As the summer winds down...GET OFF MY LAWN!!

At the beginning of the summer, Krystal D'Costa wrote an intriguing piece about The American Obsession with Lawns.

Don't think you're interested in green, gardening? This post has it all with a history of lawn landscaping and culture, considerations of class, design and aesthetic, exclusion and social-indicators of belonging. One might also easily read racial bias into lawn culture and cultural critique. D'Costa's post is somewhat reminiscent of Rotenberg's Landscape and Power in Vienna (1995) where he demonstrates how groups and classes work to align with political movements and inform cultural meanings in everyday (and larger, for example municipal, national, etc.) life.

Below is a snippet of her post:

We are at a moment when the American Dream, inasmuch as it still exists, is changing. The idea of homeownership is untenable or undesirable for many. While green spaces are important, a large area of green grass seems to be a lower priority for many. With a growing movement that embraces a more natural lifestyle, there is a trend toward the return of naturalized lawns that welcome flowering weeds, and subsequently support a more diverse entomological ecosystem.

Old habits die hard, however. And it is hard to also abandon this idea of a manifestation of material success, especially as it is so readily recognized as such. As of 2005, lawns covered an estimated 63,000 square miles of America. That's about the size of Texas. It's the most grown crop in the United States--and it's not one that anyone can eat; it's primary purpose is to make us look and feel good about ourselves.

D'Costa ends with the following statement: Lawns are American. But they're also an anomaly. And they may no longer fit the realities of the world we live in. 

The lawn factor may also translate for some living up here in Canada.

Read more of D'Costa's analysis and about this history of lawn and lawn culture by clicking on the quick links below.

Quick Links:

• Anthropology in Practice: Exploring the human condition Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American 
• Anthropology Blogs for the Affluent Tech-Thusiast? AnthoEverywhere! (July 27 2017)
• The American Obsession with Lawns by Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American (May 3 2017)
• Landscape and Power in Vienna, Robert Rotenberg (1995)

Jediism as Religion: Anthropology for a Changing World

Last Thursday, anthroeverywhere! wrote about Gillian Parrish's post on Jedi-training in the classroom, which they use as a means to teach implicit skills such as empathy to students.

Today, we delve back into the connection between Jediism and Anthropology (because why not...) by pointing out a guest blog post on The Geek Anthropologist entitled When Science Fiction meets Religion: The Case of Jediism.

In their post, Maria (Polyhymnia) Menegaki outlines a paper they presented at the AlterNatives: Anthropological Knowledge for Changing World program organized by the University of Ljubljana in 2015.

In this paper, Menegaki explores the growing global movement of the Church of Jediism and their quest to become a recognized religion. In this post, Menegaki questions the process in which religions are defined and likens this movement to those of other New Age movements that came of age in the 20th Century. Menegaki goes on to explore many topics that were likely further fleshed out in their paper, which include: the role of play, the perception of cohesion among followers, the difference between fandom vs. religious observance, and their failure to be recognized beyond an online community (as decided by the UK's Charity Commission in 2016).

Menegaki ends this post stating that the exploration of Jediism can serve anthropologists as a topic of new forms of religiosity and/or as a form of social critique (the latter of which was not discussed in this post).

These are interesting suggestions indeed. To read Menegaki's post follow the quick link to The Geek Anthropologist below.

Quick Links:

• AlterNatives: Anthropological Knowledge for Changing World University of Ljubljana (2015)
• The Connection between Anthropology and Jedi Training by AnthroEverywhere! (August 10 2017)
• Jedi is not a religion, Charity Commission rules BBC (December 19, 2016)
• Jedi Training: Developing Habits of Perception in Our Disciplines by Gillian Parrish (August 7, 2017)
• The Geek Anthropologist website
• When Science Fiction meets Religion: The Case of Jediism by Maria (Polyhymnia) Menegaki (May 4, 2017)

Remembering & Memories: there's an app for that...

As we've posted about before, the adoption of new media and technology in our lives has an impact on our social lives in many interesting ways. In many ways, new technological platforms -- such as digital communications and social media -- are already embedded with certain cultural assumptions. At the same time, there are always unexpected outcomes and unforeseen ways in which the incorporation of new media and technology shape our relationships with others, our environments, and ourselves.

Facebook Memories

This relationship between cultural actors -- including the new digital "memory" systems in our lives -- is what Molly Sauter (PhD student in Communications Studies) addresses in Instant Recall (27 June 2017, Real Life). In this short analytical piece, Sauter addresses three types of memory system and how they have shaped our memories, and the act of remembering: predictive text, "data doppelgangers constructed for ad targeting," and more particularly, reminiscence databases (e.g. Facebook Memories).

Sauter explores how digital evocations of memory differ from physical ones, such as "yearbooks, photographs, cars, houses, trees, gravestones."

These physical evocations age, and their value and veracity as objects of testimony ages with them and us. They date, they fade, they display their distance from the events they are connected to and their distance from us. Digital memory objects, on the other hand, although they might abruptly obsolesce, do not age in the same way. They remain flatly, shinily omni-accessible, represented to us cleanly both in the everlasting ret-conned context of their creation and consumption. 

Contrast this algorithmic "remembering" with how another contributor to Real Life describes the nostalgic recreation of community online through her mother's experience using Facebook in "Post, Memory" (7 July 2016, Real Life). Kelli Korducki's mother had grown up in a small Salvadoran village, once decimated by civil war, and now rebuilt online as a closed Facebook group called “Memorias de ______,” boasting "a membership in the low hundreds, which is impressive given the village’s reasonably small size." 

