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Haiti Earthquake: Worldwide solidarity, a common humanity? (updated)

Published on January 15, 2010 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, Caribbean, development empowerment, medical anthropology / ethnobothany, poverty

(Hatiain Children up in the mountains. Image: Matt Dringenberg, flickr)

(post in progress about anthropological perspectives in Haiti and how to help) “Anthropology to me is all about human connexions, about a common humanity”, said Dai Cooper from the Anthropology Song. “Being an anthropologist means that when a natural disaster occurs somewhere in the world, a friend may be there”, is a quote I found on the blog by urban anthropologist Krystal D’Costa.

“The recent catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has turned my thoughts to our global levels of connectivity”, she writes and adds:

Web 2.0 technologies have been activated to create impromptu support networks and share what little information people may have heard. They are proving integral to the management of disasters. And perhaps creating a global community so that when natural disasters strike, anthropologists aren’t the only ones wondering and worrying about the fate of friends.

I had similar thoughts today: First, on facebook, lots of friends posted stories about the earthquake and explained how to help. Browsing the web, it is overwhelming and touching to read about all the activities by people who help. Even without web2.0, people care for each other. True everyday cosmopolitanism.

GlobalVoices – my favorite source for international news – has lots of great overviews, among others about help from the region around Haiti (Dominican Republic / Caribbean) where many bloggers have been active. The Haitian Diaspora has also been active.

This kind help is often invisible in mainstream media. Here in Norway, the focus is of course on Norwegians (or Americans) or other rich countries’ help.

José Rafael Sosa for example writes (translated by Global Voices):

The Dominican people have bent over backwards to help Haiti. What happened in Haiti has no precedent. There is too much pain. Too much suffering. The absurd differences stop here and solidarity is imposed, pure and simple, openly and decidedly. This is the right moment to help our brother nation. Let’s give our hand and our soul to a people that do not deserve so much suffering.

Anthropologists have also contributed online. At Somatosphere, medical anthropologist Barbara Rylko-Bauer explains why helping through Partners in Health might be a good idea. One of the founders of Partners in Health is another medical anthropologist: Paul Farmer who currently is the U.N. Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti.

One year ago, Farmer was interviewed about the hurricane disaster in Haiti where as many as 1,000 people have died and an estimated one million left homeless. Farmer stresses that natural disasters are not only natural but also social or political disasters, they are partly man-made. He addresses Haitis ecological crisies and the way the US has destabilized Haiti. In another interview he challenges Profit-Driven Medical System (more see <a href="wikipedia and videos below).

Yes, why is Haiti so poor? Why is Haiti one of the poorest countries on this planet and therefore more vulnerable to disasters like earthquakes? Two anthropologists answer this question. They suggest links between the disaster and colonialism.

Haiti actually has been a rich country, Barbara D Miller at anthropologyworks explains. Haiti produced more wealth for France than all of France’s other colonies combined and more than the 13 colonies in North America produced for Britain. So why is Haiti so poor:

Colonialism launched environmental degradation by clearing forests. After the revolution, the new citizens carried with them the traumatic history of slavery. Now, neocolonialism and globalization are leaving new scars. For decades, the United States has played, and still plays, a powerful role in supporting conservative political regimes.

James Williams at Discovery News interviews anthropologist Bryan Page. Page gives a similar explanation.

After 1804, Haitians were discriminated against by not only the United States, but all the European powers, he says:

That discrimination meant no availability of resources to educate the Haitian population, no significant trade with any polity outside of Haiti. Also, the break up of the plantations into individual land parcels meant there’s no longer a coherent cash crop activity going on within Haiti.

These conditions persisted into the 20th Century:

You still have a population that was 80-90% illiterate — a population that didn’t have any industrial skills, a population that wasn’t allowed to trade its products with the rest of the world in any significant way.

What that isolation essentially meant was that Haiti never had a chance to progress alongside the surrounding civilizations in the region. Complicating the picture even more was a series of despotic rulers that added to the country’s struggles.

