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Food and Religion: New issue of Anthropology of Food

Published on August 27, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, food and drink, journal articles / papers

Anthropology of Food is one of the few anthropological Open Access Journals. In their new edition, we’ll find five articles on food and religion in English (two in French), among them:

Michelle Lelwica: Redefining Womanhood (?): Gender, Power, and the “Religion of Thinness”
Although women who are devoted to losing weight do not constitute a “religious” group in the traditional sense of the word, the symbols, rituals, and beliefs surrounding their pursuit of thinness have come to function much like a religion.

Adele Wessell and Andrew Jones: Reading religion and consuming the past in the feast of Guadalupe
Food is integral to the religious expression and community identity of the fiesta, echoed in its translation as the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In this paper the meal served in the Casa de Comida will be used as a historical text, as a form of communication or representation of the community and its history. Attention is directed to the interdependence of indigenous and immigrant histories expressed in the preparation and consumption of meals, as well as to the legacies of colonialism inherent in the feast.

Meritxell Martín-i-Pardo: Colombo Cabri or vegetarian meal: wherein lies the power?
“Colombo Cabri or Vegetarian Meal” argues that certain foods are used to configure two competing sectarian Hindu groups in Guadeloupe, French West Indies. What are appropriately identified as “traditionalist” and “globalist” Hindus define a rhetoric for legitimating their different claims by appropriating or rejecting “colombo,” a curry of meats simmered in this sauce, as the ritual meal for the sect whose narrative rightly claims to define the correct path for the Hindu community on the island.

>> overview over all articles in Anthropology of Food nr5/2006

Anthropology of Food is one of the few anthropological Open Access Journals. In their new edition, we'll find five articles on food and religion in English (two in French), among them:

Michelle Lelwica: Redefining Womanhood (?): Gender, Power, and the “Religion…

Bush, “war of terror” and the erosion of free academic speech: Challenges for anthropology

Published on August 10, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, journal articles / papers, Northern America, politics, University / Academia

Dean Saitta (University of Denver) is one of the four anthropologists in David Horowitz’s book The Professors: The 101 most dangerous academics in America. The reason? His involvement in a debate on the erosion of free public and academic speech in the US.

In his guest editorial in the August edition of Anthropology Today, he describes the consequences of Bush’s “war on terror” for academics and calls for action: Anthropologists, he writes, “need to step up and engage in more and better conversations about the university’s status as a site of critical, creative and civically engaged inquiry”:

The subsequent declaration of a ‘war on terror’ and the passage of the Patriot Act have threatened the civil liberties of many citizens, and brought new fears of government intrusion into our lecture halls and seminar rooms. (…)

As US troops settled into Afghanistan and Iraq the campaign against the academy intensified. Aided and abetted by a resurgent conservative student activism on campus, this campaign accuses the American professoriate of harbouring a pervasive and long-standing liberal bias – with ‘liberal’ variously understood as leftist, Marxist and anti-American.

The campaign’s single most militant crusader, Saitta writes, is David Horowitz. He is a source of advice on political strategy for the Bush administration. Since 2003, Horowitz’ organization Students for Academic Freedom (SAF) has mobilized conservative students and politicians in 20 states to propose an ‘Academic Bill of Rights’ (ABOR) for state-supported institutions. This bill is according to Saitta “clearly aimed at critics of President Bush and the war in Iraq”.

In his book The professors:The 101 most dangerous academics in America (published in february 2006), Horowitz reveals the pervasive ‘intellectual corruption’ of the American university by providing an alphabetized list of “some of the worst violators of professional obligations and standards”.

Four anthropologists are included. As Savage Minds already has noted, Diane Nelson of Duke University is another “dangerous” anthropology professor.

Many more anthropologists could have been included, Saitta stresses:

Horowitz has indicated in several of his writings and interviews that anthropology is one of the more intellectually corrupt disciplines within the social sciences (…), fraught with political correctness and partisanship.

All academics should be concerned about Horowitz’ crusade, he argues. It seems that a large part of the American public agrees with Horowitz in some way. The American public has – as a recent survey reveals – very strange understandings of what the university is and does:

Nearly 70% believe the university should, as its primary function, provide job training rather than cultivate critical thinking. Over 60% believe that professors should be fired for associating with ‘radical’ political organizations. Over 50% think that too much scholarly research today is irrelevant to the needs of society. Finally, nearly 40% believe that the political bias of professors is a serious problem on campus.

