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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…

David Graeber: There never was a West! Democracy as Interstitial Cosmopolitanism

Published on April 21, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, globalisation, journal articles / papers, politics, Us and Them

(LINKS UPDATED 20.8.2020) Recently, the terms “Western civilisation” or “Western values” have been used in opposition to regimes mainly in the Middle East. But how fruitful is this notion of “the West”? In his keynote speech at the conference Cosmopolitanism and Anthropology, David Graeber showed that this idea is a kind of Othering: It makes artificial gaps between people that have more in common than supposed.

His deconstruction of the West resembels earlier deconstructions of the National (what traditionally has been considered as “typical Norwegian” is rather the result of migration and influences from other countries).

In his paper that he presented on the conference, Graeber writes:

If you examine these terms more closely, however, it becomes obvious that all these “Western” objects are the products of endless entanglements. “Western science” was patched together out of discoveries made on many continents, and is now largely produced by non- Westerners. “Western consumer goods” were always drawn from materials taken from all over the world, many explicitly imitated Asian products, and nowadays, most are produced in China.
(…)
As European states expanded and the Atlantic system came to encompass the world, all sorts of global influences appear to have coalesced in European capitals, and to have been reabsorbed within the tradition that eventually came to be known as “Western”.
(…)
Can we say the same of “Western freedoms”? The reader can probably guess what my answer is likely to be.

The idea of a superior “Western civilisation” is a product of colonialism. But as he says:

Opposition to European expansion in much of the world, even quite early on, appears to have been carried out in the name of “Western values” that the Europeans in question did not yet even have.

Graeber mainly used the notion of democracy as a Western concept as an example:

Almost everyone who writes on the subject assumes “democracy” is a “Western” concept begins its history in ancient Athens, and that what 18th and 19th century politicians began reviving in Western Europe and North America was essentially the same thing.

(…)

Democratic practices-processes of egalitarian decision-making-however occur pretty much anywhere, and are not peculiar to any one given
“civilization”, culture, or tradition.

We should according to Graeber treat the history of “democracy” as more than just the history of the word “democracy”:

If democracy is simply a matter of communities managing their own affairs through an open and relatively egalitarian process of public discussion, there is no reason why egalitarian forms of decision-making in rural communities in Africa or Brazil should not be at least as worthy of the name as the constitutional systems that govern most nation-states today-and in many cases, probably a good deal more so.

(…)

Rather than seeing Indian, or Malagasy, or Tswana, or Maya claims to being part of an inherently democratic tradition as an attempt to ape the West, it seems to me, we are looking at different aspects of the same planetary process: a crystallization of longstanding democratic practices in the formation of a global system, in which ideas were flying back and forth in all directions, and the gradual, usually grudging adoption of some by ruling elites.

Yet why have these procedures not been considered as “democratic.” The main reason in Graebers view: In these assemblies, things never actually came to a vote! Rather, they preferred “the apparently much more difficult task” of coming to decisions “that no one finds so violently objectionable that they are not willing at least assent”. It is this form of participatory democracy that social movements around the world are trying to revive!

Graeber also discusses the “coercive nature of the state” and the contradictions that democratic constitutions are founded on. He refers to Walter Benjamin (1978) who pointed out “that any legal order that claims a monopoly of the use of violence has to be founded by some power other than itself, which inevitably means, by acts that were illegal according to whatever system of law came before it”.

And about Ancient Greece and democracy:

It is of obvious relevance that Ancient Greece was one of the most competitive societies known to history. It was a society that tended to make everything into a public contest, from athletics to philosophy or tragic drama or just about anything else. So it might not seem entirely surprising they made political decision-making into a public contest as well. Even more crucial though was the fact that decisions were made by a populace in arms.

UPDATE: The whole text is now available in The Anarchist Library: There Never Was a West Or, Democracy Emerges From the Spaces In Between

SEE ALSO:

Amartya Sen: Democracy Isn’t ‘Western’ this text was also debated on Savage Minds

Amartya Sen: Democracy as a Universal Value (pdf) (Journal of Democracy 10.3 (1999) 3-17)

David Graeber: Reinventing Democracy

Review of Graeber’s book: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology

Cosmopolitanism and Anthropology – What’s the point of anthropology conferences?

