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‘Overemphasis on security creates insecurity’

Published on April 23, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Middle East, politics, Us and Them

Security has come to be the overriding issue in every debate about development and immigration issues – and it’s part of a worldwide trend which in fact does the complete opposite and helps to create insecurity. That’s according to anthropologist Rema Hammami, a US national with Palestinian roots, working at Birzeit University. (At a seminar in Oslo on security we came to the same conclusions) Last week, she gave her inaugural address in The Hague (Netherlands) on accepting the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity, reports Radio Netherlands:

Hammami claims that a quarter of the Palestinians have lost their jobs as a result of Israel’s security regime, adding that growing poverty leads to frustration and ultimately to an insecure situation. She says that the recent past in this part of the world demonstrates that too much emphasis on security issues achieves exactly the opposite:
“During the interim period of the Peace Process, what you had was an ongoing policy by the various Israeli governments that kept making everything secondary to Israeli security. For Palestinians this meant a checkpoint everywhere they turned, inability to get into East Jerusalem […] Ultimately all of those Israeli security policies led to the outbreak of the uprising. People found the situation unbearable.”

She criticizes the immigration policy in Europe and the United States: Migrants are seen as enemies until proved otherwise, and this reflects the increasingly sharp division in the world:

“It [this dominance of security policy] becomes blind to seeing that all human beings need some basic, similar types of things. Instead what it does is say that ‘There is us and there is you, and what we have and what we need and want to preserve, is different from what you want, and just the fact that you want to be part of this is a threat to us.’ While, in fact, people the world over basically just want the same thing.”

>> read the whole story at Radio Netherlands

Rema Hammami is a truly engaged anthropologist and has published extensively on these issues, among others in the Middle East Report. See also her texts Waiting for Godot at Qalandya: Reflections on Queues and Inequality and On Suicide Bombings. A longer text, published in the Jerusalem Quarterly: On the Importance of Thugs. The moral economy of a checkpoint

The first issue of “Practicing Anthropology”, the journal of the Society for Applied Anthropology Goes Palestinian deal with the topic THE COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL ACTION IN PALESTINE: PROGRAMS AND PRACTICE. But of cource, none of the articles are available online, not even to subscribers.

Book review: Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change

Tabsir – Blog on the Middle East

PS: One of my favorite journalists on Palestinian issues is Mohammed Omer. He got known with his website Rafah Today. Now, his articles are published in the Norwegian weekly Morgenbladet. There’s also a a blog about Omer and Rafah where most of his articles are published.

Security has come to be the overriding issue in every debate about development and immigration issues - and it's part of a worldwide trend which in fact does the complete opposite and helps to create insecurity. That's according to…

“A Season in Mecca” – New book about real participant observation as a mecca pilgrim

Published on February 8, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, culture traditions, Middle East, religion cosmology

Priceton University presents a new book which might be an example for good anthropological writing. It’s a book about the Hajj-pilgrimage to Mecca by anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi:

Written in the first person, “A Season in Mecca” reads like a novel and is filled with descriptions and personal reflections. It follows a narrative structure, starting with journal entries Hammoudi wrote at his Princeton home before embarking for North Africa and the Middle East, and ending with his departure from Saudi Arabia, which is where Mecca and other sites central to the hajj are located.

Approximately 2 million Muslims travel to Mecca annually. The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam — along with profession of faith, prayer, fasting and alms giving. It is obligatory for every Muslim man or woman, who has the means, to do once in a lifetime. “According to Muslim tradition, the hajj purifies you from sin, puts you on the right path, and brings the mercy of God in you for a good life here and in the hereafter”, says anthropologist Abdella Hammoudi, author of the book which became available in English in January.

Hammoudi grew up in Morocco and moved later to France. He says, he knew that the project would be “problematic” for him because of the tension he felt arose from his dual education (both religious and secular). But, and this is interesting, “it was precisely this cultural and educational hybridity that he saw as integral to his study of the hajj”.

“I would not have done this [project] as an anthropologist without that sense of existential risk-taking. I went as a cultural Muslim with empathy, and also with distance. I went also with the openness to take the risk to revise everything I had lived with until now.”

>> read the whole story

>> read an excerpt of the book (OpenDemocracy)

>> Review of the book in the Christian Science Monitor: He traveled to Mecca in search of himself

Priceton University presents a new book which might be an example for good anthropological writing. It's a book about the Hajj-pilgrimage to Mecca by anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi:

Written in the first person, “A Season in Mecca” reads like a novel and…

Anthropologist Pnina Werbner on Muhammad-cartoons: ‘Satanic Verses Taught us a Lesson’

Published on February 8, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, media, Middle East, politics, religion cosmology, Us and Them

No newspaper in Britain has published the Muhammad-cartoons. “There are some lessons (the British) learned from “The Satanic Verses” that I’m afraid others in Europe still need to learn”, anthropologist Pnina Werbner says in an interview with Der Spiegel:

During the Rushdie affair, there was also a major discussion about the limits of freedom of speech. The debate made it clear that despite our invocations of freedom of speech, even in the West freedom of speech is not absolute. After all, limits are set on pornography, for example.

