Us and Them | antropologi.info

Gene Study Puts Indians on Guard

Published on April 28, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, ethics, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, Us and Them

IPS News

Scientists involved in the Genographic Project will go in search of the genes of indigenous communities worldwide in a bid to decipher the puzzle of how ancient peoples were disseminated around the planet. Negative experiences in the past, cultural resistance and the influence of global activism against ”biopiracy” have triggered suspicion among the Indians, who worry about their role in DNA studies, according to Latin American indigenous leaders consulted by Tierramérica.

But the bigger storm cloud, according to U.S. rights activists, is the controversial Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), dating to 1991. The initiative aimed to study human genetic variations to help design new medical treatments, among other purposes. Angry anthropologists, activists and Indians described the project as ”racist” and prevented it from taking place in its original form. >> continue

IPS News

Anthropologist: Europe Should Face Itself in Turkey’s Mirror

Published on April 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Zaman Daily Newspaper

At this time of the season, purple flowers bloom more fully in all corners of the Bosphorous, and purple clusters, enchanted because spring is coming at full speed, twine around. Being in Istanbul is a privilege under the shadow of purple clusters. Philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Edgar Morin, was in Istanbul last weekend. Morin says, “Love is part of a life poem,” and he himself has proven the fact that if one does not know anything about poems, he/she cannot be a scientist.

“Despite all efforts by intolerant Europeans, Turks climb a 200-meter hill on the way to Saint George Orthodox Church in Istanbul, together with Christians and Muslims. It is not our duty to judge the people’s beliefs here, but the ability to pray side by side and the fraternity among nations. Europeans are not very familiar with this ability. They have been after sharing since the beginning of the 19th century. They do not see the “people” around but only race, religion and discrimination. Europeans, who are busy setting double standard snares, are now lagging far behind the idea of humanism”, Morin says. >> continue

Zaman Daily Newspaper

Open source movement is like things anthropologists have studied for a long time

Published on April 18, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, gift economy gift giving, technology, Us and Them

Jill Walker (University of Bergen, Norway) reports from a seminar I’ve missed to attend:

Lars Risan is the first speaker at the network seminar I’m at in Oslo. Don’t you love the idea of code as sacrament? Lars is an anthropologist, and he starts his talk by saying that actually, what we see in the open source movement is a lot like things anthropologists have studied for a long time. >> continue

Jill Walker (University of Bergen, Norway) reports from a seminar I've missed to attend:

Lars Risan is the first speaker at the network seminar I’m at in Oslo. Don’t you love the idea of code as sacrament? Lars is an anthropologist,…

Indigenousness and the Politics of Spirituality

Published on April 6, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Native American, religion cosmology, Us and Them

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

The commodification of indigenous spirituality is based on Romanticism’s construction of indigenes as more authentic, closer to nature and the sacred than Westerners; but it grew out of popular fascination with indigenous spirituality, fueled partly by ethnography and its imitators. By the 1980s a growing popular literature on New Age mysticism was emerging, drawing many concepts from Romantic notions of indigenous spirituality.

The commodification of spirituality led to outrage on the part of many indigenous peoples that white “wannabees” were playing at being Indian and appropriating their spiritual traditions. Some Native American groups decreed that only members of their own tribes would be permitted to practice certain traditions. Another possibility that appealed to some indigenous groups was to copyright their spiritual practices through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The idea that the right to spiritual practice is determined by blood violates everything we know about the constructed nature of race, ethnicity and culture. As anthropologists, we cannot turn our backs on our most fundamental assumptions, even to protect indigenous groups whose spiritual traditions have been fetishized. Taken to its logical extreme, it leads directly to essentialization and racism. >> continue

Sabina Magliocco, Anthropology News April 2005, American Anthropological Association

Reconstructing tribal history

Published on April 1, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, history, indigenous people / minorities, Us and Them

The Telegraph, Calcutta

Tribal societies have seldom recorded their own history. They usually relied on oral transmission of events, which raises definite difficulties for mainstream historians, who have seldom given serious thought or space to tribal struggles or movements. Recently, Sussex University celebrated the 150th anniversary of the historic Santhal Hul calling for reconstruction of tribal history.

In the wake of this memorable event, a researcher should not forget that writing history has always been determined by the dominant ideologies and class interests, creating products more or less of specialised brands. >> continue

The Telegraph, Calcutta