(LINKS UPDATED 20.8.2020) Recently, the terms "Western civilisation" or "Western values" have been used in opposition to regimes mainly in the Middle East. But how fruitful is this notion of "the West"? In his keynote speech at the conference Cosmopolitanism…

Riots in France and silent anthropologists

Published on April 5, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, politics, Us and Them

What anthropologists failed to do, a few thousand burned cars made possible: Public debates on inequality, discrimination and post-colonialism. In the recent volume of Anthropology Today (subscription required), Didier Fassin criticizes anthropologists for their silence during and after the november 2005 riots in France. Anthropologist Keith Hart reminds us in a comment to this article on the marginality of French anthropology and a recent letter to oppose anthropology’s apparent demotion within the administrative structures of the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique).

Didier Fassin writes:

During and after the events historians, sociologists, demographers, writers and intellectuals intervened in the public sphere, expressing comprehension if not of the rioters’ actions then at least of the problems they experienced. (…)
Anthropologists remained peculiarly silent. Just as we had done during the impassioned debate on the prohibition of the Islamic veil, we kept quiet when the historian Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, permanent secretary of the Académie Française, suggested that the main cause of the riots was polygamy in African families – a proposal subsequently reiterated by right-wing political leaders. The academically marginal but professionally dynamic Association Française des Anthropologues organized two meetings a few weeks after the events, but significantly invited sociologists to speak.

In Didier Fassins view, anthropologists could have foreseen these events. After having done fieldwork on relations between police and youth in the suburbs of Paris, the explosion and spread of violence was no surprise to him, he writes.

The riots gave French society the opportunity for a public confession of the long-denied policies of economic inequality, residential segregation and racial discrimination. France was beginning to admit that its integration paradigm had become a cover for the denial of its institutional racism. For the first time the French started to consider theirs a post-colonial society. Though long evident to many foreign scholars working on France, French anthropologists were the last to realize what was happening according to Fassin. He explains:

Suddenly, a previously unacknowledged colour bar was discovered. The word ‘ghetto’, previously banned from French vocabulary on the grounds that it reflected a specifically American reality, became common in editorials. Newspaper articles and television reports revealed how difficult it was for Arabs or Black people to get a job or a flat, how they were stigmatized at school and humiliated by the police. What thousands of pages of academic and administrative literature failed to do, a few thousand burned cars made possible.

Anthropologists had little to say on these subjects for two reasons in Fassins view:

(1) Very few anthropologists were working on the banlieues, on immigration or inequality: This relates to the history of the discipline in France and its predominant epistemological position. Anthropology in France is above all the study of the present of remote societies. Even when French anthropologists became interested in their own society, they tended to analyse its traditional aspects:

When a few of us turned to the study of politics, most described it in terms of rituals and institutions, comparing them with the display and organization of power in African societies. Scientific analyses have certainly been rich and sometimes innovative, but seldom related to the issues that we face in our own societies today.

(2) Many anthropologists found their beliefs and the ideals of the French society uncomfortably challenged: Isn’t France a secular and colorblind society?

The reluctance of anthropologists to recognize the existence of racial and religious discrimination in France is thus as problematic as the paradigms they do engage with. (…) Many still resist acknowledging this reality and prefer to ironize about what they see as an excessive display of victimhood. (…) Racial and religious issues remain difficult for many of us to raise when it comes to actual practices because they confront our values with a reality we would rather avoid.

Keith Hart comments Fassins article. He explains French anthropology’s weak engagement with ethnic / social inequality among others by “general divisions and elitism characteristic of higher education there”.

He compares different national traditions in anthropology:

If French anthropology seems to be beleaguered these days, Brazilian anthropology, having once been confined largely to Amazonia, is now booming as a source of investigation and commentary on mainstream urban society. Scandinavian anthropology offers a flourishing model of public engagement. Anthropology is a major operation in India and Nigeria today, being mainly concerned with ‘tribal’ populations and internal cultural diversity. Anthropologists in the USA and Britain have organized themselves quite effectively as professional guilds, but there is little public knowledge there of what they do (try using ‘anthropology’ as a keyword for email alerts from the New York Times); and the discipline’s relationship to the universities is precarious.

