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Anthropologists on the Israel-Lebanon conflict

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

(post in progress) “Strangely, you rarely see anthropologists on the front lines at times like these”, anthropologist Maria Teasdale Brodine wrote at anthropology.net on the war in Lebanon nine days ago:

It seems that anthropologists might have the tools to go into a place like this and help opposing sides understand one another. After all, being a cultural anthropologist takes both a lot of diplomatic skill, and being able to respect and attempt to represent the people you’re working with.

Since then, some (not many, though!) anthropologists have raised their voice or have been asked to do so by journalists.

Gabriele Marranci, lecturer in the Anthropology of Religion, is one of the authors at the anthropology blog on the Middle East called Tabsir. He makes some comments that are typical for anthropologists (in a positive sense – in my view):

First, it is important to deconstruct one point. “Israel is not ‘the Jew’”, my very religious Rabbi friend repeated again and again to me. I have no problem to believe him: a state cannot be a person or represent what today is a very heterogenic faith: Judaism. (…) Zionism is not Israel; leave aside ‘the Jew’. An ideology can help to build a state, but a state cannot be an ideology, leave aside the personification of a person, ‘the Jew’.

Hence, to really understand what is happening today (…) means to stop observing the antithesis (terrorist vs. non-terrorist, axis of evil vs. axis of good, pro-Israeli vs. anti-Israeli and so on) and focus on more complex macrostructures.

He goes on and explains his thesis: “We are witnessing this carnage because of secularism in action.”

>> read the whole post: Secularism in action?

Also on Tabsir, anthropologist Daniel Martin Varisco commented several news reports f.ex in the posts The Lobby and Lebanon and Impudence, Impotence and Impunity where he comments an “fascinating article” Indonesia and Malaysia Ready to Send Troops to Mid-East:

Those who are informed by the likes of Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis or Sam Huntington would assume that the headline refers to the readiness of the Muslim nations to go fight jihad in support of the Hezbollah. And they would be WRONG! Instead the article talks about how these nations are encouraging the UN Security council to take quick action to end the active fighting and to establish a peacekeeping force. And when that peacekeeping force is established, they will send troops. If we really were locked in a Clash of Civilization, at this point, Hezbollah would be receiving reinforcements from all over the Islamic world.

>> read the whole post: Indonesia, Malaysia Ready to Send Troops

William Anthropologist O. Beeman, explains in an article at New American Media why Iran could play a role in bringing about peace”. Last month, the anthropology professor of Brown University has started blogging >> visit his blog “Culture and International Affairs”

A similar point is made by political scientist Bahman Baktiari and anthropologist Augustus Richard Norton. They argue that “the latest Middle East war underlines the need for an effective structure for dialogue, even with adversaries like Iran” >> read the whole text: Beyond the war in Lebanon. Norten is also interviewed in the Harpers Magazine

There are lots of stories about people escaping from Lebanon. Among them, of course, are anthropologists, f.ex. Rosemary Sayigh. Maybe also typical for anthropologists, she says, she “would not have left had it not been for pressure from her children”:

I’ve never left in any war before. I’ve lived in Lebanon for 50 years, we’ve had a lot of war in that time, and I’ve stayed usually. (But) they said that they would worry too much about me. And I’ve been planning to come to Cyprus for a holiday, so I thought I’d take it now instead of later, and rationalise it that way.

>> read the whole BBC story “Safe in Cyprus, worried about home”

Efstratios Sourlagas another tough anthropologist. He has no plans to postpone his fieldwork on Greek Orthodox communities in Beirut, he says:

I think it’s important to do my research here and I guess, when I decided to come here to do research, I knew perfectly well … the history of the place and the conditions of being here. I’m not going to be intimidated by the attacks.

>> read the whole story: Princeton students are caught in hiatus

At Electronic Lebanon, Sourlagas tells us more about doing fieldwork in this situation – and his doubts:

I came to Lebanon two weeks ago to start my own fieldwork, slightly optimistic that having being before in the region and country several times, feeling as a Greek more at home here with the way of life than in the US where I spent the last three years, possessing a knowledge of Arabic (admittedly poor as it is), and especially my girlfriend being Lebanese, I would not face such problems. (…) However, I find myself now feeling helpless and questioning the purpose and the feasibility of my research here one day after the first Greek nationals have been evacuated from Lebanon via Damascus.

The infrastructure is destroyed, but…

…what leaves one feeling much more helpless and angry is that mainly civilians have to bear the onslaught of the Israeli army (many times with their own lives) as it ushers in its familiar tactic of collective punishment as a response to the capture of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah.
(…)
How this scene of eerie quietness contrasted with the noises of thousands of Lebanese taking to the streets of downtown Beirut honking in their cars and waving Italian (and Brazilian!) flags in celebration after the World Cup Final just a few days ago!

>> read the whole story: Personal Thoughts From A Besieged Country

For more comments see Proxy War by Kevin Friedman and A protracted colonial war by Erkan Saka.