[Haiti was] seen increasingly as a benighted, terrible place, in part also because of the collective racism of the white-dominated nations that surrounded them, including Cuba, the United States and the Dominican Republic which occupies the other side of Hispanola.

Check out the Global Voice Special Report on Haiti and The Help That Haiti Needs: New York Times has asked several researchers.

UPDATE 1: More on Haiti, colonialism and racism on the blog The Cranky Linguist by anthropologist Ronald Kephart

UPDATE 2: Statement by the American Anthropological Association (AAA): The Haitian Studies Association has begun to develop strategies to help Haiti, Haitians, Haitians in the diaspora, and the Haitian academic community. The AAA will provide more information about how to respond to the disaster and ask the Haitian anthropological community for advice.

Amid Rubble And Ruin, Our Duty To Haiti Remains is the title of an article by Haitian anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse on NPR. She writes:

Hope is not something that one often associates with Haiti. An anthropologist and critic of representations of the island, I have often questioned narratives that reduce Haiti to simple categories and in the process dehumanize Haitians. Yes, we may be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, but there is life there, love and an undeniable and unbeatable spirit of creative survivalism.
(…)
I am worried about Haiti’s future. In the immediate moment we need help, rescue missions of all kinds. I am concerned about weeks from now when we are no longer front-page news. Without long-term efforts, we will simply not be able to rebuild. What will happen then?

UPDATE 3: Great post by Kerim Friedman at Savage Minds where he explains why New York Times columnist David Brooks is wrong who claims that “Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences.”

UPDATE 4: Haiti: Getting the Word Out – Janine Mendes-Franco at GlobalVoices gives an overview over bloggers in and around Port-au-Prince who “are finding the time to communicate with the outside world”.

UPDATE 5 (16.1.10): Anthropologist Johannes Wilm: Who really helps Haiti? An overview of money given to Haiti: While USA give most per person affected, Norway, Canada and Guyana give most per citizen and (again) Guyana gives most in percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). His main message is that the aid from Western countries is “close to nothing”.

Alert by Naomi Klein: “We have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy—which is part natural, part unnatural—must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interest of our corporations. This is not conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.”

UPDATE See also post by Keith Hart: Is Haiti to be another victim of disaster capitalism?

UPDATE 7: GlobalVoices: Instances of “Looting,” but Little Confirmed Evidence of Post-Quake Violence: When the media reports on disasters, they’re inevitably going to focus on the dramatic and antisocial, even if it’s one percent of the population committing these acts.”

UPDATE 8: anthropologyworks on What low-income Haitians want: lessons for aid-givers:

Here is what poor Haitians define as elements of a good society:
1. relative economic parity
2. strong political leaders with a sense of service who “care for” and “stand for” the poor
3. respe (respect)
4. religious pluralism to allow room for ancestral and spiritual beliefs
5. cooperative work
6. access of citizens to basic social services
7. personal and collective security

UPDATE 9:
(via AAA-blog) The Association of Black Anthropologists (ABA) has launched a “Focus on Haiti” page with a large collection of news about Haiti, especially anthropologists on Haiti!

UPDATE 10: Harvard and Haiti: A collaborative response to the January 12 earthquake: Video with Paul Farmer and his colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Partners In Health
and Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Videos

And here an overview about the current situation:

Haitians struggle to cope amid aftermath of earthquake

and a lecture by Paul Farmer (first introduction, lecture starts after 8 minutes):

Paul Farmer on Development: Creating Sustainable Justice

SEE ALSO:

Why we need more disaster anthropology

When applied anthropology becomes aid – A disaster anthropologist’s thoughts

“Disasters do not just happen” – The Anthropology of Disaster (2)

Katrina disaster has roots in 1700s / Earthquake disaster in South Asia man-made

Anthropology News October: How Anthropologists Can Respond to Disasters

Earth Hour – The first globalized ritual?

Keith Hart and Thomas Hylland Eriksen: 21st century anthropology: What holds humanity together?