Therefore, American anthropologists are faced with at least three major challenges in Saittas opinion:

First, we need to demonstrate that (…) our obligation as university faculty is to teach a breadth of ideas, critically examine their social causes and consequences, boldly experiment with new ones and, from time to time, actively champion particular ideas that can advance what we know and change for the better (whatever we take ‘better’ to mean) how we live. If we make some of our publics uncomfortable in the process, then we’re probably doing something right.

(…)

The second challenge is to better justify and develop the sort of engaged pedagogy and scholarship that landed many of us on the ‘dangerous 101’ list. Horowitz’ model of appropriate pedagogy is hierarchical and elitist. It evokes an image of tweedy professors filling up empty-headed and easily indoctrinable students with what is presumed to be disinterested, value-free knowledge. (…) Significant research in higher education over the past several decades has shown (…) the utility of more philosophically self-conscious and collaborative approaches for cultivating critical powers of mind.

(…)

The third challenge is to show how anthropology’s unique ‘deep time’, cross-cultural and bio-behavioural understanding of the human condition can enrich the entire academic curriculum and inform wider public discourse. (…) [B]ecause of the qualities identified above, anthropology should be the linchpin of a liberal arts education and any truly informed approach to policy-making in a globalizing world.(…)
Anthropology’s particularist conversation about human rights (…) provides a useful counterpoint to the universalist rights conversations of other disciplines.

>> read the whole text: Higher education and the dangerous professor: Challenges for anthropology (760kb, pdf – published on his homepage)

Saitta and many other ‘dangerous professors’ have stepped up to challenge the errors in Horowitz’ book, and to clarify what academia is about and set up two websites and blogs: www.teachersfordemocracy.org/ and www.freeexchangeoncampus.org .

Dean J. Saitta has by the way an excellent homepage with lots of articles.

Censorship of research in the USA: Iranians not allowed to publish papers

“Tribal Iraq Society” – Anthropologists engaged for US war in Iraq

“War on terror”: CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information

Participant rather than client – anthropologist studies new refugee integration programme

Published on July 24, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, fieldwork / methods, journal articles / papers, migration, Us and Them

Refugees are no longer treated as clients but as ‘participants’. They no longer receive social benefits but a salary for learning Norwegian and jobtraining. All recognised refugees in Norway have ‘the right and duty’ to attend a two year full-day Introductory Programme. Anthropologist Oddveig Nygård did fieldwork in one of these introductury centers in a small town in Western Norway.

She found that the new program on the one hand had positive effects on the relationship between refugees and the caseworkers – partly because the introductory programme allows the caseworkers to focus on other things than merely payment of benefits:

The fairly cold and bureaucratic environment of the social security office, in which the caseworkers are placed behind their desks and the refugees come to receive their social benefits, now belongs to the past. Instead, the refugees daily attend a centre where they see the caseworkers on a frequent basis. (…) The new framework has created a better basis to see the individual behind the refugee label and to obtain a more contextual image of the client. (…) The frequent encounters in more than just one setting have led to a more subtle relation between the two parties.

But the closer relationship between caseworkers and refugees creates ambiguity. There is a short step to the caseworkers being conceived of as a helper or a provider. Careworkers have to balance between care and control:

My study demonstrates how the motivation/sanction intersection of the introductory programme involves an element of control. Yet, the authority role tends to be diverted by the ‘fellow-being’ as they seem to have some empathy for the participant and his personal situation.

A drawback of the program is its focus on future planning and job acquirement, she writes. The role refugees seem most familiar with and accustomed to is the student role:

The majority of the refugee informants said they found it somewhat difficult to plan their future. (…) The main reason seems to be an expressed scepticism towards what they regard as limited job opportunities. (…) Several referred to their poor chances of getting a desirable job because they were ‘foreigners’, and some pointed to how even Norwegians face difficulties on the current labour market. Other spoke with resignation of the long process it would take to complete possible re-training and higher education. (…) As a result, the vagueness of the future planner role is likely to curb the overall role as ‘the active participant’.

She also describes her research process. As often the case, the anthropologist’s role is unclear to people in the field:

My mingling with both the caseworkers and the refugees certainly involved some challenges, probably causing some confusion as to “where I actually belonged”. I attempted to balance my involvement with the two groups by spending most time with the caseworkers during the refugees’ daily classes, and socialising with the refugees before and after classes, and in their lunch breaks. As a result, I sometimes had an unusual feeling of being a ‘social butterfly’ trying to be everyone’s ‘friend’.

