antropologi.info | Page 223 of 726 | social and cultural anthropology blog

Dissertation: Imam’s influence on Muslims overestimated

Published on November 15, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Europe, religion cosmology

Participants in the debate on Islam often overestimate the authority and influence of imams. The role of the imam is especially limited when it comes to so-called “second and third generation immigrants”. This is the conclusion reached by anthropologist Welmoet Boender in her dissertation Imam in Nederland, for which she was awarded her doctorate at the University of Leiden on Tuesday, according to expatica.com:

Boender’s research shows that not only the imam in the mosque defines appropriate standards and values and behaviour for the faithful, but television sheiks, internet imams, friends and family members and (translated) books also play a role. (…) In the public debate the imam is often seen as an instrument to integrate Muslims in Dutch society. (…) In light of the limited role that imams play for many Muslims, he will most likely fall short of this task.

>> read the whole story on Expatica.com

The dissertation is not online (yet?). I have not found any information in English. For those who do read Dutch, the blog Closer by Martijn de Koning of course provides more information in his post Imam in Nederland – Welmoet Boender.

I’ve found an older texts by Welmoet Boender though Imams in the Netherlands: An Impression.

Islam in Europe: Mainstream society as the provider of conditions

How Islamic cassette sermons challenge the moral and political landscape of the Middle East

Islam in Morocco: TV and Internet more important than mosques

Doctoral Thesis: Is Islam Compatible with Secularism?

Extremism: “Authorities -and not Imams – can make the situation worse”

New blog: Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist

What does it mean to be Muslim in a secular society? Anthropologist thinks ahead

Book review: Mahmood Mamdani: “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim”

Participants in the debate on Islam often overestimate the authority and influence of imams. The role of the imam is especially limited when it comes to so-called "second and third generation immigrants". This is the conclusion reached by anthropologist Welmoet…

14th Nordic Migration Researchers Conference

Published on November 14, 2007 by lorenz Posted in * Conferences, *In English, antropologi.info calendar, Scandinavia

14.-16. november 2007, Bergen (Norway)

The Nordic Migration Researchers Conferences have established themselves as a major contact point not only between Nordic researchers in the field of international migration and ethnic relations, but also between these and international scholarship generally.

The theme for the Nordic Migration Researcher Conference points to issues of sovereignty, demarcation, distinction, exclusion and discrimination, but also to issues of transience, communication across distinction, and acceptance. Aspects of ‘the global turn’ and the Europeanization of Europe, not least as manifest in migration and migrant populations, have brought border and boundary issues to the forefront not only in social science and humanities scholarship, but also placed them with exceptional prominence on the political agenda.

More information: http://imer.uib.no/14Nordic/index.htm

14.-16. november 2007, Bergen (Norway)

The theme…

American Anthropological Association opposes collaboration with the military – Bloggers react

Published on November 12, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, ethics

A few days ago, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) decided to oppose the embedding of anthropologists in military teams (HTS) in Iraq and Afghanistan. The use of anthropological knowledge in the U.S. military and the militarisation of anthropology has been the most discussed topic among anthropologists this year.

We read:

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association concludes (i) that the HTS program creates conditions which are likely to place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA Code of Ethics and (ii) that its use of anthropologists poses a danger to both other anthropologists and persons other anthropologists study.

Thus the Executive Board expresses its disapproval of the HTS program.

In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on ethical grounds. We have grave concerns about the involvement of anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project. The Executive Board views the HTS project as an unacceptable application of anthropological expertise.

To facilitate discussion on this subject, the AAA has created this blog as a forum for members to post comments regarding the Executive Board statement and related issues. Currently, their first and only blog post about the Board statement has 64 comments!

It was fascinating to see how quickly the anthropological blogosphere reacted. Short time after the publication of the statement, the first blog posts appeared:

L.L. Wynn at Culture Matters summarizes the statement and the first reactions.

Alex Golub, Savage Minds sounds enthusiastic:

The statement clearly (in my humble opinion) shows the influence of SM (Savage Minds) and the anthropological noosphere more generally on the AAA exec board and every reader, commenter and Mind should be proud to see that this is really a case of our community forming a ‘civil sphere’ that can inform AAA decision making.

I am blown away by the quality of the comments on the AAA blog, as well as the fact that they are published by professors writing in their own name. This is the first time I have seen the anthropology professoriate as a professoriate. I hope that the AAA blog become a major site in the anthropological noosphere.

Kambiz Kamrani, anthropology.net is not so happy about the decision and summarizes some criticisms.

One of the most detailed commentary can be found on the blog Open Anthropology by Maximilian Forte. After having read through over 60 comments on the AAA blog he wrote the post Empty Scholasticism at its Best on the AAA Blog. See also his comment Politics and Ethics: Anthropologists and Human Terrain Systems.

Futhermore, Forte noticed that the AAA still has job adverts for the HTS by the U.S. military on its website (see an example). “This should be a source of embarrassment for the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, although thus far there is little indication of any”, Forte writes.