UPDATE 2 (8.8.06):

Hizballah: A primer by Lara Deeb, cultural anthropologist

Several new posts on Lebanon at Tabsir

UPDATE:
GlobalVoices analyses / sums up some interesting coverage by bloggers from Lebanon and the Middle East >> read Globalvoices: Lebanon Resistance & Unity

Book review: Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change (American Ethnologist)

Do anthropologists have anything relevant to say about human rights?

Live from Gaza: Blogger and journalist Mohammed Omer

(post in progress) "Strangely, you rarely see anthropologists on the front lines at times like these", anthropologist Maria Teasdale Brodine wrote at anthropology.net on the war in Lebanon nine days ago:

It seems that anthropologists might have the tools to…

Engaged anthropologists beaten by the Mexican police

Published on May 16, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Latin- and Central America, politics

There has been a lot of focus on anthropologists and human rights recently. But being engaged is easier said than done. Police Beat and Gas Students at the National School of Anthropology and History is the headline of a story on Narco News. They were part of a demonstration against rights abuses by the Mexican police:

Students from the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), of the School for Science and Humanities (CCH) South and the National Pedagogic University (UPN), among other adherents to the Other Campaign, were blocking the “Periférico Avenue” highway near the ENAH when they were attacked with pepper gas and clubs by members of the Mexico City police.

“It was a day of energy and rebellion for the students. This could be the genesis of a real movement coming out of the solidarity of the classroom”, NarcoNews writer Juan Trujillo concludes.

Valentina Palma Novoa is one of the victims of police violence. She’s originally from Chile and student at the National School of Anthropology and History, and tells us about the background of the demonstration some days ago:

On Wednesday, May 3, after seeing the news on television and learning of the death of a 14-year-old boy, I was moved by the death of this small child and, as an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, decided to go to San Salvador Atenco.

The day after:

It must have been about 6am when the church bells of San Salvador Atenco began to ring – bong, bong, bong, over and over again – while a voice shouted over the loudspeaker that the police were surrounding the town. Bicycles hurried past in every direction.

(…)
I zoomed in with my camera. I saw that there were many of them and that, covered by their shields, they were advancing with small and nearly imperceptible steps. I was afraid. There were many of them, heavily armed, while the farmers were few and unarmed. In the screen of my camera I saw one of the police point and shoot a projectile towards us; when it landed next to me, I could smell and feel that it was tear gas.

(…)

I was panicked and didn’t want to come down from the roof; then a police officer yelled up to me, “Come down here, bitch. Come down here now.” I came down from the roof slowly, terrorized by the sight of the boys being beaten in the head. Two police officers took hold of me and pulled me forward while others beat me on the chest, back and legs with their clubs.

She was then arrested and expelled from the country.

>> read her whole account on NarcoNews

UPDATE (23.5.06)

Global Voices author David Sasaki has made an impressive research on this topic – read >> Mexico: Violence and Backlash in San Salvador Atenco

MORE INFO:

Foreign women photographers beaten and abused by Mexico City police (Reporters Without Borders)

Police Attack Mexico City Students Protesting the Violence in Atenco

Students Maintain Blockade Despite Repression. Police Beat and Gas Students at the National School of Anthropology and History (Narco News)

Police raid in Mexico exposes deep rift (Mercury News)

Protesters choke Mexico City (Washington Post)

London says ‘We are all Atenco!’ (Indymedia UK)

Subcommandante Marcos: Either Release All Prisoners from Atenco, Or We All Go to Jail” (Narco News)

USA: Censorship threatens fieldwork – A call for resistance

Published on May 12, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, politics, University / Academia

Not so easy to be researcher in the USA: There’s more and more censorship. Not long ago I wrote about Iranians not allowed to publish papers. Another form of censorship are the Internal Review Boards (IRB ). In Anthropology News May, James Boster calls for a three graded stages of response: Reform, Resolve and Resist:

The faculty head of the University of Connecticut IRB recently told me that the IRB would not now permit me to do the field work I have recently completed with the Waorani, because she considered Waorani as far too belligerent for me to have risked my own safety in doing research with them. It was a shock to learn that I could be regarded a human subject of my own research.
(…)
Many human scientists, anthropologists included, have experienced ever-increasing burdens of regulation and oversight by IRBs in their research with human subjects. Most of what is onerous about the regulation has nothing to do with providing protection to human subjects and has everything to do with requiring human scientists to submit to the arbitrary exercise of power and authority.
(…)
IRBs at a number of universities have instituted policies that have no foundation in ethics or law, ones that violate our most sacred academic freedoms and civil rights. The first amendment to the constitution states: “Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Yet what is regulated here is speech—the freedom of investigators to speak with other members of the society. The freedom to find things out is a basic human right, not a privilege to be licensed, especially when the obstacles to inquiry have never been demonstrated to prevent any actual harm to human subjects. The unconstitutionality of these restraints on free speech are clearly and comprehensively laid out by Philip Hamburger in a 2005 article for the Supreme Court Review, “The New Censorship: Institutional Review Boards.”

