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Us and Them

Taking American Race Relations on the Road…to Africa / Rituals in Ghana / Men and Masculinities in Africa

Published on by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, books, gender, journal articles / papers, Us and Them

The African Studies Quarterly is an Open Access Online Journal for African Studies.

In their recent issue there’s an article by anthropologist Rebecca Gearhart on Taking American Race Relations on the Road…to Africa:

“As an anthropologist who leads undergraduates to East Africa, I am in hot pursuit of a way to help my students avoid taking the particular way in which Americans understand race with them to Africa. So far, I have been unsuccessful in prying my students loose from the color-coded framework that has organized race relations for them throughout their lives. American notions of race often become obstacles to understanding how social relationships are negotiated outside of the American context. (…) Social relationships in Kenya are not defined by skin color the way they are in America. From a Kenyan perspective, “race” might be translated as: cultural heritage, first language, home district, family name, profession, and/or ethnic affiliation.”

>> continue

Their recent issue has lots of interesting book reviews, among others Joseph Adjaye’s ethnography “Boundaries of Self and Other in Ghanaian Popular Culture”. Adjaye studies his own society:

Joseph Adjaye offers us an inspiring ethnography of several rituals among the Akan, Krobo, and Bono in Ghana. The book offers a vivid impression of the (post)colonial transformations of libations, funerals, naming ceremonies, female initiation practices and two festivals (Bakatue and Apoo), which the author tries to explain by using and refining different theoretical approaches. The strength of this book is situated in the author’s personal experiences. As the eldest son in an Akan family, he has to take up specific rules during rituals.

>> continue

Another book review: Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa. Edited by Lisa A. Lindsay and Stephan F. Miescher:

“This book is the first collection of its kind to focus on the practices of masculinities especially in West Africa. Covering early colonial period through post-independence, the editors and contributors discuss how masculinities have been constructed and contested in sub-Saharan Africa. The book challenges stereotypes of African men as inferior and victims of colonialism.”

>> continue

The African Studies Quarterly is an Open Access Online Journal for African Studies.

In their recent issue there's an article by anthropologist Rebecca Gearhart on Taking American Race Relations on the Road...to Africa:

"As an anthropologist who leads undergraduates to East…

Read more

Researching Gossip

Published on by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, fieldwork / methods, Us and Them

Interesting article in the International Herald’s Tribune on recent research on Gossip. If there’s a list of universal human traits, gossip must be part of it:

“Long-term studies of Pacific Islanders, American middle-school children and residents of rural Newfoundland and Mexico, among others, have confirmed that the content and frequency of gossip are universal: People devote anywhere from a fifth to two-thirds or more of their daily conversation to gossip, and men appear to be just as eager for it as women.”

“Gossip has long been dismissed by researchers as little more than background noise, self-serving blather that serves no useful function”, the article tells us. “But some investigators now say that it belongs front and center in any study of group interaction” – among them an anthropologist (Kevin Kniffin) who has studied gossip among a university crew group for more than 18 months. >> read the whole story

PS: I remember vaguely that anthropologists have already conducted several other studies on gossip. See among others Kate Fox: Mobile(phone) Gossip

Interesting article in the International Herald's Tribune on recent research on Gossip. If there's a list of universal human traits, gossip must be part of it:

"Long-term studies of Pacific Islanders, American middle-school children and residents of rural Newfoundland and Mexico,…

Read more

Anthropology, photography and racism

Published on by lorenz Posted in Africa, anthropology in the news, history, Us and Them, Visual Anthropology

(via Vizuális Antropológia.lap.hu) A critical article by Patrick Harries, University of Cape Town, dealing with the history of visual anthropology in South Africa. “Many early practitioners thought photographs reflected reality in an objective and unbiased manner”, he writes. But this was a far too idealistic view as he shows.

“One of the major reasons for undertaking extensive anthropological studies in Africa, according Junod (one of the earlier anthropologists), was to provide Europeans with a picture of their own prehistoric, primitive past. The view that Europe’s past could be found in Africa’s present drove Henri-Alexandre Junod to produce a form of salvage anthropology that uncoupled “traditional” society from any form of change.

(…)

Although almost 100,000 workers drawn from southern Mozambique were employed in the mines, farms, plantations and ports of South Africa by the turn of the century, not one photograph of a migrant worker appeared in his anthropological monographs.”

