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Thailand: Local wisdom protects hometown from the onslaught of globalisation

Published on June 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, Asia, culture traditions, ecology nature, globalisation

Bangkok Post

“We fishermen have knowledge about the Mekong based on our time-tested experiences,” said Oon Thammawong, 57, of Ban Had Bai in Chiang Rai’s Chiang Khong district. “But policy-makers dismiss us as simple folk so that they can dismiss our voices and impose their policies, which only benefit businessmen but destroy our way of life.”

Over the past five years, in the wake of the building of dams and the blasting of rapids in China, the condition of the Mekong as it flows through Chiang Khong has drastically deteriorated. Like other communities, the Bangkok-oriented education and political systems have robbed the locals of their historical roots and pride in their culture.

Local pride swelled, however, when a group of residents took on the role of researchers to profile Chiang Khong’s ethnographic history and document changes in their hometown. “Reconnecting with one’s past and understanding what has shaped one’s present is always an empowering process,” explained veteran anthropologist Srisakara Vallibhotama, director of the project, which is supported by the Thailand Research Fund. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Local taboos could save the seas

Bangkok Post

"We fishermen have knowledge about the Mekong based on our time-tested experiences," said Oon Thammawong, 57, of Ban Had Bai in Chiang Rai's Chiang Khong district. "But policy-makers dismiss us as simple folk so that they can dismiss our…

Tradisjon, modernitet, multikulturalisme og konfliktløsning i Sør-Sudan

Published on June 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Afrika, fattigdom, konflikter katastrofer, master-/ hovedoppgaver, modernitet, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark

“De vestlige landene involvert i fredsprosessen, deriblant Norge, har hatt en tendens til å la seg forføre av Garangs polerte multikulturelle argumentasjon, som fremmer en fremtidig egalitær og pluralistisk nasjon. Det store spørsmålet er imidlertid hvordan dette skal oppnås i et Sør-Sudan hvor identitet er sterkt knyttet til familien, klanen, og den etniske gruppens ritualer og symboler”, skriver forsker Thomas Sletten Eri i Dagbladet.

Thomas Sletten Eri har skrevet hovedoppgaven “Sør-sudanske læreres erfaringer fra Khartoum” og har bak seg et studium i flerkulturell og internasjonal utdanning ved Avdeling for lærerutdanning, Høgskolen i Oslo.

“Egne erfaringer fra feltforskning i Sør-Sudan tilsier at tradisjonelle praksiser som medgift, polygami, overtro, patriarkalsk hierarki, stammemotsetninger og nepotisme, bør problematiseres i forhold til målsettinger om fattigdomsreduksjon og bærekraftig utvikling”, mener han >> les mer

SE OGSÅ:

Wikipedia: Southern Sudan

Sudan-nyheter på afrika.no

Challenges of Providing Anthropological Expertise: On the conflict in Sudan

Displacement, Aid and the Predicament of the Anthropologist: some remarks from Sudan. By Munzoul Abdalla M. Assal. Dept. of Social Anthropology University of Bergen.

"De vestlige landene involvert i fredsprosessen, deriblant Norge, har hatt en tendens til å la seg forføre av Garangs polerte multikulturelle argumentasjon, som fremmer en fremtidig egalitær og pluralistisk nasjon. Det store spørsmålet er imidlertid hvordan dette skal oppnås i…

– Sosialantropologien begynner å likne mer på folkloristikken

Published on June 27, 2005 by lorenz Posted in antropologi allment, faghistorie, historie, sosialantropologi i Norge, Sverige og Danmark

forskning.no

Sammenligning av julefeiring i Norge og Italia. Ekteskap mellom svarte og hvite. Identitetsskaping på Internett. Aktører i dagens bunadsbevegelse. Fantasirollespill. Folkloristikk er faget som ser virkeligheten som et produkt av fortellinger. For en folklorist eksisterer virkeligheten i den grad den fortelles. Navnet folkeminnevitenskap ble for femten år siden endret til folkloristikk. Nå i enda nyere tid har kvalitetsreformen slått faget sammen med søsterdisiplinen etnologi, under navnet kulturhistorie.