At the same time, I may have been perceived as a somewhat curious element, primarily among the refugees, in the sense that that I was a young woman apparently having lots of time, and being more than willing to talk to people. I believe my relatively young age and my perceived student role may have made me less “threatening” and arguably made it easier to get in contact with people.

>> read the whole paper by Oddveig Nygård: “Between care and control: Interaction between refugees and caseworkers within the Norwegian” (pdf) (Working paper 32, Sussex Centre for Migration Research)

Refugees are no longer treated as clients but as 'participants'. They no longer receive social benefits but a salary for learning Norwegian and jobtraining. All recognised refugees in Norway have 'the right and duty' to attend a two year full-day…

Doing fieldwork in Eastern Europe – New issue of Anthropology Matters

Published on June 29, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, fieldwork / methods, history, journal articles / papers, migration, poverty, Us and Them

The new issue of Anthropology Matters – one of the few online anthropology journals – is out! The nine articles on “Doing Fieldwork in Eastern Europe” try to explore post-communism in Eastern Europe in new ways. They are based on ethnographic case studies of communities in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Georgia, Serbia and Croatia, among others among vendors in the market square, waste gatherers, Greek migrants, Transylvanian Saxons etc.

From the editorial by Michaela Schäuble, Tomasz Rakowski and Wlodzimierz Pessel:

Ethnographic micro-societal fieldwork creates new insight into the contemporary dilemmas and everyday practices of ordinary people dealing with the heritage of socialist ideology while simultaneously trying to obtain a sense of security and continuity in their identity.

(…)

Tackling everyday realities seems to be the most emblematic feature of anthropological research in post-socialist scenarios, insofar as it provides a valuable counterpart to ‘apparent history’ as featured in legal acts, political programmes, and changes of economic and monetary systems. In his influential Anthropology, Michael Herzfeld notes that anthropology and history ‘have danced a flirtatious pas de deux throughout the past century’ (Herzfeld 2001:55). In Central and Eastern Europe this flirtation has turned into a productive intellectual relationship, in that the authors’ anthropological micro-scale fieldwork brings hitherto unseen or neglected levels, ‘paces’, and cultural narratives (back) into sight.

>> visit Anthropology Matters Journal, 2006, Vol 8 (1): Doing Fieldwork in Eastern Europe

The new issue of Anthropology Matters - one of the few online anthropology journals - is out! The nine articles on "Doing Fieldwork in Eastern Europe" try to explore post-communism in Eastern Europe in new ways. They are based on…

Brewing Cultures: Craft Beer and Cultural Identity

Published on June 11, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, food and drink, journal articles / papers, Northern America, Us and Them

beer

By studying beer cultures, you may learn lot about identity. In the United States, German-American identity is rarely marked. But given the association between Germany and beer, craft beer allows for the active negotiation of German-American identity, anthropologist Alexandre Enkerli writes in a draft of his paper Brewing Cultures: Craft Beer and Cultural Identity in North America, that he ‘s published on his blog.

“Craft beer” refers to barley malt beer brewed locally by a small commercial brewery. The “craft beer movement”, Enkerli explains, is oriented against the beer globalization. Slogans like “Think Global, Drink Local” are popular in the craft beer world.

Enkerli also discusses gender aspects:

Not only is the overwhelming majority of craft beer people male but masculinity and even virility are significant aspects of craft beer culture.

The negotiation of gender identity is an especially significant dimension of homebrewing, Enkerli writes. It often relates to the gender differentiation of food in general:

Historically, alewives and other brewsters have been responsible for domestic beer production. Contemporary (male) brewers often acknowledge the importance of women in the history of brewing. Yet the passage from a woman-centric domestic brewing practice to a male-dominated brewing industry and then to an overwhelmingly male craft beer culture rarely seems to represent a continuous process. It is as if male brewers, and especially homebrewers, were saying that despite their presence in the kitchen, they were still men.

Enkerli is both anthropologist and a craft beer enthusiast and has been homebrewer for several years.

>> read the whole paper

PS: The picture was taken at a Norwegian-German wedding. For the wedding, two barrels of Bavarian beer were transported by the couple from Bavaria to Norway by car. Enkerli’s point about negotion of German identity in the US might also be true for Norway.