Freedom of speech today is to a large extent exercised through self-censorship — not only through legislation, but by commercial interests, such as newspapers and publishing houses. They constantly make decisions about what should or shouldn’t get publicized — partly in response to audiences, partly in response to commercial interests, partially in response to the sensibilities of their viewers or readers.

You can say what you like in the privacy of your own home, but if you try to get it published, to get your voice heard in public, you will find that your opinions may be unacceptable for purely commercial or pragmatic reasons.

(…)

Their passionate belief is puzzling and alien to us. But we have to understand that, precisely because ordinary Muslims are also deeply offended, for that reason such apparently light-hearted satire will play into the hands of the extremists, the very people whom these cartoons were meant to criticize.

They are the ones who are benefiting most from the cartoons. For them, this is a huge PR coup, which enables them to recruit young people to the radical cause of Islam. In this sense the publication of the cartoons has backfired and that, I think, is the real indictment of the cartoonists. They’ve mobilized people all over the Muslim world against the West.

>> read the whole interview in DER SPIEGEL (International edition)

MORE ANTHROPOLOGISTS ON THIS ISSUE

Daniel Martin Varisco: Much Ado about Something Rotten in Denmark (My own view, even as a satirist who idolizes Montesquieu and Swift, is that the best public course is one of “freedom of discretion” at a time when there is such misunderstanding on all sides) og Loony Tunes: The War Draws On (It is bad enough that we have a war of bombs and bullets exasperated by a war of words. Do we really need to have cartoonists drawn into the fray?)

Erkan Saka: Danish Media’s Representations of Islam by anthropologist Peter Hervik and A call for respect and calm (both posts have many useful links among others Danish paper rejected Jesus cartoons and Trampling others’ beliefs in defence of yours.)

Kambiz Kamrani: Cultural relativism meets freedom of speech with the Danish cartoons and Muslim protests (He reviews several blog comments and concludes: “With the publication of these cartoons, this distance of understanding and communication is further gapped because we’re ultimately fueling an already burning fire.”)

www.sorrydenmarknorway.com – Arab and Muslim youth initiative (The problem with media representation of such issues tends to be that the media only picks up the loudest voices, ignoring the rational ones that do not generate as much noise.)

Arab Bloggers Take on Danish Cartoons

No newspaper in Britain has published the Muhammad-cartoons. "There are some lessons (the British) learned from "The Satanic Verses" that I'm afraid others in Europe still need to learn", anthropologist Pnina Werbner says in an interview with Der Spiegel:

During…

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

Published on February 2, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, Middle East, politics

No good news: In France, they shut down anthropology, in the US, we see the sell-out of our disciplin: “U.S. analysts are starting to apply anthropological models to trying to understand and fight the Iraq”, according to United Press International.

Anthropologist Montgomery McFate (we know her from previous debates on ethics) works at the Institute for Defense Analyses and cooperates with the US government in their so-called “war against terror”. Speaking at a conference, she argued for an “increased understanding of the tribal nature of Iraqi society (!)” as this would “benefit the U.S. forces by enabling them to adapt to the enemy”

McFate has suggested that knowledge of Iraqi tribal groups is useful because it can provide an insight into the reasons for insurgency. In tribal societies, honor is a measure of status. Traditionally, challenges to group honor have been met with violence, and thus the current bombings are a response to the coalition presence.

By working within the Iraqi cultural framework, coalition forces may be able to forward their strategic goal, the creation of a stable society. McFate said blood feuds regulate tribal balance in Iraq. Upon the death of a clan member, it is the duty of the kin to seek violent retribution. This rudimentary justice system provides all groups with an incentive to restrain members, and acts to constrain inter-tribe conflict.

>> read the whole story (link updated)

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No good news: In France, they shut down anthropology, in the US, we see the sell-out of our disciplin: "U.S. analysts are starting to apply anthropological models to trying to understand and fight the Iraq", according to United Press International.

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Weblogs are sweeping the political and social landscape of Iran

Published on June 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, development empowerment, internet, media, Middle East, politics, technology

Hadi Ansari, OhmyNews International

Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran’s leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people’s daily lives. Farsi has become the third most prominent language of bloggers on the Net, despite the fact that Farsi speakers around the world number just 100 million (including Afghans and Tajiks who speak Farsi). >> continue

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Hadi Ansari, OhmyNews International

Only four years have passed since Hossein Derakhshan, Iran's leading blogger and Internet activist, published a guide to making a weblog in Persian. Now the influence of weblogs has spread to every aspect of Iranian people's daily…