The Myriad Ways of Counting Money

I didn't realize there were so many:


How People Count Cash? - Free videos are just a click away

Link.

Stoned Ape Theory

So it turns out the long search for the answer as to how, exactly, human consciousness emerged was right under our noses all along...

Link.

To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.

Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.

About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.

Ape-shit Over Possible Ape Ancestry

Blogger over at anthropology.net has an interesting post on his blog making the case for a human ancestor for the apes. Here's the case he makes for the link:

1.)We see the spine anatomy of a hindlimb supported upright ape in Morotopithecus, Pierolapithecus, Oreopithecus. The data is compelling and extensive - and I have
detailed it in technical raw data form in my book: Axial Character Seriation in Mammals, which republishes my Harvard PhD Thesis. The underlying patterns are extracted and synthesized in my recent PLoS ONE paper “Homeotic Evolution of the Mammals, Diversification of Therian Axial Seriation and a Morphogenetic Basis for Human Origins” and in my Neurosurgical Focus article. The context in evolutionary theory is explained in my recent book “The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species” which has a foreword by David Pilbeam - currently Dean of Harvard College and certainly one the most knowledgeable and experienced paleoanthropologists in the world.

2.)We have evidence of an upright hindlimb supported Orrorin based on the femur and Sahelanthropus based on the skull.

3.)There is no convincing fossil evidence at all of a non-bipdeal hominoid outside of the proconsulid group.

4.)We have an early outgroup whose infants have innate bipedal walking(see the video Hominiform Progression).The Siamang video is interesting because of the innate bipedalism. As I point out in the video, John Fleagle has seen young siamangs of this age walk bipedally high in the canopy in Malaysia.

Anyways check out his site if you're interested in reading more.

China In Africa: The Red Cherry in the "Dark Continent's" Coke

In November 2006, a diverse gaggle of heads of states and dignitaries from 48 countries flocked to Beijing, China to attend what would be the largest international summit in the Chinese capital ever held. The Chinese government, eager to shine and bedazzle in the spotlight of the world’s attention, put on an impressive and warm-welcoming display. Bright red banners proclaiming ‘Friendship, Peace, Cooperation and Development’ lined the capital cities’ streets, exotic images—commonly associated with Africa—of giraffes and elephants brazenly roaming the savannahs were posted on all of the one hundred and fifty five giant billboards in the capital’s main streets and squares. According to People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper, the ‘beautiful scenery and colorful lifestyles of Africa’ that were posted on the billboards inspired long lines to form of people waiting their turn to take a picture and led one observer to passingly declare "I hope I can visit Africa one day, it's really fascinating’.[1] Other aspects of African cultures had also seeped into and flooded the streets of China. As one shop assistant informed the newspaper reporter "The CDs and DVDs on Africa are very popular, and some of the African musical products have been sold out."[2] Another manager, this time of a book shop, reported that on October 31 he had set up a special shelf allocated solely to books about African culture, history, people and tourism. The latter of which appears to be an increasing sector of change in Africa as China has ‘granted tourist destination status to 26 African countries’ which means that Chinese citizens are now permitted and encouraged to travel to these regions, which is shown by the fact that ‘200 tourists registered for the tour to Africa this month, up 30 percent compared with the same period of last year’. The Chinese agency Xinhua reported that ‘In a restaurant of African food in the Chaoyang District, east of Beijing, it [was] hard to find a seat in the recent week. The unique foods and hot African dances [had] attracted many people’. At the National Museum at the east end of Tiananmen Square two exhibitions had been on display, one showing coins and stamps of 48 African countries, and the other artifacts and relics of African handicraft. Thus the People’s Daily would describe the overall experience and feeling of the Chinese impression, from what I gather, quite acutely, when it said that the visitors ‘brought a trend of the mysterious continent to the capital of China’.[3]

I use these examples to illicit the fact that foreign policy, the objectives and practices adopted by and between nations, what often governs their relations, can also have a profound effect on the cultural changes that take place amongst their citizens. However, it is important to emphasize that this effect is not a one way street. Foreign policy does, at times, determine aspects of a people’s culture, (if they live in a culture which has a government that can create and enforce its foreign policy) but aspects of the people’s culture also plays a heavy hand in determining and shaping the foreign policy that the nation ultimately adopts and enacts. The two are often mutually and at times indistinguishably interacting with and affecting one another in myriad and significant ways, which makes the task of determining at a certain moment which, exactly, is influencing which MORE, rather difficult. It is an intriguing question, but because it will most likely never be settled (akin to the nature-nurture or mind-body debates), it seems best to embrace the notion that they are mutually dependent on one another, interacting with one another, at times, in a mutually beneficial manner, (which I measure based on their affects on and from the point of view of the citizens of the nation), but the past record shows that more often than not their interaction is, historically, detrimental.

The continent of Africa, for example, has represented a very many different things to a very many different people, cultures, and civilizations. It has been the ‘dark continent’ of immense mystery, mischievous eroticism, and alluring exoticism; it has been the ‘romantic continent’ of noble ‘savages’, harboring the remnants of some revered past and natural way of life, living on the cusp of the wild, the bosom of Nature; it has been the ‘primitive continent’, underdeveloped, riddled by political corruption and absolutism, stricken by poverty, raped by war, and helplessly plagued by disease; and various other conceptions, which we, today, diligently top with our cherry of the prefix -mis. All of these conceptions of Africa which are, perhaps unfairly, all past ‘Western’ conceptions of Africa, have no doubt lingered, however subtly, as stereotypes in the minds of many. These conceptions of what Africa actually is have grossly misinformed past nations’ foreign policy and often determine how they have dealt with the continent (as the devastating affects of colonialism or more recently, the economic and political realities in Africa today that are far from what Western nations such as the US and a number of European countries want them and are desperately trying to force them to be).

