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“Prostitution is not sex for money”

Published on June 29, 2008 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, gender, Middle East

(via CultureMatters) Prostitution is a fascinating topic and means different things in different parts of the world. In the American Sexuality Magazine, anthropologist Lisa Wynn writes about her difficulties to understand what Egyptians meant when they said “prostitute”.

The article explains why we always have to think out of the box and leave our own preconceptions behind. She writes:

Eventually I realized that the reason I was struggling to understand the concept of a prostitute had everything to do with my own preconceptions about sex and money. I thought of prostitutes as women who had sex for money.

It was not the injection of money into a sexual relationship that defined it as prostitution:

What is involved in defining a prostitute in Egypt, then, is a complex moral judgment about a woman’s social behavior, the number of her sexual partners, the extent to which she submits to familial controls over her social life, and her loyalty to her current romantic partner.

>> read the whole story

Similar points have been made by anthropologist Bjarke Oxlund who conducted research among students at the University of Limpopo in South Africa, see my earlier post An anthropologist on sex, love and AIDS in a university campus in South Africa. Earlier this year, anthropologist Patty Kelly argued for a decriminalization of prostitution.

(via CultureMatters) Prostitution is a fascinating topic and means different things in different parts of the world. In the American Sexuality Magazine, anthropologist Lisa Wynn writes about her difficulties to understand what Egyptians meant when they said “prostitute”.

The…

The resurgence of African anthropology

Published on May 16, 2008 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, interdisciplinary, journal articles / papers, University / Academia

What is the state of anthropology at African universities? African anthropology is interdisciplinary and focuses on solving problems like poverty, diseases and violence, Paul Nchoji Nkwi writes in the book World Anthropologies (download the book):

The West invented anthropology to study the “Other” and it defined the canons. But in developing economies, where resources are scarce, science has to be either useful or be gone.

In his very interesting text that is available online (Word-document), he describes the recent developments of our discipline in Africa and calls for a better cooperation between anthropologists in Africa with anthropologists in other parts of the world:

The European and American traditions of the discipline are distinct and the discipline surely deserves an African twist as well. It is time for the social sciences, including anthropology, across Africa to regroup and to face the challenges that confront us as a continent and as part of the human family: Disease, hunger, HIV/AIDS, ethnic wars, poverty … We need to look for answers to these scourges. It will be salutary for Africans to bring their own particular perspectives to all the social sciences, including anthropology

It is the applied option that dominates anthropology in Africa. Applied anthropology as the focus of academic work rehabilitated the discipline that has been discredited in post-colonial Africa because of its history as the handmaiden of colonialism:

African anthropologists grew up in societies that were either colonized or recently decolonized. Westerners initially controlled the production of anthropological knowledge and the result was functionalist studies. These studies were explicitly ahistorical and often myopic about colonialism. After the colonial period, the new nations of Africa dismissed anthropology both as a cultivation of primitivism and as an apologetic for colonialism.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s African and Africanist anthropologists found it difficult to practice their profession openly, Paul Nchoji Nkwi writes. Anthropology took cover within African Studies programs, or anthropology institutes disappeared into sociology departments.

Some African anthropologists like Kwesi Prah (papers), Godwin Nukunya, Harris Memel-Fotê and Théophile Obenga, remained in Africa, while others like Adam Kuper, John Comaroff and Brian du Toit, Archie Mafeje, and Maxwell Owusu, left their countries “in search of more conducive environments”.

But by the 1980s, there was more and more demand for anthropological knowledge – mainly regarding development projects. Many projects had failed due to their top-down approach. A perspective from below was needed – an anthropological perspective. Also, a shift from hospital-centered to people-centered health care gave medical anthropologists a window of opportunity.

In 1987, the Pan African Anthropological Association (PAAA) was established. This was another event in the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped integrate anthropology into the discourse of development in Africa.

Anthropology, Paul Nchoji Nkwi writes, had to rediscover itself as a discipline that could help to solve problems:

During the first PAAA conference in 1989, many participants argued that addressing important human issues, such as the need for health care, the spread of famine, rapid population growth, environmental degradation, discrimination and violence against women, poverty, and ethnic violence would enhance the discipline’s tarnished image.
(…)
Since 1989, the PAAA has organized twelve annual conferences and a series of training workshops for junior anthropologists. The association has also worked hard to bring the discipline closer to other social sciences. The future of anthropology depends, we feel, on how well the discipline integrates with the other social sciences. For anthropology to attract funds it must take on, and bring a unique perspective to, research problems that are common to other social sciences.
(…)
Over the years, African anthropologists have worked closely with environmental biologists, organic chemists, economists, demographers, health providers, and others. This experience showed that multi-disciplinary work is mutually enriching since each discipline draws on its unique insights to attain a common goal.