In this digital community space, "long-lost neighbors and relatives resumed contact after decades of quiet separation, strewn from Virginia to Montreal to Los Angeles and points above, below, and in between." On Facebook, members and diaspora descendants of this scattered community came together, sharing and creating artifacts of the long-gone community, juxtaposed with images and details of the living village today.

What do these different insights onto the intersections of memory or the act of remembering with social media tell us about everyday life? How might these examples be useful in discussing social relationships, memory, cultural artifacts, or even imagined communities?


Quick links:

• Instant Recall (27 June 2017, Real Life)
• Post, Memory (7 July 2016, Real Life)
• You might also want to check out some of the other pieces in Real Life magazine, which all address aspects of living with technology -- including a number of articles that incorporate an anthropological perspective.
• Media, language, and social relationships (20 April 2017, anthro everwhere!)
• Anthropologizing Software and Design (12 January 2017, anthro everwhere!)

More on racist mascots

In my house, we are already two months into baseball season -- which also means the resurgence of critical blogs, news articles and discussions about racist mascots. We posted last year about Racist Mascots (11 April 2016), and this post adds to that earlier and ongoing discussion.

Native Mascots Perpetuate Racism Against Indigenous People

Last April as the Toronto Blue Jays battled through the American League Championship Series, Cleveland's team arrived in Toronto for Game 3 of the series amidst a legal challenge to ban the use of that team's racist mascot and name. Where many of the Cleveland fans interviewed by Canadian media feel that "the team's nickname and logo are not offensive and should not be changed," well-known Indigenous architect, activist, and officer of the Order of Canada Douglas Cardinal filed an injunction against the team's name and mascot as offensive and discriminatory. Douglas argued

that the logo reflects stereotypes and misunderstandings about indigenous cultures, lumping diverse groups of First Nations into one offensive, homogenous cartoon.
“It’s much deeper and more profound than a logo being offensive. It’s really an indicator of why that relationship (between First Nations peoples and society at large) is so flawed. Because there’s this lack of recognition of what the true conditions of native peoples have been over the last 500 years.”

The last-minute injunction was overturned by the Superior Court and Cleveland proceeded to wear their racism on their sleeves throughout the series.

The challenge to ban the broadcast of the name and mascot was successful, however, in raising this discussion again in mainstream media, and highlighting ways in which people in relative positions of power are already acknowledging the connections between this imagery and institutional racism against Indigenous peoples. For instance, much was made of how the long-time radio announcer for the Jays, Jerry Howarth, stopped calling Cleveland and Atlanta by their offensive team names since a 1992 letter from an Indigenous fan. This announcer has also made a concerted effort to stop using "terms such as tomahawk chop and powwow on the mound." Local teams with similarly offensive team names or mascots have also recently been called upon to change because of how these symbols perpetuate racism in the everyday.

Indigenous artists are also using these kinds of moments to speak back to and challenge these sports symbols of institutional racism. See for instance, Artists Respond to Cleveland Team’s Racist Logo (Canadian Art) or Culturally Appropriate Chicago Blackhawks Logo by First Nations Artist Goes Viral (Indian Country Today).

In the classroom, these team names and symbols provide fruitful examples for discussing how banal imagery comes to support the status quo of institutionalized racism, as well as more general questions of representation, cultural change and the invention of tradition.

Quick links:

• Racist Mascots (11 April 2016, anthro everywhere!)
• Canadian activist seeking injunction against use of ‘Cleveland Indians’ name (16 October 2016, Toronto Star)
• Cleveland Indians Can Use Logo and Name in Toronto, Canadian Judge Says (17 October 2016, New York Times)
• Blue Jays' radio voice Jerry Howarth sticks to 1992 vow to not say 'Indians' (11 October 2016)
• Native Mascots Perpetuate Racism Against Indigenous People (4 March 2016, HuffPost Canada)
• Cleveland Fans Say Team's Name 'Honours' Indigenous Culture (17 October 2016, HuffPost Canada)
• HuffPost Canada Will Not Be Using Racist Sports Team Names (13 October 2016, HuffPost Canada)
•  Artists Respond to Cleveland Team’s Racist Logo (18 October 2016, Canadian Art)
• Culturally Appropriate Chicago Blackhawks Logo by First Nations Artist Goes Viral (18 Vovember 2015, Indian Country Today)

Bringing anthropological ethics into the classroom

With the Canadian Anthropology Society Conference next week comes CASCA's Spring issue of the network's newsletter, Culture.

One item that caught our eye in this issue was Eric Henry's description of a case-study discussion activity he created for students to work through some of the potentially thorny issues anthropologists and linguists face in the field: Targaryen Ethics: A Case Study in Linguistic Appropriation Using “Game of Thrones”

Henry writes that in his linguistic anthropology course,

language appears to students to be a relatively uncontroversial topic of research – in what possible way could listening to an oral history or eliciting verb conjugations harm someone?
I wanted to get students thinking about some of the thorny ethical issues surrounding linguistic heritage, appropriation, and ownership.

In this short piece, Henry provides the short text of his case study, where the linguistic anthropologist is approached by the producers of the hit television program about adapting a local (endangered) language to fit one of the show's mythic peoples. Henry also reflects on the outcomes of working through this case-study with his students, including some of the unanticipated issues that students themselves raised about the case, and the role of the anthropological expert in terms of language revitalization, representation, development, and what ethics means in these moments.

Henry's case-study is a great example of an activity to bring an experiential learning element into the classroom through role-playing. How might you adapt this style of case-study exercise in your own teaching?

