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Cultures of Consumption: Re-thinking the relationship between consumer and citizen

Published on August 2, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, interdisciplinary, journal articles / papers, persons and theories

Inspiring research contradicts journalistic and academic presumptions. It seems that the multidisciplinary research program Cultures of Consumption has produced inspiring papers. Anthropologist Daniel Miller gives us a summary of a public presentation of the research results on the blog Material World:

As usual in such programme the highlights came from research that contradicts journalistic and academic presumptions. For example we heard evidence that international retailing firms find that they have to raise their standards to meet Chinese consumers who are more demanding than those in other areas. Another paper demonstrated that people have extended family meals in the UK just as much now as in the 1970s (though migrating from dinner table to kitchen table) and that in terms of food behaviour generally there is no evidence for global convergence e.g. becoming more like the US.

>> read the whole post

The research project has a great website. The snapshops from the projects provide reader-friendly summaries. Lots of working papers can be downloaded.

Extremism: “Authorities -and not Imams – can make the situation worse”

Published on August 2, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, politics, religion cosmology, Us and Them

“Muslim religious leaders are not only working with local authorities but are helping to decrease radicalisation”, stresses anthropologist (and blogger) Gabriele Marranci. During an International Conference on Extremism in London, key authorities were criticized for not listening to Muslim Imams who reach out to offer help. They were criticized for paint the Muslim community as un-cooperative at the same time according The Voice.

Marranci said:

“During my research, I found no evidence to suggest that the Muslim chaplains are behaving or preaching in a way that facilitates radicalisation. On the contrary, my findings suggest that they are extremely important in preventing dangerous forms of extremism. However, the distrust that they face, both internally and externally, is jeopardising their important function.”

Marranci researched on islam in prisions: How does being behind bars impact on Muslim identity and their experience of Islam? He interviews over 170 current and former Muslim prisoners in Scotland, Wales and England and lived with the families of former prisoners. His study Living Islam in prison: faith, ideology and fear showed that sometimes it is actions by the authorities-and not Imams- which can make a situation worse. Current efforts by the authorities to curb radicalism within UK prisons are having the opposite effect according to the anthropologist.

His study said, the Voice writes, Muslim prisoners are subjected to stricter security surveillance than other inmates. Marranci claimed that security policies within prisons – including restricting praying in a communal space or reading the Qur’an during work breaks – are exacerbating, rather than suppressing the radicalisation process.

>> read the whole story in The Voice

In a recent entry in his blog he gives us more details about his studies and concludes:

The terrorist threat, as well as the general representation of an ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ Armageddon battle, is polarising, in a very dangerous way, prison life. On one side are the Muslim prisoners, with a minority of radicals but a majority of ordinary Muslims pushed towards the aforementioned because of the discrimination they suffer. On the other side are the non-Muslim staff and prisoners whom understandably develop resentment towards the terrorists, but which too easily becomes resentment towards the ordinary Muslim prisoners.

These circumstances maximise the possibility of attacks against Muslim prisoners, and consequently provide a fertile soil for successful radicalisation of Muslim prisoners.

Yet I have the impression that the Prison Service and the Government see ‘extremism’ as merely the product of ‘indoctrination’. Yet, as my research suggests, ‘extremism’ within prison should be tackled by rejecting over focused Muslim-centric security policies in order to develop an encompassing strategy against intolerance. (…) I have highlighted many times to the Prison Service that extremism and radicalism are not just Muslim issues. Within the prisons there are visible increases in right-wing ideologies and a high level of unnoticed intolerance.

The ‘War on Terror’, he stresses, is disintegrating the British Values: “Today we are ready to deport people towards their torture and death thanks to shameful political agreements with tyrants who shun our democratic values.”

>> read the whole post “Mr Barot’s disfigured face can radicalise Muslim prisoners more than his voice”

Marranci is currently transforming his research into a book provisionally titled “Faith, ideology and fear: Muslim identities within and beyond prisons”. It will be published by Continuum Books in summer 2008. You can download a speech about his researchheld at the House of Lords.

Protests against British research council: “Recruits anthropologists for spying on muslims”

Doctoral thesis: Towards a transnational Islam

"Muslim religious leaders are not only working with local authorities but are helping to decrease radicalisation", stresses anthropologist (and blogger) Gabriele Marranci. During an International Conference on Extremism in London, key authorities were criticized for not listening to Muslim Imams…

Malaysia: Penan people threatened by demand for “green” bio-fuels

Published on August 2, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, ecology nature, indigenous people / minorities

The Penan people from the jungles of Sarawak are threatened by rampant commercial logging and palm oil plantations for bio-fuel, a Malaysian government report said. European and North American demand for “green” bio-fuels made from palm oil means rainforests across the region are being replaced with plantations writes the Telegraph:

For 20 years the Penan people from the jungles of Serawak have mounted a peaceful campaign to protect their ancestral lands, only to be driven back by soldiers, police and contractors.

Earlier this year, as police firing shots in the air tore down the latest blockades of bamboo tied with grass, Penan leaders said that if the loggers were not stopped their jungle would be entirely destroyed within two years.

