Blog for Anthro 104, Fall 08, UMass Amherst

In lecture today (Dec 3), I very briefly talked about how ideas from Liberation Theology influenced Paul Farmer & co.   As I was raised Roman Catholic in New Hampshire and in the greater Boston area, I’ve always found that Liberation Theology was one of the things I could stomach in a Church that otherwise grabs too many headlines for its pedophile priests.  So I’d like that students know about this, particularly if they’re Catholic.  So here’s some comprehensive info clipped from a BBC site:

“Love for the poor must be preferential, but not exclusive.“ Ecclesia in America, 1999

Liberation theology was a radical movement that grew up in South America as a response to the poverty and the ill-treatment of ordinary people. The movement was caricatured in the phrase “If Jesus Christ were on Earth today, he would be a Marxist revolutionary”, but it’s more accurately encapsulated in this paragraph from Leonardo and Clodovis Boff:

“Q: How are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice?    A: There can be only one answer: we can be followers of Jesus and true Christians only by making common cause with the poor and working out the gospel of liberation.“ Leonardo & Clodovis Boff

Liberation theology said the church should derive its legitimacy and theology by growing out of the poor. The Bible should be read and experienced from the perspective of the poor.

The church should be a movement for those who were denied their rights and plunged into such poverty that they were deprived of their full status as human beings. The poor should take the example of Jesus and use it to bring about a just society.

Most controversially, the Liberationists said the church should act to bring about social change, and should ally itself with the working class to do so. Some radical priests became involved in politics and trades unions, others even aligned themselves with violent revolutionary movements.   A common way in which priests and nuns showed their solidarity with the poor was to move from religious houses into poverty stricken areas to share the living conditions of their flock.

Read more of this summary (including how John Paul II wasn’t to fond of the movement) at the BBC site on liberation theology.

A few weeks ago, we watched a short film, Babakiueria, made by indigenous Aboriginal Australians that both parodied ethnographic participant observation methods and reversed the racial markings/unmarkings of Australian society.  In the film, the Aboriginal Australians are depicted as the “discoverers” and then colonizers of Australia and the Native White population are the underclass.  Students have remarked to me about some of the more moving scenes, saying that until they saw it happening to White people on the screen, they it had never really hit home for them about what it meant for indigneous children to be taken away families for schooling in the dominant culture.

In the U.S., the government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was officially doing this to Native American Indians until 1928 in an assimilating process of “Americanization”.  In Australia, the White population was still doing this to Aboriginal people even up until the late 1970s.  Today Aboriginal people refer to these assimilated kids as “the Lost Children”.

I happened to think of this recently when I read an Australian newspaper article that stated that Barack Obama would have been one of the “Lost Children” himself, because with an African father, thus being “hypodescented” into a racial category that “needed assimilating” into American culture.

Ann Stewart writes with a link that reflects on some of the discussion in her sections in the past week:

For those of you who got a dose of looking at Cosmo as a how-to book for successfully performing female heterosexuality in sections this week, I’d like to point out that you could also take VH1′s “The Pick-Up Artist” as a how-to for heterosexual masculinity. It similarly teaches men how to regulate their appearance (they have to re-style themselves in the first installment) and behavior (learning the “art” of the pick-up complete with vocabulary that speaks of “targets” rather than “women”).  The advice that “Mystery” (the expert pick-up artist) gives also has the same sort of strategy of tricking a person into thinking you’re worth spending time with that Cosmo often uses, and that strategy is based on the same questionable generalizing about what one gender finds attractive in another.  However, success in this show is measured by how many “number closes” or “kiss closes” (clearly, I’ve learned the lingo…) they can achieve by the end of the night, with no mention of any plan to follow those up and persue the ralationships that Cosmo’s strategies usually aim for. Mystery even trains them to use his own vocab in ways that often make it sound like they’re talking about an enemy on a battlefield rather than a woman hanging out with her friends… http://www.vh1.com/shows/series/pua_lingo/
This all comes together to give it the same air of fascinating yet worrisome laughability that Cosmo has…for me at least.  -Ann Stewart

(In discussing tribes and chiefdom societies, we’ve looked at the Kayapo as an example.  Here’s more information about the Kayapó from Sociedade Internacional de Lingüística, SIL Brasil)

The Kayapó are a tribal/chiefdom culture of about 5,000 people spread over nine primary villages.  They are also known by the alternative names Xikrin or Txhukahamai and their language is classified as Macro-Gê, Kayapó.
“The Kayapó were formerly considered to be a very warlike and aggressive tribe inhabiting southern Pará and Northern Mato Grosso, roaming a vast territory from east of the Xingu to the Tapajós. The eastern sector of the tribe was pacified around 1940, and the western sector in the 1950′s by the Villas Boas brothers. They warred with neighbouring tribes such as the Karajá, Juruna, Xavante, Tapirapé, Kreen-Akorore and others, as well as local Brazilians such as rubber-tappers and those living along the rivers. They killed, burned villages, sacked them and took captives. Some of these captives are still living in Kayapó villages today, integrated into Kayapó society, married and with children and grandchildren.