In the West the common conception of Africa is that it is a continent that needs to be helped, and it is up to us, the nations of the capable and the willing, to help fix Africa into a functioning, stable, democratic and socially liberal, open market, and prosperous continent. Obviously three of those things mentioned are unquestionably reasonable and laudable intentions for these states to embrace, but two of them, democracy/social liberalism and open markets, have an almost missionary-esque zeal for the conversion of other citizens to adhere to these principles, when in other cultures they are somewhat ambiguous or different from our own conceptions. Thus our efforts of conversion seem in vain, because not everyone agrees with what we are trying to profess to them. Moreover the West in particular has yet to realize that what has successfully worked in the past for them, will not necessarily work ipso facto for other states in the future. Perhaps the reason the West has yet to realize this secret is because it is so blatantly obvious (like searching for your glasses everywhere when they’re right under your nose): What works for other states is primarily and fundamentally what they find works for them. Culture plays a huge role in this regard, because the foreign policy that nations adopt must adapt to the culture or cultures that exist within their state lines. However some would argue that even state lines desperately fail to represent the cultural and ethnic milieu found in Africa, which is why governments have little control over the boundaries they inherit when they ascend to power.[4] But this question is too large for me to cover sufficiently and address productively, so I will leave it, for now, to the other scholars in African politics to wrestle with and move on to discussing China.

Against the backdrop of failed Western attempts to ‘fix’ Africa, was a growing feeling in some circles (mostly Western) of despair and ‘Afro-pessimism’. Africa was starting to be seen as innately responsible for preventing itself from success and prosperity, incurable to Western prescriptions, because it wouldn’t swallow what we prescribed, and therefore any attempt to try and change Africa seemed historically futile. This grim and pessimistic outlook was even beginning to sink into and be widely accepted by some circles in Africa, until China, the ascending star, with its burgeoning economy, became a faint red glow, slowly glowing brighter and brighter, as people in Africa became more and more convinced that it was here to stay. To perhaps exhaust the metaphor, China was just the right kind of star that Africans had been waiting for to illuminate the terrain and help them navigate over the rough obstacles that had prevented them from achieving their goals and objectives. China’s foreign policy was attractive because it offered assistance without ‘political strings’ or the kinds of conditionalities that had been made mandatory by the West; moreover China was willing to do what past Western states had long ignored: provide trade instead of simply aid. For example, in 2000 trade between China and Africa is reported to have been around US $1 billion, but by 2006 it exploded up to US $40 billion making it Africa’s third largest trading partner (which isn’t bad for a new kid on the economic block). Another attractive aspect of China, from Africa’s perspective, is that China represented a successful alternative to the West’s dogmatic principles of development. China proves, by its very example, that there are other ways to achieve economic success that do not involve the ‘Washington consensus’. This view is shown, for example, by the senior leader of the Nigerian legislature, Ken Nnamani, who in a welcome address entitled ‘China: A Partner and Example of Development and Democracy’, which was hosted for President Hu’s April visit to Nigeria, describes China’s ‘outstanding (economic) performance exclusive of western democracy’ as ‘the paradox of development and democracy’. Nnamani would go on to say:

China has become . . . a good model for Nigeria in its quest for an authentic and stable development ideology . . . China [is] a lesson to Nigeria on the enormous good that a focused and patriotic leadership can do to realize the dreams of prosperity and security for the citizen . . . in embracing China . . . it should not only be in [the] field of economic prosperity since . . . [China’s] steady and gradual democratisation confirms the lesson that no nation can sustain economic development in the long run without democracy.

Thus the ‘China model’ is attractive for two chief reasons in Africa: a) it is an alternative to the political and economic models—roughly encapsulated by the Bretton Woods system—of the West and therefore promising; b) the Chinese model is one of partnership, mutually participatory, emphasizing cooperation, win-win, and south-south relations, and is thus devoid of the political and economic conditionalities that were prescribed and enforced by the West—an outsider, (something that Africans have been all to familiar with, distasteful towards, and suspicious of). Proof of the legitimacy of this latter pole of attraction is clearly shown by some of the documents that have been released by the Chinese government, briefly advertising their foreign policy to the public (though mostly in response to the many criticisms). Chris Alden, who specializes on the topic of Chinese involvement in Africa, points to three quotes in particular which illustrate this cooperation and partnership building, which is at the core of Chinese foreign policy. The first one is a declaration that ‘Sincerity, equality and mutual benefit; solidarity and common development: these are the principles guiding China-Africa exchange and co-operation’.[6] Alden diligently points out that ‘The emphasis on self-interest mingled with shared experiences and developmental aims is seen to be the ‘common project’ that encapsulates the rationale for a renewed engagement between China and Africa’. He then grabs a quote from a notable Chinese scholar on African affairs, He Wenping, who said ‘Common sense about human rights and sovereignty is only one of the common values shared by China and Africa.’[7] This shows an effort to build upon the over lapping layers of consensus in other areas of the China-Africa relationship, instead of focusing solely on those aspects and details that often cause conflict.

