with weird mother-nature-earth chant. While the group's sing-along earth mother offers a chant to the Earth and Dad follows obediently along, Hattie flees the circle and pulls determinedly at the door. My sentiments, exactly, Hattie. San Francisco: need I say more. You won't find that stuff in Texas or New Jersey. LOL.

Unlike, Ponijao, Hattie spends much time alone with one parent. Not for her the touch--loving and abusive--of an older sibling or playmate. Nor for Mari either. Our "developed" babies interact in carefully structured worlds isolated in strollers, distracted by toys, lectured at with books with titles like "No Hitting", rather than rolling in the earth and pulling the penis of our older brother.

I am uncertain what students might take away from the film but I can see some rather extensive discussions revolving around all this issues. One way to "get into" them is probably to approach the discussion of concepts of safety and danger. I imagine most students will be instantly struck with the different standards of supervision the different babies experience. The film maker has commented on his own role in the process; having been asked the inevitable "when would you have interfered" when faced with toddlers tangled in between the legs of goats and cattle.

There is a rather extensive support site for the film here. And go see it. Its a really nice change of pace in a hostile and unhappy world.

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Measuring Success

Tomorrow is my baby girl's twentieth birthday. In the artificial construct of American age, it is the last year I can refer to her as a baby girl. Next year, she will be an adult.

There has been a lively discussion on the SACC listserv about measuring educational success. Of course, I think it is all bullshit. I hate when people try to apply scientific standards to human behavior. It can't be done. Anthropology has taught me that. And then to take it one step further and tell me I need to be able to demonstrate my effectiveness to the public? Please. Get your cultural hegemony out of my classroom.

Anthropology has taught me that humans are too much fun to waste time trying to control them. Let us relish the process. Celebrate the experience.

Like parenting. Or should the public have the right to measure my effectiveness in that regard? Should I make transparent and explicit my parenting plan? Should we devise models of my effectiveness? (Did I mention she got straight A's at UT this semester?)

Oh well, time to prepare for the annual Dim Sum birthday party. We are having it one day early this year. I don't know how it came to be that she celebrated in this fashion. One year, she just wanted to do it and so we do. And have continued to do so. I don't know what it means to her personal growth but it makes me happy and I relish the process.

The Meaning of Black Hair: Chris Rock, IMF Restructuring and Curly Kits

I notice Chris Rock (such a bummer that the You Tube of him on Leno from a previous post was pulled--trust me it was hilarious)is releasing a documentary entitled "Good Hair" exploring the meanings and issues associated with...well..."black hair". I didn't have to go very far to read lots of stories and reviews of it. Salon has three stories, specifically, on the documentary and ancillary links that pull up stories on Michelle Obama's hair and Tyra Banks' weaves. I haven't done a full Google on it but I was playing a little a game with myself betting that if it hasn't happened already, Stuff White People Love, will have a reference soon to black hair. If Salon is so obsessed with the issue isn't that a safe bet?

If you check out the commentary added to my last post you will find an interesting discussion about the ways that anthropologists walk the thin line of "relevance". I suppose the consensus is that we all use our cultural dialogues to begin the discussions but, in the end, we all want to move beyond to achieve the ultimate "relevance". I want to thank Barbara Miller for commenting and inviting us all to use the resources which support her textbook. Here is a link to her blog, Anthropology Works. It looks awesome.

So, reading about the Chris Rock documentary was fascinating in and of itself but it was more fascinating for me because it took me back to my original fieldwork days. I think I have mentioned before that I was in Tanzania during its initial IMF restructuring. I arrived on a pre-fieldwork 3 month visit in 1985 and then returned a few months later for a full year. During that time the deal was struck and the currency devaluation, government jobs layoffs, and deregulation of the economy slowly unfolded. I say slowly maybe because of the way I perceived it. I saw small signs of it before I left Dar es Salaam and headed up country and each time I returned to Dar I would see specific and dramatic changes. I remember standing on the street in shock staring at the bars of Kenyan Cadbury's chocolate spread out on a street vendors mat. This was a country I had come to know as lacking petrol, bread (no wheat flour)...oh heck, why bother to try to list. The country had nothing. I had to boil all my water and filter it because there was no bottled water at that time. At one time, surviving as an anthropologist was awkward beyond belief trying to figure the ethics of relying on a black market currency and then under currency de-regulation the constant re-assessment of the value of my grant clashing in my head with the local perspective of value that was taking over my daily thoughts--it was all too much disconnect.