UPDATE (17.11.07):“The AAA disapproving of HTS is unfortunate, U.S. militrary anthropologist Marcus Griffin writes. “Anthropology will have failed to take advantage of an important opportunity to make a difference in the world”. >> continue reading on his blog (link updated)

Urban anthropologist: "Recognize that people want to come to the big cities"

Published on November 12, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment, Latin- and Central America, poverty

(LINKS UPDATED 21.9.2020) More and more people live in mega cities. Rather than fixating on investing in the countryside, donor agencies need to recognize that people want to come to the big cities. And rather than demolishing squatter developments one should integrate these self-made communities into the surrounding neighborhoods, anthropologist Janice Perlman said in a lecture according to Multi Housing News.

The cities whose populations are expected to increase the most Mumbai, Lagos and Mexico City etc) are according to the anthropologist also the least equipped to handle the massive influx of people. The world’s slums will likely become even more massive in scale, and this, in turn, will hinder the ability of many cities to be truly sustainable. However, according to Perlman, there are steps that can be taken now to avoid an ecological disaster.

The anthropologist is the founder and executive director of the Mega-Cities Project, a transnational nonprofit network that strives to aid urban dwellers around the world. It concentrates its efforts to make cities more socially just, ecologically sustainable, politically participatory and economically productive.

>> read the whole article in the Multi Housing News

According to the Megacities website, Perlman is about to finish a book on the dynamics of urban poverty in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The book’s working title, Marginality from Myth to Reality: Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, 1969-2005 is based on field research she has done over that period of time. This study documents what has happened to the original study participants of her 1969 research which became the classic book, The Myth of Marginality: Urban Politics and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro (UC Press, 1976).

She explains:

As a young graduate student in 1968-69, during the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship I lived in three favelas in Rio de Janeiro and interviewed 250 residents in each.
(…)
I discovered that the prevailing stereotypes of favela residents (which I termed the myths of marginality) were “empirically false, analytically misleading and invidious in their policy implications” — as they were used to justify the eradication of favelas. My book created a paradigm shift from “blaming the victim” to recognizing migrants as highly motivated urban pioneers and from socio-cultural modernization theory to structural dependency theory.
(…)
How has life changed over the last three decades? (…) The answers are paradoxical. While the material condition of life has improved, the human condition has deteriorated. The fear of favela eradication has been replaced by the fear of being killed in the cross-fire between drug gangs and the police. Despite the return to democracy after the 20-year dictatorship, people feel more excluded and say they have less bargaining power than before; and despite community upgrading, the poor feel more marginalized than ever.

She has put online several papers on her research in Rio’s favelas, environmental justice and related issues.

>> visit the Megacities Project website

Cultural Backstreet Tours: Explore your town with anthropologists!

Anthropology of Trash: An anthropologist as garbage collector

Interview: Anthropologist studied poor fast food workers in Harlem

Who are the people keeping the Jewish traditions alive in Cuba?

Published on November 12, 2007 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, Caribbean, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, religion cosmology, Us and Them

The Ann Arbor News (Michigan) interviews anthropologist Ruth Behar who has written a new book about Jewish life in Cuba. The island’s tiny Jewish community is among the most diverse in the world.

“An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba” offers not only profiles of Jews who live in Cuba, but details the author’s own history – wherein she, at age 5, left Cuba with her family at the time of the 1959 revolution.

She tells she was surprised about how Cuban Jews try to preserve the past. A lot of young people are willing to emigrate to Israel. Many times in the book, people mention the absence of anti-Semitism in Cuba. The anthropologists explains, people in Cuba / in the Caribbean are more tolerant:

Definitely it is helpful to Jews if they live in a culture that’s more secular than in a culture that’s heavily Catholic and Christian – especially if that culture continues to say the Jews killed Christ. This kind of thing does not exactly create good feeling toward the Jews. …

But we can’t give full credit to the revolution for this, because even before ’59, Jews did not experience anti-Semitism, based on the stories that I heard from my family, my Polish grandmother. When she arrived, she said it was such a breath of fresh air from Poland that she just – people didn’t have the anti-Jewish stereotypes that they did in Poland and elsewhere in Europe.

So it was like a fresh slate. That was part of it, and I think the Caribbean is different, too, in that the African influence on Cuba is very important. The African religions are much more open and tolerant of difference.

>> read the whole interview

According to the Miami Herald, the book is “a narrative that tugs at the heart”: It’s a collection of anecdotes and observations accompanied by black and white images shot by Cuba-based photographer Humberto Mayol:

In many respects, this may be Behar’s most personal work. The University of Michigan anthropology professor has written poems and essays about the nostalgia, grief and displacement of exile. She was also awarded a MacArthur Foundation ”genius” grant 18 years ago and even has a short feature film about Cuban Sephardic Jews, Adio Kerida, to her credit. But here she lovingly intertwines her own thoughts and feelings with the more analytical observations of her profession. The result: a narrative that tugs at the heart.

>> continue reading in the Miami Herald

>> Excerpts from An Island Called Home by Ruth Behar

On her own website, she describes herself as a “cultural anthropologist who specializes in homesickness”:

I’m a memoirist who suffered from amnesia as a child after leaving Cuba. That must be why I’m obsessed with remembering and all the ways that history leaves traces on how we live in the present.

She has also started writing a web diary (a web1.0 blog)

The Ann Arbor News (Michigan) interviews anthropologist Ruth Behar who has written a new book about Jewish life in Cuba. The island's tiny Jewish community is among the most diverse in the world.

"An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish…