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…It was twenty years ago: Cities. Part 1

Published on January 13, 2009 by cicilie Posted in Academic life and family, Cicilie among the Parisians

A friend who checks my blog on a regular basis and know me well in “real time” commented jokingly that “style, voice and perspective” wasn’t really what concerned me at the moment, so, where’s the update? Numerous updates spin around in my head daily when I, hours on end, feel like I do nothing, but, when I in fact do nothing less than providing the total nourishment for keeping another human being alive. I try to see it that way, that I actually do something very important with long lasting effects and which in the big scheme of things doesn’t take that much time… But it’s hard to change outlook entirely and over-night from one aloof and intellectual to one almost entirely concerned with biological and material necessities. Naïvely, before the little creature arrived, I imagined I would have at least a couple of hours a day for doing other things. But unfortunately we happened to call him Leo and indeed he eats like a lion. …well, duty calls with a loud roar. That’s it for today. I didn’t even get to the point of telling what happened twenty years ago and what that has to do with cities and why this is of concern for this blog.

I’m curious to see how many parts it will take me to get me to finish this post or even get to the point. Well, that’s life at the moment.

Humain Terrain anthropologist attacked in Afghanistan has died

Published on January 10, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Asia, ethics, Northern America

(via ‘Ilm al-insaan) An anthropologist embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan to help soldiers understand local customs has died more than two months after she was doused with fuel and set on fire, according to ap.

Anthropologist Paula Loyd, 36, had been chatting with an Afghan man about fuel prices when he suddenly attacked her. She worked for contractor BAE Systems in a Human Terrain Team, in which social scientists and anthropologists are embedded with combat brigades, according to court records.

She earned a cultural anthropology degree from Wellesley College and spent much of her career abroad.
According to BAE Systems Loyd served in Bosnia as a U.S. Army reservist, working on civil military affairs projects. She had spent significant time in Afghanistan, working as a civilian military officer for a United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, and also as a field program officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development in one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces.

>> read the whole ap-story (link updated)

Oh I see there is also a story about her death in Wire Third ‘Human Terrain’ Researcher Dead and on Open Anthropology The Unreported Death of Staff Sgt. Paula Loyd of the Human Terrain System: Third Researcher to Die with lots of additonal resources (Open Anthropology seems to be the first to have reported on her death)

“Anthropology = Smarter Counterinsurgency”

Cooperation between the Pentagon and anthropologists a fiasco?

The dangerous militarisation of anthropology

(via 'Ilm al-insaan) An anthropologist embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan to help soldiers understand local customs has died more than two months after she was doused with fuel and set on fire, according to ap.

Anthropologist Paula Loyd,…

God natt, Blindern!

Published on January 8, 2009 by lorenz Posted in forskning(spolitikk) akademia, neoliberalisme / velferdsstaten, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, utdanning

Er dette satire? Eller står det virkelig så ille til med forskningen? Nå har kommunikasjonskonsulentene inntatt Universitetet i Oslo. De har vel allerede skrevet denne pressemeldingen. Jeg må le når jeg snubler over alle disse fancy ordene men egentlig er dette en trist sak.

Les:

Undersøkelser viser at Universitetet i Oslo er et tradisjonsrikt universitet med akademisk tyngde og troverdighet. Samtidig er det i verdensklasse når det gjelder nivået på fremtidsrettet forskning, og utdanning av toppkandidater til offentlig virksomhet, næringsliv og organisasjoner.

– Vi skal bli enda bedre til å vise landets dyktigste, mest motiverte og karrierebevisste studenter hvorfor Universitetet i Oslo er det beste valget for dem, sier Siv Nordrum, kommunikasjonsdirektør ved UiO.

Kvaliteten på UiOs forskning og utdanning vises i den prestisjetunge Shanghai-rangeringen. Der ligger nemlig UiO som nummer en i Norge, og som nummer tre i Norden. Av totalt 16 000 universiteter og høyskoler på verdensbasis, ligger UiO på en 64. plass.

– I tillegg til å utdanne flere høykvalifiserte kandidater til arbeidslivet enn noe annet norsk universitet, har Universitetet i Oslos forskning bare siden 2004 resultert i over 300 innovasjonsideer, etablering av 14 nye selskaper og nær 30 kommersialiserte prosjekter. Dette ønsker vi at flere skal vite om, sier Nordrum.

Verdensklasse. Toppkandidater. Fremtidsrettet forskning. Innovasjonsideer. Kommersialiserte prosjekter. Prestisjtung. Karrierebevisst. Smak på ordene. Hvilke signaler gir de? God natt, Blindern!

>> les pressemeldingen i Uniforum

SE OGSÅ:

Antropologer kritiserer produksjonslogikken på universitetet

Kvantitetsreformen og effektivisering: Hylland Eriksen varsler døden for den frie kunnskapsutvikling

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Universitetenes grunnleggende unyttighet

Meningen med universitetet: Ut mot “produktifiseringen” av utdanningen

Protests at Yale: When Walmart’s management principles run an anthropology department

“Sovjet-liknende produksjonskvoter truer forskningsfriheten”

Opprop: Forskningsfinanseringen en trussel mot vitenskapen og demokratiet

Kommersialisering av forskning: Artikkel om aidssyke barn uønsket

Fagidioter på eliteuniversitetet – Akademikernes utspill møter motstand

Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Sett Israel og Palestina under administrasjon!

Published on January 7, 2009 by lorenz Posted in konflikter katastrofer, Midt-Østen, politikk, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark, vi og de andre

Få antropologer har kommentert krigen i Gaza. Thomas Hylland Eriksen er et av de få unntakene. Hvorfor har ikke verdenssamfunnet forlengst rykket inn med tungt artilleri og satt Israel og Palestina under administrasjon? Det bekreftes jo gang på gang at befolkningen i området er ute av stand til å styre seg selv, skriver han i en kronikk i Aftenposten:

De siste 15 årene har man med vekslende hell grepet inn bl.a. i Irak, Afghanistan, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia og Rwanda. Så hvorfor ikke i Israel og Palestina?
(…)
Vanlige jøder og arabere fortjener bedre enn å bli holdt som gisler av religiøse fanatikere og krigsherrer. Det er kort sagt vanskelig å se noen annen løsning enn påtvungen avvæpning, utvikling av en ikke-etnisk offentlighet med forbud mot etniske og religiøse partier og der en arabisk/palestinsk stemme er like mye verdt som en jødisk, muliggjort fordi verdenssamfunnet har fylt opp gater og torv med FN-soldater og internasjonalt politi som ikke har tenkt å reise hjem med det første.

>> les hele kronikken i Aftenposten

For ti dager siden har teolog Anne-Hege Grung skrevet en fin kronikk der hun har avmytologisert Midtøsten-konflikten: “Konflikten er rett og slett ikke særlig mytisk, den er knyttet til kamp om land, vann og politisk kontroll” – les kronikken Godt nytt år, Gaza i Aftenposten.

Jeg er forresten nettopp blitt ferdig med innlegget Anthropologists on the war on Gaza (handler om engelskspråklige media)

PS: Thomas Hylland Eriksen har organisert et adhoc-seminar “Gaza: Hvilke scenarier er mulige?”. Det skal finne sted mandag 12. januar 2009 kl 1415 i Auditorium 2, Eilert Sundts Hus (SV-fakultetet), Blindern (Universitetet i Oslo). Mer informasjon oppdatering Les oppsummering av seminaret

Anthropologists on the war on Gaza (updated)

Published on January 7, 2009 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, Middle East, politics, Us and Them

LINKS UPDATED 26.10.2023 (See also part II David Graeber: Boycott Israel! – More anthropologists on Gaza) After two weeks war in Gaza, it’s time to round up: How have anthropologists contributed to a better understanding of the conflict? According to my overview, they have been quite silent. And they have been more active on blogs than in traditional media. Neither Google or Yahoo news search give any relevant results.

Gabriele Marranci has written one of the first blog posts: Gaza: bad politics needs blood. He criticizes both Hamas and the Israeli government:

And here lies the main issue: both parties, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, share at least something in common: an immoral and unethical view for which political gain are more important than innocent lives, including those of women and children.
(…)
Hamas has no problem to sacrifice Palestinian lives in the name of an impossible mission (to remove Israel from the Middle East), and the Israeli government has no issue with endangering the lives of innocent Israelis with the inevitable retaliation of suicide bombing and killings.
(…)
Palestinians and Muslims have to accept one simple fact: Israel is here to stay. Israel and its supporters have likewise to accept that sophisticated forms of ethnic cleansing will not be sustainable nor sucessful. Palestinians are, generation after generation, there to stay, and if a solution not found, to fight.
(…)
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, has some clear historical reasons. Yet the fact that it is still one of the most deadly conflicts affecting civilians is due to extremely bad politics, and bad politics, akin to a kind of cancer, requires innocent blood in order to perpetuate itself.