But that was all terribly selfish reflection because in the midst of this the Tanzanian people were struggling with their new world. The borders were fully open and the markets de-regulated. Consumer goods were now available (even if few could ever afford them). And Tanzanians at all educational and class levels were debating the changes and the debates centered around "black hair", specifically "curly kits": those packages of chemicals and curlers which gave one the Billy Dee Williams-Jheri-Curl-kitted-look. Tanzanians at that time called them "curly kits" and they were the one object everyone wanted and everyone hated everyone else for wanting.

I suppose every anthropologist has stories about the things they were asked to obtain from the power of their whiteness, their otherness, their wealth and power; that thing that in the closed world of our grad student minds we forgot we had until thrust into the new role of connected outsider. They have a convenient label for it in Tanzania: mzungu, the Kiswahili word for "outsider". Literally? People who go around and around aimlessly. Nuff said. One of the first personal (not shouted out) requests I got was from the wife of one of my then-husband's contacts in Dodoma. She pulled me aside and asked me for birth control and a curly kit. (For those of you interested in the birth control issue. Tanzania, at that time, had only Soviet birth control pills available. The great ole' USA wouldn't supply anything other than the wing an a prayer rhythm method. It took HIV/AIDS to get the condoms in. Don't get me started on those policies and laws. Bastards.)

Next thing I knew the letters to the editor sections of the one English language and the two (that I recall) Kiswahili papers were full of righteous indignation about the issue. I devoured the letters, struggling valiantly with Swahili in its real--non-classroom--version. The debate was early Chris Rock. People warned of the dangers of losing natural African beauty (I always think of the late, great Miriam Makeba here). The arguments quickly moved into condemnation of a system which allowed scarce hard currency to be wasted pandering to individual vanity. The country needed so much. A generation of people raised in the beliefs of pulling together for the common good and then experiencing the disillusionment of its failure can have some powerfully interesting discussions about free market economics and choice. By the time I left, I saw a few glistening curly heads in Dar but never encountered one up country. Whatever politics and sense of identity might have been associated with sporting the Billy Dee look could be afforded by too few to count. But it made for a hell of a paper debate while it lasted.

BTW, you are damn right I walked away from that Fruit and Nut Bar in a wave of sanctimony. Then turned right around, came back, paid several dollars for it, devoured it on the spot in a non-Tanzanian wave of gluttony. I can't, honestly, say that it tasted all that good having been without for months. And, no, living in my own glass house, I don't dare toss a stone at those wanting perfectly curly, perfectly shiny hair. But Tanzania does need a lot more than that.

Ooooo....teachable moment alert...teachable moment alert

Have we all seen the recent discussion of Michelle Obama's ancestry? The New York Times has extended discussion/blog/commentary up with views of noted scholars commenting. Even one by an Anthropologist (yeah team). Its got some nice bits on race. I need to go read the others. I, totally, paused to rush back and tell you. Follow me back over there--here.

De-evolution and Evolutionary Debate

Don't know about you but I am scheduled to cover Evolution in my General Anthropology (ANTH 2346) come this Tuesday. Not looking forward to it. 39% of Americans don't "believe" in it.

And this just in from the Daily Telegraph who is, once again, wallowing in their sense of British superiority about the rampant stupidity of their colonial backwaters. Seems the critically-acclaimed film about the life of Charles Darwin, Creation is "too controversial for religious America".