Owen Sichone: Poor African migrants no less cosmopolitan than anthropologists

(Hatiain Children up in the mountains. Image: Matt Dringenberg, flickr)

(post in progress about anthropological perspectives in…

Financial crisis: Anthropologists lead mass demonstration against G20 summit

Published on March 23, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, development empowerment, Europe, globalisation, politics

(Update: Chris Knight suspended over G20-activism) The G20 summit in London next month may be marked by one of the biggest demonstrations since a million people marched against war in Iraq in 2003. According to The Sunday Telegraph, the demonstrations are being organised by anthropologists Camilla Power and Chris Knight.

Under the slogan “Storm the Banks”, the two members of The Radical Anthropology Group are urging the public to vent its anger on the financiers and bank executives many blame for the global economic crisis. They think it is necessary to question or even overthrow capitalism – a taboo topic for the ruling elites.

Very interesting: The Telegraph writes that the two anthropologists work at the University of East London, which is based close to the headquarters of some of the world’s biggest banks. The University is “proud of its links with the City of London and multinational companies based in London”.

The paper quotes the university’ website who “boasts“:

“We are committed to do all we can to ensure that our expertise is made available to benefit business and society. Utilising the wealth of expertise, research capabilities and facilities at UEL our solutions help companies to become more profitable, more competitive and more sustainable.”

(Or take a look at the frontpage of the university and study the language: Is this a university or a oil company or even a bank??)

Anyway, Camilla Power thinks her role in organising the protests does not conflict with her position at UEL and says:

“What our university management thinks is good for students and academics does not always accord with what students and academics think is good for them.”

But maybe they don’t disagree at all? A spokeswoman for UEL said (diplomatically?):

“The University of east London includes a range of academic disciplines and individual academics who advocate a range of viewpoints. We are proud of our diversity, which fosters a spirit of critical inquiry, and we support freedom of debate. We are also proud of our active partnerships with business.”

As often the case when people take to the streets, the media are mostly interested in writing about violence and “the worst public disorder for a decade“. . Up to 3,000 police officers will be on the streets. Armed undercover officers will mingle in the crowds while police snipers will be stationed on rooftops.

>> read the whole story in The Sunday Telegraph

>> Protest website G20 Meltdown

Anthropologist Explores Wall Street Culture

After the Tsunami: Maybe we’re not all just walking replicas of Homo Economicus

The Internet Gift Culture

“Anthropology needs to engage in an activist way”

(Update: Chris Knight suspended over G20-activism) The G20 summit in London next month may be marked by one of the biggest demonstrations since a million people marched against war in Iraq in 2003. According to The Sunday Telegraph, the demonstrations…

Why we need more disaster anthropology

Published on March 11, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Asia, development empowerment, ecology nature, journal articles / papers

On the 5th of December 2006, typhoon Durian hit Bến Tre province in Southern Vietnam. Close to 100 people died, more than 800 moored fishing boats sank, thousands of buildings collapsed including schools and hospitals. In her master’s thesis, Uy Ngoc Bui looks at how this event changed peoples’ lives and explains why we need more disaster anthropology.

In this extremly well written thesis at the University of Bergen (Norway), Uy Ngoc Bui looks at the role of NGOs, the state and the people themselves’ in the period after the disaster. Although the government and the NGOs did a significant job in handling typhoon Durian the real heroes were the people themselves, who helped one another in a time of great need, she writes:

They showed great courage, endurance and solidarity by overcoming this challenge. As such, it is perhaps no surprise that my study concurs with the many previous studies which state that disaster management is very dependent on the participation of the community, and their strengths and efforts can determine the outcome of the disaster.

Therefore it is important to study peoples’ knowledge and coping mechanisms:

In disasters as floods and tsunamis, traditional knowledge acts as warning signs which can be read ahead of time, saving many lives. This type of information should be spread wherever it is useful, as Red Cross has done in Vietnam.
(…)
I believe that thorough research into traditional knowledge and local coping mechanisms should be emphasised as they are a type of accumulative knowledge which has been passed on throughout generations, adapted to their specific environment. This type of knowledge is valuable because it is not written down, and if is lost, it will be lost forever. Here anthropology has an important job to do.