While I could bore you with the facts and figures that are so prominent and prolific in the political science discourse of China in Africa I would like to briefly focus on the media’s reaction to this recent development, because the media is often a good bellwether or thermometer of the general sentiments and opinions of the masses, for obvious economically incentivized reasons. In the West the reverberations of China as a growing power and China becoming more involved in Africa, the two main discussions amongst political wonks, could possibly be detected on a Richter scale. The entire discussion primarily revolves around criticisms lauded at China, what is thus aptly termed the ‘discourse of fear’, for whenever someone is not attaining something they want, the first thing they usually do is point the finger of blame at someone or something else. Thus the criticisms by the West directed towards China only exist partly because of the past failures of the West, for which they will never admit. As a result the discourse in media outlets primarily describe China as some monster, solely interested in satisfying its own needs, and nothing else. For example, in The Economist magazine, China’s recent actions are directly attributed to its growing economy:

Its economy has grown by an average of 9% a year over the past ten years, and
foreign trade has increased fivefold. It needs stuff of all sorts—minerals, farm
products, timber and oil, oil, oil. China alone was responsible for 40% of the
global increase in oil demand between 2000 and 2004.[8]

Moreover the topic of China in Africa revolves around the former country and largely neglects the latter’s states. The verbs used in the Western media’s discourse and analysis of China’s actions are mostly associated with actions associated with actors who are greedy or thieves or otherwise generally just actions largely deemed as unwarranted. This can be seen across the board.

From the Washington Post: ‘China's reach into Zimbabwe's economy is equally pervasive . . . China's voracious appetite for raw materials ‘;[9] from the New York Times: ‘China’s hunger for resources’[10]. . . ‘Chasing China in resource rich Africa’[11] ; US conservative media outlet Fox News takes the liberty of going so far as to say ‘Not only has China become an exporting giant, dumping cheap goods and creating enormous trade deficits all over the globe, but it continues to reach out to historically oppressive regimes for trade, economic partnerships and greater influence on the world political stage, policy watchers say’.[12]

The titles in European outlets of media also help stoke these flames of fear and suspicion, though they also have a common theme of colonial oriented questions, which perhaps isn’t surprising. For example the BBC: ‘China’s Long March to Africa’, ‘China’s Hunger for African minerals’, and their most recent Have Your Say Segment , which was entitled ‘Is China Africa’s New Master?’ [13]; The Lemos and Ribeiro article ‘Taking Ownership or Just Changing Owners?; and numerous others. Just today actually the newspapers were abuzz with the recent EU conferences that are addressing and in some regards responding to this very issue of China in Africa. What has been particularly interesting to see, though still to early to tell for sure, is the significant change in course and attitude European countries are adopting as a direct result of China engaging Africa.

The media discourse in China is of course much more optimistic and happy-go-lucky. In fact I joked with my cousin that reading the newspaper articles in China on Africa were, from an Africans point of view, akin to reading sentence after sentence of words picked from the fortunes you read in those little yellow, pig-hoofed shaped cookies. Most of the information that I gleaned over was from the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, a forum established in 2000 to develop and enhance relations between the country and continent. All of the texts emphasize the mutual effort aspect of the relationship, a sort of silent head-nod agreement that yes China needs resources, but Africa needs trade and investment too, so both parties have something to gain from the relationship. This has really excited a lot of leaders and governments in Africa who felt that the problems their countries faced were due to outside forces beyond their control (which in many cases is true, though can be exaggerated). Now China is offering the opportunity of trade, government incentivized business investment in Africa, and money with no-strings attached, so that leaders and governments and nations can use it for what ever purposes they see fit. This policy of political non-interference I think will be much more effective in achieving the long term goal of eradicating poverty than the West’s system had been, but I do worry that condoning it is somewhat akin to, in politics, endorsing the famous (among political wonks over 40 at least) Jeane Kirkpatrick policy in the 1980’s that authoritarian dictators are preferable to totalitarian ones, and that the US should support the former when necessary, but never the latter. In other words, although it is clearly hypocritical to support regimes that are clearly not representative of the US’ values and practices, it is permissible because it is a minor and sometimes necessary step in that direction. Ronald Reagen supposedly was heavily influenced by this notion and it really shows in the decisions that his administration made during their time in office. I place my faith in the goodness of mankind and under the hope that leaders who come into power will be held accountable by their people, otherwise face turmoil, conflict, and ousting, and in most cases they usually will want to impress their people or provide for them. This, however, is not always the case, but it is the general trend.

Returning to the topic of foreign policy, I think there are two main obstacles that stand in the way of effective policy in Africa. The first obstacle is the habit of trying to oversimplify things by creating an all-inclusive package or policy that is directed at the continent of Africa, instead of catering to its individual nations and peoples. The second is the tacit thinking that modernity (Westernization) is progress, and therefore the closer one emulates and imitates the west, the more one progresses.

The continent of Africa is often treated as being one single country, when in fact it is not Australia. Africa has an extraordinarily diverse panoply of cultures and peoples, not surprising of a massive continent. All of these cultures have been influenced in different ways by outside peoples and cultures and from cultures and peoples that are close in proximity. It is therefore folly to attempt to create a policy that is directed at the continent and not the individual states within that continent. What works for one country may not work for the next, just as what works for you may not work for another country. Foreign policy must be tailored and fitted to each individual state, much as suits are fitted for each individual man. Its expensive yes, but also successful (and probably cheaper if you consider the costs of the effects of failed policy). Africa proves this truth time and time again.