He not only influenced the way Europeans looked at Africans but also local people’s identity:

Towards the end of the 19th century, the linguistic and anthropological work of Junod and his colleagues played an important part in the creation of Thonga (or Tsonga) ethnicity and race consciousness. Early photographs helped create this identity by presenting people as objects to be classified according to racial and ethnic taxonomies. Photos of “native salt manufacture” or “consulting the bones” turned individual behavior into general roles while “the Thonga hut,” “Thonga carvings” or “Thonga warriors” transformed individual creations into tribal types.

>> read the whole text (website removed, link updated with copy)

PS: This paper was presented at the conference “Encounters with Photography – Photographing people in southern Africa, 1860 to 1999 in Capetown. All the papers can be read on the conference website (website removed, link updated with copy)

RELATED:
Book review: Colonial Photography and Exhibitions: Representations of the ‘Native’ and the Making of European Identities. – Review (Australian Journal of Anthropology, The, April, 2001 / findarticles.com) Link updated with copy

(via Vizuális Antropológia.lap.hu) A critical article by Patrick Harries, University of Cape Town, dealing with the history of visual anthropology in South Africa. "Many early practitioners thought photographs reflected reality in an objective and unbiased manner", he writes. But…

Read more

Thesis: Participant observation on a Rastafari discussion forum on the internet

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

Norwegian anthropologist Christian Stokke has published his thesis “Unlearning White Superiority. Consciousness-raising on an online Rastafari Reasoning Forum” in full length. From his introduction:

The ensuing interracial dialogues on racism are the main focus of my thesis. Most whites define racism as prejudice and discrimination, and suggest good intentions and “colorblindness” as a solution, while Blacks define it in terms of group dominance, structural inequality and cultural hegemony. Black Rastas point out that whites tend to show dominating behavior in the discussions, and see this as a reflection of a “white superiority complex.” Black Rastas consistently confront whites and hold them responsible for their conduct, although it is usually unintended and unconscious. Through this confrontation, many whites become aware of their taken-for-granted ‘white privilege’ and start “unlearning white superiority.”

>> download the thesis (pdf, 788kb)

Norwegian anthropologist Christian Stokke has published his thesis "Unlearning White Superiority. Consciousness-raising on an online Rastafari Reasoning Forum" in full length. From his introduction:

The ensuing interracial dialogues on racism are the main focus of my thesis. Most whites define racism…

Read more

Summer anthroblog round-up

Published on by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, books, corporate & business anthropology, fieldwork / methods, Us and Them

(Post in progress)

Here a short summary of some stories published during the summer break:

Most discussed: Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs and Steel” and the reasons for differences in progress for different societies

From a summary of the debate in Inside Higher Education (via Keywords):
Diamond focuses on the impact of geography — whether food and other key items were plentiful, whether and how disease spread, and how these developments led to different levels of industrialization, and wealth. “The book overlooks a fundamental issue: the inequality within countries as well as between them,” Kerim Friedman writes. “I assure you that logging industry executives in New Guinea live better than you or I do! Both New Guinea and the United States are far more unequal (by some measures) than is India.” >> read more in Inside Higher Education

>> read the whole debate at Savage Minds (116 comments!!!)

Field Work at Mac Donalds Drive-Through. Coca-Cola hired an anthropologist to find out how to sell more Coke to car drivers and the anthropologist didn’t have more than 40 seconds per informant >> read the whole story “Ronald, patron saint of ethnography” by Grant McCracken (inkl lots of comments!)

Online-Research on age cohorts Charu writes: “I am very curious about what experiences we grew up sharing…. Internet ? Technology ? Liberalization ?” Her idea: to understand the events, ideas, values that have shaped her generation (mid-70’s born, the over-20, 30 ish) and to experiment with the possibility of blogs as a tool for primary research…. >> continue to her post on “A Time To Reflect”

Ethnographic Research on African Village in the Zoo published Nina Glick Schiller, Data Dea and Markus Höhne (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany) did some fieldwork in the zoo. One of their findings: “Organizers and visitors were not racist but they participated in and reflected a process that has been called racialization: the daily and often taken-for-granted means by which humans are separated into supposedly biologically based and unequal categories.” >> read the summary and download the report

( >> earlier posts on the African Village)

(Post in progress)

Here a short summary of some stories published during the summer break:

Most discussed: Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs and Steel" and the reasons for differences in progress for different societies

From a summary of the debate in Inside…

Read more