There are lots of topics to study for anthropologists, for example the local-global linkages and the reconstruction work:

My experience is that more research should be done on the bridging of relief aid with long term reconstruction and development. Relief aid has become more efficient and standardised, which is positive, but this is only short term help for people who are in a vulnerable situation. Decreasing their vulnerability and strengthening their capacity to overcome disasters in the future should be the key foci of anthropologists and NGOs.

(…)

Anthropology provides a unique look at how the local situation relates to the global through the holistic approach. It is therefore important that anthropology uses this approach to better understand the complex local-global linkages in future research. Solid fieldwork on the ground level can show how the lives of the people involved are changed as a result of the disaster and the following intervention by foreign actors. The real effects of natural disasters, the ones that are felt intimately and which linger on long after the dust has settled, are best researched with anthropological methods which can take into account all the historical, economical, political and social factors that are involved in the making of a natural disaster.

One of the global forces are related to global warming:

Many blame the Western industrial ways for corrupting the planet’s eco-system, creating more and more havoc for each year. Research in disaster management therefore also includes research into finding more eco-friendly ways to live.

Uy Ngoc Bui has studied anthropology at the University in Bergen, Norway. As she’s “of Vietnamese origin” she felt that she “had an advantage in being half-immersed in the ‘culture’ already, which would make the transition somewhat smoother”. Furthermore, people were as interested in hearing about Norway and Norwegian culture as she was interested in them, she writes.

>> download the thesis “After the Storm: Natural Disasters and Development in Vietnam”

Today was by the way the second day of an interdisciplinary climate conference in Copenhagen. Among the researchers we find many anthropologists. Kirsten Hastrup is team leader of the research project Waterworlds at the anthropology department at the University of Copenhagen:

The ambition of the project is to study local, social responses to environmental disasters related to water, as spurred by the melting of ice in the Arctic and in other glacier areas, the rising of seas that flood islands and coastal communities, and the drying of lands accelerating desertification in large parts of Africa and elsewhere. The aim is to contribute to a renewed theory of social resilience that builds on the actualities of social life in distinct localities, and pays heed to human agency as the basis for people’s quest for certainty in exposed environments.

The Anthropology of Disaster – Anthropologists on Katrina

“Disasters do not just happen” – The Anthropology of Disaster (2)

Anthropology News October: How Anthropologists Can Respond to Disasters

Comparative studies of flood management in neoliberal, social-democratic states needed

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

BBC: Tsunami “folklore” saved islanders

How to survive in a desert? On Aboriginals’ knowledge of the groundwater system

Thailand: Local wisdom protects hometown from the onslaught of globalisation

Anthropological activism in Pakistan with lullabies

Published on January 22, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, culture traditions, development empowerment, indigenous people / minorities, Visual Anthropology

A few days ago, Pakistani anthropologist Samar Minallah lauched a “video song”, a tribute to little girls in all the regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan where schools are being destroyed, depriving girls of their right to education, The News reports.

The song ‘Allaho: A Lullaby for You, My Daughter’ (both in Dari and Pashto) is one of the first lullabies that have been dedicated to girls according to the news report. Traditionally lullabies are made for sons alone. The new song is “a welcome break from the traditional practice”:

The production and launch of the song has acquired an added significance in that hundreds of schools have been burnt down in recent months both in Pakistan and Afghanistan by those who are not ready to allow girl education despite the fact that women constitute almost half of the population of both the neighbouring countries.
(…)
One of the verses in Pashto is: ‘Ookhiyaara sha taleem oka; Da tol jahan tazeem oka; Da khalqo khidmatgaara sha; Har kaar pa lowar tasleem oka’ If translated into English, it means: ‘Become clever and educated; Respect and serve mankind; Ready for the challenges of life; Learning makes the journey of life easy.’