The second obstacle is easily understood by anyone who has been to, lived in, or studied Africa, because they are intimately aware of the sheer diversity on the continent and even within the states. There are myriad ethnicities, cultures, and styles of life, social systems, and governance structures that are starkly different from ‘our’ (outsiders) modern conceptions. We often assume that these indigenous systems and structures that exist are somehow flawed, ‘backwards’, or primitive, because we are under the impression that our way is the right way. As John McCall accurately points out in his book Social Organization in Africa this notion has significantly influenced the decisions and policies of international development agencies. ‘An assumption that economic development means replacing “traditional” African social systems with “modern” Western ones has led planners to favor the centralized administration of development programs and to ignore the practical efficiency of community-based institutions, which can more accurately identify local needs and are relatively free of the bureaucratic waste and corruption that have plagued projects designed on a Western model’. This has been a huge problem in Africa and around the world (i.e. Afghanistan and Iraq) for the West, because it never uses the useful systems that are already in place in the community, because it thinks that these systems are inherently flawed or inept, but as McCall points out, and it is worth repeating and should be taught to all development agencies: ‘modernization does not necessarily mean Westernization’,[14] (nor, for that matter does ‘modernization’ necessarily mean progress’).

This cultural bias, commonly called ethnocentrism in anthropology circles, stems from the idea that one’s own culture is vastly superior to someone else’s culture. Unfortunately people or states with power can convince through force or appeal, other people or states that this is true. Thus among some people in Africa there is a strong appeal and incentive to adopt the practices of the West, to inherit its technological amenities, and too many, THAT... is modernization; THAT… is progress. I recently saw a funny comic strip that uses humor to jab at this idea. The cartoon portrays an African village with kids running around smiling with sticks and wooden wheeled rings that they whack to keep rolling. A white man in a business suit is looking on at this activity and deplores the primitive conditions that the kids are playing in and takes it upon himself to do something. The next square shows the same village scene, but this time with all the kids playing on laptops, and you see some fighting over whose turn it is, while others are incapable of drawing themselves away from their new toy, because they want to play just one more game. The cartoon accurately portrays that Westernization may not be as good as we often assume it to be, all we can say, with confidence, is that it is just different, not better, not worse, just different. Thus it is wrong for nations to impose their cultural system on other people, through their policies or by other means, because they think that their culture is more advanced and more robust than the culture of the people they are working with. Whether or not that is objectively true is irrelevant, because it is up to the people of that culture to decide, not for us to impose. That’s the point I am trying to make.

I’d like to briefly elaborate on an idea I touched upon earlier, because I think it is an important one. Often indigenous systems are vastly superior and more effective than outside imposed ones. As Eugenia Shanklin in her chapter Family and Kinship illustrates when she briefly shares a story of how she suggested using indigenous systems, instead of western ones, and not surprisingly it was much more effective:

"A number of years ago, while chairing a session at a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference (the conference was on a Cameroon disaster that killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than 5,000 homeless, including more than 2,000 orphans), I remarked that Western solutions to such problems--psychiatrists and boarding schools--were being offered for African orphans. I added that, since humans had evolved in Africa, it was likely that during eons of evolutionary history, Africans had come up with their own solutions to human problems. The African solution I heard mentioned most often in conference corridors was "family." As it worked out, the best solution to the problems of the orphaned children (and even adult) survivors was to put them into fictive (that is, made-up) families" (Shanklin et al., 2001).

It is solutions such as this, applying local solutions to local problems that need to be capitalized on and used by outside developmental agencies, because they are so much more effective and cheaper to impose, as they already exist and are practiced. Whether to political, social, or economic problems, the solutions are already in place and in practice, they just have to be slightly tweaked to the changing global system that they are entering in to.

To return to the question of China’s policy towards Africa, it is hard to tell what cultural biases they are bringing into the mix, mostly because I am not an expert on Chinese culture, but if non-interference and building relationships for the communal good instead of the individual good are common themes in Chinese culture, then I would say that China has a very high chance of being a successful partner of and beneficial friend to Africa. However as always whenever a major power (in the Realists’ state sense) comes rolling into town looking to satisfy its material interests negative results will occur. These however are all being addressed within African communities and within China itself. Questions concerning fair and equal labor rights, human rights in general, detrimental effects of industry on the environment, political corruption, etc. are all issues that people in both country and continent are addressing and questioning. The important thing to watch is whether or not their voices become loud enough for the powers that be (usually governments) to listen to their concerns and demands. China has an awkward history in this regard, but it consistently shows that it no longer ignores these concerns and is, perhaps grudgingly, but still undeniably, addressing them as they emerge, first usually on the grassroots level, but especially when they bubble up into the general public or civil society level, and as more people demand these rights and protections for the environment, the government usually has to respond in one way or another, and history shows that the successful governments were the ones that catered to its people.

With the upcoming Olympics in Beijing approaching, China is obviously making an enormous effort to shine in front of the international community, impressing not only them, but their own citizens, and making them feel proud. As China’s economy and state status in the international community continues to grow, all eyes will be transfixed on the policies that China adopts, the actions it takes, and the effects that they make. I doubt the world’s attention will be as focused on Africa as it will be on China, but Africa will also be profoundly changed by its relationship with China. The differences amongst African nations are often exalted by Africanists and deeply protected (identity to Afriacanists is what tradition is to traditionalists), and the particular identities of each people are always being wrestled over in an effort to define.[15] But if African nations hope to be prosperous in the future, they will HAVE to settle these differences and historical scores, and unite together in organizations such as the African Union, in order to compete successfully in the new and ever growing globalized world. If they continue to argue and fight amongst themselves about inner issues and concerns they will continue to be taken advantage of by outside forces who are working more collectively and therefore effectively. Whether Africa redivides itself into ethnic based states of territory or whether it will keep the lines that the occupiers assigned is a question for Africans to decide, but I think the most successful route is to keep the state system already imposed and more or less adopted, and organize and establish more multilateral institutes like the AU, so that when they do work collectively, they can, collectively, achieve and benefit from their goals on a more frequent basis than if they go at it alone.

