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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…

“The White House should hire an anthropologist”

Published on February 7, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, ethics, politics

Anthropologist Fazia Rizvi points to an article by Maureen Dowd where she argues that the White House should hire an anthropologist:

Corporations have begun hiring anthropologists to help them improve product designs and interpret markets. And clearly, the Bush foreign policy team doesn’t understand any of the markets where it is barging around ineptly trying to sell America and democracy.

(…)

It’s stunning that nearly four decades after Vietnam, our government could be even more culturally illiterate and pigheaded. The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react.

One smart anthropologist reinforcing the idea that “mirroring” – assuming other cultures think like us – doesn’t work would be a lot more helpful than all of the discredited intelligence agencies that are costing $30 billion a year to miss everything from the breakup of the Soviet Union to 9/11 to no WMD to Osama’s hiding place to the Hamas victory.

>> read the whole story in the SGVTribune

Anthropologist Fazia Rizvi points to an article by Maureen Dowd where she argues that the White House should hire an anthropologist:

Corporations have begun hiring anthropologists to help them improve product designs and interpret markets. And clearly, the Bush foreign…

“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)

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

Two Books Explore the Sins of Anthropologists Past and Present

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…

"Ethnographic perspectives needed in discussion on public health care system"

Published on January 15, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, medical anthropology / ethnobothany, Northern America, politics

In the current discussion on reforming the American public health care system, ethnographic perspectives are especially needed — and sadly lacking, Sarah Horton and Louise Lamphere write in Anthropology News January 2006. They call for an “Anthropology of Health Policy”:

Anthropologists’ relative neglect of health policy issues may lie, in part, in our tendency to view the realm of policy as outside our disciplinary scope. Yet in doing so, we have ceded the field of health policy to health economists, who have long held hegemonic sway over the terms in which we discuss and understand the current American health care system. Terms such as the “law of demand” and “cost-efficiencies” are commonly used to explain the logic of imposing cost-sharing through premiums and deductibles. Patients are instead portrayed as “consumers of health care,” naturalizing the idea of health care as a commodity whose use must be restricted.

As medical anthropologists were once instrumental in challenging the terms of the rationality debate three decades ago, it is time we dust off our boxing gloves. There are multiple levels of analysis at which anthropologists can make a contribution to debates over health policy—at the levels of individual behavior, institutional policy and public discourse.

(…)

Finally, as ethnographers, we should continue to document how such reforms play out in our tattered health care safety net. Perhaps nowhere else are the effects of such reforms more visible to the ethnographic eye.

>> continue (LINK UPDATED 3.4.2020)

SEE ALSO:

What is medical anthropology?

earlier news on medical anthropology

Who Are the Rioters in France? Anthropology News January (I)

Published on January 15, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, politics, Us and Them, youth

In Anthropology News January 2006, Susan J Terrio criticizes main stream medias coverage of the youth protests in the suburbs in Paris. The protests can’t be explained by religion, culture or by pointing to that the rioters are immigrants:

Yet, the “immigrants” are second and, in some cases, third generation French children of non-European immigrants of Antillean, North and Sub-Saharan African and Turkish ancestry who are French citizens. They are not, for the most part, observant Muslims. The riots are not a response to perceived attacks on Islam or a reflection of their cultural distance from mainstream French society.

To assert that the rioters are culturally alienated and difficult to integrate is to isolate cultural difference as a cause for social unrest and to downplay the more significant factors of economic marginalization, spatial segregation and anti-immigrant racism.

(…)

Rioters feel alienated from French police, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and social workers in part because minorities are still underrepresented in all these fields.

>> continue

Anthropologist Cicilie Fagerlid has posted several related entries in her blog: Among others she comments that “I haven’t seen any empirical basis for blaming the riots on neither religion nor ethnicity”. In the same post she mentions a seminar, arranged by the French Association of Anthropologists on the actuality of anthropology and the crisis in the banlieues. She also lists some links.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen sums up:

Some commentators have tried to link the riots to religious revitalisation and militant Islamism in the Arab-speaking world. Yet, others – including the anthropologist André Iteanu, who has done research in these areas for years – point out that the riots have social causes, not cultural ones: The people living in these parts of Paris have no metro, few buses, hardly any libraries – and the majority have no work. Deprived and poor people have rioted in Paris several times before. It has nothing to do with their being Muslim and everything to do with their being socially excluded. Conclusion: Leave culture out of this matter.

(part of an interesting debate on the culture concept!)

Check also Erkan Saka’s coverage on this and the extensive round-up by Perlentaucher: Voices on the French riots

In Anthropology News January 2006, Susan J Terrio criticizes main stream medias coverage of the youth protests in the suburbs in Paris. The protests can't be explained by religion, culture or by pointing to that the rioters are immigrants:

Yet, the…