In New American Media, William O. Beeman explains why Hamas is Not Iran’s Puppet:

The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not a proxy war between Israel and Iran. This is a myth that has grown up during the Bush administration, and is now widely promulgated with little or no support. (…) Hamas has been effectively sealed off from the world by Israel, and by Egypt.

tabsir – one of the best resources regarding the Middle East – collects continuisly news stories and analysis on Gaza. Daniel Martin Varisco wrote two posts: Rizpah and the Politics of Vengeance and David vs Goliath, the IDF vs Hamas

John Hutnyk posted two eyewitness reports by Ewa Jasiewicz, a former student from Goldsmiths.

Maximilian Forte has collected lots of links in his post Currently Covering and Commenting on the Gaza Massacre and reflected on using twitter in Tweets of Conflict in the New Online War Zone.

Erkan Saka is also sharing Gaza-analysis with us, see More than 200,000 protested in Çağlayan, Istanbul and For the people of Gaza

That’s it so far. Not much. In Gaza: A Frightening Anthropological Analogy, Pamthropologist criticizes her colleagues:

Is presenting a discussion of these issues not, exactly, what we should be doing as Anthropologists? And yet, our blogs rarely cover these issues–the notable exception being Open Anthropology, wait he is a Canadian. You know, as a discipline, we have no functioning voice in the American dialogue.

But anthropologists have raised their voices about this conflict before. Last year, among others, Adam S. Kucharski published his thesis about The Politics of Water in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.. Linda Teigland Helgesen was eight months of fieldwork among Palestinian students at Birzeit University. The result is her thesis The construction of resistance. A case study among “Il-majaneen” students in the occupied West Bank

Earlier this year, Jeff Halper published his new book An Israeli in Palestine. Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel. It was reviewed by Electronic Intifada. See also interview with Halper ‘As Israelis, We Also Fight for Palestinians’ (Oh My News).

For general news see The Guardian and the impressive round-up of blogposts from Gaza by Global Voices: Palestine: “In Gaza our future is almost destroyed”

UPDATE 5: Metronews in Halifax (no longer available) writes about Israelian anthropologist Jeff Halper (mentioned above): “It’s unusual to have an Israeli who’s critical of Israel and supports Palestinian rights, especially with the war in Gaza going on,” he told Metro yesterday. Something needs to be done, he said, because the current situation isn’t just affecting Gaza, it’s “messing up the whole world.”

UPDATE 4: New posts by Gabriele Marranci: Gaza and the ethos of death and Maximilian Forte at Open anthropology Campus Gaza: Academic Boycotts and Complicit Silence

UPDATE 3: Palestinian anthropologist Yara El-Ghadban has collected lots of information on her bilingual (French / English) blog Tropismes

UPDATE 2: New post by Maximilian Forte: Accepting the Might to Exist: Some Israeli Lessons for Anthropology:

Anthropology teaches us not to naturalize any human construction, and to recognize the arbitrariness of culture, not to mention the arbitrariness of power. Political Anthropology invites us to recognize that the state is the most violent of all arbitrary institutions in human history, that all states on earth owe their existence to massive and bloody assaults, and continue to preserve and promote themselves through violence against the peoples governed by other states.

UPDATE 1: Today, here in Norway, Thomas Hylland Eriksen wrote an article in the newspaper Aftenposten where he proposed a possible solution – to put Israel-Palestine under (UN-) administration (in Norwegian only). Yesterday, the Norwegian Psychological Association demanded the end of the war. The psychologists are among other things concerned for possible consequences for children’s mental health (Norwegian only)

SEE ALSO PART TWO OF THIS POST

David Graeber: Boycott Israel! – More anthropologists on Gaza (II)

SEE ALSO EARLIER POSTS:

Lila Abu Lughod: “In Israel and Palestine we have an amazing opportunity”

Anthropologists on the Israel-Lebanon conflict

Selected quotes from “On Suicide Bombing” by Talal Asad

The anthropology of children, war and violence

Conflict Resolution and Anthropology: Why more scholarship on violence than on peace?

For an Anthropology of Cosmopolitanism

LINKS UPDATED 26.10.2023 (See also part II David Graeber: Boycott Israel! - More anthropologists on Gaza) After two weeks war in Gaza, it's time to round up: How have anthropologists contributed to a better understanding of the conflict? According…