Samar Minallah is a Pukhtun (Pashtun / Pashto) from the North-West Frontier Province who has done her MPhil in Anthropology and Development at the University of Cambridge. She heads Ethnomedia, an organisation in Islamabad that works in the field of media and communications for a social change. She is the winner of Perdita Huston Human Rights Activist Award 2007 for effectively using electronic media to highlight the lives of women in Pakistan.

UPDATE (via pukhtunwomen.org) The video is now availabe on youtube:

Allaho--A lullaby for you my daughter

Samar Minallah has produced lots of documentaries, among others ‘Swara — A Bridge Over Troubled Waters’. ‘Swara’ is the name of a practice where minor girls are given away as compensation to end disputes between different families. Even swara killings occur. Although officially outlawed in Pakistan, the custom prevails.

In the documentary a “tribal leader” says about one of the swara girls:

“She is the prize of my son’s death and will be treated accordingly, I’ll taunt and humiliate her for she’s the price paid for my son’s death. She’s not part of the family and cannot partake in any rituals or festivities.”

The anthropologist comments:

“Swara is a part of the Pukhtun culture, we are always told it is a noble sacrifice or that the girl is an ambassador of peace. Sadly though, throughout my research, it is clear that the girl that is given away in the name of Swara has very little chances of leading a good life. A custom that so heartlessly forces a girl to suffer for the rest of her life is completely against basic human rights”

The film can be watched online in full length. At first I only found a six minutes introduction and I was not sure if I liked it as it seemed to be a bit essentializing. But in an interesting interview with Damon Lynch, she is more nuanced:

Samar points out that culture is never static. What is seen as a fixed cultural tradition today may have developed over time from an honorable tradition into a profoundly negative one. For instance, a current “traditional” method of dispute resolution involves the payment of a girl to a family that has been wronged. (…)

Historically, Samar believes this tradition involved a girl from one family or village going to another family or village, and returning with gifts, signifying the respect of one family or village for the women of the other. However this practice decayed until it reached its present form. Samar is challenging this practice of dispute resolution in the Supreme Court, hoping to have it declared illegal. (…)

Samar believes that aspects of Pukhtunwali–the ancient code of Pukhtun honor and custom–are good, even as there are other areas in need of reform.

As part of her work, Minallah even produced a talk show for a Pashto television channel, which she hosted. And she persuaded truck and rickshaw owners to paint slogans against Swara, such as “Giving away little girls as compensation is not only inhuman but also un-Islamic” on their vehicles.

She has been present in Pakistani media many times also related to other issues like Da Bajaur Guloona — Homeless at Home. Highlighting the plight of the displaced and Minallah brings out hidden colours of NWFP (North-West Frontier Province)

Criticizes the “apathy of anthropologists toward the human rights situation in the Balochistan Provice in Pakista”)

Thesis: The limits of youth activism in Afghanistan

John Postill on media anthropology and internet activism in Malaysia

Do anthropologists have anything relevant to say about human rights?

Chronicles Women’s Social Movements in India

Thesis: How Indian women fight the stigma of divorce

5.11.2022: Some links updated, links to her site ethnomedia.pk removed as the site has been hacked

A few days ago, Pakistani anthropologist Samar Minallah lauched a "video song", a tribute to little girls in all the regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan where schools are being destroyed, depriving girls of their right to education, The News reports.…

Headhunting as expression of indigenousness

Published on January 3, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, culture traditions, development empowerment, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, tourism, Us and Them

Anthropologists often criticize mainstream media for exoticizing people. But in Borneo you’ll find indigenous people who promote themselves as headhunters and are proud of it.

The journal Cultural Analysis has recently received a prize in the Savage Minds awards. It was voted as the second best Open Access anthropology journal. In the recent issue, folklorist Flory Ann Mansor Gingging writes about headhunting as an expression of indigenousness.

