antropologi.info | Page 336 of 726 | social and cultural anthropology blog

9/11 og forskernes oppgave

Published on September 25, 2006 by lorenz Posted in antropologi allment, forskning(spolitikk) akademia, politikk, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark

(OBS Bare løse tanker) De fleste har sannsynligvis fått med seg debatten om teksten Ekstreme synspunkter, skrevet av antropologen Emil Andre Røyrvik der han sår tvil om den offisielle versionen om hendelsene den 11. september.

Noe av det mest oppsiktvekkende er reaksjonen til Erik Tunstad, redaktør i forskning.no. Han mener at det “ikke finnes saklig grunn til å trekke den såkalte offisielle versjonen om 11. september i tvil”:

Det Røyrvik og et utvalg norske imamer impliserer, er at den amerikanske regjeringen hadde en finger med i spillet. At dette tullet legges fram av en «forsker og skribent» fra SINTEF/NTNU

Forrige uke fikk flere norske universitetsbyer besøk av antropolog og fredsaktivist Jeff Halper. Han sa at de intellektuelles oppgave er å tenke, stille kritiske spørsmål, avdekke det som folk flest kanskje ikke klarer å se. Han var invitert for å fortelle om Israel-Palestina-konflikten. Han sa han tadde tenkt å fortelle “what the hell is giong on” i Palestina. Og “The hell part is the most important one”. Med dette mente han: Å prøve å identifisere det som står mellom linjene.

Er det ikke nettopp det som Røyrvik har gjort? Hvilket syn på forskning har forskning.no’s redaktør? Røyrvik sier at han ikke er sikker på hva som har skjedd men bare tenkte høyt:

Jeg påpeker at det er mange tvilsomme ting i den offisielle versjonen som myndighetene har lagt frem. Man ting tyder på at myndighetene forsøker å unngå at sannheten kommer fram. Det er veldig mange teorier om motiver, blant annet dette med oljeinteresser. Jeg har spekulert litt i min artikkel, om utenriks- og forsvarspolitiske endringer, USA som et imperium, altså ideen om Pax Americana og verdenshegemoniet.

Intressant er arbeidsgivernes reaksjon. Pressekontakt Åse Dragland sier:

En forsker skal ikke uttale seg om private meninger med navn fra SINTEF, han burde i en slik sammenheng kun ha oppgitt navnet sitt, og ikke oppgitt tittelen forsker. Dette er ikke uttrykk for SINTEFs mening, ikke i det hele tatt

Emil Røyrvik: Ekstreme synspunkter. (11. SEPTEMBER: Hvem er ekstrem her? Minister Hanssen eller imamene?) (Dagbladet, 19.9.06)

Erik Tunstad: Konspiratorisk suppe (Dagbladet, 22.9.06)

SINTEF-pressemelding: Debattinnlegg i Dagbladet representerer ikke SINTEFs syn (SINTEF, 20.9.06)

Konspirasjon i ruiner – Dagblad Magasinet oppsummerer debatten (20.9.06)

Konspirerende konspirasjon: Å kalle motstanderens synspunkter for konspirasjonsteorier er en hersketeknikk (islam.weblogg.no, 15.9.06)

Eva Ferrari: Trist fra Tunstad. Å være åpen for at sannheten er en annen enn den offisielle versjonen, er ikke det samme som å hevde at det foreligger en konspirasjon (Dagbladet, 26.9.06)

OPPDATERING:

Kritikken mot amerikanske myndigheter er seriøs og massiv (nytt innlegg av Emil André Røyrvik i Dagbladet, 28.9.06)

SE OGSÅ:

– Den intellektuelles roll är att göra motstånd

Blogging and Public Anthropology: When free speech costs a career

Bush, “war of terror” and the erosion of free academic speech: Challenges for anthropology

(OBS Bare løse tanker) De fleste har sannsynligvis fått med seg debatten om teksten Ekstreme synspunkter, skrevet av antropologen Emil Andre Røyrvik der han sår tvil om den offisielle versionen om hendelsene den 11. september.

Noe av det mest oppsiktvekkende…

Blogging and Public Anthropology: When free speech costs a career

Published on September 25, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, ethics, politics, University / Academia

As many of us know, Yale anthropologist David Graeber has been fired for his anarchist activism. He’s not the only one who was punished for leaving the academic ivory tower. More and more academics have started blogging, exposing their personal opinions to the world. The Yale Herald has an interesting story about “how profs’ political advocacy outside academia can threaten their success within it”:

The recent explosion of professors using their academic bully pulpits to expound on everything from federal sentencing law to the need for a Palestinian state raises questions of responsibility and consequence. Every year, more professors join the blogosphere, expanding into a medium that lets them write anything about anything and makes them advocates as well as teachers.

Mazin Qumsiyeh for example was hired by the Yale School of Medicine:

He had advocated locally and nationally for Palestinian rights under his title as a Yale professor. Five years later, he was looking for a new job.

Qumsiyeh is the editor of Qumsiyeh: A Human Rights Web.

