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Aboriginees in Australia: Why talking about culture?

Published on June 6, 2006 by lorenz Posted in aboriginees, anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Pacific Oceania, Us and Them

In the Australian magazine On Line Opinion, Anthropologist John Morton criticizes public views of Aboriginess in Australia and argues for avoiding the term culture:

Ever since Europeans first came to Australia, public views of Aborigines have veered between two extremes. Aborigines have been promoted either as disgusting savages or as admired paragons, uncivilised riff-raff or as noble bearers of their culture – bad or good, but never ordinary.

As we now enter a new phase of Aboriginal affairs, Indigenous Australians once again enter the public mind as radically different types of people. On the one hand, we are bombarded with material about dysfunctional communities plagued by drug and alcohol abuse, rampant violence, uncontrolled children and chronic sickness. On the other hand, we routinely hear about “the oldest living culture in the world”, Aboriginal people caring, sharing and looking after country, and the profound qualities of Aboriginal art.

In these circumstances, it’s hard to know what “the oldest living culture in the world” might be. Indeed, it’s hard to know what people are talking about at all when they refer to “culture”.

(…)

We’ve heard a lot of arguments about the “true” nature of Aboriginal culture in recent weeks. Some say Aboriginal culture fosters violence against women and children. Others gainsay this and suggest that violence is cultural breakdown stemming from neglect and marginalisation by mainstream Australian culture. There are many more axes to grind in relation to employment, health and education, but always with a view to promoting a good or bad image of Aboriginal people, not to mention a good or bad image of the “mainstream culture” which provides Aboriginal services.

(…)

This blame game doesn’t give us “the truth” about Aboriginal or any other culture. It simply reduces the extremely complicated relationship between Aboriginal communities and all the arms of the state (governments, bureaucracies, the police, land councils, schools, health centres, etc.) with which they engage. Recourse to “culture” always seems to deliver imagined parodies of real life, transforming it into something inordinately valuable or completely worthless.

British cultural critic Raymond Williams once remarked that “culture” is “one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”. (…) In fact, it’s an empty word: you can fill it with pretty much anything you like. That’s why it functions so well in slogans.

In the meantime, there are many people both inside and outside Aboriginal communities who recognise that there are big problems in Aboriginal affairs. It’d be good if they could all be allowed to get on with the job of finding appropriate solutions to those problems without “culture” getting in the way.

>> read the whole article in On Line Opinion

From Stone Age to 21st century – More “fun” with savages

Ancient People: We are All Modern Now

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

The Culture Struggle: How cultures are instruments of social power

“Quit using the word ‘culture’ wherever possible”

In the Australian magazine On Line Opinion, Anthropologist John Morton criticizes public views of Aboriginess in Australia and argues for avoiding the term culture:

Ever since Europeans first came to Australia, public views of Aborigines have veered between two extremes. Aborigines…

“Play on sterotypical understandings of Africa” – Anthropologist analyses Nigerian scam emails

Published on June 3, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, cyberanthropology, internet, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

Email scams constitute the third largest industry in Nigeria, after oil and drugs. These email-scammers succeed because they play on stereotypical understandings of Africa, anthropologist Elina Hartikainen concludes in paper, that she presented at a conference few weeks ago.

Most of us have received emails from African chiefs and businessmen, or relatives of them, with pleas for assistance in retrieving large sums of money that for some reason is inaccessible for them. As compensation we are promised a sizeable percentage of it. In 2001 alone, “Nigerian scammers” have earned around 500 million dollar from victims all over the world.

The spam filters at Hartikainens university are not that good, so she received lots of these scam-emails and started collecting them. There is no thing on earth that cannot be of interest for an anthropologist! When she finally read through one of the emails, she was totally fascinated by the ways in which it played on stereotypical understandings of Africa.

She writes:

The power of these e-mails to engage their recipients in further interaction is centrally founded on the senders’ artful calibration of both the content and form of the e-mails to Western stereotypes of Africa and African cultural practices. It is by representing themselves as embedded in webs of corruption, oil wealth, religious piety and traditional inheritance customs that the senders of the requests for assistance construct themselves as imaginable characters to their Western audience.

She provides this example. “Mrs.Princess Mawa” writes to her, telling about the death of her father, a wealthy businessman:

Following his death, his family members insisted that I am not entitled to his property (Assets and money) since I am a woman and my offspring is all girl as I do not have a male child for my late husband claiming that it is what our tradition entails. Well, because of this barbaric traditional law here in COTE D’IVOIRE which doesn’t permit a woman to inherit her Husbands property incase of death if she has no male child, the relatives of my late Husband are expected by tradition to take over the management of his business and other properties including myself who automatically becomes a wife to one of his immediate brothers.