Quick links and further reading:

• CASCA's Culture newsletter
• The AAA's Handbook on Ethical Issues in Anthropology edited by Joan Cassell and Sue-Ellen Jacobs
• Chapter 3: Cases and Solutions provides 12 ethics case-studies on general ethical issues raised by practicing anthropologists similar to Henry's case study above
• AAA's Ethics blog
• The Smithsonian's Anthropology Outreach Office has also created an Ethical Dilemmas activity with 6 short case-studies
• anthro everywhere!'s Reading Lists & Syllabi Resources page

Updated 23 August 2017: Henry's article is no longer available via Culture

Media, language, and social relationships

In teaching anthropology, I always find students to be exceptionally interested on the days that we talk about media. Many of my students consider social media to be an important part of their lives and social interactions, from how they connect to others to how they spend their leisure time. And, in many ways this engagement has actually changed the ways through which students interact with us, as well as the language and forms of address we see in email communications.

To many of us who really care about writing well (and try to teach this skill and sensibility), these shifts are occasionally taken as doomsday signals of the downfall of the English language, or even the future of society in general (when we're being melodamatic, anyway). Yet, to take an anthropological approach, it's interesting to think about how these different forms of media actually mediate social relationships... including between ourselves and our students.

I often like to show the first 12 minutes or so or Michael Wesch's lecture "An anthropological introduction to YouTube" to students when we first discuss media. Wesch really brings home this idea that media is more than just content, and that media mediate social relationships.

So, really, it shouldn't be surprising that engagements through new forms of media have lead to interesting (if annoying) cultural changes in language use and meaning. An interesting example of this is observable in this piece from Newsweek: "What it means when you end your emails with a period." Here, David Crystal opens by remarking how "Regular emailers will have encountered the new styles, and may use all of them. The omission of punctuation marks, avoidance of capitalization, and the use of nonstandard spelling is commonplace." Yet, this kind of language use is also part of our learned cultural context:

These styles are characteristic of informal e-communication. The more formal the interaction, the less they are likely to occur, and the more they will be construed as inappropriate. So it's important for youngsters experimenting with internet styles to realize that breaking the conventions of the standard language is dangerous in certain settings.

Another interesting example of shifting meanings -- this time within and across social media platforms -- comes from this The Sociological Imagination piece, "“Liking” it on Facebook." Javier de Rivera explores the sensibility and standardization of feeling connected to the "like" function on platforms like FaceBook and Instagram. Consider the following statement about the shifting and standardizing meanings associated with functions such as the "like" or "fav" across these different platforms:

The evolution of Twitter seems to be going in the same direction, by experimenting with the Favs and changing them to Likes, establishing the trend – that started several years ago – for using this feature to show appreciation rather than for archival purposes. Here, overlapping is not possible, by choosing Hearts as a mean of social interaction we are deploying its value as an archival resource: our list of bookmarks would be flooded with the less memorable tweets we chose to mark as an expression of appreciation.

How might you bring these examples into your classroom discussions of cultural change, community, meaning, and language?

Quick links and further reading:

• Michael Wesch's (2008) An anthropological introduction to YouTube [55.30 minutes]
• What it means when you end your emails with a period (4 February 2017, Newsweek)
• “Liking” it on Facebook (21 December 2015, The Sociological Imagination)
• More posts from anthro everywhere! on language and cultural change:
• The mutability of language (LOL!) (9 March 2016)
• How does language shape our worldview? (17 October 2016)
• A historical view of a long heated debate: what could be more menacing than the singular "they"? (8 September 2016)
• Add it to the dictionary! Changing language, changing culture (12 December 2016) 
• What's in a Word? The Importance of Recognizing the Etymology of Words (27 March 2017)

Special Friday Edition: The Dutch Election, Domino Effects and Wilders' Patriotic Spring

Both contributing bloggers on this website completed their PhD research in the Netherlands. Why? We were drawn to understand the influence of nationalistic Dutch politicians on the everyday lives of ordinary Dutch residents. The platforms and rhetoric of these nationalistic politicians sought to re-define and identify what it meant to be 'Dutch' in an age of (seeming) globalization.

In a recent chapter (Long 2016) for Loring and Ramanathan's Language of citizenship and immigration: policies, pedagogies, and discourses, I introduced the Dutch context as follows:

Following the deaths of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and film director Theo van Gogh in 2004, the Netherlands generated its own brand of Islamophobia that dominated the European landscape, especially when it was led by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders. Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) received significant popular support and became one of three ruling political parties in a Dutch coalition government between 2010 and 2012. Although this coalition dissolved, the PVV is currently ranked at its highest popularity according to national opinion polls (Bolt, 2013). Wilders most recent platform (the platform he ran on and secured the second largest number of seats with) included breaking ties with the European Union and securing social supports for older generations, in addition to his long-standing platform concerning the decrease in non-western migration and a renewed interest in Dutch national identity (Party for Freedom, 2012).

In a recent  article (Mosher 2015) for a special issue in the Journal of Social Science Education, Rhiannon wrote:

Muslims especially have been positioned in the context of the Netherlands as having dramatically different – even incommensurable – cultural, historical, and political values and norms than the national majority (cf. Long, in this issue; Silverstein, 2005; Duyvendak, 2011; Geschiere, 2009; Stoler, 1995). The challenges for the civil enculturation of non-Western adult newcomers have contributed to the consensus across all sections of mainstream Dutch society that the Dutch government is at least partially to blame for the failure of many newcomers to demonstrate an appropriate fit through language and social skills acquisition. At the same time, support for cultural diversity (including religious diversity) has come under increasing scrutiny.