Last year, Yale decided to woo Professor Juan Cole away from Michigan. Then it changed its mind:

The provost’s office refused to comment on the reasons for his rejection; Dr. Cole refused to comment on this story. But many eyes turned toward Cole’s blog as a factor in the decision, one that may have raised his profile and polarized opinion on his candidacy. On his site, “Informed Comment,” Cole has provided commentary on the news coming out of the Middle East since 2001.

And the popular anarchist anthropologist David Graeber was invited to give this year’s Malinowski lecture, an honor given only to the world’s most promising young anthropologists. His contract went up for renewal last year:

He had been a controversial figure, but now finds sleeping on couches in his friends’ New Haven apartments after giving up his lease.
(…)
When Graeber returned from a one-year sabbatical in 2002—having joined forces in the interim with anti-war and anti-globalization groups such as the Direct Action Network and Ya Basta — he said he found his welcome back much colder than his farewell. “I thought a ‘hello’ would have been reasonable,” he said. “All of the sudden, no one was talking to me.” He continued to be a prolific writer and researcher, but his future no longer looked so rosy.

>> read the whole story in The Yale Herald (LINK UPDATED 3.7.2022)

Bush, “war of terror” and the erosion of free academic speech: Challenges for anthropology

Engaged anthropologists beaten by the Mexican police

As many of us know, Yale anthropologist David Graeber has been fired for his anarchist activism. He's not the only one who was punished for leaving the academic ivory tower. More and more academics have started blogging, exposing their personal…

Rather texting than talking, blogging instead of sex in the bedroom?

Published on September 24, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, technology

From the exotic world of technology and culture: “I feel more comfortable texting friends, because face-to-face you run out of things to talk about,” a 17-year-old American high school senior said. “When you’re texting, the conversation doesn’t have any awkwardness. And when you run out of things to say, it’s over.”

Anthropology Professor Jan English-Lueck, who with her colleague, Professor Chuck Darrah, is conducting the Silicon Valley Cultures Project, explains:

Teenagers and early 20-somethings would tell me that things like face-to-face and telephone and even e-mail are a cold medium and you can’t trust them, but the way you can really be authentic is through texting and instant messaging.
(…)
You are in more control when you’re doing the texting and instant messaging than when you’re in a group of people talking at once, with confusing messages that you have to unravel. In a group you’re not presenting the real you, you’re just reacting.

>> read the whole story in the San Francisco Chronicle

And according to The News & Observer, more and more technology is ending up in the bedroom, “laptops shares couples’ most intimate space”:

Dr. Enoch Choi, 36, and his wife, Tania, 33, who have been married 10 years, both take laptops to bed to write their blogs. “I suppose I started the trend,” said Choi, a physician in Palo Alto, Calif. “But now my wife is just as much the nighty-night PowerBook key-banger, blogging away for her friends.”
(…)
Sholes lies in bed and exchanges instant messages with her husband, who is elsewhere in the house on his own computer. “We discuss things, you might even say argue,” she said. “The IM will often eliminate a lot of the tone, and we can discuss things a little bit better.”

>> read the whole story in The News and Observer

How internet changes the life among the First Nations in Canada

From the exotic world of technology and culture: "I feel more comfortable texting friends, because face-to-face you run out of things to talk about," a 17-year-old American high school senior said. "When you're texting, the conversation doesn't have any…

“Good story about cannibals. Pity it’s not even close to the truth”

Published on September 22, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, culture traditions, indigenous people / minorities, Pacific Oceania, Us and Them

Great commentary (and a good example of engaged anthropology) by anthropologist Sarah Hewat about a recent TV story on Wa Wa, a Korowai boy in Papua, who should be “rescued” from “cannibals”. Hewat says, the journalists should have read some work by anthropologist Rupert Stasch before talking about cannibalism. Stasch did his doctoral research on the Korowai of West Papua in the mid-1990s:

If they did, they would learn that as a Korowai, Wa-Wa does not live as a member of a lost tribe, tyrannised by tradition. (…)
The Korowai may live in the forest, but that does not exclude them from having a certain style of modern life. Korowai may fly in planes, go to church, attend school, have meetings with government officials, or sell produce at the market — or gaharu (agarwood) to black-market traders. Even in the peripheries of Korowai territory, where Wa-Wa lives, people no longer kill and eat witches. Times have changed, and in any case, they fear the barbaric repercussions of the Indonesian police.

Part of the story is Paul Raffaele, who brought the TV-team to Wa-Wa. Raffaele has written this doubtful article I’ve mentioned two weeks ago “They still eat their fellow tribesmen”. Hewat writes about Raffaele:

His work does not enhance understanding of the KorowaI but panders to a Western public hungry to consume the primitive.

The Korowai, like other tribal groups portrayed by Raffaele, are presented by him through a series of either/ors: either they are bright-eyed upholders of a fragile Eden, or else they are darkly menacing, horrifying us with their cruel customs.

But if we pay attention to who they are rather than what we want them to be, then we will find ordinary people trying to come to terms with their place in the world. The Korowai, like other ethnic peoples in their position, are simply struggling to engage state and global forces in their own way.

