Reading Marx with David Harvey

If you've ever wanted to do a close, guided reading of Marx' work, you probably couldn't ask for a better teacher than Distinguished Professor of Anthropology & Geography David Harvey. Not only has Harvey has been teaching Karl Marx's Capital for more than four decades, he's willing to meet you on your schedule and for free! In other words, he's developed an online course that will take you through Volumes I and II with video lectures. 

There's also an option to download the lectures as audio podcasts -- perfect for long commutes on your way to sell your labour. The online course, Reading Marx with David Harvey, is available through Harvey's website. Harvey's site also offers a lecture series (6 videos) on "Marx and Capital: The Concept, The Book, The History."

Quick links:

• Reading Marx with David Harvey: "A close reading of the text of Karl Marx's Capital in free video lectures by David Harvey."
• Marx and Capital: The Concept, The Book, The History
• Finding a copy of Marx' Capital

Anthropology Timeline

The Anthropology Timeline is a massive undertaking to chart the history of the discipline of anthropology. The timeline is an interactive site that charts anthropology's history along two arcs -- "publications (books, articles, etc.) and institutions (everything that isn't a publication)" -- through individual anthropologists.

According to Alex Golub, who hosts the project, it "grew organically over time. It is meant to be part of a larger research project on the history of anthropology in the UK, USA, and France from 1927 to 2027." All events are colour-coded: red - America, Canada; blue - France; yellow - UK, Australia, New Zealand; purple - Europe; Orange - Africa; Green - Latin America; light green - Asia. You can read more about the timeline's organization here.

A project like this certainly has to begin with decisions about how to organize the material it notes. The geographic/ national organization might be a useful starting place for a discussion about our discipline itself: Why are certain national histories (and languages) privileged over others? What are the effects of methodological nationalism on the discipline of anthropology?

Neanderthals, racism, science

This New York Times article offers an interesting discussion about how Western European scientific racism also played a significant role in how we classified and described Neanderthals.

"Neanderthals Were People, Too" (2017) asks us to think about how the same racial thinking that supported the brutalities of Western imperialism also filtered into our understanding of pre-history.

As long-form journalism, this would be an interesting piece to assign alongside anthropological classics on scientific and systemic racism, racial thinking, and colonialism as part of the history of anthropological thought. Alternatively, it might be a good discussion piece for thinking about epistemological questions, and how science is part of a deeply cultural worldview.

Mapping the world?

At anthro everywhere! we've already written a couple of posts about how maps powerfully represent certain social realities. Today's post adds a couple of new resources for teaching about the power of maps as a tool of social and political as well as geographic representation:

This video from Vox (via their faceBook page; run-time 6 minutes) gives a brief history of the mathematical problem of trying to accurately represent the three-dimensional world in a nice, neat two-dimensional format -- and the distortions that result from that impossibility:


The "Dymaxion Map," also known as the Fuller Projection Map, seems to be the closest mathematical solution to flattening the globe.

For other resources and links on mapping a representation, check out our earlier posts:

• Decolonial Atlas (29 August 2016)
• Africa is not a country! (6 April 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

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)

#FreeHoma: Anthropologists in dangerous contexts

Anthropology is a discipline that was born out of colonial encounters and systems of power. Anthropologists have historically been complicit in supporting the people, systems and ideas through our research of often marginalized communities.

Today, however, many anthropologists critique and challenge the very power structures and relationships that our discipline in many ways helped to build. The topics that anthropologists research and the sites in which we conduct our research can put anthropologists in danger, including at risk of imprisonment by governments who read such research as threatening.

Dr. Homa Hoodfar

Homa Hoodfar has been imprisoned since March 2016 by the Iranian government. Hoodfar holds dual Canadian and Iranian citizenships, and has been a professor at Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) since 1991. She has explored issues of gender, development, and politics especially in the Middle East, and especially known for her work on "Muslim women's ability to realize their rights within an Islamic framework, and for her critique of essentializing Western stereotypes about veiling."

As the authors of "Academics and Authors In Support of Professor Homa Hoodfar" explain,

"It is not clear what charges the Counter Intelligence Unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard might bring against her.  Any accusations against Prof. Hoodfar are undoubtedly based on a fundamental misinterpretation of the nature of her ethnographic research which has never been a threat to the Iranian regime. Instead, her arrest points to a renewed campaign to target and intimidate other scholars writing about Iran." 

This can be a very real issue for researchers working in such contexts. In 2014, a University of Toronto political science PhD candidate, Alexander Sodiqov, was arrested during his field research in his native Tajikistan. Sodiqov was arrested and detained under charges of espionage and treason. As in Hoodfar's arrest, the "exact rationale for this charge remains murky, and may never be explained. But the wider context is anti–Western feeling and the fact that Tajikistan's security services are cracking down on domestic non-governmental organizations, emulating Putin's Russia." While Sodiqov was released, Hoodfar continues to be detained.

