New York Times writes about the Ariaal society in northern Kenya and some bad behaving anthropologists. The Ariaal answer all their strange questions. But anthropologists don't give something back. A local chief, Stephen Lesseren, said he wished their work would lead to more benefits for his people:

"We don't mind helping people get their Ph.D.'s. But once they get their Ph.D.'s, many of them go away. They don't send us their reports. What have we achieved from the plucking of our hair? We want feedback. We want development."

"I thought I was being bewitched," Koitaton Garawale, a weathered cattleman, said of the time a researcher plucked a few hairs from atop his head. "I was afraid. I'd never seen such a thing before."

>> read the whole story

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"We have a huge responsibility to give back to the places we study from"

Josué Tomasini Castro has started blogging impressions from his fieldwork among the Herero in Namibia. He is mainly interested in their culture and cosmology. Right now, he is establishing contacts and trying to learn the local language Otjiherero.

>> continue to Josué Tomasini Castro's blog AnthroBoundaries

I recently interviewed Benedict Anderson. He wrote one of the most read books on nationalism, “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism”. I was surprised over Andersons positive views on nationalism. He thinks that nationalism can be an attractive ideology because it makes you feel that you're member of a society:

"You follow the laws because they are your laws - not always, because you perhaps cheat on your tax forms, but normally you do. Nationalism encourages good behaviour. (...) I am probably the only one writing about nationalism who doesn’t think it ugly. I actually think that nationalism can be an attractive ideology. I like its Utopian elements."

https://www.lorenzk.com/english/2005/benedict-anderson-interview/

Anderson is quite critical towards recent theories of globalisation and modernity. Despite all the talk of transnationalism and fluid identities, he stressed, nationalism is in the best of health. Newer examples of nationalism are the long-distance nationalisms of migrants: Jews in the USA fighting for a state in the Middle East, or Tamils in Norway working for their own state in Sri Lanka. Some of the most ardent Sikh nationalist are situated in Australia and Canada - thanks to the Internet and cheap airline tickets.

One thing that fascinates Benedict Anderson is how nationalism evolves along with other developments in society. Right now nationalism “clashes” with the Internet and mobile technologies. Previously it “clashed” with the women’s movement.

>> read the whole interview (Link updated with copy. I also published a copy at https://www.lorenzk.com/english/2005/benedict-anderson-interview/)

(Links updated 24.9.2020) By studying flags it is possible to study how a society includes and excludes people. A few weeks ago, the research program "Cultural Complexity in the New Norway" arranged a two days' conference on Flags and Identity with some leading flag experts from the UK, the USA and the Nordic countries. We even heard about flag burning. My summary has now been translated into English. It starts like this:

One of the fundamental insights of social science is “Nothing is just” (Dustin Wax): Football is not just a game; family isn't just the people one is related to; and a flag is not just a square of cloth on a metal pole. Flags mark group identity; flag are symbols, loaded with emotion. The police in Northern Ireland, for example, refrain from taking prohibited flags down from lamp posts: They know that this would lead to rioting, explained anthropologist, Neil Jarman. Flags symbolize the happy union of family and nation, said folklorist Anne Eriksen. Those who question this idyll, as Thomas Hylland Eriksen once did, will be forced to rethink: As a teenager, together with some friends, he waved a Swedish flag during Norway's 17th of May Independence Day parade. They were removed from the procession and sent home.

>> read the whole article

All papers can be downloaded as pdf-files.

In Australia, anthropologists have been criticized for "conducting themselves as advocates for Aborigines instead of impartial experts", the Australian writes. Because anthropologists frequently had long-term relationships with particular groups of Aborigines, their ability to give objective evidence was sometimes open to attack, Graeme Neate, president of the National Native Title Tribunal says.

Similar findings can be found in a report that was produced for the tribunal last year. It found there was "a certain form of entrenched amateurism" among anthropologists outside universities. "Some expert witnesses have been held to be manifestly advocates for the claimants".

>> read the whole story (link updated)

UPDATE:

1. Comment by Tad McIlwraith:

It seems unreasonable to expect anthropologists not to feel empathy for the people they work with and, often, have lived with … but does that eliminate the possibility of objectivity? What about academics with long-term associations with the government? I suspect that the courts are not likely to reduce the value or credibility of their testimonies. Are we simply back to the problem of the power-relations inherent in land and title cases that rely on ’settler’ courts?

>> read Tads whole post: The Problem of Anthropologists as Advocates

2. Jamie writes:

Perhaps it was anthropological or scientific research that led the anthropologist to feel that advocacy was necessary in the first place!

>> continue

3. Kambiz Kamrani thinks:

Studying cultures and peoples cannot be done without the give and take of personalities, behaviors, beliefs; in my opinion... and that maybe one of the reasons why anthropology has not become the "universal intellectual discipline" that it has potential to be.

>> read the whole post

All over Sweden, schools, workplaces, towns and homes are planning their Lucia celebrations. Lucia, the bearer of light in the dark Swedish winter, has been celebrated in Sweden for centuries. Lucia used to be blonde and blue-eyed. Isolde Palombo, 21, a molecular biology student, is far from blonde. But that didn’t stop Stockholmers voting her Lucia this year, according to sweden.se.

Agneta Lilja, lecturer in ethnology at Södertörn University College Stockholm, says festivities are far more civilized than they used to be:

"In agrarian society people used to dress up as monsters and wander through the neighborhoods, singing and drinking. It has become a cultural phenomenon because we have honored the tradition for so long, especially in schools.”

>> read the whole story

For decades, a stereotypical and frequently inaccurate mindset dominated the way anthropologists and museum curators treated Native Americans in research and exhibits. But several attendees on this year’s American Anthropological Association conference noted an expanding willingness in the field to pay attention to the voices of Native peoples in the development of new museum exhibitions and in the evolution of older ones, according Inside Higher Education.

Bruce Bernstein, the National Museum of the American Indian’s assistant director for cultural resources said: “I think that people are largely enlightened now,” said Bernstein. He recalled that while presenting similar ideas on American Indian voices within museums at an American Anthropological Association conference in the early 1990s, “the crowd was not pleased.”

He adds:

“If, as anthropologists, we’re really looking to work with people — to understand them better — then repatriation [of objects] is really the best thing that ever happened for museums. It puts them in one-to-one contact with the very people that they want to be in contact with and generate information about.”

Has the dialogue sometimes gone too far, Native Indians taken over the control? Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, president of the association, says why Indians still need anthropologists:

“There’s been a lot of dialogue by Native Americans, asking ‘Why do we need anthropologists to speak for us? We can speak for ourselves,’. I think that’s a legitimate question, but I think there’s an answer to it. Nobody — including anthropologists — see themselves objectively. People benefit from dialoguing with an outsiders point of view. If anthropologists are outsiders, that’s also good for Native people to be in dialogue with them. It’s also good for anthropologists.”

>> read the whole story

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Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber agreed to leave Yale University this spring, dropping an appeal over whether his termination was politically motivated, according to ap. David Graeber said he will teach two classes next semester, then take a yearlong paid sabbatical, after which he will not return:

"Normally, you get a sabbatical on the condition that you come back and teach the following year. I'm getting the sabbatical on the condition that I don't come back and teach."

His final two classes will be an introduction to anthropology and a course titled "Direct Action and Radical Social Theory."

UPDATE: Article no longer online, read rather:

Graeber agrees to leave University (Yale Daily News)

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Fired from Yale, anarchist professor points to politics

Solidarity with David Graeber - Webpage

Review of Graeber's book: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology / download the whole book