At the University of Yaoundé, there were 525 students majoring in anthropology in the 2002-2003 academic year, the same number of students took it as their minor. Paul Nchoji Nkwi witnessed an “increased involvement of the social sciences in health, agriculture, animal, environmental, and population research programs funded by the government”:

Targeting critical areas such as general health, reproductive health, population growth, the environment, and agricultural development led to the design of courses in medical anthropology, development anthropology, and environmental impact assessment. Today, the University of Yaoundé-I has one of the most active and dynamic departments of anthropology in Central Africa, attracting students from the entire region.

African anthropologists want opportunities to work and earn their way – in partnership with their colleagues all over the world, he stresses:

To bring this about requires a series of small but doable changes in the formal academic training programs, grant administration procedures, and grant requirements to promote better partnership arrangements.
(…)
Strengthening the ability of Africans to organize and develop their own professional associations is a way to address all of these issues at once. Truly professional associations will link Northern and African anthropologists in a single intellectual, publishing, and teaching endeavor on a more equal footing.

>> read the whole text “Anthropology in a Post-Colonial Africa – The Survival Debate” by Paul Nchoji Nkwi (Word-document)

SOME LINKS RELATED TO AFRICAN ANTHROPOLOGY:

Pan African Anthropological Association (PAAA) (no updates since 2005!)

African Anthropologist (Journal of the Pan African Anthropological Association)

Etho-Net Africa (the new website of this network is no longer available)

African e-Journals Project

Nordic Journal of African Studies

African Studies Quarterly

African Journal on Conflict Resolution

JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies

Afrikanistik online

Africa Writes

Book and papers online: Working towards a global community of anthropologists

The West invented anthropology to…

Really an ethnic conflict? An anthropologist on the Kenya-crisis

Published on January 28, 2008 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, politics, poverty, Us and Them

Both in Norwegian and international media, the recent crisis in Kenya has often been described as an ethnic or an tribal conflict. But is this a correct view? “There is a tendency in media in the West to portray Africa as a place where tribal rivalries inevitably and almost naturally yield conflict and violence, and that is fairly misleading”, says anthropologist Angelique Haugerud in a The Real News Network radio interview:

It’s clear that ethnicity is a part of this picture, but it is only one piece of it. And the conflict in Kenya is as much due to political party competition, modern efforts at democratization, and the kinds of political dynamics we see anywhere in the world.

The kind of anger that’s boiling over now has also to do with economic inequalities:

The U.S., like the World Bank, the IMF, and European donors have over the years emphasized neoliberal economic policies—privatization, user fees for health care, and so on. That’s a set of policies that were, of course, widely implemented in Africa by these international financial institutions, as well as through bilateral aid. In Kenya, those have accentuated economic inequality and poverty.

>> view and read a transcript of the interview

In an article in OpenDemocracy, the anthropologist gives us an optimistic buttom-up-perspective. The way Kenyan citizens are living out and working through their country’s crisis offers insight into how boundaries of ethnicity, clan and class can be overcome, she writes:

Yet such hardening of ethnic boundaries, even four weeks into the crisis, is by no means pervasive or irreversible. 23-year-old Muthoni, for example – a Nairobi resident whose parents are from Embu district and thus again perceived as nearly Kikuyu – traveled with her church group to assist Luo people who had taken refuge at a police station in the nearby town of Limuru, whose population is predominantly Kikuyu. She comments: “we are all Kenyans…it’s a mixed brew; we can’t live without the other….it’s not logical to kill your neighbour; you were in agreement before.”

(…)

In spite of today’s newly charged ethnic identities and growing mistrust, now (as in the past) mutual assistance and other social bonds soften boundaries of ethnicity, neighborhood, clan, and class.

>> read the whole story in OpenDemocracy

I wish she’d elaborated more on this issue. But several excellent round-ups over at GlobalVoices provide us with useful links.