The context for our original doctoral research seems not to have significantly changed since 2009-2010 when we conducted our research. Wilders' warnings against what he calls "the Islamification of Western Culture" had received attention from national and international audiences in the past; however, his (rather monotonous) platform and bid for the top spot in this national election received even more attention because journalists likened him to the divisive politics of the US President. Indeed, international media called Wilders the Dutch Donald Trump, on account of Wilders' "call to Make the Netherlands great again (1), (...) for his increasingly outrageous positions, and his reliance on social media to circumvent the press and speak directly to the people" (Wildman, Vox, 15 March 2017)

Wildman quotes Dr. Sarah de Lange from the University of Amsterdam, who argues that Wilders is different from Trump because:

1. He's more ideological with a better understanding of society
2. He's more rational and calculated with a focus on strategy
3. He's more interested in exerting influence than gaining absolute power

And I would agree - the racism, ill-will, ill-feelings, and questioning that surged through these elections does not dissipate with the fanfare of election night. Instead, this energy digs roots and finds its way into everyday interactions and residents' relationships.

Much of the news coverage of Wilders' defeat has the hallmarks of the 'good triumphed (no pun intended) over evil' story. Yet, Martijn de Koning (on his blog: Closer, March 16, 2017) has argued that

the Dutch did not stop the domino effect of racist populism: the mainstream parties have taken over the racist rhetoric that was the result of the populists strategy of politicizing Islam, integration and immigration. And worse, the rhetoric of the domino effect [which he defines as the outcome of the Dutch elections and its possible influence (i.e. the domino effect) on other racist populist parties running in the French and German elections and set after Brexit and Trump’s election victory] reproduces the invisibility of the racist mainstream as well as Dutch nationalism by directing our attention to Trump’s US and Brexit as symbols of what went wrong and the Netherlands as a bulwark against what PM Rutte has called the ‘wrong kind of populists‘.

While Wilders' party didn't win top place, his form of politics and his bid for influence, rather than power, did triumph. What I haven't heard many scholars discuss however, is Wilders' idea of the Patriotic Spring.

In late 2016, Wilders first used the term "Patriotic Spring" to describe Donald Trump's win and England's vote to leave the European Union. Wilders described this movement as "historic", "a revolution" and tweeted #MakeTheNetherandsGreatAgain for the purpose of taking back the Netherlands.

I think this term would prove to be an important term to unpack in order to more fully understand the role of continued colonialism in Wilders' political ideology and platform.

Alhassan (N.d.) argues that the term “Arab Spring” is 

not a new one and was originally applied to describe a prescient “democratic domino effect” that was expected to spread its “seeds” across MENA after the elections in Iraq in 2005. “Arab Spring” and the metaphor of spring as a time of “renewal” also historically defined “liberal reform” movements that were either short-lived or quickly crushed (like the “Prague Spring” of 1968 that was put down by the USSR).

This continuation of the colonial framework that Alhassan writes about was recently articulated in Sarah Salem's post (thanks to de Koning for pointing out this blog and post) about the Dutch context.

Salem writes about the continued colonial framework that positions racialized identity at the center of Dutch politics and identity-making. She argues that "the Dutch self is a racialized self. This is not new, but as old as the Netherlands itself." Check out her blog post at the link above for a more detailed overview.

In sum, I think Wilders' use of the term Patriotic Spring is an example of a westernized misunderstanding, what Alhassan has argued as an Orientialist view, of the (dignity) revolutions in MENA since 2005. It is also an attempt however to appropriate not only the populist but perhaps includes an undercurrent of radicalism, dangerousness, and revolution by and for the people. In much of Wilders' dialogue, I see a desire to spark his followers into action. This incendiary approach envelopes a narrative of the Wild- (and Arab) East, a play on words here from the Wild West. If this is the case, Wilders' use of the "Patriotic Spring" works not only to erase its original meaning as experienced by those in MENA, but also continues to build on and appropriate the term as used by Orientalists and conservatives in "the West". It's only difference perhaps is its play on the radicalism and populism that this term evokes.

Note from both Rhiannon and Jenn:
We are interested to see how these relationships continue to unfold. We welcome your thoughts on this (and any other) posts - to get in touch, you can email or tweet at us (see our contact information on the blog).

End Notes
(1) Rhiannon made a great point about this hashtag: It's important to recognize the use of the English language in Wilders' tag, which plays interestingly into the broader language politics and questions of acceptably cultural difference in the Netherlands in a much more banal way.

Quick Links: 

News Articles

• Alhassan's post 
• Wildman's Vox news article 

Blog Posts:

• Martijn de Koning's Closer blog post
• Salem's blog post

Articles:

• Rhiannon Mosher's JSSE article: "Speaking of Belonging: Learning to be “Good Citizens” in the Context of Voluntary Language Coaching Projects in Amsterdam, the Netherlands"
• Jennifer Long's JSSE article: "Investigating Multiculturalism and Mono-Culturalism Through the Infrastructure of Integrationin Rotterdam, the Netherlands"

Add it to the dictionary! Changing language, changing culture

This short article about Merriam-Webster's addition of 'genderqueer' to their dictionary is really useful for thinking about how language changes over time to describe our changing cultural worlds. According to the Hufftington Post, the dictionary's

commitment to adding new queer terms and language to the dictionary, and discussing them on social media, follows the evolution of culture.
“The set of terms relating to gender and sexuality that we’ve added in recent years is like any other; as established members of the language ― we have evidence of these terms in published, edited text from a variety of sources and over an extended period of time ― they meet our criteria for entry,” Emily Brewster, Merriam-Webster Associate Editor, told The Huffington Post. “We would be remiss not to define them.”

What does the emergence of new words tell us about our changing cultural world -- in this case about how we understand and express our gender and sexuality?