Here is the trailer:



Can't see the objection, it seems to have the proper degree of histrionics and angst. Perhaps if they ripped off some of those bodices, Americans would be more comfortable with the whole issue. *sigh*

Doing my part, as the new Honors Coordinator on campus, I have signed us up for the webcast lectures being billed as The Darwin 150 Project. Its easiest to get at them through their Facebook page. The first lecture in the series is almost sold out:

"The World Before Darwin" - Lecture 1 of "Origin of Species" 150th Anniversary Lecture Series - at Harvard University
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 from 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM (ET)

I am glad I am already signed up, fired up, and ready to go. Sign up here. If you still can.

Nat Geo has a blog up about the Facebook evopalooza. Heck, go to their Facebook page and look, I can't begin to link up all the coverage they are getting.


Has everyone seen the way-cool Evolution of Evolution extravaganza at the Nation Science Foundation? Check it out here.

Those Pyramid-Building Aliens

I was going to blog about the responses of our local school districts, here in the great state of Texas, to that powerful socialist force that is our President and his nefarious plan to hypnotize schoolchildren to do his bidding but it just makes me sick to my stomach.

Instead, I have been working on those pesky aliens. This semester I cried Uncle and dealt with it in a full, frontal assault.

First know thy enemy. This blog, Ancient Cosmonauts, is a lot of fun for exploring the "pyramid-building aliens" meme. This week in my Archy class, I pulled it right up in class and we had at it. A good number laughed at the pictures. They are the Stargate visualizations they grew up with, after all. Staying with the science of movies, the blog author includes this sentiment (I hesitate to call it an argument):

Do you really think this wonderful pyramid was built by the allegedly savages depicted in Apocalypto or is it more reasonable the line of Alien vs Predator?

Fun with bad archaeology time.

We played the embedded You Tube video and critiqued it, observing, for example, the legitimacy established by the "documentary narrator" voice.

Now, that was a fun one.... but here is the kind of thing you are really up against. A site with the name of Edutube with a .org address promoting this kind of stuff.

I guess most of us begin to critique this stuff from the whole Occam's Razor perspective:
As this site by the Chemical Heritage Foundation does. But I have grown to find that approach the tiniest of toe dips into the waters of where the corrective needs to go. You are, really, only using the parsimony perspective to get you to the Myths and Moundbuilders "it was the locals, stupid" meme. The Chemical Heritage Foundation link does it with the look at how cool those ancient, indigenous people were, they discovered the magical antibiotic properties of honey. Its a bit patronizing and simplistic but it is meant for school kids, after all.

Penn State's Donald Redford has a demystified explanation here which conforms, nicely, to the requirements of parsimony. It does, however, lack the sex appeal of aliens. Or if you just want some visual support without wasting the time for a whole documentary, some visualizations from the Nova documentary This Old Pyramid, are online courtesy of Creighton University here.

If you want to add greater complexity and sex appeal (if not, necessarily, undisputed accuracy), you can get into the whole ramp location debate (summarized in Archaeology magazine in 2007) in the context of Khufu and the, definitely, non-parsimonious work of Jean-Pierre Houdin for which there is a way cool 5 minute Nat Geo clip up at You Tube here.

These brief snippets aren't meant to be comprehensive. Feel free to add. Where is Bob? He could do a better job at this.

And, if all else fails, you can always give up and buy the t-shirt. Although, I prefer "Stonehenge was an inside job".

Guest Blogger, Bob Muckle, sent me the following by email. It was too long to fit on Twitter. I am going to post it up quick and since I am out late tomorrow, he won't catch me to take it down for awhile, in case he didn't intend to share. Bob is the slanty print-attach no meaning to that.

I don't routinely schedule a discussion on the pyramids, but sometimes it does come up. Like you I tackle it on a number of fronts. When I do tackle it, I usually use the framework of science to assess the explanations/hypothesis. I start with the ol' test of testablility. As in..."if you can't test it, throw it (the hypothesis/explanation) out." It is simply impossible to test for the fact that aliens built it. "How would you test for aliens?" I ask my students. They usually come up with a list of things, but I then remind them that just because you may find some previously unknown material or some such thing, one cannot make the claim that it is evidence of aliens.'