Besides warring with non-Kayapós, they also had internal warfare between the different villages and factions, raiding and killing amongst themselves. Today there is no more internal warfare, nor warfare against other tribes, but they assert their bellicose natures by attacking whomever encroaches on their land.

Some of the distinctive features of Kayapó culture are the lip disks that used to be worn by the men and still are worn by some, although the practice is no longer being continued by the younger generation. Another feature is the beautiful body painting in intricate geometric designs that children and adults of both sexes use. Another very interesting feature is their elaborate festivals. The festivals come to a climax after a period of months during which each ritual is rigorously adhered to with its distinctive songs, dances, and special ceremonies which pertain to that festival.

The language has 17 vowels and 16 consonants, and a distinctive intonation pattern and lengthening of vowel to denote emphasis.”

SIL International is an international non-profit organization. Its primary objectives are to analyze indigenous languages and promote linguistically and culturally viable alphabets. SIL encourages the production of indigenous literature, and translates into those languages material of high cultural value. SIL cooperates with the government by offering bilingual and intercultural education for indigenous groups where linguistic research is in progress.

A webpage by Edward Fischer at Vanderbilt University gives more information about the  Kayapo, addressing their environmentalist efforts, as well as concerns that some Kayapo have been abusing their position as guardians of the forest.

I happened to be reading something from the BBC on-line today, entitled “Why rednecks may rule the world”, while at the same moment that I was listening to the radio and hearing a short person-on-the-street interview with someone who had just voted in the Presidential elections in Ohio.  The somewhat inarticulate interviewee [frankly, he sounded drunk] was saying that he made his because “I like the Vice-President choice, I think that [that person] knows regular folks and sounds a lot like me”.   And, as anyone who knows me knows that I’m open about my political choices, well, I have to say, I cringed, thinking I most certainly don’t want a person who sounds like that guy as VP.

Anyway, as I looked at the “rednecks” article, I glanced at a subheader that I quickly read as American Ethocentrism.  But, a second glance made me see that it said American Ethos.  It got me thinking, how much is a national ethos unavoidably a national ethnocentrism?

I’m originally from New Hampshire, a little ways upstate which is probably as redneck as place as you’ll find in the Northeast.  So, the ideas in the Rednecks article kinda hit home for me, because I grew up with a lot of them.  I’m cutting and pasting some of them here:

• Belief that no law is above God’s law, not even the US Constitution.

• Hyper patriotism. A fighting defence of native land, home and heart, even when it is not actually threatened: ie, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Haiti and dozens more with righteous operations titles such as Enduring Freedom, Restore Hope, and Just Cause.

• A love of guns and tremendous respect for the warrior ideal. Along with this comes a strong sense of fealty and loyalty. Fealty to wartime leaders, whether it be FDR or George Bush.

• Self effacement, humility. We are usually the butt of our own jokes, in an effort not to appear aloof among one another.

• Belief that most things outside our own community and nation are inferior and threatening, that the world is jealous of the American lifestyle.

• Personal pride in equality. No man, however rich or powerful, is better than me.

• Perseverance and belief in hard work. If a man or a family is poor, it is because they did not work hard enough. God rewards those who work hard enough. So does the American system.

• The only free country in the world is the United States, and the only reason we ever go to war is to protect that freedom.

Here is the original article, Why rednecks may rule the world, from the BBC.  Whattaya think?  Is the BBC writer being fair?  Is this the American ethos?  The redneck ethos?  How ethnocentric are these ideas?

And consider this part of the “ethos”:  “Personal pride in equality. No man, however rich or powerful, is better than me.”  What if it is, “Personal pride in equality. No person, however intelligent, is better than me”?  I talk positively about egalitarianism in my Anthro 104 lecture, don’t I?   But don’t I sound like a snob when I’m writing, above, about the Ohio voter who is making his voiting choice based on his  “personal pride in equality”?

In my on-going effort to give more background on some of the films and readings we’re doing for class, I thought I’d post up a link to an article that relates to “Kayapo: Out of the Forest”, a film that I show in order to demonstrate two main things:  one, to give a view of political, economic, social and ideational dynamics of a culture that we are “typologizing”, in our “old school” terms, as “tribal” and, two, to show an optimistic success story about an indigenous people’s struggle to survive in the face of Westernization.   This article, “Neither Warriors Nor Victims, The Wauja Peacefully Organize to Defend Their Lands”, written in the aftermath of the events we see in the Kayapo film begins with citing how the Altamira demonstration proved to be inspirational to other groups in fighting massive river-damming projects.  While the film we see in lecture is quite old, the struggle continues everyday in the Amazon: the website of Survival International, The Movement for Tribal Peoples provides updates.

Today, there are still some tribes, or tribal subgroups, that have been resisting contact and exchange with the West and have tried to remain isolated (including a Kayapo-Metyktire subgroup).  Read about some of them at Anthropology.net.