In her view, the journalists should have rather talked with her and other people who have lived in Papua for years, about “the cannibalistic nature of the tourism industry” there. “Primitiveness” is, she writes, after natural resources, a prize commodity in Papua. Tour operators have perfected the art of selling “first contact tours”. She continues:

I have known locals who have been paid a measly sum to take off their clothes, brandish spears and speak of a barbaric past to satisfy the voyeurism of white tourists, journalists or filmmakers seeking a close encounter with our ancestral past. The cash-strapped locals who stage such performances are, unfortunately, adjuncts to people who get paid much more to bring Westerners to them.

(…)

Our debates about human rights should focus on real issues: supporting the growth of democracy and the rule of law in Papua, building a strong education system that extends to the villages, and, not least, interrogating the exploitative relations between the West and the “primitive other” in the international tourist industry.

>> read the whole story in The Age

PS: Thanks to Peter Keough for alterting me to this article and sorry for not having posted more often recently

UPDATE (24.9.06): I’ve just found an Sydney Morning Herald article where Raffaele conceded he did not know Stasch’s research, doesn’t speak Indonesian or any Papuan language and had spent less than six weeks of his life in the restive province. And Wa-Wa is apparently not Korowai after all. Anthropologist Chris Ballard says, says that Raffaele, two television networks and millions of viewers were misled: The Korowai depend on the tourism trade and have learnt to say what rich foreigners want to hear. “Most of these groups have 10 years’ experience in feeding this [cannibal] stuff to tourists,” Ballard said.

MORE ABOUT THIS ISSUE:

Savage Minds: Breaking News: Intrepid Explorer’s First Contact with a Vanishing Race of Noble Savages

Australian networks clash over cannibal boy (afp, 15.9.06)

Spears fly over ‘cannibal’ expedition (The Age, 15.9.06)

Experts decry cannibalism claims (The Age, 15.9.06)

“They still eat their fellow tribesmen”

Brief history of cannibal controversies

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Ancient People: We are All Modern Now

On Savage Minds: Debate on the Construction of Indigenous Culture by Anthropologists

Great commentary (and a good example of engaged anthropology) by anthropologist Sarah Hewat about a recent TV story on Wa Wa, a Korowai boy in Papua, who should be "rescued" from "cannibals". Hewat says, the journalists should have read…

Wieso immer noch Kasten in Indien?

Published on September 21, 2006 by lorenz Posted in Artikel und Papers, Zeitschriften, Asien, Ethnologie Sozialanthropologie Kulturanthropologie, Kultur Tradition

Indien ist das Schwerpunktthema der neuesten Ausgabe der Zeitschrift Journal Ethnologie. Einer der Artikel handelt um das Kastensystem. Obwohl offiziell bereits vor knapp 70 Jahren abgeschafft, existiert es weiterhin, schreibt Ulrich Oberdiek. U.a werden Ehegesuche in indischen Tageszeitungen weiterhin nach Kasten geordnet: Brahmanen, Marwari (Händlerkasten), Punjabi (Sikhs, Kshatriyas) etc. Es gibt sogar die Charakterisierung “Kaste kein Hindernis!”.

Warum ueberlebt dieses anti-demokratische System? Ein wichtiger Grund ist dem Ethnologen zufolge die arrangierte Ehe:

Ehen werden von den Eltern oder Großeltern arrangiert, die dafür sorgen, dass die Ehepartner aus der eigenen Unterkaste kommen. Es lässt sich allerdings im „modernen“ Leben nicht immer vermeiden, dass zwei junge Leute verschiedener Kasten sich kennen lernen (etwa im College) und beschließen zu heiraten, aber das ist sehr selten. Vereinzelt kommt es auch vor, dass Eltern in solchen „Entgleisungsfällen“ einwilligen. Flucht und manchmal sogar Selbstmord zeigen jedoch die dramatische Wirklichkeit dieser Regeln auch heute.

>> zum Text in Journal Ethnologie

Frank Heidemann zeigt in seinem Beitrag u.a. einen Zusammenhang von Kolonialismus und dem Entstehen des Kastensystems auf:

Nicholas Dirks hat mit seinem Werk „Castes of Mind“ (2001) die langfristigen Folgen der kolonialen Durchdringung Indiens, vor allem die Kolonisation des Geistes, aufgezeigt. Nach Dirks waren Kasten vor der Ankunft der Briten keine festen Einheiten und bildeten nur eine unter vielen Möglichkeiten der Identifikation.

Durch die Praxis der Volkszählungen (bei denen sich jede Person zu einer Kategorie bekennen musste), durch die Festlegung einer Kastenhierarchie in Listen und Handbüchern, und durch die Zuschreibung kollektiver Identitäten wurden die Kasten zur wichtigsten sozialen Kategorie und jeweils mit spezifischen Qualitäten assoziiert.

>> zum Text Indien – mit Tradition und Moderne von Frank Heidemann

Weitere Texte in Journal Ethnologie:

Ulrich Demmer: An Sanesvaras Schrein. Lokale Modernität und Politik in den nördlichen Nilgiris (Südindien)

Markus Schleiter: “Zum Tanze”. Eine ethnographische Erzählung über den indischen „Stamm“ der Birhor

Bettina Weiz: Die Trommler der neuen Zeit. Besuche bei Experten der Informations-Technologie