I also tackle it on the basis of compatability. That the Egyptians built the pyramids is compatabible with what we know of Egyptian civilization in general, and the evolution of funery monuments in particular. We can see the evolution in size, shape, and engineering of pryamide building.

I also use Occam's Razor.

And I remind students that it is bad science to accept one hypothesis by rejecting the others. This is what pyramidiots and others who use the "alien explanations" do all the time. Pretend to be scientific by generating a list of competing explanations and then ruling out Hypothesis #1, Hypotheses #2, Hypotheses #3, Hypothesis #4, and then concluding that it must have been aliens.

I don't use much on-line video on the pyramids, but on occasion I have pulled out "The Case of the Ancient Astronauts", a 1978 Nova production focussing on debunking the work of Erich von Daniken. It looks dated (hair cuts and cars, etc), but it is really quite good to show the alien vs. scientific/archaeological perspectives. It has a segment on the Egyptain pyramids that begins with von Daniken providing his explanation, and then it goes to critique. It also does this for the Nasca lines, statues of Easter Island, a Mayan sarcophagus lid at Panlenque, and some sites in South America. When I do show it, I provide an update (eg. von Daniken, while not so popular in North America is still writing books and going on lecture tours in Europe, and recently had a big theme park in Switzerland that I think went bankrupt). I also try to provide updates on current archaeological thinking about the pyramids, etc.

Of course there are many semi-scholarly/semi-scientific articles tacking the pyramadiots. Peter Kosso has a chapter called "The Epistimology of Archaeology" in the edited volume 'Archaeological Fanatasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public.' It is reproduced in 'Reading Archaeology' which I edited (Univ Toronto Press, 2008). A good portion of the chapter is devoted to considering explanations of the Egyptian pyramids.

Private Thoughts and Public Labels: From Potatoes to Gender

Houston lost a daughter. Austin gained a Longhorn. Mom still has the hedgehog; you saw that one coming didn't you?

On the road from Austin home to Houston, I passed (again) the sign for Old Potato Road, and had the same thought: is the potato old or is it the road?

Its all about the label, isn't it?

Just after Old Potato Road, NPR had a story about the controversy over Castor Semena, the South African track runner who improved a little too much, too fast sparking a flurry of rather tacky speculation about her gender; although why an improvement of 8 seconds in a year should translate into a gender identity issue is beyond me: only men can improve by leaps and bounds? Or: we are stunned; stunned, shocked, and appalled to discover that she was in fact, a man, all along even though we did not contemplate that when she was slower

But she looks muscular, has narrow hips and a deep voice. Exactly what is a woman supposed to look like?

Anyway, when classes start next week, I suppose we all have the ideal label--Castor Semena--for discussing the complexities of gender identification. Teachable Moment alert.

Juxtapose thoughts about Castor Semena with the news about the swimsuit model killed by the reality star and stuffed into a suitcase. Turns out she could only be identified by the serial number on her breast implants. What is a woman supposed to look like? Too many thoughts for me.

Cue Tammy Wynette: sometimes its hard to be a woman

...especially driving through a Texas night having said goodbye to a daughter.

Teachable Moments Clips: Fun with Animals

Since we are, probably, all gearing up for another year, I thought I would share some of the useful clips I have found for Cultural classes. I think we would all agree that it takes some creativity to do an online Cultural class and I have worked rather hard at finding intro stuff that can generate new ways of thinking without overly-exoticizing or "tribalizing". I rather love this one on cowness (the meaning and consequent treatment thereof), I have it embedded in a wider discussion on ways of getting your groceries but do with it what you will:

How Americans treat their cattle: A Maasai perspective

Following Hillary: Today: Angola.....Texas Tea, Black Gold...but what happens to the hillbillies?

