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“Help the Hadza!” – Why focus on culture and not on human rights?

Published on June 12, 2007 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, Us and Them

Help out the Hadza, urges anthropology.net. A United Arab Emirates royal family is trying to use the land of the Hadza as a “personal safari playground”. After a helicopter tour, they have worked out an arrangement with the Tanzanian government to lease the land without consulting the Hadza.

Philip Marmo, a Tanzanian official, said that a nearby hunting area the royal family shared with relatives had become “too crowded” and that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family “indicated that it was inconvenient” and requested his own parcel.

Marmo called the Hadzabe “backwards” and said they would benefit from the school, roads and other projects the UAE company has offered as compensation, according to the Washington Post. “We want them to go to school,” said Marmo. “We want them to wear clothes. We want them to be decent.”

Marmo is by the way Tanzania’s minister for good governance!

A similar agreement with another company resulted in dozens of Hadzabe men being arrested for hunting on their own land. Three of the men died of illness in the prison, three others died soon after being released.

>> read the whole story in the Washington Post

>> Comment by anthropologist Christopher O’Brien

Reading these stories and comments I am wondering why the focus is on “saving culture” and not on human rights or class?

The Washington Post starts the article with well known evolutionism:

One of the last remaining tribes of hunter-gatherers on the planet is on the verge of vanishing into the modern world.

And the journalist continues describing them as “backward” people. They “still make fire with sticks”, they “still hunt and gather as a way of life” and “avoid confrontation by fleeing into the bush”.

And of course they call them a “tribe”.

Maybe even worse: We find the same ethnocentric evolutionism among anthropologists. In the first post on this issue at anthropology.net Tim writes:

I wrote previously about mankind’s attempts to resurrect some faunal components of the Pleistocene, but here’s a story about mankind’s attempts to obliterate one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies that has survived (just about) to the present day.
(…)
We might expect the government of Tanzania to have some interest in preserving their cultural past. (….) There are various projects which seek to protect wildlife in Africa – for example there is a big, if not completely effective, anti-poaching drive to protect elephants from ivory hunters and traders – so why can we not protect human hunters and gatherers?

UPDATE (13.6.07): The Guardian (Tanzania) reports about earlier “violations of human rights against the Hadzabe ethnic group committed by social researchers, tour firms, filmmakers and some non-governmental organizations”:

There are claims that some of these groups have been inspecting the Hadzabe people`s private organs to determine their size for unknown reasons. They reportedly use a variety of strategies to convince the Hadzabe to undress for the purpose of having sexual intercourse, in attempt to photograph them while naked. (…) There are claims that tour operators are ferrying visitors to see the Bushmen`s primitive way of life and their environment, hence generate money while the Hadzabe themselves get nothing.

And according afrol.com international protests against the land-grab is growing. The case has now been presented to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples, Rodolfo Stavenhagen.

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Primitive Racism: Reuters about “the world’s most primitive tribes”

“Stone Age Tribes”, tsunami and racist evolutionism

“Good story about cannibals. Pity it’s not even close to the truth”

Ancient People: We are All Modern Now – Debate on Savage Minds

Do anthropologists have anything relevant to say about human rights?

Anthropological perspectives on suicide bombing

Published on June 6, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, persons and theories, politics, religion cosmology, Us and Them

“On Suicide Bombing” is the title of a new book by anthropologist Talal Asad. In the introduction he writes:

For many non-Muslims in the United States, Western Europe, and Israel, the suicide bomber quickly became the icon of an Islamic “culture of death.” This led me to try to think in a sustained way about the contemporary mode of violence that is described by much of the Western media as “Islamic terrorism.” Is there, I asked myself, a religiously motivated terrorism? If so, how does it differ from other cruelties? What makes its motivation—as opposed to the simple intent to kill—religious? Where does it stand in relation to other forms of collective violence? How is the image of the suicide bomber, bringing death to himself and others, addressed by Christians and post-Christians?

He also examins the “clash of civilizations” thesis that purports to explain contemporary Islamic jihadism as the essence of contemporary terrorism, and he argue against the kind of history that assumes self-contained civilizations having fixed values. Asad also discusses state terrorism and violence exercised by the modern state:

I am simply impressed by the fact that modern states are able to destroy and disrupt life more easily and on a much grander scale than ever before and that terrorists cannot reach this capability. I am also struck by the ingenuity with which so many politicians, public intellectuals, and journalists provide moral justifications for killing and demeaning other human beings. What seems to matter is not the killing and dehumanization as such but how one kills and with what motive. People at all times have, of course, justified the killing of so-called enemies and others they deem not deserving to live. The only difference is that today liberals who engage in this justification think they are different because morally advanced.

>> read the whole introduction

By the way, Paradise Now is a great film about suicide bombers.

