The Anthropology of Olympic Gymnastics

I saw Savage Minds has a post up about having to say something about the Olympics. Funny because I had been thinking the exact same thing. Fortunately, my wonderful students have saved me. We were discussing gender today and one of my female students offered the following observation: "I just think its wrong when you see a man doing the floor exercise in gymnastics". That led to a really interesting discussion of our gender concepts, expectations, cultural constructs, and homosexuality around the world, and why Blades of Glory was a really funny movie. Sometimes, I really do love my students.

Although the woman in me just had to agree with her on that one. Like, what's up with the synchronized diving?

Ah, sometimes its hard to be an anthropologist.......

Keith Hart' s Blog has a new post up.

Africanists and world historians will be excited to see that Keith Hart's latest blog is a detailed review of Jack Goody's new book.

Check it out here, I am well past my bedtime.

The Bitch in/of/on Contingent Faculty: A Rant in Two Parts, No Harmony

From the Chronicle of Higher Education comes a discussion of intellectual property rights in the form of the course syllabus "When a Syllabus is Not Your Own" by Jennifer Sinor. It was this passage that got me really worked up:

To decide that a syllabus is not a made thing, not worthy of protection without regard to market value or aesthetic value, erodes the terrain of the classroom, a terrain with a history of siege. I remember in graduate school being mocked by other doctoral students for caring about the classroom. Most tried to "get out" of teaching through grants and fellowships. The real work, I was meant to understand, lay in scholarship. In a culture where teaching is feminized, I see direct connections between the lack of protection surrounding the materials produced for the classroom and the fact that female faculty members tend to have higher teaching loads than their male counterparts, devote more hours to teaching, spend less time on research and therefore publish less, and dominate the adjunct ranks while lagging behind in the numbers of full professors. My syllabus participates in larger questions in academe about what, and who, is valued.

Amen, Sister.

The anonymity of this blog is determined by my contingent status. No tenure and a contract which stipulates COE--Contingent on Enrollment, which at this time of the year has me checking my course enrollments almost hourly (got that kid going off to College this year). And I am, somewhat privileged, 18 years in and with a Ph.D. and I get just over $62,000 for a nine month COE contract in a right-to-work state. For a semester load of 5 courses and 35 hours a week expected duty time--which must be accounted for on a submitted daily schedule form. Still, its much better than say The World's Most Beautiful Sociology Prof who with a Master's and 13 years in is a victim of "compression" and pulls down maybe $43,000. Adjunct faculty (and my, much needed, overloads) are paid at mid $1800 a course.

And, I really did want to teach--all through grad school that was my goal. Add to that the issue of looking into the eyes of a 3 year old and swallowing the knowledge that Mom hasn't time to suck those cheeks because its publish or perish. Couldn't do it. But the cost hasn't just been financial--it is that complete lack of respect. I call it the taint of the Community College. But scroll down to the beginning of this Blog and check out the posted comments by those few brave early souls. This is where the bulk of teaching of Anthropology is being done. By the poor, stressed-out and disrespected. Sinor is right, it is the final measure of disrespect when we lose the product of our own labor.

Which brings us to:

Rant: Part II

Any one noticed the ever more growing wave of anti-intellectualism? I am, also, getting hyper-sensitive to that one. We are "facilitators" not "authority figures" and this tidbit of information, also, from the Chronicle of Higher Education is IMHO an example of anti-faculty, anti-education beliefs couched in "progressive" views. The piece features a Department Chair who is complaining of the SACS requirement of Master's with 18 graduate hours in the field for teaching at the Associate's level. Seems he wants to hire retired business people without the education. So, we want to argue for the value of an education by hiring people who don't have one? *blink* And our own Belle Wheelan of SACS, seems to be agreeing (in a really slippery, slimy, Twister-playing kind of way). I get the administrator point of view, this guy is a Department Chair and he has to staff classes but I am faculty--through and through--and I ain't drinking the kool-aid. If you can't find qualified faculty, stop trying to decrease the qualifications and PAY someone something. Respect Us. Value Us.

Visual anthropologists: Notice Marx is left-leaning (from his perspective) and on the left. I have choices, you know. Just can't "picture" him center or right or right-leaning.

Pedagogical Irony and the Illusion of Inclusion

I am on my college's "elearning task force". (We don't have committee's anymore, we have task forces which is a metaphor borrowed from the military, although I doubt any of our administrators would know or appreciate the rich irony of that--no, I have another irony in mind.). Our Dean of the Virtual College set up an asynchronous discussion forum on, ugh, BlackBoard, to review our policies (which are presented as document checklists) for our Distantly Learning courses and faculty.

Irony alert: no one is participating! We have yet to have a post from any administrator on the panel. Self Interest Alert. We have a couple of posts from a long time and retirement-aged faculty member who owns a piece of land a couple hours from campus arguing for permitting faculty to be located off-campus. And a couple of posts from librarians (who police the open lab areas and offer assistance) who continually witness groups of students taking exams together. Or people (spouses and friends) taking exams for students. Hey, in today's world that's collaborative learning. But, other than myself, that's about it. No responses to any postings. Most of my postings have been about allowing faculty at the departmental level to work out our evaluation. The model presented gives it all to an entity known as the Department Chair (but there are several departments glommed together under a Chair.) No responses to any of these few suggestions and arguments. The site has been up for 3 months now.