>> read the whole text in Anthropology News May 2006 (link updated)

Another anthropology-specific problem is mentioned in an article by As Rena Lederman: IRBs are comprised mostly of researchers from non-ethnographic disciplines “folks whose picture of “real research” looks nothing like ethnographic fieldwork.” Therefor this advice (!):

So it is crucial that your board view participant observation as a sound, productive research method. This cannot be taken for granted. If IRB members are mystified or horrified by participant observation—if they imagine that it is useless or even itself unethical—then your proposal may be denied even if your project’s topic is completely innocuous!

>> read the whole story in Anthropology News

>> Blog: Censorship and Institutional Review Boards

Not so easy to be researcher in the USA: There's more and more censorship. Not long ago I wrote about Iranians not allowed to publish papers. Another form of censorship are the Internal Review Boards (IRB ). In Anthropology…

“Anthropologists Should Participate in the Current Immigration Debate”

Published on May 12, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, migration, Northern America, politics, Us and Them

“There is ample need for anthropologists and other social scientists to contribute to the immigration debate by providing greater context to the discussion and by describing the effects that immigration policies would have”, JC Salyer argues in Anthropology News May 2006. Anthropologists and the AAA (American Anthropological Association) should counter the many false claims which depict immigrants as national security threats or as hoards depleting the nation’s economic, health care and educational resources, he writes:

While it is always difficult to translate anthropological work into publicly accessible statements, AAA members should support AAA taking immediate steps to assure that the knowledge gained from the valuable body of research conducted by anthropologists on the subject of immigration is not ignored during this crucial period. Whether AAA’s action should take the form of a statement, the creation of an annotated bibliography, or some more creative proposal is for AAA’s leadership to decide, but it would be a true shame if AAA chooses not to join this important public discussion at all.

>> read the whole text in Anthropology News May

Rose Wishall Ediger has attended two rallies in Washington DC — the seventh largest immigrant gateway in the US and home to immigrants from over 30 countries, she writes in another Anthropology News article:

I was struck by the religious and patriotic overtones of the rallies. Both drew on prayer and included regional religious leaders of diverse faiths. In fact, churches have been important to the movement’s organization, helping to kick it off when Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles stated that HR 4437 countered the Church’s teachings to “feed the poor and welcome the stranger.” But also there was a display of US patriotism at the second rally: a great many demonstrators wore red, white and blue—especially white, which organizers advocated as a symbol of peace. And instead of the homemade signs of the first rally, attendees at the second event overwhelmingly waved US flags.

These rallies call in , Rose Wishall Ediger’s view, anthropologists to address issues of “race,” “human rights” and “engaged anthropology.”:

While rally participants and the media compare the movement to the 1960s civil rights movement, the relationship between ideas of race, racism, and immigration are still surrounded by open questions. For instance, while there is widespread agreement that those falling into the diverse category of US immigrant—legal or not—face discrimination—there are also claims that immigrants fill occupations and class positions that natives do not. And, how does the competition for resources among and within various minority groups complicate civil and human rights issues?

(…)

An even broader question about immigration that we should consider is what does it say about global inequalities and how human rights are practiced and demanded of different governments, and how do global, transnational, and national public and private policies differentially affect the movement and well-being of people, and what might that mean in terms of social justice. And, finally, on a more personal note, how do our own consumer practices play into it?

>> read the whole article in Anthropology News May 2006

Immigration laws: More Global Apartheid?

"There is ample need for anthropologists and other social scientists to contribute to the immigration debate by providing greater context to the discussion and by describing the effects that immigration policies would have", JC Salyer argues in Anthropology News…

“A postcolonial urban apartheid”: Two anthropologists on the riots in France

Published on May 12, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, politics, Us and Them, youth

In their Anthropology News May article Urban Violence and Civil Rights in Postcolonial France, Paul A Silverstein
and Chantal Tetreault analyse the riots in France in november 2005.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced a “state of emergency” across over a quarter of the nation:

Deploying this law, an instrument of colonial governance, both challenged the basic civil rights of France’s suburban citizens and revealed an enduring logic of colonial rule. Like colonial settler cities, contemporary French urban centers cast their impoverished peripheries as culturally, if not racially, distinct.

The anthropologists are not surprised over the riots:

Nearly every euro France has saved by “tightening the belt” on the public sector has been redeployed into the forces of security. Every attempt at “integrating” (or “civilizing”) underclass residents of the cités has been undermined by policing practices that continue to demarcate these populations as racially and spatially “other.”

The result is a form of postcolonial urban apartheid, in which the French state is equated with repression by many cité inhabitants. The October-November violence reflected this unity of social marginalization and anti-police sentiment. In the end, the French state’s treatment of its own citizenry as racially suspect and intrinsically violent—as potential enemies within—may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

>> read the whole article in Anthropology News (Link updated, was removed)

Who Are the Rioters in France? Anthropology News January

In their Anthropology News May article Urban Violence and Civil Rights in Postcolonial France, Paul A Silverstein
and Chantal Tetreault analyse the riots in France in november 2005.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced a “state of emergency” across over…