Hillary Clinton has finished up in Angola and is moving on to Nigeria. Do I have that right? Can't say I follow her every move. I just assumed that because of the oil connection. Obama to Ghana=good political move, up with democracy; Hillary to Angola=oil, Hillary to Nigeria=oil. How do they say it? Oh....."enormous economic opportunity"....for whom?

First thing you know old Jeb's a millionaire. Kinfolk say Jeb move away from there. Its the standard problem of any oil-producing nation a lot of money from the crude but how to distribute it? And lets face it, all we want is for the oil to keep coming and we will do some pretty nasty things to keep it so. We are Mr. Drysdale, after all...just keep the hillbillies happy..or maybe, Drysdale's asshole son Milby who tries to screw them out of every last cent while Papa runs after him trying to undo the damage but allowing it to occur from the get go. Guess that makes Hillary the Miss Hathaway in this piece but somehow I just don't see it.

Funny how those pop cultural image resonate. Oil will transform Africa pulling them out of their hillbilly status. But, of course, the story is with those hillbillies back home. The Clampetts "get out" but those back home in unidentified hillbillyland, presumably remain in poverty and the gap widens.

There is a nice summary of the probles in a very simple, very readable book on oil in Africa, entitled Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil, written by John Ghazvinian. The book was released in 2007 and a Time article from that time sums up the issues for those of who don't have the time to become economists and Africanists. I read Ghazvinian's book when it came out and although it wasn't anything new to me, I thought it was a good overview.

For those of you who want more depth Africa Focus has a great new Bulletin just posted today on the situation in Angola; wealth flowing in to the hands of a few and the masses of its population not only marginalized but also displaced to serve the needs of Texas Tea. You can find the beginning of the Africa Focus Angola piece here. Enjoy. And share with your students.

Time Team America: Teachable Archy Moments

PBS has a new (for me) archaeology show called Time Team America. It premiered July 8 and has a new episode up this Wednesday. It has a great support site and easy access to the televised episodes. Here is the blurb:

TIME TEAM AMERICA is a new science-reality series from PBS that sends archaeologists on a race against time to excavate historic sites around the nation. The team has 72 hours to uncover the buried secrets of their assigned digs using the latest technology, decades of expertise and their own sharp wits. Host Colin Campbell guides each expedition as viewers peer over the shoulders of diggers, scientists and historians at work. You never know what they'll dig up next!

I watched the one on the Fremont culture: Range Creek, Utah and thoroughly enjoyed it. Now feel free to tell me everything that was wrong with it. I was so blown away by the beautiful scenery and my hiking lust, I probably wasn't properly critically focused.

Check it out here:

The site has support info and videos that could be very useful in intro classes. Check them out. Here is the info which and videos which pop up under field school and you will find one on CRM and historic/prehistoric, as well. And there is a whole lot more.

Call it Archy porn.

Thank the World's Hottest Poli Sci Prof for the heads up.

Gates-gate: The Ongoing Teachable Moment

I don't have a face-to-face class meeting at the moment and I hesitate to bring it up in my Distance Learning one, still finding Discussion Boards awkward for, well... discussion... so I can't contribute much in the way of suggestions and thoughts on the coming beer bash at the White House. I noticed Savage Minds brought the topic up without much committed or useful discussion--which surprises me a bit given our discipline but....its summer maybe we are all a little lethargic.

Its one of those moments where a number of issues intersect: race, class, and the town/gown tension we academics know so well. The latter, as frequent commenter Larry reminds me is the Jefferson/Jackson debate writ large in our current political climate of the supposed intellectual approach of Obama and the frontier moxie of Palin. (Quick, Farley Mowat, hide the wolves.) Guess whose side I am on in that battle of the network stars.

It is a ripe moment. A moment for personal narratives and the sharing of perspectives. It is also a moment when people dig their ideological heels in and refuse to budge. A hard one for students; particularly ones who parrot parental views and aren't quite sure of their own. Its fraught with peril for intro classes. You can lose them when discussing these issues. Welcome to the tightrope of bias.....here we go.....hands flailing, knees wobbling.