There are several articles by or about Talal Asad online, among others:

Interview with Talal Asad (Asia Source, 16.12.02)

Interview with Talal Asad: Modern power and the reconfiguration of religious traditions (Stanford University)

Talal Asad: A single history? Francis Fukuyama’s defence of the universalism of western values and institutions is challenged by modern global political realities (Open Democracy, 5.5.06)

Talal Asad: Reflections on Laïcité & the Public Sphere (Keynote address at the “Beirut Conference on Public Spheres,” October 22-24, 2004)

Talal Asad’s hour-long Stanford Presidential Lecture

"On Suicide Bombing" is the title of a new book by anthropologist Talal Asad. In the introduction he writes:

For many non-Muslims in the United States, Western Europe, and Israel, the suicide bomber quickly became the icon of an Islamic “culture…

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

Published on June 2, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, fieldwork / methods, religion cosmology, University / Academia, Us and Them

Reading my earlier post “The dangerous militarisation of anthropology” you might get the impression that this is something that only regards the U.S. But the same thing is happening in Britain. A few weeks ago the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA) passed a resolution that criticized a huge British research program that recruits anthropologists for “anti-terror” spying activities, and anthropologist Susan Wright (Danish University of Education) called for global coordination on this issue.

Here is ASAs resolution:

The ASA notes with concern the formulations of the recent ESRC/AHRC/FCO funding initiatives (Programmes) on ‘New Security Challenges’. While welcoming the withdrawal of the first proposed Programme, it considers that the revised initiative, particularly as set out in section 3.2. (that the research should inform UK Counter Terrorism policy overseas), is prejudicial to the position of all researchers working abroad, including those who have nothing to do with this Programme”.

This meeting thus proposes as follows:

* that all anthropologists in the UK, and members of the ASA in particular who might have applied for funding under this Programme, consider carefully the position in which they could place themselves, the people with whom they work in the field, and other colleagues. They should also note that research of this kind may well conflict with the ASA’s Code of Ethics,

* that the office-holders and Committee have the confidence of the ASA membership to discuss these issues with colleagues within this and other disciplines, both through networks and professional associations, and decide on what further actions are appropriate.

“This is a major issue that professional associations in the UK and the US need to take a hard line on”, writes Susan Wright in Anthropology Today February 2007:

It’s no use one country’s professional association taking a hard line and another not: it will make it impossibly difficult for politically marginalized people to decide who to work with and who not to if any country’s professional association condones academic enquiry being confused with spying, surveillance or counterinsurgency.

What’s this all about?

In July 2006, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) invited chosen academics to bid for funding under a £1.3-million research initiative entitled ‘Combating terrorism by countering radicalisation’. It is a research program that is based on the premise of a link between Islam, radicalization and terrorism. ‘Radicalization’ is a new buzzword in intelligence circles and was nowhere defined.

As Gustaaf Houtman explained in Anthropology Today 6/2006:

The ‘initiative’ was not openly advertised and MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (which in 2003 brought together counter-terrorist expertise from 11 key government departments and agencies, including the police), was understood to have participated in its design. The programme was jointly sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the direction of Professor Stuart Croft, the Director of the ESRC’s five-year New Security Challenges Programme (a programme that began in 2003, and sponsors 40 research projects aiming ‘to try to offer fresh insight into the security challenges faced in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 globalized world’).

Under the ‘Combating terrorism programme’ six regions – Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa and the Gulf – and five specific countries – Jordan, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and Turkey – were chosen for study.

Academics would be asked to ‘scope the growth in influence and membership of extremist Islamist groups in the past 20 years’, ‘indicate where intervention strategies might have a disproportionate influence’, ‘name the key figures (moderate and extreme) and key groups (including charities and proselytising religious groups) influencing the local population’ and ‘understand the use of theological legitimisation for violence’. Among the main topics mentioned were ‘radicalisation drivers and counter- strategies in each of the country studies’ and ‘future trends likely to increase/decrease radicalisation’.

But these plans were suspended soon after the Times Higher Educational Supplement got hold of the story and this spring, a revised version was launched.

Nevertheless, the focus doesn’t seem to have changed a lot as we see in these lines in paragraph 3.2:

The FCO’s interest in this initiative stems from the recognition that independent, high-quality research on radicalisation issues can inform UK Counter Terrorism policy overseas. As part of the Prevent strand of that policy in particular, the FCO seeks to use research to increase its knowledge and understanding of the factors associated with radicalisation in those countries and regions identified as high priority. The Prevent strand is concerned with tackling the radicalisation of individuals, both in the UK and elsewhere, which sustains the international terrorist threat.

(…)

Proposals with a country or regional focus should address questions arising out of a critical engagement with the conventional wisdom and scholarship on topics of relevance to the initiative.

These include:
• Key political, social, cultural and demographic factors that impact upon Muslim populations in the area of study
• The social profile of those who may support or be attracted to violence, in terms of gender, age, class and ethnicity
• Diverse forms of avowedly Islamist mobilisation, both political and non-political, violent and non-violent
• The diversity of Islamic schools, organisations, political parties and social movements and the divisions between such bodies, movements and sects
• Patterns of migration, identity formation, and mobilisation among Muslim diasporic communities and their impact on ‘radicalisation’

The project is not an entirely British affair. According to Jeremy Keenan (Anthropology Today February 2007) it has been designed to meet the needs of its US ally, whose counter-terrorism initiatives have been running into an increasing number of difficulties in several places in the world. The FCO, he writes, had been asked by the Americans to help them in their “counterterrorist efforts” in the Sahara-Sahel. The FCO was now asking the ESRC and AHRC to get British academics involved. Keenan who has done reearch in this area for 30 years in this area has also been asked to advise them.