For anyone interested in learning about N!ai, the film made about her life, and the San !Kung people that we watched in class, the Documentary Educational Resources has a study guide available at http://www.der.org/resources/study-guides/N!ai.pdf.  I hadn’t looked at it in a very long time and had forgotten that it included a very disjointed, yet nonetheless useful transcript of much of the dialogue of the film.  Reading it tonight, I was also reminded that they made a mistake in the film in saying N!ai was eight when she was first married to /Gunda.  She was actually eleven years-old.  Importantly, however, everyone should realize that this marriage was ceremonial at this point and consummation of the marriage was not expected of N!ai (as you recall, she says she ran home that night and slept in her mother’s hut).

Another remark: you never see the camera or filmmakers of the N!ai film in the film itself, which to me is kind of “old school”.  That is, the filmmakers are not being very forthcoming about their roles in the process.  We can see that they do have some kind of effect on the community, as the charismatic N!ai is rewarded for her work in the film and others are jealous of her access to more material resources.  I also find myself feeling uncomfortable as the camera follows the all-out fight about two-thirds of the way through the film — seems rather intrusive, doesn’t it?  I wonder what other tensions the anthropologists and filmmakers may exacerbate?

I purposely try not to assign things like this because I don’t want to bury you under too much reading, but I like this blog as a place where those of you who are interested can find more resources.  Let me know what you think.

For the next three weeks or so in our Intro Cultural class we’re doing what I like to refer to as “old school” anthro.  I say “old school” because it reflects some theoretical paradigms that anthropology, in general, has shifted past some time ago, as well as the “traditional” objects of anthropological inquiry, namely band societies and tribal cultures.  While it’s true that I worry that the barely awake “C-” student sitting in the back of my lecture hall just trying to fulfill some distribution requirements will miss the point and have her or his stereotypes of “weird Other people” only reinforced, my hope is that it’ll be worth going back to some of the earlier ideas of anthro in order to better appreciate the ideas we work with today.  In part, but doing this I’m trying to build a modernist model of anthropology so that we’ll have something to deconstruct when we want to push into post-modernist thinking.

With that in mind, we’re learning about hunting & gathering band societies and then “ranked” tribal societies and I’m trying to put forth some of the cultural ecological and neo-evolutionist ideas associated with people like Julian Steward and Leslie White in the 1950s and 1960s.  And, while I’ll necessarilly have to simplify some ideas in order to get the broader concepts across to a lecture hall of 250 or so students, I’d like the inquisitive to know that there really is a lot more nuance to the story.  Specifically, in lecture I’m laying out an interpretation of the Dobe !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert of Botswana known as the “traditionalist model”, usually associated with with R.B. Lee and J.S. Solway.  However, I want students to know that there’s other takes on the same subject, namely the “revisionist model”, put forth by people like J.R. Denbow and E.N. Wilmsen.   The debate goes on amongst students of anthropology and I think this website, The Kalahari Debate, posted by Ohio State University does a nice job of succinctly explaining some things I leave out of my lecture.

. During my last Anthro 104 lecture, someone asked, “how much pre-determined focus does an ethnographer enter the field with?”  And, on the spot, I gave my “wide open” ethnographic approach telling about one of my best ethnographic interviews, the one where I opened with, “Why journalism?”, and then this guy went on talking for 90+ minutes and, because of the open-endedness of that one question, he took me down paths that had never occurred to me.   I think this answer was OK, but I didn’t really feel satisfied with it because I should have said something more about theory, about the analytic framework with which I come to the field.  Also, I should have mentioned my goals in learning about the changing journalistic models and mass media styles of post-socialist, post-war Croatia.  So, later I was thinking of nice little analogy that T. H. Eriksen talks about in our textbook (29).  He writes:

The choice of a precise topic for investigation … is an important part of the preparation for fieldwork. One should, at the very least, know if one is interested in, say, resource management or child-raising before embarking on fieldwork. Otherwise one will end up knowing too little about everything rather than knowing enough about something. Godfrey Lienhardt (1985), borrowing an analogy from Geertz, has compared the relationship between theory and ethnography to an elephant-and-rabbit stew. What is required, says Lienhardt, is one elephant of ethnography and one rabbit of theory. The art, as he sees it, consists of bringing out the flavour of the rabbit.

That’s a great analogy for me – I asked, “Why journalism?”, as I went after the elephant. But, yes, I had an idea of where I’m going with this line of inquiry as I try learn about the journalistic milieu and I have some theory in mind that helps me to figure out what to do with this elephant. With seasoning, you’ll recognize the rabbit.

Having previously posted something about White Privilege, something centering on Sarah Palin’s family’s particular privilege, a friend told me I just had to see Tina Fey’s dead-on Sarah Palin impression from the most recent SNL.  It is stunning – if there could be any silver lining if Palin were to become VP, it’d be to see Fey comedically eviscerate her for longer than just this campaign season.

I found it impossible to get the whole bit on YouTube because I was looking after NBC had pulled it and, indeed I could only get the FOX News clips which only included the parts where Fey did the “vivacious Palin” and not the, ummm… “highly questionable Palin”.  The best version I found on YouTube was from CelebTV – go figure! And I was embedding it in this blog, but now apparently that’s been pulled and I’m back to finding it on only YouTube as it was covered by FOX – double go figure!   You can, however, find the full NBC SNL skit here.