In the end, the administrators will make the decisions they want. But doesn't it look good that they had a discussion forum to tackle these issues? I am so proud of us. Embracing both new forms of media expression and models of inclusiveness. Cue Alanis Morisette. Unfortunately, the shadow world of appearances isn't accompanied by any true meaning. Because our emperor is buck naked. And that is definitely a nauseating thought.

Hurray for Librarians

This just came in via Ann Kaup from the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges.

Information Literacy Standards for Anthropology and Sociology Students
by the ALA / ACRL / ANSS (Anthropology and Sociology Section) Instruction and Information Literacy Committee Task Force on IL Standards

Its what your librarians can do for you. It's is pretty impressive. I think I will let them teach my classes.

BTW, the blog roll issues are Bloggers, not mine. They say they are working on it. Its driving me crazy. I like to scan the topics and they keep coming and going. Score one for the neo-ludites--*&@# technology. Better go put on some Rage Against the Machine.

Breaking News: Rwandan Commission indicts French

Really interesting discussion of responsibility and consequences and, unfortunately, the diplomatic repercussions.

More Neat Stuff

Gordon Brown, recently announced plans to provide British military resources to help "shore up security" in the Niger Delta.

Contrast the BBC reporting on the "offer" and that published by the Socialist Worker or even Britain's Financial Times and you will get an idea of the nature of the controversy. And those are just the superficial mass media reports.

While checking up on the details of the story, I ran into the most amazing opportunity. Michael Watts' monograph on the Niger Delta, Curse of the Black Gold, has been made available in a free pdf version at Power House Books. I am posting both a direct and a visible link for this one:


http://www.powerhousebooks.com/blackgold.pdf

You will notice, immediately the stunning photographs courtesy of Ed Kashi of National Geographic.

There are some useful support materials, including articles written by Watts at the books website here:

http://www.curseoftheblackgoldbook.com/

NPR's story on the book, including at interview with Ed Kashi, is here
and National Geographic coverage is here

Michael Watts, of course, published that fine work Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria in 1983.

Really Neat (and poignantly beautiful) Stuff

If you scroll down, you will find I have added a new blog roll entitled:

Voices of Kenya's Vulnerable Children and Youth

Thanks to the Kenyan Pundit for alerting us all to this remarkable work (asante sana, ndugu). As part of an Advocacy Project endeavor in conjunction with the Undugu Society of Kenya (USK), 17 Kenyan students have posted stories and pictures about their lives. You will find all their blogs in this blog roll.

Cutting and pasting the words of their facilitator Kristina Rosinsky:

A total of 17 students are involved with the training. Nine were chosen from USK’s Education and Training program, which helps poor and marginalized children attain an education and gain practical vocational skills. The other eight were chosen from USK’s Street Associations, which are groups of children and youth living and/or working on the streets.

Their heartfelt stories and stunning pictures are simply beautiful. It is a wonderful gift to see the world through the eyes and voices of this talented group. It seems Kristina has spent the summer setting up the program in Kenya. I hope the students and USK are able to continue the endeavor. I would like for my own students to engage with this work when they return in the Fall.

Quite some time ago, I visited several street children's homes in Tanzania. I published an article about one of the children I met at that time in an introductory anthropology reader which is now out of print. I would be happy to provide a pdf of the article for anyone who would like some background into the issues in an African context. Just email me.

Updating--Courtesy of Edouard

Snow Day! Well, not really but I can remember when we lived in Nebraska (military brat--we measure our lives by places lived, if it was Nebraska it must have been early elementary school) they would cancel school because of too much snow. It was the best time ever. We spent hours building forts and pummeling each other with every conceivable manifestation of snow artillery our minds could conceive. (Worse than the dreaded yellow snow--Frank Zappa- was the dog-poop snowball.)

We are out because the Texas gulf coast is, yet again, being pummeled with tropical storm rains and a visit by Edouard, our non-sexist multi-cultural yet somehow still anthropomorphic weather-related experiential moment(s). How come snow storms don't get names? I'll think about that later.

In remembrance of fonder times, I will be tossing out some snowball posts by way of updating. Duck, when the dog-poop flies. There is nothing more humiliating than falling victim to that one. Unless, its having it rubbed in your face while the wrathful victim sits heavily on your chest.

What being an anthropologist means to me: apparently, it means a long post

There are times when the threads of your thoughts become tangled together in the dryer of your mind, usually wrapped around an unsuspecting button or strap of an innocent piece of clothing. (How is that for a tortured metaphor?) This is one of those messy times. And every blog I read, twists those threads into a tighter tangle.

I have been working on my Distance Learning course. Mostly trying to make myself feel better about its existence. My journey down the technology inroads to achieving this goal has frustrated me no end.