Quick links and further reading:

• Merriam-Webster Has Become A Hilarious, Shade-Throwing LGBTQ Ally 
• Other related posts on changing language and culture:
• The mutability of language (LOL!) (9 March 2016)
• How gender changes our jobs (24 October 2016)
• A historical view of a long heated debate: what could be more menacing than the singular "they"? (8 September 2016)
• Avoiding gendered bias... for instructors (25 May 2016)
• Indigenous languages and gender (10 March 2016)
• How does language shape our worldview? (17 October 2016)

The Anthropology of Trump: turning an ethnographic lens on Trumpland

Way back in March we posted about The Anthropology of Trump: It's getting political in here (16 March 2016). In this earlier post, Jenn reviewed Paul Stoller's analysis of Trump's popularity.

Recently, an ethnographer working for ReD Associates, Morgan Ramsey-Elliot, has provided some nuanced insight into Donald Trump’s support in small-town America. (Perhaps underscoring George Leader's argument that Universities Need Anthropology Now, More Than Ever, Huffington Post Blog, 20 October 2016).

"Trump Towns" (Quartz, 22 September 2016), highlights the incredible value of ethnographic research in making sense of social worlds. The insights that Ramsey-Elliot shares about people in small towns across America -- for instance in Texas and Colorado -- help to illuminate how Trump has gained such a vibrant base. What is striking from a methodological perspective, however, is that Ramsey-Elliot wasn't doing working on a project about political values when he learned these things. He was actually working as "an ethnographer with the consulting group ReD Associates, studying the lives and values of truck owners on behalf of a major US auto manufacturer." But, through his daily immersion in all aspects of his research participants' lives, he was also able to arrive at more complex understanding of why this ongoing American election cycle has taken on the character it has. Unsurprisingly, (to an anthropologist, anyway) this has to do with culture.

For instance, in teasing apart why so many Trump supporters oppose minority rights (e.g. "“homosexual” and “feminist” agendas") as 'selfish', Ramsey-Elliot argues that the answer is actually not as simple as prejudice alone:

It is true that fundamental prejudice plays a role in some conservatives’ attitudes toward minority groups. It is also true that, to Robby’s family and others like them, groups of people who are actually fighting for basic human rights look like individuals who have decided to elevate their own identities and needs and appear to be calling for special privileges. This idea is anathema in communities that value, and in many ways are structured around, subsuming individual needs and desires for the good of the group. For many I met in rural America, “minority” agendas and the individualism they are seen to represent are a manifestation of a larger problem: the vanishing respect for duty and self-sacrifice for the sake of the local community.

Cultural and structural changes in small-town life have deeply affected long-standing relations of mutual-help and community obligation. In this context, the discourse that Trump employs and his cultivated 'authentic' persona (not unlike that of Toronto's former Mayor Rob Ford) -- even when it is riddled with contradictions -- "feels far more authentic than that of more polished political elites."

[Trump's] frequent appeals to loyalty are a great example of how this works. Loyalty is, by definition, a deeply personal and contingent thing, and it’s a trait he has systematically attempted to build into a pillar of his personal brand (his proven track record of disloyalty is beside the point).  ...
The logic of such appeals to loyalty—contingent, personal, experiential—taps into a deeper reality about how many people relate to each other in rural America. 

Ramsey-Elliot, a New Yorker, concludes by arguing that people living on the "coasts" wont be able to understand the appeal of Trump until they gain a more nuanced understanding of everyday life across rural America. In other words, in order to understand these political divisions in America, we need to think like anthropologists about the social divisions.

Quick links and further reading:

• anthro everywhere!'s The Anthropology of Trump: It's getting political in here (16 March 2016)
• "Trump Towns" (Quartz, 22 September 2016) An ethnographer has a new explanation for Donald Trump’s support in small-town America
• Anthropologist Sarah Kendzior's take on how "Our fate was sealed long before November 8 (and not because the election’s rigged)" (De Correspondent, 2016)
• "Universities Need Anthropology Now, More Than Ever" (Huffington Post Blog, 20 October 2016).
• "Why Rob Ford appealed to so many in Toronto" (Toronto Star, 22 March 2016)

How gender changes our jobs

One of the things I love about teaching anthropology is thinking about and showing how -- through everyday experiences -- broad processes shape local lives.

I think that these connections come out very clearly in this piece from The Atlantic, "What Programming's Past Reveals About Today's Gender-Pay Gap" (2016). The hook of the piece is that computer programming, which is now a male-dominated field, actually began as a career considered particularly suited to women. So, what happened?

The answer comes down in a very real way to how our

Margaret Hamilton, Programmer for NASA (1969)

conceptions of “expertise” are inseparable from gender. As Judy Wajcman, a sociology professor at the London School of Economics, has argued, “The classification of women’s jobs as unskilled and men’s jobs as skilled frequently bears little relation to the actual amount of training or ability required for them. Skill definitions are saturated with gender bias.” Gender stereotypes pervade definitions of competence and status, contrasting work that requires brain or brawn; mathematical or verbal ability; individualism or cooperation. When an occupation undergoes a shift in gender composition, the description of the job often morphs to better align with the gender of the incoming hires—such as when programming went from being understood as clerical work suitable for women to a job that demands advanced mathematical facility. When women replaced men as typists, it went from a job that was seen as requiring physical stamina to one that needed a woman’s dexterity. In providing profiles not only the male-dominated field of programming, but the female-dominated field of teaching, this piece underscores how our perceptions of different careers, their power, prestige, and the paycheck that goes along with them is deeply coloured by our culturally-informed ideas of gender.

Dr. Christine Darden. Courtesy NASA

This piece is also interesting to use to think about how structure and actions based on socially constructed qualities associated (even unconsciously) with gender and race have helped to shape certain fields, and to keep individuals out of working in certain fields, e.g. women and people of colour in STEM.