Over the years, I have learned some ways of approaching such issues. IMHO, the trick is to get students to talk about race without talking about race. If you can get them to understand the consequences of social differentiation; give them an immediate and somewhat simplistic vignette from history. As MissivesfromMarx noted in comments on the last post here, you do really need to handle these issues early on in the semester. I find you need to get across two simple thoughts: we humans culturally construct the terms of our existence and, specifically, students have interited a world that they did not create.

I have two ways I do this and I will share one now and save the other for another time. After allowing some open discussion (student-driven) about the social meaning of race, stereotyping, and discrimination, I switch the issue to gender. Follow me on this one....it does work for me.

I tell them that I arrived at the University of Virginia just a few short years after Mr. Jefferson's University was court-ordered to allow women to enroll as regular, resident undergraduates. It was not until 1972 that UVa admitted students without regard to gender. I arrived in 1978. The University had an overall enrollment of about 16,000 students at that time. Prior to 1970-ish that enrollment was almost entirely male. By 1978 it was 50/50. I ask them to contemplate the reality of that situation. In order for 8,000 female students to be admitted. 8,000 male students would have to be turned down. No doubt those turned down would feel angry, feeling they had lost a spot to a female. Perhaps they could even argue they had some score on some test that might show they were a better candidate. Then I ask my students how they think "I" (from the perspective of my gender)felt about that. You got it. Tough shit. How many years did I "stand down" so they could be privileged? Is it tough for the 8,0000 men who could have been admitted in 1972 but did not? Undoubtedly, but they weren't really "entitled" to be there in the first place, were they?

I have always found this to be an easier start to the Teachable Moment of the "race" question posed by Gates-gate. Switching the issue from race to gender, temporarily seems to diffuse all that invested anger so that the actual principles of affirmative action can be understood and the personal perspectives can be explored.

I find it a good first step. But, yes, there is a lot more still to go...

Update: OMG. You must check out MissivesfromMarx today. I swear I wrote this before I saw today's post there. Great minds think alike. LOL.

Witchcraft and that Slippery Extra Step in Theories of Causation

WWE-PS. What would Evans-Pritchard say? Baseball Magic, anyone?

Check out Illustrator Christoph Neimann's Blog Post, entitled, Master of the Universe at the NYT. Fun Stuff

The Love I.E.D.: Teachable News You Can Use

Truth be told, for all that gets published on a daily basis, there isn't that much of use in the press for your basic anthropology class. One seems to be perpetually stuck with that view of culture that is both eternal and exotic. You know, the one that I think we can safely say the vast majority of students come with: "those people have a fully formed culture which sprang like Athena from Zeus's head and, man, its weird shit." To counter-act that view its always nice to find a story which presents "culture" in the process of becoming. Then, the anthropology professor can assert: "see, here we have common and shared human emotions, something we all recognize, being expressed in the terms given by the life experiences of the people--this, right here, is the heart and soul of our discipline, reality and meaning being constructed anew through the lived experiences of people--with all the shit attached." I always like to take away some shit but give some shit back because, generally, students are correct, there is always some shit when it comes to people.

Here in the New York Times is one such story, teachable news you can use: Lovelorn Iraqi Men Call on a Wartime Skill.

Here is the beginning of the story to get you started but click on through to read it all:

It goes like this: Boy meets girl. They exchange glances and text messages, the limit of respectable courting here. Then boy asks girl’s father for her hand. Dad turns him down. Boy goes to girl’s house and plants a bomb out front.

The authorities call it a “love I.E.D.,” or improvised explosive device, and it is not just an isolated case. Capt. Nabil Abdul Hussein of the Iraqi national police said that six had exploded in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad alone in the past year.

“These guys, they face any problem with their girlfriends, family, anyone, and they’re making this kind of I.E.D.,” Captain Hussein said.