I motsetning til folkloristikk går sosialantropologi inn for å sammenligne kultur og samfunn. I senere år har forskere også tatt for seg vestlige forhold, og mindre enheter som bedrifter og institusjoner der. I tillegg kommer lokalsamfunn og spesielle sosiale miljøer. Faget begynner følgelig å likne mer på folkloristikken. >> les mer

PS: I artikkelen er det ført opp en del linker om folkloristikk og etnologi. Siden de ikke er klikkbare på forskning.no, lister jeg dem opp her:

www.uio.no/studier/program/kulturide/presentasjon/
www.hf.uio.no/ikos
www.kulturvern.no/NorskFolkeminnelag.html
http://studere.uib.no/?mode=show_page&link_id=405&toplink_id=284
www.hum.ku.dk/iae/etnologi/
www.antro.uu.se/
www.etnologi.su.se/
www.etn.lu.se/ETNHEM.HTM
http://www.novus.no
Tidsskrift for kulturforskning http://www.nordnytt.dk

forskning.no

Locating Bourdieu – Interview with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, persons and theories

Interesting interview by Scott McLemee with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay on her recent book Locating Bourdieu in the magazine “Inside Higher Education”. The book is according to Scott McLemee “a very good place for the new reader of Bourdieu to start”.

Reed-Danahay summarizes one of Bourdieu’s main points and compares France to the USA:

“Bourdieu believed that we are all constrained by our internalized dispositions (our habitus), deriving from the milieu in which we are socialized, which influence our world view, values, expectations for the future, and tastes. These attributes are part of the symbolic or cultural capital of a social group.

In a stratified society, a higher value is associated with the symbolic capital of members of the dominant sectors versus the less dominant and “controlled” sectors of society. So that people who go to museums and like abstract art, for instance, are expressing a form of symbolic capital that is more highly valued than that of someone who either rarely goes to museums or who doesn’t like abstract art.

The person feels that this is “just” a matter of taste, but this can have important consequences for children at school who have not been exposed to various forms of symbolic capital by their families.”

“His work on academia provided us with a method of inquiry to look at the symbolic capital associated with academic advancement and, although the specific register of this will be different in different national contexts, the process may be similar. Just as Bourdieu did in France, for example, one could study how it is that elite universities here “select” students and professors.”

>> to the interview in “Inside Higher Education”

Interesting interview by Scott McLemee with anthropologist Deborah Reed-Danahay on her recent book Locating Bourdieu in the magazine "Inside Higher Education". The book is according to Scott McLemee "a very good place for the new reader of Bourdieu to start".

Reed-Danahay…

Our obsession with the notion of the primitive society

Published on June 24, 2005 by lorenz Posted in Andaman & Nicobar societies, anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, indigenous people / minorities, persons and theories, Us and Them

Quite regularily, newspapers report about so called “primitive peoples”. The newest example is the Reuters-story “Hunter-gatherers face extinction on Andaman island” where we read “how primitive tribesmen came out of the jungle armed with bows, arrows and spears, raided a village in the Middle Andaman island and looted tools, food, clothes, cash and jewellery” and the reporter asks if this is an “indication that the Jarawa hunter-gatherers remain untamed primitives — or a cry for help from man’s earliest ancestors, their forests and their lifestyle, their existence under threat as never before?”.

I’ve always wondered why Westerners are so obsessed with this notion of the primitive, with the notion of linear evolution where the so-called so called enlightened West reigns on the top. From an anthropological point of view one could explain this phenomenon like this: These so-called primitives are used by the West in order to construct a positive image of itself – the “primitives” play the same role as the so-called “Orient” – as shown by Edward Said in his classic “Orientalism”.

Or as Adam Kuper wrote in his book The Invention of Primitive Society: “Primitive society was the mirror image of modern society – or rather, primitive society as they imagined it inverted the characteristics of modern society as they saw it.”

This also applies to anthropologists as we know. Kuper writes:

“The anthropologists took this primitive society as their special subject, but in practice primitive society proved to be their own society (as they understood it) seen in a distorting mirror. For them modern society was defined above all by the territorial state, the monogamous family and private property. Primitive society therefor must have been nomadic, promiscuos and communist. (…) Primitive man was illogical and given to magic.”

UPDATE: See also Evamaria’s ramblings: As an anthropologist, Cameron Diaz’ travel show on MTV is pretty offensive to my sensibilities. ‘The life of the Massai has remained the same for the last 600 years.’ Ugh, that kind of remark makes my skin crawl! >> continue

Quite regularily, newspapers report about so called "primitive peoples". The newest example is the Reuters-story "Hunter-gatherers face extinction on Andaman island" where we read "how primitive tribesmen came out of the jungle armed with bows, arrows and spears, raided a…