This ‘second front’, he writes, has played a key role in furthering US interests over the last five years. In particular, it has created the ideological conditions used to justify and legitimize the current militarization of Africa for the purposes of securing US strategic national resources – notably oil. The ‘front’ has also been used by the Pentagon’s controversial Office of Special Plans to ‘cherry-pick’ now largely disproved intelligence to support its invasion of Iraq. It has also helped to keep a more sceptical ‘old Europe’ supportive of the ‘global’ ‘war on terror’.

But as his research has shown, there are no terrorists there. Most, if not all, of the ‘terrorist’ incidents in this region, which justified the launch of the ‘second front’, Keenan writes, were fabricated by US and/or Algerian military intelligence services.

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

Fieldwork reveals: Bush administration is lying about the “war on terror” in the Sahara

San Jose: American Anthropologists Stand Up Against Torture and the Occupation of Iraq and AAA Press Release: Anthropologists weigh in on Iraq, torture at annual meeting

“War on terror”: CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information / see also debate on this on Savage Minds

Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations

Bush, “war of terror” and the erosion of free academic speech: Challenges for anthropology

USA: Censorship threatens fieldwork – A call for resistance

Two Books Explore the Sins of Anthropologists Past and Present

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

Published on April 18, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Arctic / Northern Regions, ecology nature, indigenous people / minorities, journal articles / papers, persons and theories, Us and Them

Our fellow anthro-blogger Tad McIlwraith has successfully defended his dissertation “But We Are Still Native People’: Talking about Hunting and History in a Northern Athapaskan Village” that now can be downloaded from his website (The graduates in his year are the first who are able to request open access publication)

His dissertation is a study of hunting in the northern Athapaskan village of Iskut, British Columbia, Canada. Iskut hunting is a source of pride for Iskut people. Yet, hunting is sometimes stigmatized by outsiders with interests in the lands and natural resources of northern British Columbia. For some outside observers, he writes, modernization and acculturation are one-way processes. Traditions are better left in the past. At times, he found out, Iskut talk about hunting conveys those sentiments too. At other times, Iskut people strongly reject the stigma of labels like ‘impoverished’ or ‘nomadic’ that resonate in the words that have been written about Iskut people.

Tad McIlwraith indicates that the ethnographic inquiry into an Iskut culture was a profitable way to identify the importance of hunting to Iskut people and, thus, to offset the racism and stereotypes that are frequently associated with native lives.

He also argues that ethnoecological research and the Ethnography of Speaking both contribute useful methodological alternatives to Traditional Use Studies particularly when the documentation and interpretation of the varied expressions of hunting in Iskut Village is of concern.

>> download the dissertation

>> visit his blog

Our fellow anthro-blogger Tad McIlwraith has successfully defended his dissertation "But We Are Still Native People’: Talking about Hunting and History in a Northern Athapaskan Village" that now can be downloaded from his website (The graduates in his year are…

The Dictionary of Man: Will Bob Geldof and the BBC reproduce racist anthropology?

Published on April 18, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, culture traditions, media, Us and Them

Bob Geldof is to team up with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on a project to digitally catalogue all known human existence. They want to create the “largest ever living record” of films, photographs, anthropological histories, philosophies, theologies, economies, language and art, as well as people’s personal stories, according to afp

Might sound good but reading Geldofs statements (“In an age of globalisation, we face the growing homogenisation of cultures”) and their plans to “capture all 900 of the separate groups of people anthropologists believe exist in the world”, one begins to doubt: It seems that Geldof and the BBC are going to reproduce old fashioned racist anthropology (“Völkerkunde”). Although they call it an “anthropological project”, they can’t have read much anthropology.

>> BBC: Geldof unveils earth series plans

>> afp: BBC, Geldof join forces to draw up a map of mankind

>> Guardian: Geldof plans the definitive record of mankind

UPDATE: Over there at Culture Matters, Joana Breidenbach comments:

Here we see again the widely popular notion of “cultures” as distinct, static and unchanging entities threatened by Western-led globalization.

It seems a pity that this outdated view should be perpetuated by the BBC who in its reportages so often manages to portray a very different image of the cultural dynamics in globalization: i.e. in which a new diversity is created by the encounter between global consumer goods, media, ideas and institutions with local ways of doing and thinking.

>> read the whole comment

In Detroit and London: More African Villages in the Zoo

Geldof’s Live8 and Western myths about Africa

Bob Geldof is to team up with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on a project to digitally catalogue all known human existence. They want to create the "largest ever living record" of films, photographs, anthropological histories, philosophies, theologies, economies, language…