Now at last they have received some official backing. “Claims made [by Penans] on ancestral land are often not considered by the relevant authorities and those who clear the forest areas and commence logging and oil palm activities,” said the report, recommending that the land code be reviewed to include customary rights.

It may already be too late for the Penan. The rainforests of Serawak are millions of years old but have been decimated by the Malaysian logging companies which, campaigners say, have felled trees at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world.

>> read the whole story in the Telegraph

The Penan leaders also met with officials from the Sarawak state government to demand that it recognise their rights to their land and stop issuing logging and plantation licences on their land. Groups of Penan have set up blockades on roads through their forest to stop loggers destroying their homes according to Survival International.

>> more Penan-news by Survival International

This story reminds me of the article Eco-junk by George Monbiot. Ecological of ethical shopping is not the solution, but less shopping.

Dissertation: Survival in the Rainforest

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

But We Are Still Native People” – Tad McIlwraith’s dissertation is online

Arctic refuge saved from oil drillers – Inuit divided

The Penan people from the jungles of Sarawak are threatened by rampant commercial logging and palm oil plantations for bio-fuel, a Malaysian government report said. European and North American demand for "green" bio-fuels made from palm oil means rainforests across…

New York Times reviews Talal Asad’s “On Suicide Bombing”

Published on August 1, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, Middle East, politics, Us and Them

Some weeks ago I wrote a few lines about the book On Suicide Bombing by anthropologist Talal Asad. Among other things, he questions our notions about legitimate violence.

On Sunday, the book was reviewed in the New York Times:

Asad (…) takes aim less at the Bush administration than at the rest of us, and at what he sees as our unspoken complicity in “some kinds of cruelty as opposed to others.” He hopes, he writes, to “disturb the reader sufficiently” by showing the hypocrisy of rules that permit murderous conduct by states but deny it to nonstate actors. And he is angered by scholars, theorists and journalists who don’t speak Arabic and have never set foot in the Middle East, yet sound off about why suicide bombers do what they do. He is understandably aghast that the American public has expressed so little shock over the bloodshed inflicted in its name.

And by the end of the book, his rage has overtaken him. The Bush administration’s actions in the Middle East have left him so disgusted that he declares simply, “It seems to me that there is no moral difference between the horror inflicted by state armies (especially if those armies belong to powerful states that are unaccountable to international law) and the horror inflicted by insurgents.”

It is hard to answer Asad’s argument without drifting into the distinctions he attempts to demolish. For instance, he cites the political philosopher Michael Walzer’s definition of the “peculiar evil of terrorism,” which, according to Walzer, is “not only the killing of innocent people but also the intrusion of fear into everyday life, the violation of private purposes, the insecurity of public spaces, the endless coerciveness of precaution.” Asad then asks why the United States’ war in Iraq and the Israeli cluster bombs in Lebanon do not earn the same condemnation as bombs wielded by terrorists. But if you continue to believe (as I do) that there is a moral difference between setting out to destroy as many civilians as possible and killing civilians unintentionally and reluctantly in pursuit of a military objective, you will indeed find “On Suicide Bombing” disturbing, if not always in the way he intends.

Nonetheless, Asad’s book is valuable because the legal distinctions he is challenging are especially vulnerable now.

The review is part of the article Our War on Terror.

As Savage Minds already has noted, Columbia University Press has published a mp3-interview with Talal Asad. For more information on the book and Talal Asad see my earlier entry Anthropological perspectives on suicide bombing

More information will follow. I’m currently reading this book.

Some weeks ago I wrote a few lines about the book On Suicide Bombing by anthropologist Talal Asad. Among other things, he questions our notions about legitimate violence.

On Sunday, the book was reviewed in the New York Times:

Asad (...) takes…

Obituary: Anthropologist Priscilla Reining Broke Ground on AIDS

Published on August 1, 2007 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, medical anthropology / ethnobothany, persons and theories

Anthropologist Reining died July 19 at the age of 84. “Anthropologist Broke Ground on AIDS, Satellite Mapping”, writes the Washington Post in an orbituary.

Last winter I wrote about anthropological studies that showed that male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection. But Reining had researched this topic already 18 years ago:

In a 1989 study published in Current Science with three co-authors, Reining spelled out the unmistakable correlation: Uncircumcised African men were 86 percent more likely to get the AIDS virus than those who had been circumcised. Her findings held true across different regions, ethnic groups and religious faiths in Africa.

At first, her study was ignored or dismissed. Some African peoples had taboos against circumcision, and many scientists couldn’t believe that such a simple procedure could produce such startling results.

(…)

Yet study after study — there have now been more than 60 — supported Reining’s initial findings. She was interviewed for a BBC documentary in 2000, and one-time skeptics were convinced by years of mounting evidence that she had been right all along.

>> read the whole article in the Washington Post

SEE ALSO:

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”

Cultural values and the spreading of AIDS in Africa

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

Anthropologist Reining died July 19 at the age of 84. "Anthropologist Broke Ground on AIDS, Satellite Mapping", writes the Washington Post in an orbituary.

Last winter I wrote about anthropological studies that showed that male circumcision reduces the risk of…