The international system and the global economy is forcing groups of people to organize and form larger groups in order to compete on more or less equal footing, because those groups that stay divided usually end up fighting amongst one another over small local group interests, whereas collective entities or bodies representing big groups, compete over global interests, often playing these local conflicts of interests off of each other in order to attain their objectives. Thus I think the take home message that I would send to Africans, as they think about how they will deal with China and other foreign states in the future of their development, is the old, but true adage: ‘United [you] stand, but divided [you] fall’. We (outsiders) have learned a lot from Africa and Africans and I can only hope that they, too, can learn something from themselves and from us.



__________________________________________________

[1] People’s Daily Online < http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200611/06/eng20061106_318605.html >
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] P. Chabal & J. Daloz (1999). Africa Works.
[5] N. Obiorah, (2006) ‘Who’s Afraid of China? Towards An African Civil Society Perspective on China-Africa Relations
[6] Embassy of China, ‘China’s Africa Policy’, January 2006.
[7] Cited in Chris Alden (2006), ‘Through African Eyes: Representations of China on the African continent.’
[8] The Economist (2006) ‘Never too late to scramble’, 26 Oct < http://economist.com/ >
[9] C Timberg. ‘Asian Giant's Appetite for Raw Materials, Markets Has Some Questioning Its Impact on Continent’. The Washington Post, 13 June 2006. < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061201506.html >
[10] L. Polgreen. ‘China’s Trade in Africa Carries a Pricetag.’ The New York Times, 21 August 2007. < http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/world/africa/21zambia.html >
[11] S. Sengupta. World Briefing. The New York Times, 10 October 2007. < http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E07E4DB173CF933A25753C1A9619C8B63 >
[12] Fox News. < http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165695,00.html >
[13] BBC. ‘Is China Africa’s New Master’. Have Your Say. < http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=3852&edition=2&ttl=20071209200936 >
[14] J. McCall. Social Organization in Africa.
[15] P. Chabal & J. Daloz (1999). Africa Works disorder as political instrument.

Tuesdays With Mary Douglas

I came across this brief, but wonderful interview on youtube with British anthropologist Mary Douglas and thought it was worth sharing with you.



I wrote a little anthro nugget of information, a short paragraph, which sort of elaborates a bit more on what she is talking about (posted below):

This brief, but exceptionally telling interview on youtube with Mary Douglas reveals quite a bit about this distinguished British anthropologist. Associated with the symbolic anthropology approach, Mary Douglas’ work focuses on the meaning that people give to their reality and how this reality can be observed in the behaviors and cultural symbols of that people. In the beginning of the interview she says that she was very interested in cognition and that this interest led her to look at cognition and society, specifically how the mind relates to the culturally constructed reality that it comes into contact with. From her research Douglas reaches the conclusion that, as she puts it in the interview, “the mind gets a lot of discomfort from seeing things that don’t fit the categories that people are using for thinking about them.” She mentions that this is Durkheimian and Maussian, since it is very structural functional, and in keeping with that approach Douglas in her works such as Purity and Danger argues that these fuzzy in betweens that don’t quite fit into binary social categories of distinction are automatically adopted into taboo and form ‘impure’ moral attitudes in the minds of people, or as she puts it in her book “taboo is a spontaneous device for protecting the distinctive categories of the universe… taboo confronts the ambiguous and shunts it into the category of the sacred”. In the interview she mentions that her interpretation of Leviticus focused too much on cognitive categories and failed to do what she intended: divert the intellectualist approach of the study of religion to a “behavioral intellectualist” approach that focuses on or emphasizes interactions through the use of symbols.



TimesOnline had a nice obituary dedicated to her, written two days after her death, which I recommend reading. She truly was an exceptional scholar and shining intellect of her time.

Questioning Relativism

It's awful stories like this that make me seriously question, as an anthropologist, whether cultural relativism is something that should restrain us from interventionism.

"A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200."

While our values are undeniably relative to our cultural heritage, I do not think that that realization in and of itself discredits the universal validity or social applicability of those values' aims. Simply because individual rights is considered to be a Western value, to me, does not mean that it is something corrupt and only applicable to Western cultures...the west just happened to have the right historical context to be one of the first 'cultures' to uncover, outline, and legalize the realization that equality and individual rights is something worth while and worth pursuing, something that protects all humans from the intra-species hatred, injustice, and inequality, that has been the common theme throughout the history of mankind.

This is what the human rights movement is trying to and hopefully will change. And all this talk of cultural relatives, as if they only apply to the cultures in which they are found, is detrimental to the progressive movement of universal human rights.

But thats just my opinion. And I'm pretty sure it would be shunned by the majority in the anthropology community.


*Update: Just noticed that Cosmic Variance has a post on this same story, but adds another story showing that gays seem to have the same lashing fate in Saudi Arabia too.

About 50 people picketed Saudi Arabia’s embassy in London on Oct. 19 in protest against the nation’s reported floggings and executions of gay men.

On Oct. 2, two Saudi men convicted of sodomy in the city of Al Bahah received the first of their 7,000 lashes in punishment, the Okaz daily newspaper reported. The whippings took place in public, the report said.

But I am not just trying to single out Saudi Arabia here. These are just two particular examples of a more common human behavior of targeted group hatred towards other group differences which, unfortunately, seems to be universal.

United (with Xenophobia) We Stand

Tartarize has a good post up on his blog commenting on (what I thought was) a very interesting article recently published in SciMag: The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War.