Flat Tires and HIV/AIDS: blame it on the alcohol

Yesterday in the early morning, I had one of those oh-shit moments. Came out to get in the car for the 40 minute drive to an 8:30 class only to find a tire flat--not much time to spare and none to spare on the spare.

Ha! Daughter home from college with car and no plans until late in the afternoon. I'll just borrow her car--which was once mine, paid for by me, and insured by me. But, definitely, not mine anymore. Its a bit strange tooling down the highway over-accessorized. In front of me attached to the dashboard are fuzzy pink bunnies, fuzzy pink balls, and various figurines; stuffed animals peek at me from door pockets and over my should strapped into the middle seat belt, one Commander Cuddles, a large stuffed bear clutching red felt flowers to his fuzzy chest in a gesture of joy and supplication.

Once my eyes settled in, my ears started to notice the difference. Gone were my presets and, suddenly, I was listening to the morning show on HOT Hits957 and their special segment entitled "Whatcha doing at the Courthouse". Way. Check out the live interviews here.

Next up some actual music, specifically, that fine love song "Blame it on the Alcohol". Its your basic rationalization song--rationalization supplied by Jamie Foxx and T. Pain (stand up guy, uh?). Lyrics here. We watched the video in class today. Opie. WTF? Of course, my students had all the inside scoop, all the principal celebs featured in the male fantasy got together at our POTUS' inauguration. I blame it on the alcohol. Here is the Obama spoof version.

Why did we watch it? Does one have any difficulty arguing that maybe Africans aren't any more sexually promiscuous than us or that a woman might find it difficult to demand the use of condom in a sexual encounter, or that she might be viewed as a submissive object, or even the more benign "shit happens" after seeing that? Case closed.

I kinda missed Commander Cuddles today. It is strangely comforting to be playing Morgan Freeman to a fuzzy bear's Miss Daisy.

Oh the flat tire? Wasn't nothing but a nail.

My Jared Diamond Post at Crooked Timber: Just Because....

Feeling somewhat frustrated with the lack of coherency in all the never-ending discussion, I posted this up at Crooked Timber where the thread of comments on their post, Diamond's Vengeance seems never-ending:

Perhaps, it is true that we need a more populist voice for Anthropology because there is much very basic anthropology getting lost in this thread and, I might add, the exchanges at Savage Minds.

When I conducted my fieldwork in the 1980’s and 1990’s (before IRB’s), I was told many a story in a pick-up truck. Those stories were the jumping off point for my research. I would have followed that story up with formal interviews, with the notebook out, quotes recorded as carefully as possible, and having obtained informed consent as to what would be recorded and what published. It would have taken a long time to contextualize the meaning of that story. (Read that last sentence, carefully, because it speaks volumes about what Jared Diamond failed to do.)

The ethics dilema: As an anthropologist, I am compelled to “do no harm”. The determination of harm can only come from a detailed participant observation experience in which we struggle (with much weakness and some arrogance) to determine the consequences of our research. I, myself, have a pile of fieldnotes with names, dates, and detailed stories. In graduate school at Northwestern, where there is a large African studies program, we young students—anthropologists, historians, and political scientists, alike—drank many a beer while pondering the fate of our yet uncollected notes: should we keep them ourselves, place them on deposit in the library to be viewed upon request, seal them up with a 30 year rule. But, most importantly, how will we know what is “harm” when we doing that recording? At no time would we have concluded that a story in a pick up truck from one individual admitting to acts deemed illegal in a modern nation-state be appropriate for publication. This would clearly be harm. This is clearly unethical.

(I often point out to my students that a film like China Blue, which was made inside the PRC with hidden cameras, could not have been made by an anthropologist. We are simply not permitted those liberties according to our ethical codes.)

But back to our main point. Diamond’s ethical lapse reveals the reasons why we cannot place any stock in his anaylsis. Diamond, apparently, had no rapport with what we anthropolgists might call a research population. He did not have the kind of on-going, “boots on the ground” (if you will permit the tortured metaphor), hard-fought, give and take relationship with the individuals he purports to discuss. Had he that relationship, we would not be having this debate. Nor would we be speculating on his possible alternate motives. It would not be about him, if you will; rather, we would be discussing the data that he brings to the table, the multiplicity of stories and discussions that he should be citing to support his argument. But that would have been just another boring ethnography and, after all, who wants to read that?