Headhunting is no longer practiced but the tradition has been commercialised by the tourist industry many places in South East Asia. But the headhunting past has not only taken on a commercial value, but also a cultural and political one, Flory Ann Mansor Gingging argues:

I propose that the tongue-in-cheek invocation of headhunting by the tourism industry represents one way in which Sabah‘s indigenous people counter the outside world’s designation of them as the Other; that is, by parodying their headhunting past, they demonstrate their understanding of the joke and thus guard their indigenousness and their status as human beings.
(…)
Marginalized groups in Sabah, many of whom share a headhunting past, have re- written the headhunting narrative in their favor, becoming co-authors of a cause that seeks, in Hoskins’ words, “to seize an emblem of power, to terrify one’s opponents, and to transfer life from one group to another” (Hoskins 1996a, 38). Thus re-imagined, the headhunting narrative emerges as a tool useful in working towards change and equality.
(…)
Observed in cadence with past and present political milieus, the “refashioning” of the headhunting narrative within tourism in Sabah hence seems to reflect a general consensus among certain of Sabah’s native groups: that Otherness, strategically invoked and appropriated, provides them with an instrument for addressing external threats to their identities.

The ~~anthropologist~~ folklorist and doctoral student in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University grew up in the village she writes about. One of her friends, herself an indigenous Sabahan, said the headhunting imagery and narrative in tourism promotion is “embarrassing but cool”:

“It’s beyond comprehension that I have ancestors that might have been headhunters. At the same time freakish ancestors totally distinguish you from the rest of the global population, so it’s secretly thrilling as well. I love seeing the slightly raised eyebrows reaction I get when I tell someone new I’m from Borneo.”

The researcher heard lots of stories about headhunters during her childhood. As she grew older, her relations to these stories changed:

As I got older, I began to be aware of the economic and political struggles that indigenous people in my state face. Since becoming part of Malaysia in 1963, Sabah, a former British colony, had never had a chief minister who was both indigenous and non-Muslim. Consequently, when in 1984, Joseph Pairin Kitingan, a Dusun lawyer, became the first non-Muslim native to assume this position, being indigenous suddenly meant something to me.

It was also around the same time that I remember feeling a new attraction to the macabre and exotic elements of my culture—one of them being headhunting. Without quite knowing it, I was invoking those aspects of my culture that were potentially embarrassing as a way of responding to the threat I felt towards my own Dusun-ness. For me, headhunting ceased being just a part of history and became, in the most personal way, a part of my heritage—an expression of my indigenousness.

In my opinion, making headhunting such a visible icon of tourism in Sabah is an example of what Michael Herzfeld calls “cultural intimacy,” which he describes as “the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered as a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with the assurance of common sociality” (Herzfeld 1997, 3).

A good example for this trend is the Monsopiad Cultural Village. Here, she writes, Herzfeld’s “cultural intimacy is performed”. Although it is by no means the first to use the state’s headhunting histories within the context of tourism, she believes the Village is the only tourist site that has developed an entire park around the headhunting theme.

On the village’s website they write:

Monsopiad Cultural Village, the traditional village is a historical site in the heartland of the Kadazandusun people and it is the only cultural village in Sabah built to commemorates the life and time of the legendary Kadazan and head-hunter warrior: Monsopiad. The direct descendants of Monsopiad, his 6th and 7th generations have built the village on the very land where Monsopiad lived and roamed some three centuries ago to remember their forefather, and to give you an extraordinary insight into their ancient and rich culture.

Read the whole article:

>> Flory Ann Mansor Gingging: “I Lost My Head in Borneo”: Tourism and the Refashioning of the Headhunting Narrative in Sabah, Malaysia

SEE ALSO:

Ainu in Japan: Cool to be indigenous

In Norwegian TV: Indian tribe paid to go naked to appear more primitive

“They still eat their fellow tribesmen”

Anthropology and tourism: Conference papers are online

Anthropologists often criticize mainstream media for exoticizing people. But in Borneo you'll find indigenous people who promote themselves as headhunters and are proud of it.

The journal Cultural Analysis has recently received a prize in the Savage Minds awards. It…