I highly recommend reading the article, however if you are pressed for time/don't have a subscription Tartarize has a pretty good--more laymen's argot/pragmatic--translation of what the article is basically saying:

"promoting a sort of tribalism and intergroup warfare, rejection, fear, and non-cooperation between the groups, the intragroup altruism becomes much more likely to be returned to the benefit of everybody (within the group). If you can isolate your group with respect to other groups, you both need to work together in order to succeed in these conflicts and can work together due to the much greater assurance that your gesture will be reciprocated...[sic]From a state of nature, where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short to a more peaceful altruistic world--the best path is via a small warring group where everyday is the day after 9/11. Where everybody is xenophobic and altruistic. Where you love your neighbor as yourself, but take slaves "of the strangers that do sojourn among you."

The best way to build up some trust within a group larger than your family is by forming a group, go around murdering other people, enslaving them and insuring xenophobia. This, oddly, leads to altruism. You keep people out and help people in, and can succeed in tough times and help in good times, and your entire group will be the better for it."

Though this trend is sad and unfortunate, if you look at it amorally it appears, undoubtedly, to be the very mechanism in history that has slowly united us together into everlarger groups.

Which is why I'm (perhaps a little naively) optimistic about the future. I feel that as our enemies turn into frenemies, and our frenemies into friends, we have been slowly inching towards the end of war. Globalisation (with its economic incentive for peace) has forced us to reconcile our differences and we are slowly realizing that working together is undeniably the most optimum pursuit for everybody.

Which leads us to my subscription to the utopian dream of One. I would argue (somewhat confidently) that our historical directional arrow appears to be pointing this way. Whether or not, in the end, it will be a mutually respecting consensus of states who give fair and equal concern and respect to their citizens or a hegemonic ruling of one state over the rest, or worse the failure of either resulting in the extinction of our species and even planet via nuclear weapons, I have no clue, but I can only hope for the former, and end with the annoyingly true adage: "only time will tell."

AAA Responds To HTS

Just noticed that the American Anthropology Association finally produced a statement on the US Military's Human Terrain System (which recruits anthropologists to assist their 'progressive' efforts in the regions they occupy).

I'll redirect you to two responses from fellow AnthroBloggers for all those interested:

In favor of and prolific posters on this issue: bloggers over at SavageMinds.org
&
Opposed to: the blogger(s) over at Anthropology.net

I'm still on the fence with this issue, since I'm a prospective AFSA with an undergraduate degree in anthropology...

But I think Marx's famous quote could be pertinently changed to:

"[Anthropologists] have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

In my opinion your not going to change military policy and actions by writing in subscription journals and if you truly want to stop the egregious acts and culturally detrimental actions of the military you have to actually get engaged with it, learn the lingo, embed yourself within it, so you can not only understand it, but hopefully teach it the vaulable lessons that anthropology has uncovered over the years.

But that's just my two cents...it's a very tricky ethical question (as all ethical questions usually are).

Changing Our Perspective Towards Africa

Over the course of history the continent of Africa and its inhabitants have taken on numerous images and meanings in the eyes of the Western world. It has been the “Dark Continent” a rugged land of exoticism and savagery, which caused a mass of European explorers and expeditions, adventurers and thrill seekers to migrate to the mysterious continent, who then wrote books and letters home which fueled the African trope of barbarism and primitiveness amongst the ‘civilized’ citizens of Europe. It has been a helpless continent, ravaged by war, raped by poverty, and pillaged by disease and hunger, undeveloped and salvageable only by the advanced wealthy civilizations who are capable of fixing and rescuing it, which inspired a call to aid and assistance, propagandized by the media and popularized by celebrities such as Bono and Angelina Jolie. But in more recent years Africa has taken on yet another image, a new meaning, particularly in the eyes of the United States, it has become a national security risk.

“Africa Emerges as a Strategic Battleground” is the headline of the article by Wall Street Journalist Frederick Kempe, who suggests that the true motivation behind the US administration’s recent significant increase of aid to Africa is to combat the spread of terrorism by eliminating potential regions or environments out of which terrorism tends to emerge and take root. This notion of an increasingly volatile national threat emerging in Africa stems from the characterization that “great swaths of Africa are lawless, corrupt and bitterly poor”, a characterization which produces the conclusion that Africa is, therefore, “an ideal breeding ground for extremists.” But the domino reaction does not stop there since this very conclusion inspires a solution offered by the US in the form of engagement and intervention. Thus aid and assistance by organizations such as the U.N., IMF, and World Bank are increased and the U.S. now has a comforting justification for meddling in the affairs of African politics, economics, and society (and the beat goes on).

In his article Kempe provides an acute quote, which sums up the new role Africa plays in US foreign policy, when he quotes U.S. Gen. James Jones saying “Africa plays an increased strategic role militarily, economically and politically…We have to become more agile in terms of being able to compete in this environment.” This mindset is clearly a binary, black and white one, since it implies that a failure to be ‘king of the mountain’ in Africa politically, economically, and militarily, would be a national security disaster for the U.S.—whose safety is now directly linked to Africa’s stability. And as US involvement in Africa increases, so, too, do its interests. “In the Gulf of Guinea off West Africa -- through which 15% of U.S. oil imports flow, a figure expected to rise to some 25% in the next decade -- Gen. Jones sees a more lasting maritime presence to protect against piracy and bunkering, or the widespread siphoning of oil from pipelines.”

In order to maintain its pursuit and protection of its regional interests the US must emphasize the popular characterization or meme of Africa being a victim of underdevelopment, a place that is ridden by poverty, lawlessness, disease and starvation, in order to justify its involvement within the continent. This is comparable to the priest who teaches his parish that they are all abhorrent sinners destined for eternal punishment, unless they accept God and Jesus as their saviors—only then are they saved. Or better yet, a person who walks around cutting people with a razor blade in order to sell them a bandage. The point is that the US offers a solution to a problem of its own-making!