Quick links & further reading:

• "What Programming's Past Reveals About Today's Gender-Pay Gap" (The Atlantic, 2016)
• How does language shape our worldview? (17 October 2016) and other anthro everywhere! posts on language
• "Margaret Hamilton, the Engineer Who Took the Apollo to the Moon" (Medium, 2014)
• "Meet the Black Female Mathematicians Who Helped America Win the Space Race" (Observer, 2016)
• "What's Up with Chicks in Science?" Neil Degrasse Tyson responds to an old white dude about minorities (African-Americans and Women) in Science (YouTube, 3.30 minutes)
• "Alabama scientist, one of nation's few black female physicists, breaks ground in cancer research" (AL.com, 2016)

Acknowledging Indigenous Territory at Universities

Every year in recent memory, the opening of the annual Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) conference begins with an acknowledgement that the meetings are taking place on Indigenous territory. In the context of Canadian anthropology, which has a long (and fraught) tradition with studying Indigenous peoples, this ritual acknowledgement speaks to both the debates about decolonizing anthropology in Canada and more generally, as well as the ongoing work of truth and reconcilation.

However, as the ever-insightful âpihtawikosisân blog's Chelsea Vowel points out, territorial acknowledgement has become increasingly common as a policy across Canadian universities, with the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) itself releasing a Guide to Acknowledging Traditional Territory.

It is interesting that âpihtawikosisân's post about thinking Beyond territorial acknowledgments (23 September 2016) is set against headlines about the royal visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (a.k.a Will and Kate) to British Columbia. While many of these headlines have focused on the popularity of the young royals among (settler-) Canadians, and strengthening ties across the Commonwealth, some have focused on the decision of some Indigenous leaders and groups not to attend a planned 'reconciliation ceremony' at the BC legislative assembly (see for example these articles from HuffPost British Columbia and Vice Canada).

In this context, âpihtawikosisân's post offers valuable critical insights and analysis into the purpose and practice of territorial acknowledgement rituals. She writes,

When I think about territorial acknowledgments, a few things come to mind that I’d like to explore. First, what is the purpose of these acknowledgments? Both what those making the territorial acknowledgments say they intend, as well as what Indigenous peoples think may be the purpose. Second, what can we learn about the way these acknowledgments are delivered? Are there best practices? Third, in what spaces do these acknowledgements happen and more importantly, where are they not found? Finally, what can exist beyond territorial acknowledgements?

How can we move beyond just acknowledging territory (even when these acknowledgments can act as "sites of potential disruption, they can be transformative acts that to some extent undo Indigenous erasure") toward "asking hard questions about what needs to be done once we’re ‘aware of Indigenous presence’"?

Quick links:

• Beyond territorial acknowledgments (âpihtawikosisân, 2016)
• Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) itself releasing a Guide to Acknowledging Traditional Territory
• What does it mean to decolonize anthropology in Canada? (Decolonizing Anthropology series, Savage Minds, 2016)
• Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) 
• CASCA Dossier: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015
• Royal visit & reconciliation links:
• Canada’s Colonial History Thrust Into the Spotlight During the Royals Visit to BC (Vice, 2016)
• Royal Visit 2016: B.C. Chiefs Refuse To Attend Reconciliation Event With Will And Kate (HuffPost, 2016)
• Prince William and Kate in Canada: Why their royal visit is more than just the photo ops (CBC, 2016)
• More anthro everywhere! posts on Indigenous peoples and issues

A historical view of a long heated debate: what could be more menacing than the singular "they"?

The use of 'they' as a replacement for 'he or she' pronouns has been gaining momentum not only because it lets one slip around those steadfast predefined gender binaries of 'he or she', but also because the American Dialect Society voted it the word of the year in 2015.

A relatively recent article by Ernie Smith details centuries of debate around the use of this term that linguistic anthropologists and anthropologists alike would enjoy. Smith also highlights Dennis Baron's publicly available essay entitled: The Words that Failed: A chronology of early nonbinary pronouns which might make a good read for those wishing to use those failed and absent words to understand linguistic changes over time.

Smith goes on to describe what they believe to be the most interesting comment on the debate from Ruth Walker at the Christian Science Monitor who likens the use of the singular they to a shortcut through grammar law that while irksome for some, will most likely become more acceptable over time.

In any case, this historical investigation of the manner in which linguists and laypeople think around (literally in this case) the topic of gender binary might be a useful brainstorming session for students or a stepping stone to being rethinking one's own vocabulary.

Related posts on language, gender, and cultural change:

• Avoiding gendered bias... for instructors (26 May 2016)
• Indigenous languages and gender (10 March 2016)
• Gender & Sexuality Info-graphic (25 February 2016)
• The power of language in historical narratives (21 July 2016)
• The mutability of language (LOL!) (9 March 2016)

Anthropoliteia's #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus

Anthropoliteia (@anthropoliteia) is another great anthropology resource publishing in blog form, offering "critical perspectives on police, security, crime, law and punishment around the world."

One of their new projects is the Black Lives Matter Syllabus, "which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagogical exercise addressing the confluence of race, policing and justice." First introduced on 30 August 2016, the project is an ongoing attempt to produce an anthropology-focused syllabus that doesn't "side-step the conversation" happening through and around #BLM. As an open project, the creators -- Dr. Sameena Mulla and the Anthropoliteia editors -- invite anthroplogists to contribute:

Circulate this call for resources and tools
Reflect on the matter and share your thoughts with us
Create and share any helpful resources
Speak openly and honestly with your students about current events
Support black students, staff, neighbors and colleagues

Further reading:

• anthro everywhere! posts on 'race & racism':
• How a Teacher's Race Affects their Ability to Teach about Race (11 August 2016)
• How To Support Blacademics & Be an Ally (8 July 2016)
• Black Disabled Woman Syllabus (19 May 2016)
• Why it's okay to say Black (13 April 2016)
• The growing #BlackLivesCDNSyllabus is available as a Google Doc. It is interdisciplinary with a focus on Canadian experiences through scholarship, literature and art.
• Candice Benbow's interdisciplinary Lemonade Syllabus

Reviving food diversity through Indigenous knowledge

This NPR piece -- How Native American Tribes Saved A Giant, Ancient Squash From Oblivion -- offers an interesting example for thinking about the everyday impacts of colonization through changing eating habits and the cultivation of food. For many of the indigenous peoples in this story, the revival of 'lost' ancient foods like the giant Gete Okosman squash also represents cultural healing and revival in their communities.

