Studia ethnologica Croatica is one of those Open Access journals I’ve found recently. Their latest issue gives an overview over recent delevopments in anthropology in Eastern Europe. The texts are based on presentations made at the conference ‘New Curricula in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology – Marking the 80th Anniversary of Croatian Ethnology’ in Zagreb.

Janusz Baranski is one of several authors who describe how anthropology in Eastern European countries has changed recently. In his paper New Polish Anthropology, he writes:

(T)he Polish tradition of anthropology differs from Western traditions in at least one aspect. Whereas the main subject of the latter were the so-called primitive cultures of the New World, colonized by Western powers; the main subject of Polish and other East European ethnologies were the so-called folk cultures.

Scholars who wanted to deal with non-European cultures did their research in Western academic centers; Bronislaw Malinowski is perhaps the best-known example. The opposition “our - foreign” or “us” and “them” was, in the East European context, identified with the opposition of “upper classes - the people” or “upper culture - lower culture”. For East European anthropologist, a peasant filled the role that the Trobriander filled for Malinowski.

He thinks he is a good example of recent shifts of interests within Polish anthropology:

I am a graduate of ethnography – this was the formal nomenclature of the discipline in the communist period (with a thesis on Slavic mythology; so, one would say, a “traditional one”); next I completed a postgraduate degree in ethnology – this is the nomenclature of the discipline in the post communist period (the thesis was on the language of political propaganda; say – a “modern one”); finally, I identify, above all, with cultural studies: my post-doctoral dissertation was on material culture and social symbolism of the material world – commodity aesthetics, fashion, lifestyle, consumer culture.

In this respect, I am a typical example of the tendency among anthropologists, mentioned by George Marcus, to shift from the first project, which is framed by the traditional field of anthropology, into the second – experimental and new for the discipline, which, he claims, is a growing tendency in American anthropology. Not only in American, as we see.

>> read the whole paper

Spiritual culture and folk medicine have become popular research topics, as Antoaneta Olteanu writes in her paper “Teaching Anthropology in Romania":

We should not forget that, under the communist regime, we were forbidden to talk (and write) about the spiritual culture, folk mentality and folk religion (folk Christianity, demonology and such), in order to prevent their interference with the healthy vision of the communist ideology.

This was one of the reasons why, after 1989, Romanians started to publish research of both the ethnological and the anthropological approaches on peasant healing (both text and rituals, but also general representations of illness, demons, personality of the healer, ritual plants, objects and others topics (…).

>> read the whole paper

>> overview over all articles in this issue

SEE ALSO:

Interview: “Anthropology Is Badly Needed In Eastern Europe”

Doing fieldwork in Eastern Europe - New issue of Anthropology Matters

“Take care of the different national traditions of anthropology”

How can we create a more plural anthropological community?

“I am pleased to announce that JASO (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford” has been relaunched as a free online journal, editor David Zeitlyn (University of Kent) writes in an email to the Anthropology Matters mailing list:

The intention is for the new version to exploit the flexibilities of web publication while maintaining a continuity with the precedent set by JASO. A retrospective conversion of the back issues is planned in due course.

On the journal’s website, though, they “reserve the right to levy a charge at any time in the future".

JASO-Online is no refereed journal. Nevertheless, “a strict quality threshold will apply".

The journal was originally launched in 1970 as a hard copy journal; it ceased publication in that form in 2005. It has now been re-launched to coincide with the Centenary of the Oxford Anthropological Society in 2009.

There is only one issue online. The most contributors to this issue are graduate students of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

The current issue consists of nine book reviews and these four articles:

Arielle Rittersmith: Contextualising Chinese medicine in Singapore: microcosm and macrocosm

Marisa Wilson: Food as a good versus food as a commodity: contradictions between state and market in Tuta, Cuba

Harry Walker: Transformations of Urarina kinship

Ieva Raubisko: Proper ‘traditional’ versus dangerous ‘new’: religious ideology and idiosyncratic Islamic practices in post-Soviet Chechnya

What is it like being veiled and working in Australian companies? Anthropologist Siham Ouazzif sent me her thesis “Veiled Muslim Women in Australian Public Space: How do Veiled Women Express their Presence and Interact in the Workplace?”

Siham Ouazzif conducted 16 in-depth interviews with Australian veiled women. They were well educated and held different professions from professors, psychologists, teachers to marketing managers.

Hijab and veiling are highly polarized issues today. So maybe it was no big surprise that her potential informants were sceptical in the beginning:

In the beginning of my research I soon realized that among my informants there was a feeling of scepticism at being part of a study that explored Muslim women’s issues. However as they came to know that I too was from a Muslim background I sensed they felt more at ease. Nearly all of the women expressed a sense of frustration at having been misrepresented in both the media and in other academic studies. They did not want to be part of a study that reinforced an image of veiled Muslim women as oppressed, backwards or limited. 