Journalists such as Kempe and many others (if you don’t believe me just scan the news coming out of Africa and see if you notice a theme) assist and even promulgate this sentiment of the need to assist Africa, making it our obligation, because we are wealthy and advanced and they are poor and primitive. I will agree that equality is something to be strived for and we, members raised in Western culture, are obviously indoctrinated with these Lockean values, and as a result have a missionary zeal and sense of duty to go out and eradicate inequality and injustice in other countries, but we must be careful that these enthusiasms and zestful aspirations are not solely serving the interests of our state. For it seems true that in the 20th century the inherent values of individual equal rights, political representation, and social justice have all been merely side affects of the United States protecting and increasing its material interests.

If we continue to view Africa through the popularized view in the media and amongst the general public as being our sickly patient, who is helpless without us, then we will continue to feel justified in the political prescriptions we give and the economic remedies we offer. Africa will continue to be dependent on our aid and assistance and it will most likely never develop into a healthy, stable, and sustainable independent continent—it will, to carry the metaphor further, never get better. But if we change the way we see Africa, denude ourselves of the mischaracterizations and misconceptions that have plagued our policy decisions and attitude towards Africa, then perhaps, just maybe, we will start seeing Africa get its color back, its elan vital, and it will finally become the healthy, sustainable, and stable continent—which we so often forget—that it wants to be and not the Africa—supported by the mass media, journalists like Kempe, and the US administration, whose importance is solely constituted by its strategic significance--that we want it to be.



Article link found here

European Anthropology: From The Armchair of Explanatory Conjectures to the Village of Exploratory Participation.

Whenever I am at a party and asked which academic major or program I belong to and I reply--with perhaps a trace of reverence--‘Anthropology’, I have found that two responses usually ensue: 1) “Oh so you like dinosaurs” or 2) a facial contortion which may as well be in the shape of a giant question mark. It saddens me how little the general public knows about Anthropology and even the occasional person aware of the discipline is usually under the impression that it is a field of study which investigates the lives of “savages”. I think we Anthropologists are perhaps partly to blame for this severed bridge of information/awareness/knowledge between the anthropologists' mined data of rigorous research and participation and the general publics--the mere layman’s (pretentious sarcasm alert)--common understanding of the immense stock pile of cultural ore anthropologists have accumulated through this rigorous field work and data mining. Anthropologists are unfortunately in the habit of only publishing their research and findings in esteemed academic journals, which you of course have to pay to subscribe to, and as a result there seems to be a castle of isolationism that anthropologists have erected that keeps their work and approaches within the limited confinements of their own discipline. The Internet, however, seems to be tearing down these erected walls of idea-isolationism and anthropology blogs, videos, and informational links, are popping up all over the place--providing wonderfully free information on the subject of anthropology. But I digress, this post is meant to introduce a well known, enigmatic character and individual in Anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski, and explain why I think he can be thought of as one of the most significant axles of change on the European theoretical approaches to Anthropology. By reading this post you will be able to both impress students within the discipline of anthropology and fellow friends, sparing you the embarrassment of be being the token Kallikak at the next party you attend. ; - )

Born in Krakow, on April 7, 1884, Bronislaw Malinowski is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of, contributors to, and perhaps even propagandist of a method of study in Anthropology known as ethnology—the idea that in order to know a people, you actually have to spend time, living, sleeping, eating, learning the language of and participating with, the people. Prior to this radically new, systematic approach of studying a people by spending time with them and taking the time to learn their language was a more laid back, and hence aptly termed ‘armchair’ approach to the study of Anthropology. These armchair anthropologists included prominent figures such as Sir James Frazer, author of the highly influential and popular book The Golden Bowl, and Edward Burnett Tylor who made a palliative effort to dress the discipline of Anthropology up in the revered and at that time highly fashionable gown of science. Frazer popularized ideas of the mysterious 'savage' and customs of other cultures, emphasizing the romantic differences, while Tylor argued that there was a progressive upward linear evolutionary development amongst the civilizations of man from ‘savage’ to ‘civilized’ (Europeans of course being the acme of the latter category). He thought of people in the same fashion that museums organize tools, an arrow head for instance, which began as crude and blunt, but continually evolved new shapes and complexities, until it reached its most ideal state of perfection, and efficiency (Tylor obviously would have been a huge fan of the video game Civilization). The theories these anthropologists developed largely stemmed from the books that provided information collected by other individuals on other cultures, and hence was incredibly inaccurate and inconsistent, but what is important to note is that this armchair approach had a particular emphasis on explanatory theories, a piecing together of man’s evolutionary history and a mythic popularization of the ‘savage’, greatly neglecting the richness of data that existed within the actual people’s culture, not found in a book, but rather within the person and his cultural context. This change is largely due to the advent of new modes of transportation and opportunities to travel abroad and see these‘savages’ with your own eyes, which became increasingly available to European citizens around the turn of the 20th century.

One citizen in particular--who idolized the British way of life and culture and aspired to one day be amongst the respected ranks of the upper class--a student at the London School of Economics, seized upon this opportunity to travel abroad, after he had been reading many texts on, what was then a hot-spot of study for Anthropology, Australian Aborigines (such as Gillen&Spencer), and thus had the urge to, as the old adage goes, see it in order to believe it. Bronislaw Malinowski’s fame however does not stem from this particular trip, but rather his long, for historical reasons (WWI breaking out), stay with the Trobrianders on their Islands, and the valuable information that he was able to attain (most notably the Kula Ring), shattering numerous previously held theories and approaches, as a direct result of his effort to, as he put it, “grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.”