Hartikainen comments:

This description of Princess Mawa’s situation in terms of traditional, barbaric kin and inheritance customs plays a dual role in enticing the recipient of the request into responding to it. On the one hand it serves to reinforce stereotypical understandings of African tradition that circulate in the popular media. (…) On the other hand, Princess Mawa’s condemnation of her own society’s “barbaric traditions” and particularly her claim to invest her share of her money in her daughter’s education (…) create the possibility for the recipient of the letter to claim that in the final run their decision to cooperate in the scheme is not motivated by financial profits alone, but it is also morally justified.

One can expect that no one takes these mails seriously. But those who do, respond on the basis of impressions of the senders’ intellectual inferiority, Hartikainen supposes. Many of the victims, she writes, consider themselves to be scamming the scammers only to realize that it was not they who were playing the scammer for the fool, but the opposite.

>> read her entry: Writing on Nigerian Scams

The paper is not yet available online. But she has an interesting blog called becoming an anthropologist – about me and my life somewhere between bahia, chicago and helsinki where she will publish the paper when she has “cleaned up the paper”, since it is “still in more of a presentation format”.

Most of…

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Cosmopolitanism is like respecting the ban on smoking in the public

Published on May 30, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, cosmopolitanism, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

Thomas Hylland Eriksen didn’t make it to the conference Cosmopolitanism and Anthropology (delayed plane), but his paper is now available online. It’s called “The cartoon controversy and the possibility of cosmopolitanism”. Cosmopolitanism, he explains, is like respecting the ban on smoking in the public:

Let us suppose that secularised Danes were to take the religiosity of Muslims seriously and treat it with respect, much as they treat their old parents with respect. In that case, they would easily know how to maneuvre in order not to offend them. Not even trying to maneuvre indicates a strong inclination not to live in the same society even if one lives next door to each other. The kind of cosmopolitan attitude leading to restraint can be compared to the underlying reasoning behind the ban on smoking in public, which is these days being implemented in many parts of the world (…).

The point is, however, that supposing I smoke and you do not, and we are in a room together, I might just tell you that if I smoke and you don’t, we both enjoy our liberal freedom. This is the problem of the cartoon controversy and the simplistic liberal responses to the offended reactions among Muslims. Muhammad cartoons to them are like tobacco smoke to an asthmatic.

>> read the whole paper (pdf) LINK UPDATED 24.6.2021

Owen Sichone: Poor African migrants no less cosmopolitan than anthropologists

What’s the point of anthropology conferences? (general summary of the conference Cosmopolitanism and Anthropology)

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

For an Anthropology of Cosmopolitanism

Thomas Hylland Eriksen didn't make it to the conference Cosmopolitanism and Anthropology (delayed plane), but his paper is now available online. It's called "The cartoon controversy and the possibility of cosmopolitanism". Cosmopolitanism, he explains, is like respecting the ban on…

Three interviews about multiculturalism, arranged marriages, honor and dignity

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

Three interviews that I’ve conducted earlier this year have been translated from Norwegian to English:

Take on the multiculturalism debate – Interview with Alexa Døving
Does culture exist? What is integration? What defines Norwegianness? Is nationalism excluding? How useful are cultural explanations? Should special rights be awarded on cultural and religious grounds? What groups make up a society? Alexa Døving has chosen to write about the big issues. >> read the interview

Unni Wikan with plans for a new book about immigrant men, honour and dignity
Previously Unni Wikan has been interested in immigrant women and children. She now wants us to be more concerned with the men. Better insights into the mens’ situations could prevent conflicts, says the anthropologist, who is working on the analysis of two court cases to do with honour killing and forced marriage. >> read the interview

To engage the reader with a complex message – Interview with Anja Bredal
Do not underestimate free will and do not trivialize coercion! This is the conclusion in Anja Bredal’s doctoral thesis on arranged marriage. After ten years of research, one doctorate and several journal and newspaper articles this sociologist is still interested in the topic. She wonders about one thing in particular: How is it possible to maintain a nuanced moderate position and yet still be interesting? >> read the interview

Three interviews that I've conducted earlier this year have been translated from Norwegian to English:

Take on the multiculturalism debate - Interview with Alexa Døving
Does culture exist? What is integration? What defines Norwegianness? Is nationalism excluding? How useful are cultural explanations?…

“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…