The anthropologist concludes:

In general they understood the hijab to be empowering and many concluded that being veiled and an active professional proved that wearing the hijab did not hinder women from achieving what they want.

The veil signified respect and control over public space. Most women gave the impression that the veil made them feel stronger as feminists in public, she writes.

Hadda who worked at a Microsoft company said:

When I started wearing the veil, I felt more in control and protected, men didn’t look at me in a sexual way, I felt respected and that made me feel more comfortable working with men.

But their muslim identity at the same time limited their relationships with their colleagues - especially outside the work place:

The women emphasized that their Islamic commitment was incompatible with non-Muslims way of socializing, especially because it involved alcohol. However, most of the women felt that co-workers treated them with respect and inclusion.
(…)
(M)ost women simply explained that, “In Islam I am not allowed to shake the hand of a man I am not related to,” although a few avoided explaining this to their male colleagues for fear of being impolite. In this way the veil transformed into a physical separation between male co-workers and the women. But most of the women also said they felt more comfortable in their interaction with men, because the hijab restrained sexual flirtation or the sharing of inappropriate jokes.

Of course, stereotypes about suppressed muslim women in the media that were also shared by some colleagues, made the women frustrated and angry. However the majority of women believed strongly that positive changes would appear in time:

Most believed that the increasing number of Muslim women actively interacting and engaging in the Australian society would change people’s stereotypes.

For the women, wearing a hijab is like bearing the flag of islam:

Amongst my informants veiling was far from extremism or an experience of oppression but rather a public statement and as some women confirmed explicitly, wearing the veil is like bearing the flag of Islam, an identity they wished to preserve.
(…)
Motivations for veiling seemed to transform in meaning: sometimes it was related to religious identity, sometimes to a gendered political resistance. The interesting response was not so much their explicit answer for why they veiled or what the veil signified to them in a non-Muslim society, but rather how they understood the concept of veiling in Australia where they constitute a minority.
(…)
Veiling as a form of protest or resistance was present in the women statements. For some of these women veiling was used as a symbol to make a public statement to support the Muslim world. However most women seemed to think that it is was not political but more as an identity.

Interestingly, of all the fifteen women she spoke with only three knew which verses in the Koran mentions the head cover. Nevertheless all confirmed that the veil was compulsory in Islam.

>> download the thesis “Veiled Muslim Women in Australian Public Space: How do Veiled Women Express their Presence and Interact in the Workplace?”

Siham Ouazzif has also written the article (Norwegian only) Hijab i vesten og de mange motiver (Kvinner sammen 2/2007)

SEE ALSO:

Lila Abu-Lughod: It’s time to give up the Western obsession with veiled Muslim women

Phd-Thesis: That’s why they embrace Islam

We have discussed a lot about the strengthening ties between the military and universities in the USA and Britain, but similar things are happening in Scandinavia. And there is no public debate about it here.

One example is a research center that was founded last year by the Danish Ministry of Defence: the Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation.

It is part of the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus and focuses according to the website on radicalisation, ideologies and the international consequences of “Islamism":

The Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation will assemble anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and theologians, who can contribute to the understanding of what happens when Islam becomes a political ideology with the objective of overthrowing Governments.

And the role of anthropologists? (source):

The anthropological part of the project will mainly focus on processes of radicalisation, on how radicalisation manifests itself gradually, through adaptation of new world views, values and lifestyle. Data will be collected through field work and surveys. The main hypothesis is that interaction between an individual in search for identity and a radicalised group play an important role in the process of radicalisation.

It is described as an independent research institute but I wonder how free it is when the establishment of the research center is part of the U.S-led “war on terror” and the premises are so clear. The project regards terrorism as a phenomenon that is mainly linked to islam. “Islamism” is according to the Minister of Defence, Søren Gade, the biggest threat to peace on earth. The Minister of Defence said that the research findings will play a central part in Denmarks policy in their so-called “war on terror".

This world view is also reflected in many project descriptions, for example “Islamic Radicalisation among Muslims in Denmark. A Policy-oriented Empirical Study” by Shahamak Rezaei and Marco Goli:

Islamism is designated as the primary enemy of the democratic world, the omnipresent threat, and when, at the time of writing, at least two major wars are being fought against Islamism (in Afghanistan and Iraq). A vast number of billions drained from the Western state funds are being invested in national and international security.

The aim of this project is to provide empirical knowledge about factors that characterise the processes of radicalisation among young Muslims, e.g. from faith to politics, from religion to ideology, from civic society to the enemy.

The project’s key empirical questions to be answered are:
1. Which processes characterise the movement from “normal", cultural or religious Muslims to radical Islamists, mainly from the group of young Danes with an immigrant background from third countries?
2. What motivates this process?
3. How can we identify radical Muslims?