Malinowski accomplished this aim by separating himself from the amenities he was accustomed to within his own culture by taking up residency--setting up his tent-poles--right smack dab in the middle of the Trobriander’s village.

This would seem like a very subtle change, but it turned out to have significant and revolutionary implications. There’s a good paragraph in the introduction to Malinowski’s book on the Trobrianders entitled The Argonauts of the Western Pacific which clearly outlines the personal change that occurs by taking up residence within the village of the people who you are trying to know.

As I went on my morning walk through the village, I could see intimate details of family life, of toilet, cooking, taking of meals; I could see the arrangements for the day’s work, people starting on their errands, or groups of men and women busy at some manufacturing tasks. Quarrels, jokes, family scenes, events usually trivial, sometimes dramatic, but always significant, formed the atmosphere of my daily life, as well as of theirs.

the paragraph continues and ends with a sentence which I found to be rather amusing:

It must be remembered that as the natives saw me constantly every day, they ceased to be interested or alarmed, or made self-conscious of my presence, and I ceased to be a disturbing element in the tribal life which I was to study, altering it by my very approach, as always happens with a new-corner to every savage community. In fact, as they knew that I would thrust my nose into everything, even where a well-mannered native would not dream of intruding, they finished by regarding me as part and parcel of their life, a necessary evil or nuisance, mitigated by donations of tobacco.

By embedding himself within a culture and spending a number of years taking part in the daily occurrences of that culture, Malinowski created a new way to collect information and build a better understanding of the particularities of that individual culture. But it is clear that Malinowski had personal reasons and ambitions towards a certain tier of social status and perhaps explains how, being the neurotic and intensely hypochondriac man that he was, he was able to endure the numerous years he spent in the isolation of another culture. He truly was a stranger in a strange land.
His personal diary clearly expresses his lamentations and the titles of the books he published clearly show his desire to be a celebrity of British culture by playing off of its moral reservations, with such books as Sex and Repression in Savage Societies and The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia.

After he returned from the Trobraind Islands he took up a professorship at the London School of Economics and reared an entire generation of students, who would later become the disciples of ethnology. Anthropologists such as Audrey Richards, who wrote Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe, Monica Hunter, author of Reaction to Conquest, Bateson’s Naven, Firth’s We, the Tikopia, and finally the shining star of Malinowski’s embedded approach inherent in ethnology, Edward Evans-Pritchard, who wrote Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande. From here on out it was undeniable that if one wished to study and understand a particular culture one must go spend time living and interacting with that culture. New theories arose and were hotly debated and practiced—mainly variations of functionalism between Malinowski’s biological/psychological primary and secondary needs functionalism and the Durkheimien/Radcliffe-Brown structural functionalism—but all anthropologists agreed that fieldwork through participant observation was now an undeniable necessity.

Raymond Firth, a good friend of Malinowski’s, wrote these words in a posthumous evaluation of Malinowski’s work:

To his pupils, Malinowski’s stimulus lay in a combination of many qualities: his subtle power of analysis, his sincerity in facing problems, his sense of reality, his scholarly command of the literature, his capacity for integrating detail into general ideas, his brilliance and wit in handling discussions. But it was due to something more, to his liberal interpretation of the role of teacher…He and his students did no always see eye to eye. But one felt that he had a great store of wise advice, which he expressed in his own inimitably shrewd fashion. Whether he gave it soberly or flippantly, one knew that he was sympathetic, that he felt the trouble as his own. And if a crisis arose—because one could argue fiercely with him at times—he had a most disarming way of suddenly putting aside all emotion, and spreading the whole thing out on the table, as it were, for analysis of his own motives as well as those of the other person. It was this capacity for friendship and sympathy, going beyond the relations of a teacher to pupil, that helped to strengthen his attraction.(Barth, p.29 in One Discipline Four Ways)

Malinowski clearly inspired and popularized the field of anthropology, amongst his students, and amongst the larger public, but a critique often associated with Malinowski is that despite all his enthusiasms, his contributions, theoretically, were largely ad hoc. Malinowski has a more personal approach, which he tries to distance himself from in his works, but when compared to say Meyers Fortes or A.R. Radcliffe Brown, one easily recognizes the differences in approaches. The former sought to give the native’s identity and perspective back to him, by studying the native in his own environment, but largely focused on issues popular to British pop-culture, whereas the latter established concrete and consistent systems and approaches to participant observation, that took culture, analyzed it, and attempted to understand it in all its diverse richness, colors, and manifestations, with a particular emphasis on its structural implications and functions.

To this day anthropologists doing field work and participant observation are deeply indebted to and significantly benefited by both of these approaches to studying cultures and are persistently trying to capture the native’s reality, not through preconceived theoretical impositions of explanations, but, rather, through exploratory observations.


***By the way, I just came across this BBC documentary on Bronislaw Malinowski posted on youtube and thought it was worth sharing. The pictures in the film are stunning, the music and reenactment a little over dramatic, and the final clip which takes a look at a modern application of anthropology with some lady, unknown to me, who studies the 'tribe' of horse racing, seemed to me to be a, excuse my Latin, reductio ad absurdum of what Anthropology is all about, but nevertheless the rest of the film is pretty informative, though it does mostly focus on the character of Malinowski as opposed to the contributions of Malinowski, but perhaps I should stop complaining for fear you might not be intrigued enough to click below.

Enjoy.

Tales From The Jungle: Malinowski
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6