I blame the Africanist in me. I first went to Tanzania in 1985 just prior to IMF restructuring. The country had pretty much ground to a halt. No petrol, no wheat flour, no electricity, uncertain water supply--this in the capital city. Life in the villages was, obviously, much more difficult. Crops couldn't get to market and life was very, very localized. (In some cases, this made things better but that is a different discussion.) I returned again in 1986-87 for my full dissertation research during a time of IMF restructuring. And then in 1994, I returned, again, this time picking up a consultancy job with USAID and the International Red Cross conducting a "rapid assessment survey" of the condition of children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS virus. It was a transformative experience as all fieldwork experience should be. Dealing with the daily poverty and the pain and guilt it induced in me was, in many respects, more than I could handle. I came to recognize that the only way I could hope to make a difference was to teach. And so I do.

And when I teach, I believe it is my responsibility to convey the reality of a world where there are other ways of thinking and other ways of doing. In an effort to achieve that goal, I will with great happiness and gusto deconstuct American popular culture with my students to try to tease out our meanings and ways of being. But in the end, I want them to move beyond our world and embrace "the other". I want them to come to terms with a global economy which impoverishes Tanzanians. I want them to understand the frustrations of the 20 million people in the Niger Delta. I want them to understand the dangers of assuming a free election will produce a "democracy" in a country that has only know the rule of a cold-war dictator.

So, as I review the great move toward technological innovation in the classroom. I find, myself recoiling in horror. I just don't get it. Michael Wesch's youtube of his oh so forlorn students who don't read and can only become excited when engaging with their own methods of discourse drove me crazy. So many problems brought up by the brief glimpses you get of his work. I get the idea that they need motivation. But what is the line between motivation and pandering?

One of Wesch's assertions is that you can learn more by "doing" than by studying/reading/attending lecture? I certainly can't agree with that. I was barely ready for participant observation after an intensive undergraduate experience and three years of graduate course work. I can't tell if these students view participant observation as just an excuse to have a good time or they actually come to understand that its ultimate purpose is analytical. You don't learn from an experiential moment, unless, you have done the ground work. Wesch, clearly, gets it when he discusses digital ethnography but then he has done his ground work, hasn't he? What, exactly, do the students learn about anthropology? (I've seen the world sim stuff--let's let that go for now. I only have so much energy for my rant. I can tackle that one later.)

Seems I might not be the only one lamenting the loss of an expectation students put in the time to read and reflect. The Atlantic Magazine this month has a summary article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, (thanks to The World's Hottest Poli Sci Prof for the shout-out on that one), which discusses the changes to our brain when we abandon "deep reading" in favor of "power browsing". Students should be encouraged to do some deep thinking and not "pancake" processing.

Do some deep reading of Gramschi and fight the hegemonization of a capitalist agenda for education. The crime here seems to be expecting any faculty member to teach a class of 200-400 with 10 undergraduate T.A.'s. We faculty, as a collective group, should not be helping any administrator or member of the public to believe that is acceptable. I teach classes of 30. My students aren't surfing the web when we are in class. Major universities can do better and should.

And then, the Africanist in me rears its ugly head again. How many Tanzanians would, quite literally, give their right arm to be in that lecture hall? Any guesses on how much of their time would be spent on Facebook and how much time spent reading? And more: when will those American students come to understand Tanzanians? You won't find most Tanzanians posting on youtube. You are only likely to find missionaries posting videos of adorable children singing praises to God. Isn't the purpose of anthropology to expose these inequalities not reinforce a world of our own making? And youtube may be a global phenomenon but only for those in a global elite. The majority of the humans who people this planet cannot afford the luxury.

And when we turn our back on our long history of engagement with those who cannot afford youtube and when we loose the desire to engage, respectfully, with the lived experiences of all of humanity, we are losing the central focus and ethics of our discipline. I have always felt anthropology was far more than a collection of methods. I can remember being told upon declaring my undergraduate major that you became an anthropologist because of the type of person you were. My last post was about Evan-Pritchard because as I struggled with these issues, I was reminded of the ways he made that real for me. Nuer Religion (which I actually did deeply read as an undergraduate) humbled me. I no longer felt I had all the answers. Maybe "the other" had some ideas, as well. This gift of an idea led me through my fieldwork and informs every moment of my teaching practice.

Savage Minds and Open Anthropology have been crackling with the scary picture of an anthropology devoid of this focus, devoid of the ethics of respect for the other. At the same time, over at Ethnography. com , we learn that according to Foreign Policy Magazine, we are the most left-leaning academic discipline. Of course, David Horowitz has been arguing that for years. Just to annoy him further, it makes you wish Chomsky was an anthropologist--not just the linguist we anthropologists must understand.

Anyway, I say, if embracing the perspective that the lived experiences of all humans have legitimacy and deserve our compassionate understanding makes me "left" and wanting my students to come away with deeper thoughts than can be contained in a 3 minute youtube snippet makes me a dinosaur. Then I am a left-leaning dinosaur.