Or take a look at Lene van der Aa Kühle’s project, called “The Cultic Milieu“:

The development of a European Islam has not followed the expectations of most researchers. Instead of forming and reforming in a liberal and secularized manner, radical Islam has developed as perhaps the most distinctive form of European Islam.

But the question of why some Muslims become radical has not been easy to answer. Studies propose that there is no single pattern which can explain how and why some young European Muslims become radical. Marginalization, deprivation and resentment may provide part of the explanation, but Muslims who are radicalized are often fairly well integrated and at least not any more marginalized and deprived than large part of the Muslim community.

Studies have failed to find any psychological deficiencies and while the impact of radical religious authorities seems in some cases to have had an influence, in others the process seems to be one of self-radicalization.

Then there is one project with a different perspective. Jonathan Githens-Mazer actually challenges much of what is said on the website. From his description of his project “Causes and Process of Radicalisation among Young Muslims in Leicester (UK)“:

While there exists a very real threat of violent extremism in the UK, this threat comes from an extremely small minority, and many young Muslims feel as though they are under constant surveillance and scrutiny despite rejecting any form of political violence.

These same young people also often feel as though their own individual efforts to empower communities to be resilient against violent radicalisation and violent extremism aren’t being understood and/or heralded by non-Muslim communities, politicians and the police and security services.

This project will seek to act as a corrective to this neglect of Muslim community perspectives on issues of radicalisation and violent extremism – by conducting a series of qualitative structured interviews with young Muslims, their parents, community social workers and Imams from Leicester (UK).

I’m not 100% sure what I should think of this but it reminds me of a British initiative, see my earler post Protests against British research council: “Recruits anthropologists for spying on muslims”

There are lots of papers and links on the website that might be worth a study. Among the institutions they link to, we find The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.

Maximilian Forte has written several interesting posts on his Open Anthropology blog recently, among others What are the Pentagon’s Minerva Researchers Doing? and Militarizing the Social Sciences and Humanities in Canada

SEE ALSO:

The dangerous militarisation of anthropology

“War on terror": CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information / see also debate on this on Savage Minds

Fieldwork reveals: Bush administration is lying about the “war on terror” in the Sahara

Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations

Two Books Explore the Sins of Anthropologists Past and Present

Cooperation between the Pentagon and anthropologists a fiasco?

Shortly after I wrote about Olivia Harris’ death I was informed about the death of medical anthropologist Cecil Helman.

Helman was both anthropologist, doctor and poet. He combined both clinical and anthropological perspectives on a variety of issues in health, illness, and medical care. He was also interested in the role of narrative and creative writing in health and illness.

His textbook in medical anthropology, Culture, Health and Illness has been used in more than 40 different countries. Two years ago he won the Medical Journalists Association Book Award for his chronicle of life as a familiy practitioner, Suburban Shaman: a journey through medicine.

>> Tribute to Dr Cecil Helman (Medical Humanities, 17.6.09)

>> RIP Cecil Helman (Book South Africa, 18.6.09)

>> Obituary for Dr. Cecil Helman (University College London, 22.6.09)

>> Cecil Helman’s website

See also reviews of some of his books like Irregular Numbers of Beasts and Birds, Medical Anthropology and Suburban Shaman: a journey through medicine

One of antropologi.info’s readers alerted me to the death of anthropologist Olivia Harris. She died suddenly of cancer aged 60 on the morning of 9th April.

Harris is the co-founder of the Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths College (also University of London) and served as vice-president of the Royal Anthropological Society. In 2005, she became chair of the London School of Economics’ anthropology department. Highland Bolivia was her main research area. She published among other things about Inca civilisation and the impact of the Spanish invasion, changing notions of citizenship and the growth of indigenous movements.

The London School of Economics has set up a page In Memory of Professor Olivia Harris (1948-2009) and a page with tributes to Olivia Harris.

There are obituaries in The Guardian and in Times Higher Education.

One of Olivia Harris’ phd-students (T’anta Wawa) has written two nice blog posts about her.

In Olivia Harris 1948 – 2009 she writes that:

Olivia’s influence in British anthropology and Latin American studies has been immense, but her contribution to thinking about Bolivia is perhaps even more significant.

and adds:

I’ve also been reluctant to put it up here because frankly, that would mean admitting that she is dead, and that has been difficult. It’s illogical that someone so lively, warm and important should be suddenly gone. But she is.

Then, she translated a text by Olivia Harris’ friend and colleague Xavier Albó that was originally published in La Razon:

An excerpt:

Olivia belonged to a well-connected British family, associated with the upper levels of the Anglican church and even linked to the Crown. But she immersed herself fully over many years in a completely different world, in the community of Muruq’u Marka, a day’s travel away from the paved road in the south of the Mining District of Catavi (…).