>> read Keith Hart’s comment (updated link)

More and more anthropologists, but they’re absent from public debates – “Engaging Anthropology” (1)

Racism: Five Major Challenges for Anthropology

Proclaiming the birth of a new civil rights movement

Published on April 2, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, migration, Northern America, politics

Lots of demonstrations recently – not only in Paris, but also in the USA. According to anthropologist Roberto J. Gonzalez the recent mass demonstration against a tougher immigration policy (bill HR 4437) is proclaiming “the birth of a new civil rights movement”:

For many other young people — those without documents — the proposed legislation threatened to shatter their American dreams of a better future.
(…)
The walkouts are part of a larger wave of mass demonstrations in which immigrants and those sympathetic to their cause have been led by Latino activists. They have been turning out in the hundreds of thousands — a quarter of a million in Chicago, half a million in Los Angeles, and many thousands more in Phoenix, Milwaukee, Dallas and other cities.

Those participating in the marches are expressing much more than opposition to the xenophobic proposals of a Midwest congressman. They are proclaiming the birth of a new civil rights movement — a movement seeking to reclaim the dignity of all people living within our country’s borders, regardless of color, creed or nationality.

(…)

Mass marches, rallies and demonstrations are deeply rooted American traditions in our country, a land of immigrants seeking new opportunities. Howard Zinn‘s groundbreaking book, “A People’s History of the United States,” recounts hundreds of cases in which ordinary people — women, slaves, students, working people, immigrants — have transformed our country against incredible odds by doing extraordinary things.

>> read the whole story at Mercury News

Roberto J. Gonzalez has among others written the book Anthropologists in the Public Sphere : Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power. For Anthropology News 2003 (AAA) he wrote the text Speaking Out on War, Peace and Power. Towards a Preventative Diplomacy.

Thousands stage second day of demonstrations in California for immigrants’ rights (OhMyNews, 26.3.06)

Lots of demonstrations recently - not only in Paris, but also in the USA. According to anthropologist Roberto J. Gonzalez the recent mass demonstration against a tougher immigration policy (bill HR 4437) is proclaiming "the birth of a new civil…

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

Published on March 15, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, Northern America, politics, University / Academia

Jill Walker reports about censorship of research in the USA:

Recently, two articles by teams from the University of Bergen were accepted by prominent US journals and then turned down because, the publishers said, “we cannot publish your paper because the United States government restricts publishers from publishing papers that have an affiliation with the government of Iran.” Some of the authors were Iranian citizens.

She comments:

Isn’t that astounding, though? The results results are presumably important, since they were accepted in an internationally reknowned, peer reviewed journal. They have nothing to do with bombs or weapons of mass destruction or politics – this is geology and oil and such. And yet the US government refuses to allow US journals to publish this, just because some of the authors – scholars, not politicians – have Iranian passports? How peculiar that the country that (in theory) has the strongest tradition of freedom of speech and democracy stifles research and communication like this.

>> read the whole post and the comments

The rector of Bergen University said to the Norwegian media that this was “unacceptable political censorship”, “previously known only from totalitarian regimes”. Matthias Kaiser from the National Committees for Research Ethics in Norway says, the American science community can no longer be regarded as a part of the international science community.

~~There’s no English language coverage available~~,

>> information from the University in Bergen on this issue

>> information on the Patriot Act which is the reason of this problems

A few weeks ago, the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the world’s largest association of scholars of religion, criticized a similar “ideological exclusion” of knowlewdge and scholars. They joined a lawsuit that challenges a key provision of the USA Patriot Act, according to the blog Mirror of Justice:

Citing the 2004 revocation of a travel visa for noted Swiss scholar of Islam Tariq Ramadan, the suit contends that an “ideological exclusion” provision of the Patriot Act is being used to impede the free circulation of scholars and scholarly debate that are integral to academic freedom.

Commenting on the suit, AAR Executive Director Barbara DeConcini stated that “preventing foreign scholars like Professor Ramadan from visiting the U.S. limits not only the ability of scholars here to enhance their own knowledge, but also their ability to inform students, journalists, public policy makers, and other members of the public who rely on scholars’ work to acquire a better understanding of critical current issues involving religion.

>> read the whole post “Religion Scholars Challenge Patriot Act”

>> AlterNet: Banned in America: Tariq Ramadan of Switzerland, one of the world’s most important Muslim scholars, ran right into the USA Patriot Act

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

>> News on Patriot Act and Academic Freedom

>> The Patriot Act and Civil Liberties. Information and Resources

Jill Walker reports about censorship of research in the USA:

Recently, two articles by teams from the University of Bergen were accepted by prominent US journals and then turned down because, the publishers said, "we cannot publish your paper because the…