Rebecca Wanjiku writes:

After a week of killings, looting and the political madness witnessed in Kenya after last month’s general elections, Kenyan Bloggers are at the forefront of reconciliation, urging people to reach out, regardless of their ethnic background

>> read Kenya: “Bloggers seek to heal a wounded nation” and Kenya: Moving images of unrest and hope by Juliana Rincón Parra and Kenya: Cyberactivism in the aftermath of political violence by Ndesanjo Macha

A similar perspective can be found in the analysis by media researcher George Ogola:

A week prior to the election, only Al-Jazeera had taken some trouble to tell the Kenyan story. Reuters Africa proved another notable exception. But the familiar would soon follow, vicious and unrelenting.

When protests met the announcement of the presidential results, CNN, BBC 24 and Sky News sent some of their finest to Nairobi. But the frame of reference had been pre-determined. A narrative had been established. Kenya had descended into tribal anarchy reminiscent of the Rwanda genocide. Neighbours had turned onto each other just because they belonged to different tribes. ‘Tribal violence’ became the definitive mantra and was the basis for reports across the world.

(…)

It was equally about a western anthropology that figures conflict in Africa only in tribal terms; an Africa whose existence is so basic it must not be understood beyond the discourse of the tribe. I witnessed the power of a selective morality that tends to view Africa from a paradigm of difference, a unique rationality that embraces the kind of savagery the world was witnessing.

(…)

Amid this, the obvious was deliberately being negated. Why was violence in Nairobi largely restricted to the slums of Kibera and Mathare? Was it possible that the Kenyan poor were at war with the rich and with themselves? (…) Was it really possibly that because of disputed presidential elections, Kenya would suddenly implode? Was there a historical trajectory to this conflict?
(…)
The assumption that informs the continent’s interpretation is that this is a continent whose civilisation cannot be so sophisticated as to have class wars; neither can it justifiably fight for anything remotely democratic.

>> read the whole comment in AfricanPath

See also comment by Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian: “The west’s exotic fantasy of Africa means we fail to understand the real reasons for conflict in developing countries”, she writes.

>> read the whole comment “The violence in Kenya may be awful, but it is not senseless ‘savagery'”

UPDATE: Anthropologist Miroslava Prazak agrees: “Economic difference is truly at the heart of what is happening,” she said. “… It’s not about ethnic clashes. It’s about a political process that has gone wrong.” >> full story in the Bennington Banner (link updated)

Turning away from ethnicity as explanatory model

Seeing Africa as exceptional underestimates common experience of globalisation

Conflict Resolution and Anthropology: Why more scholarship on violence than on peace?

Both in Norwegian and international media, the recent crisis in Kenya has often been described as an ethnic or an tribal conflict. But is this a correct view? "There is a tendency in media in the West to portray Africa…

Circumcision: “Harmful practice claim has been exaggerated” – AAA meeting part IV

Published on December 10, 2007 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, culture traditions, gender, medical anthropology / ethnobothany, Us and Them

Is female circumcision violence against women or a feminist act? Are critics of this practice guilty of cultural imperialism? Those questions were debated at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Washington – among others by African anthropologists who have undergone the procedure themselves.

New York Times blogger John Tierney has written two interesting posts on the debate incl links to books and papers, among others by Fuambai Ahmadu. She has argued that the critics of circumcision exaggerate the medical dangers, misunderstand the effect on sexual pleasure, and mistakenly view the removal of parts of the clitoris as a practice that oppresses women. Ahmadu writes that her Westernized “feminist sisters insist on denying us this critical aspect of becoming a woman in accordance with our unique and powerful cultural heritage.”

>> read the whole post by John Tierney: “A New Debate on Female Circumcision”

>> two papers by anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu on circumcision

In his second post, John Tierney askes anthropologist Richard Shweder for more information about he health risks, benefits, and the actual effect of the procedure on the lives of those subject to circumcision.

Shweder reviews existing research and concludes that “the harmful practice claim has been highly exaggerated and that many of the representations in the advocacy literature and the popular press are nearly as fanciful as they are nightmarish”:

The best evidence available at the moment suggests to me that the anthropologist Robert Edgerton basically had it right when he wrote about the Kenyan practice in the 1920s and 1930s as a crucible in which it is not just the courage of males but also the courage of females that gets tested:

“…most girls bore it bravely and few suffered serious infection or injury as a result. Circumcised women did not lose their ability to enjoy sexual relations, nor was their child-bearing capacity diminished. Nevertheless the practice offended Christian sensibilities”.