The seed library maintained by the Jijak Foundation contains dozens of native varieties of corn, beans, tobacco, watermelon and ancient squash.  |  Rebecca Williams/Michigan Radio

Through the creation of a native seed library, the Jijak Foundation in Michigan is sharing the oral history of the seeds, reviving these 'lost' foods, and traditional farming techniques.

Census Data and the Social Construction of Race

Since Franz Boas, anthropologists have argued that race is not a biological but a social fact that varies across time and place. Using the US Census, Vox underscores this view, asserting that 220 years of census data proves race is a social construct (2016).

Surveying the changing racial categories used in the US census clearly demonstrates how something that many still take to be biological is actually something cultural. Rather than being fixed (based on biology and therefore unchanging) these are categories that rely on ideas of difference that are socially meaningful in a particular time and place, drawing on a range of signifiers (e.g. national origin, phenotype).

This piece is also interesting for how it underscores the census itself as a tool of power. Censuses (and census makers and takers) can create or support social categories of difference and the social inequality founded on these ideas of difference. In the classroom, we can use this article to think about how social ideas of difference, such as race, and how we/ our governments account for them have wider reaching effects.

US Census Categories for Asians in 1890 (Vox)

US Census Categories for Asians in 1940 (Vox)

US Census Categories for Asians in 2010 (Vox)

Colonialism & white saviourism in tourism and trade

Travel writer/ editor/ photographer Bani Amor's work in Bitch magazine tackles the question of what it means to decolonize travel culture (tourism) as well as our trade relationships with people in the Global South.

In their article, "Spend & Save: The Narrative of Fair Trade and White Saviorism" (2016, Bitch), Amor takes a critical look at how the Fair Trade movement is embedded in the broader processes of global inequality supported by capitalism. This includes questions of gender, class, poverty, and narratives of white saviorism that have clear connections to colonialism: "The sad state of the savage Other necessitates civilizing via white/Western intervention, which maintains dominion over resources that sometimes trickle down to the needy via acts of charity."

This critique of Fair Trade emerges again in the follow-up interview with Amor: What Does it Mean to Decolonize Travel? (2016, Bitch). In this interview (2016, Bitch), Amor discusses why it is important to critically consider the social, political and historical power relationships that shape contemporary tourism and travel culture. In their work, they ask the kinds of questions that anthropologists are interested in when we think about tourism:

How do we look critically at the business of tourism and its historical relationship and present relationship to imperialism and colonialism? How does that affect people of color who not only travel, but who depend on the tourism industry as workers and laborers, usually cheap labor and menial labor? What is the relationship between these tourist workers—these communities who often experience sort of an occupation of foreigners, of Westerners, of mostly white people coming into their communities and shifting the local economies, the local culture—and how those communities relate to their culture?

Amor also speaks to questions of intersectionality (as queer, non-binary person of colour, an immigrant, with indigenous roots in South America, and a travel writer), positionality and reflexivity in this interview and their writing.

These articles, together or separately (alongside content from Amor's own website), speak to an anthropological perspective and provide an accessible take on the some of the ways in which 'positive' or well-intended relationships between the Global North and South -- through trade (consumption philanthropy) and tourism -- are nonetheless implicated in broader processes of inequality.

Quick links and additional resources:

• Spend & Save: The Narrative of Fair Trade and White Saviorism (2016, Bitch Magazine)
• What Does it Mean to Decolonize Travel? (2016, Bitch)
• Bani Amor's website everywhere all the time: decolonizing travel culture
• Films that speak to issues of colonialism in contemporary tourism: 
• Can't Do It In Europe (2006)
• Life and Debt (2001)

One person's trash...

One person's trash is another's treasure... or data, if you are an archaeologist or anthropologist working in a landfill.

Places where trash builds up can provide archaeologists important clues into past lives. For instance, in Toronto, Canada, when the Major League Baseball stadium was first built, archaeologists surveying the site found many interesting artifacts from what was then the lake shore in the early city. Most items had either been lost in the lake, or were part of the landfill extending the reaches of the city into the lake.

Archaeological teams have also dug into our more recent past. For instance William Rathje's Garbage Project, which "explores modern waste disposal, consumption, and recycling patterns" across North America. Or, the recent dig for Atari in a New Mexico landfill, which became a much publicized spectacle that "provided the necessary means to directly access the contemporary past for purposes of archaeological and historical research."

But, sociocultural anthropologists -- like Joshua Reno -- are also beginning to turn their attention to landfills and the people that work in this "secret world of activity that [is] utterly necessary to all of us, but completely hidden from most of us." In this interview, Reno digs into our social relationship with garbage.

What does trash, as material culture, tell us about our social worlds?