The comunity members thought highly of her because she shared all their lives with them: worked in the fields, herded llamas, danced in fiestas, ate and slept whatever and wherever. They admired her audacity to go on foot anywhere, to cross rivers in rainy season. She ran around all those stretches of land mostly on foot, sometimes even on a large motorbike which a teacher lent her. Over six months she accompanied the llama caravans to the Mizque valleys. Jaime Bartolli, at that time of Uncia parish, reminds me of a detail which is her all over: at the most unexpected hour and day, she appeared around there with her poncho – and her violin!

>> read the whole post “Xavier Albó writes on Olivia Harris’s life and death”

(Photo: LSE)

“In Search of Respect. Selling Crack in El Barrio” is one of my favorite ethnographies. Now, Philippe Bourgois, is out with a new book. In “Righteous Dopefiend“, he looks at the clients of the dealers, the University paper Penn Current reports.

The paper published a interesting interview with him that also touches the popular topic “anthropology at home". Bourgois conducted his fieldwork among homeless heroin and crack users a mere six blocks away from his San Francisco home. He spent lots of time with them, and even slept outside in homeless encampments to gain a true sense of what life is like for the addicts.

What happened? People in the neighborhood began to think that the anthropologist must be one of the addicts as well:

During the intense years, when I’d be hanging out on the corner, people in the neighborhood just took for granted that I was either a drug addict or someone about to fall into drug addiction.

I remember being embarrassed in front of my son’s friends, because my son at this time was about seven years old when I started the project, and so all of his friends lived in the neighborhood and would say, ‘I saw your father hanging out on the corner where all the drug addicts are.’ I was worried about my son’s friends’ parents, because they were seeing me.

But although the addicts lived so close to the neighborhood, they were invisible. It was “mind-boggling", he says, that he literally had to walk not more than six meters through a little thicket in order to enter a totally separate universe:

You can hear all these people, I mean, literally, hundreds of people at rush hour, walking to the bus stop, and you’re in this separate universe, and the two don’t touch. You can spend several hours in this separate universe listening to people go by and they don’t look through the bushes and notice these people. You almost feel falsely protected in this cocoon. 
People don’t want to see it, either, and the point of my book is to make it visible.

Bourgois connects the daily life in the thicket with larger structures in the society:

(W)hat is terrifying is seeing - and this is in a sense what the book is about - how structural forces beyond our control, historical forces, shifts in the economy, shifts in the political organization of public policy, come crashing down on vulnerable sectors of the population and basically shove them around in very unpleasant ways.

These are the people who weren’t able to recover from the downsizing of the industrial sector in the United States. A bunch of other types of industries arose in place of that, but those people who aren’t able to make that adjustment, those people who don’t have the education to shift from being a factory worker to being an information technology processor, are people who fall into indigent poverty.

The guys that we studied - their parents were the people who lost their jobs working on the docks of San Francisco, working in the steel mills, working in the warehouses that were serving the active factory sector of San Francisco as a port industrial city. 
These are forces that are much larger than the will of any individual or the moral ability of any individual to act in a way that’s going to make them a productive member of society. The book is trying to show those dynamics and when you dig deeper you then see these other patterns, that whites are affected by this very differently than African Americans.

Over half of his informants have passed away during the study and in the two years since the end of the actual field work.

>> read the interview in the Penn Current

>> download the first chapter of the book

On his website, he has published lots of papers!

UPDATE Long article about the book in The Chronicle Review: An Anthropologist Bridges Two Worlds. See also the comment by Eugene Raikhel at Somatosphere

SEE ALSO:

The most compelling ethnographies

Is the anthropologist a spy? New Anthropology Matters about fieldwork identities

Study: Drug smuggling as vehicle for female empowerment?

When anthropologist Michael Madison Walker did research in rural Mozambique, he - as a white man - was variously assumed to be a priest, a development worker, a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, and even a spy. Fieldwork identities is the topic of the new issue of Anthropology Matters.

11 authors reflect on perceived inequalities, differences or power relations, e.g. related to race or wealth, gender or age. As Ingie Hovland writes in her introduction, “the identities that are attributed to us and the roles we are placed in during fieldwork matter - to the people we study, to us, and to the research process.”

But as Nigerian anthropologist and blogger Olumide Abimbola shows, “being similar” is not necessarily less challenging. On his fieldwork among mostly Nigerian traders in Benin, some thought his questions, his glasses and backpack made him a suspicious character or a spy. As he is based at an academic institution in Germany, others thought he must be a German citizen (who could aid others in acquiring German visas). It was precisely the shared similarities (Nigerian background) between himself and the traders, that brought out the differences between them all the more sharply, Olumide Abimbola argues.

>> visit Anthropology Matters 1/2009

SEE ALSO:

Panic, joy and tears during fieldwork: Anthropology Matters 1/2007 about emotions