(…)

At the panel on “Zero Tolerance” policies held on Saturday at the American Anthropological Association meeting, one of the participants Zeinab Eyega, who runs an NGO concerned with the welfare of African immigrants in the USA, noted that these days in New York “the pain of hearing yourself described is more painful than being cut.”

Shweder thinks it is noteworthy or even astonishing that in the community of typically liberal, skeptical and critical readers of the New York Times there has been such a ready acceptance of the anti-circumcision advocacy groups’ representations of family and social life in Africa as dark, brutal, primitive, barbaric, and unquestionably beyond the pale”.

>> read the whole post: “Circumcision” or “Mutilation”? And Other Questions About a Rite in Africa

>> papers by Shweder on circumcision

More about the AAA-meeting:

New media and anthropology – AAA meeting part III

“The insecure American needs help by anthropologists” – AAA-meeting part II

Final report launched: AAA no longer opposes collaboration with CIA and the military – AAA meeting part I

Is female circumcision violence against women or a feminist act? Are critics of this practice guilty of cultural imperialism? Those questions were debated at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Washington - among others by African anthropologists who have…

An anthropologist on sex, love and AIDS in a university campus in South Africa

Published on November 27, 2007 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, gender, journal articles / papers, medical anthropology / ethnobothany

“It has sometimes been difficult persuading the girls to do interviews about love and sex with a white, foreign male researcher”, anthropologist Bjarke Oxlund says in an interview with OhMyNews. Oxlund traveled to South Africa in 2006 and 2007 to conduct research among students at the University of Limpopo.

South Africa has the highest number of people living with AIDS in the world, and therefore issues of gender equality and sexuality have been according to Oxlund propelled to the forefront of South African politics. Many have pointed to men as the driving force and explained this with reference to male dominance and female vulnerability. But is this correct?

The anthropologist shared some of his insights at a recent presentation in Pretoria:

Combined female and male agency (rather than male agency and female passivity)
Reciprocity of love and sex and the material and the immaterial (rather than ’transactional’ sex or prostitution)
Particularity of the concept of personhood in a resource poor setting rather than a particular (South) African sexuality

He said that we need to move away from the concept of transactional sex (or prostitution). His research showed that it’s wrong to juxtapose transactional sex / prositution with a normative notion of pure love which is supposed to be free from socio-economic interests or lust and desire:

(I)n many students’ lives it is the other way around – values of romance and finance are deeply intertwined. Young people navigate a social terrain of love, sex and materialism where exchanges are used to signal who you are. These exchanges take centre stage in processes of becoming, which can be summarised as the attempt to be the person you want to be and being recognised as such by others.

There are very few studies on love in Africa and lots of them are somehow problematic. For example, public health studies tend to look at sex in Africa as instrumental and loveless and anthropology always interpreted relationships as a mechanical exchange of women between kinship groups.

>> download the presentation

In another paper he writes:

I would like to argue that there are important social meanings of relationship dynamics that some of the more public health oriented studies have not grasped, and that in research and program interventions issues of female agency have been downplayed when it comes to love, sex and relationships.

He also notes that, overall, little attention has been given to notions of love or affection in academia, “while in the social reality of Limpopo informants spend huge proportions of their time living out and discussing love and how it relates to sex and relationships” (well, not only there, we could add…).

>> download the paper by Bjarke Oxlund: Of cheese-boys, course-pushers, ministers and the right ones: Sex, love and relationships in a South African university campus (pdf)

There is one more paper by him: Bjarke Oxlund: Masculinities in student politics: Gendered discourses of struggle and liberation at University of Limpopo, South Africa (Microsoft Word Document)

Anthropologist Priscilla Reining Broke Ground on AIDS

Male circumcision prevents AIDS?

“There’s no AIDS here because men and women are equal”

AIDS:”Traditional healers are an untapped resource of great potential”

The emerging research field of medical ethnomusicology: How music fights AIDS

Cultural values and the spreading of AIDS in Africa

AIDS and Anthropology – Papers by the AIDS and Anthropology Working Group

Taking as many lovers she pleases: Where women rule the world and don’t marry

"It has sometimes been difficult persuading the girls to do interviews about love and sex with a white, foreign male researcher", anthropologist Bjarke Oxlund says in an interview with OhMyNews. Oxlund traveled to South Africa in 2006 and 2007 to…