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A new word For June – or: When is the Arctic no longer the Arctic?

Published on October 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, ecology nature, inuit, language

Long story in the International Herald Tribune about climate change in the Arctic, sinking cities, unhappy reindeers, emaciated looking polar bears, walruses trying to climb onto white boats, mistaking them for ice floes and seasoned hunters who have been stepping in snow that should be covering ice but instead falling into water.

Traditions are changing. Here a little detail concerning Inuit language:

Take the Inuit word for June, qiqsuqqaqtuq. It refers to snow conditions, a strong crust at night. Only those traits now appear in May. Shari Gearheard, a climate researcher from Harvard, recalled the appeal of an Inuit hunter, James Qillaq, for a new word at a recent meeting in Canada.

One sentence stayed in her mind: “June isn’t really June any more.”

>> read the whole story

Fighting for the Right to be Cold: Inuit leader wins environment prize

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

Published on October 16, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, culture traditions, development empowerment, ecology nature, Northern America

As noted before, disasters have their cultural aspects: Disasters are embedded in cultural practices of societies. “Disasters do not just happen.”

Anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith says in an interview about the earthquake in South Asia:

People often believe that nearly all environmental disasters are natural disasters when in fact many are the result of human actions, such as unsustainable use of natural resources. Even in the case of the recent earthquake in Pakistan, the majority of the deaths and displaced people can be attributed to the failure of building structures and their location.

A recent expert panel at Louisiana State University stated that the Katrina disaster actually has roots in 1700 when the French settlers started building levees in an attempt to stop flooding from the Mississippi River. Hurricane Katrina’s effects are the consequences of natural forces combined with the way people have engineered the landscape as far back as the early 1700s:

“It was not just a meteorological event, it was a social event as well,” said Craig Colten, professor of geography at LSU.

John Pine, interim chair of LSU’s department of geography and anthropology, said rebuilding will need to include recognizing how people have changed the landscape around New Orleans and how that could affect flooding and storm damage in the future. In doing that, he said, it’s important to include the unique culture and heritage of neighborhoods instead of imposing outside ideas on people.

Helen Regis, associate professor of anthropology, agreed.

“The people who live in New Orleans are the main experts on how to rebuild,” Regis said.

>> read more in The Advocate (Louisiana) (copy of article)

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

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Globalvoices: South Asian earthquake blogging highlights

South Asia Quake Help Blog

As noted before, disasters have their cultural aspects: Disasters are embedded in cultural practices of societies. "Disasters do not just happen."

Anthropologist Anthony Oliver-Smith says in an interview about the earthquake in South Asia:

People often believe that nearly all environmental…

Pacific Ethnography – Anthropology research consultancy on Human and Environmental Interaction

Published on October 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, development empowerment, ecology nature

(Via my site statistics) Most anthropological research consultancies concentrate on design and business anthropology. Pacific Ethnography do conduct consumer product research, but they provide human environmental impact research as well and work with non-profit-organisations. One of their project is called “Understanding and Changing Polluting Behavior in Los Angeles”: They develop benchmarking tools to guide water quality education in Los Angeles County watersheds. They have offices both in San Pedro (California), in Santiago (Chile) and in Pondicherry (India).

>> visit Pacific Ethnography’s website

(Via my site statistics) Most anthropological research consultancies concentrate on design and business anthropology. Pacific Ethnography do conduct consumer product research, but they provide human environmental impact research as well and work with non-profit-organisations. One of their project is…

New website: Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

Published on September 19, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, ecology nature

This is how social scientists should act. The Social Science Research Council has set up the website Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. SSRC explains:

“As analyses and “spin” of the Katrina crisis grow, we confront the sort of public issue to which a social science response is urgently needed. Accordingly, the SSRC has organized this web forum addressing the implications of the tragedy that extend beyond “natural disaster” “engineering failures,” “cronyism” or other categories of interpretation that do not directly examine the underlying issues—political, social and economic—laid bare by the events surrounding Katrina.”

Three texts are written by anthropologists:

An Imperfect Storm: Narratives of Calamity in a Liberal-Technocratic Age. By Alex de Waal

Un/natural Disasters, Here and There. By Stephen Jackson

Disasters and Forced Migration in the 21st Century. By Anthony Oliver-Smith

The Anthropology of Disaster – Anthropologists on Katrina

This is how social scientists should act. The Social Science Research Council has set up the website Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. SSRC explains:

"As analyses and "spin" of the Katrina crisis grow, we confront the sort of…

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

Published on September 8, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, ecology nature

“Nothing Is Just”, anthropologist Dustin M. Wax wrote in one of his first posts on Savage Minds: Filmmaking isn’t “just” making movies: Marriage isn’t “just” a marker of committment. Family isn’t “just” the people you are related to. Giving gifts isn’t “just” a form of exchange.”

The same can be said about disasters like the Katrina hurricane. In the book “Catastrophe & Culture. The Anthropology of Disaster” (2002), Susanna M. Hoffman and Anthony Oliver-Smith stress cultural aspects of disasters, that disasters are embedded in cultural practices of societies. “Disasters do not just happen”, they write in their introduction:

“Many societies in their native practices, before colonialisation, globalisation, and other interferences, had knowledge and strategies to deal with the nature of their physical platform, to the extent that a disaster, at least up to certain extremes, might not even constitute a “disaster” to them, but simply part of their lifeways and experience (Schneider 1957). For example, Sahelian nomads for centuries adapted to the periodic droughts of their region through interethnic cooperative linkages with sedentary farmers and by altering migration routes (Lovejoy and Baier 1976). In contemporary conditions, these strategies often have been disrupted by such things as governmental policies, economic development, population increase, or nation-state boundaries, such that maladaption, conditioned by the outer world, now hovers near (see McCabe, this volume)”

(quoted from page 8-9) (to be continued in later posts)

"Nothing Is Just", anthropologist Dustin M. Wax wrote in one of his first posts on Savage Minds: Filmmaking isn’t “just” making movies: Marriage isn’t “just” a marker of committment. Family isn’t “just” the people you are related to. Giving gifts…