I venture to say that the story seemed “sellable” because it tapped into that great white hunter/intrepid explorer meme. Driving with savages is way more cool than watching birds or sweating over fieldnotes. Sucks to be professional and ethical. (Before everyone jumps on the bitter anthropologist attack, I am laughing my ass off in this last bit.)

Shooting People: A Largely Unteachable Moment in Texas

I really, really don't know how to teach anymore. Now, I recognize that I am tired. I got all my grades in for 7 classes (our load is 5 but I teach two extra--daughter at University, you know) and immediately started a Spring Mini, I don't know who all out there in anthropology/college land do those types of things. One semester in three weeks--that is three and a half hours a day for five days a week. So, yes, I am tired. I am white-knuckling it through these three weeks and then I will be teaching only online until the Fall. I am thinking of staying at home with salt and vinegar potato chips and a jug of wine until then. But, even so; I am fairly certain I have reached some crises moment--the moment when my students scare the shit out of me.

They seem perfectly happy with the idea of shooting people. They want to shoot the New Guinea Highlanders who run down hills toward them with stone spears. They want to shoot people in the parking lot if they are stealing their pick-up truck, they want to shoot supposed thieves in the yard of the next-door neighbour...in the back...as they run away. And now they can have guns on campuses and in the national parks--two of my favorite locations in the good old U.S. of A. In a world in which asking a student to stop texting in class rates a "dis" on rate my professor how can you begin to have a reasonable discussion of the issue. Not that I can remember the last time I had a serious discussion in class....not when I have to waste so much class time explaining that the pyramids where not built by aliens.

And they feel frustrated with me. I am naive and stupid for not wanting to defend myself. To them, I seem to be lacking some important, natural defense mechanism. I wonder if the vehemence of their opinions and their attack on me implies an underlying insecurity in their position. Okay, I made that up to make myself feel better.

I suppose the only consolation is that the one University of Texas student in the class looks as confused as I am. Perhaps that means that we will not shoot each other.

FGM versus Female Genital Cutting, again...and on Mother's Day....Oye

I am probably behind the times, as usual, but I just noticed this nice little, succinct article with a pithy title at The American Prospect:

Rights Versus Rites: When it comes to the lives of women around the globe, do local traditions ever trump human rights? Michelle Goldberg | April 28, 2009

One of those pieces were the media is catching up with our own anthropological debate; it, once again, explores the arguments of Fuambai Ahmadu and Richard Shweder, which I assume we all know well?

Those of you who are looking for usable links for students, many are contained here at the NYT's Tierney Lab blog, I link them up on Blackboard for my students as readers of this blog may recall, we have, as yet, limited journal access at my institution of lower learning. That particular blog post resulted from the 2007 AAA discussions about the issue.

Anyway, what I like about The American Prospect Piece is the way the journalist tried to push the discussion beyond the polemic and the cause du jour of what she labels "fashionable thirdworldism" to suggest we might want to, actually, pay attention to what is happening "on the ground", so to speak. At least, that is the implication when she tells us the story of Agnes Pareyio (who was honored as UN in Kenya person of the year), a story just as meaningful as that of Fuambai Ahmadu.

Unfortunately, I don't think she truly embraced where her story lead her. Maybe just maybe all female genital cuttings aren't the same and maybe just maybe all Africans aren't the same. Could we (whoever "we" are), as Socet laments in his comment on the last blog post, stop viewing everything from the us/them lens and try for some more nuanced understandings of locally produced meanings. I, personally, always thought that was what our discipline did best. You know, bottoms up, you all...not tops down.

Oh, and by the way...sometimes Maasai women don't look like "Maasai women". Shocking, isn't it.