Quick links:

• "8 things they found when they dug under the Rogers Centre" (2015, Toronto Star)
• "Seeking the Truth in Refuse" (1992, New York Times)
• "Museums: The Truth is in Our Trash" (2002, Archaeology)
• "The Garbage Project & "The Archaeology of Us"" (by William Rathje, 1996, Symmetrical Archaeology)
• "Why We Dug Atari" (2014, The Atlantic)
• "The Anthropologist in the Landfill" (2016, the Atlantic)

An anthropologist walks into... a gym

Katie Hejtmanek is a cultural anthropologist who studies the culture of strength sports (powerlifting, weightlifting, CrossFit) in the United States.

Her articles for BarBend offer not only interesting insights into her particular 'tribe' but also an easy intro to what ethnographic field research is actually about. For instance, in "Anthropology 101: A Cultural Anthropologist Walks into a Gym" (27 May, 2016), Hejtmanek discusses how she set out to understand the the cultural shift where 'strong is the new skinny': "new phenomenon that women are seeking out fitness activities that actively promote muscular bodies. We’ve been taught that the ideal female body is skinny. It is not “natural” or universal to idealize a skinny female body, rather it has been an American cultural ideal."

What are the larger forces at play behind this cultural shift? What are people saying about their participation in strength sports, and how does this reflect or differ from what they do in strength sports spaces?

In her recent article in this ongoing series for BarBend, Hejtmanek answers some of these questions in "The Morality of Fitness: An Anthropologist’s Observations in a CrossFit Gym" (8 June, 2016). In connecting the official 'origin stories' of CrossFit gyms with the local tellings of these stories in the context of (potential) gym members lives, we see how cultural and moral worlds are created by "1) by mobilizing moral frameworks of health, and 2) linking the activity with a community and relationships."

Quick links:

• All of Katie Hejtmanek's articles on the anthropology of strength sports at BarBend.
• "Anthropology 101: A Cultural Anthropologist Walks into a Gym" (27 May, 2016)
• "The Morality of Fitness: An Anthropologist’s Observations in a CrossFit Gym" (8 June, 2016). 

Re/telling the story of Canada's Residential Schools

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada investigated the impact of Canada's Indian Residential Schools system on students, their families, and indigenous peoples across Canada more broadly. The report, which concluded that this schools system was part of a systematic government program of cultural genocide, was just the first step toward reconciliation and healing for those affected, and for relations between all Canadians and indigenous peoples on whose land Canada was founded.

As was evidenced in the joint CASCA SANA meetings held at Dalhousie University this past May, many projects are now underway to begin and continue this journey of healing and reconciliation. Federal funding is now being made available to projects committed to this goal. At Dalhousie, Andrea Walsh (Victoria; scroll to "Current projects - Collections and Community Based Research and Curating") and Myrna Cranmer (Kwakwaka'wakw, 'Namgis) discussed "The work of redress through repatriation in the case of the Alberni Indian Residential School paintings collection." In 2013, another project was the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's creation of what is now a "critically acclaimed original ballet, based on a story by The Orenda novelist Joseph Boyden and featuring music from Tanya Tagaq" (2016, CBC). Projects are also making this history more accessible to settler-Canadians, for instance through the creation of a new Heritage Minute. For Canadians who grew up in the 1990s, we learned a lot about Canadian history through the minute-long educational shorts shown during commercial breaks called Heritage Minutes. Yet, only 6 of these minutes addressed aboriginal peoples, and none addressed the uncomfortable and shameful past of this cultural genocide... until this past week with the publication of Heritage Minutes: Chanie Wenjack. Like all of these minutes, this one provides an evocative glimpse into part of Canada's history.

Instructors teaching about colonialism and the reverberations of systemic violence against indigenous peoples might be interested in reflecting on these projects as an opening to a broader discussion on these topics. What can these examples bring to the discussion colonial legacies in the context of Canadian national identity? Why is it important to collaborate with and support indigenous peoples in the re/telling of this brutal history? How does voice and representation matter in projects of reconciliation and healing? What role has anthropology played in these historical projects, and what can anthropologists do today?

Quick links and further reading:

• Government of Canada page on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
• Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada via the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba
• Telling the dark story of Canada's residential schools through ballet (2016, CBC)
• Links on the Indian Residential School and Day School art collections project discussed by Andrea Walsh and Myrna Cranmer (CASCA SANA 2016) (scroll to "Current projects - Collections and Community Based Research and Curating")
• Heritage Minutes: Chanie Wenjack
• CASCA SANA meetings held at Dalhousie University, May 2016

UPDATE 30 June 2016: CBC now has a link to their documentary, Truth, Dance, & Reconciliation (44.10 minutes run time), about the RWB ballet about Canada's Indian residential school history, "Going Home Star." 

Anthropologist, CTO

Is it really that strange to think that an anthropologist would be the best choice for a Chief Technology Officer?

According to Susannah Fox, the CTO for HHS (U.S. Health and Human Services), no, it shouldn't be:

“We’re living through this time right now where technology is a Trojan Horse for change ... . We say technology, but we mean innovation. We say interoperability and open data, but we mean culture change. And this is why the HHS CTO is an anthropologist. I know about culture change. I know how difficult it is for everyone involved.” (mobihealthnews.com, 2016)

For Fox, part of this cultural change has to do with understanding patients' needs, and the technology hacks that people are already doing, as in the #WeAreNotWaiting movement among people living with diabetes.

 Quick links & further reading:

• "HHS CTO: Technology in healthcare is a Trojan Horse for culture change" (mobihealthnews.com, 2016)
• "Why An Anthropologist, Not A Technologist Was The Best Choice For HHS CTO Role" (2016, Forbes)
• #WeAreNotWaiting via twitter
• Fox' blog post, "Love made visible" (2013) in which she reflects on her archaeology/ anthropology background and what this brings to her work in the healthcare sector.
• anthro everywhere's page, "Applying an anthropological perspective outside of university"