For instructors, these cases highlight how research, knowledge, can be considered a threat by regimes and potentially place the researcher in danger. How do we balance or value the insights of research and the potential risks inherent in conducting it -- for our participants, and for ourselves?

UPDATE 1 November 2016: Dr. Hoodfar's release from Evin Prison was confirmed on 26 September 2016. News reports following Dr. Hoodfar's release, underscored not only the resilience of this woman, but also how anthropologists can indeed find anthropology everywhere:

After a few days of intense interrogations, she decided to treat her time there as field work. Although lacking pen and paper, she used her toothbrush to scrawl her observations on the stone wall of her cell, prompting her cellmates to view her as a kind of mad professor, she said, laughing.
“My age and the fact I was an anthropologist and quite familiar with their techniques was a problem for them,” said Hoodfar, who now plans to write a book on the anthropology of interrogation. (6 October 2016, Montreal Gazette)

Quick links and further reading:

• #FreeHoma website with background and ways to show support
• Academic petition
• Student petition
• "Homa Hoodfar trying to get back to a normal life after Iranian imprisonment" (6 October 2016, Montreal Gazette)
• "Canadian-Iranian professor: I survived imprisonment by studying my captors" (10 October 2016, The Guardian)
• Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) Statement, news and links
• News stories on Alexander Sodiqov's arrest: 
• Alexander Sodiqov, University of Toronto researcher, being detained in Tajikistan (CBC, 17 July 2014)
• U of T fails to act for PhD student arrested in Tajikistan (MacLeans, 31 July 2014)
• How Alexander Sodiqov was freed following espionage charges (CBC, 23 September 2014)

Reflecting on Métis identity

This post comes from the âpihtawikosisân blog. The author, Chelsea Vowel, describes herself as "Métis from the Plains Cree speaking community of Lac Ste. Anne, Alberta. She currently lives in Montreal, Quebec. Her passions are: education, Aboriginal law, the Cree language, and roller derby. She holds a BEd, an LLB and teaches indigenous youth."

Her blog links to a number of resources on Aboriginal issues in Canada, including a thorough collection of Online Learning Resources, An Open Letter to Non-Natives in Headdresses, and a regular blog.

One such blog post is "You’re Métis? So which of your parents is an Indian?" In this post, the author reflects on Métis identity, and addresses common misconceptions that she has faced in her own experience, what identity means, and some of the legal and political issues that affect these peoples. Here's a short except from this excellent post:

"My understanding of my Métis identity has shifted considerably over the years.  You see, I was only about 5 years old when the term Métis was recognised officially in section 35(2) of the Constitution Act of 1982.  I point this out because although the term Métis predates that official recognition, it was not necessarily the most common term in use. Often we were referred to in the Prairies as the Road Allowance People.  The term ‘halfbreed’ still got tossed around a lot when I was growing up and was pretty ubiquitous in my parent’s and grandparent’s time.  You can imagine how confusing it is in terms of forming an identity, to be known by so many ill-defined names."

Check out this post and others on the âpihtawikosisân blog, or read them in Vowel's forthcoming book, Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada.

Quick links and further reading:

• "You’re Métis? So which of your parents is an Indian?" (2016, âpihtawikosisân blog)
• âpihtawikosisân blog
• Online Learning Resources, 
• An Open Letter to Non-Natives in Headdresses
• An article about Michif artist and activist, Christi Belcourt, that addresses how she has experienced discrimination from within the indigenous arts community: "Christi Belcourt turned an act of discrimination into a work of art" (2016, CBC)

The power of language in historical narratives

Representation -- the images and language we use to describe our social worlds -- matters. "Discovery, settlement or invasion? The power of language in historical narratives" (2016, The Conversation) digs into how the historical relationship between Australia's indigenous peoples and British 'settlers' has been framed, and what this means for contemporary relationships between these groups.

"The University of New South Wales recently found itself in a firestorm for reportedly encouraging students to use the terms “invasion”, “occupation” or “colonisation” when discussing Captain Cook, who had hitherto often been described as “discovering” Australia in the 18th century, as part of the history of British “settlement”."

Going back to Captain Cook, terra nulis, and delving into current and recent land claims issues, this piece is a useful reflection on how and why language matters.

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)

Ghettos

Ghettos. We commonly associate the term today with places like "effective social or ethnic ghettos, from the favelas of Brazil to the mostly black urban neighbourhoods of the United States and the predominantly north African banlieues of Paris."

But this term, as we learn in "Inventing the Ghetto" (2016, 1843 Magazine - The Economist), has its own specific history that dates back 500 years to the establishment of the Jewish ghetto in Venice on March 29th 1516.

I like this piece for the ways in which it connects the history of this ghetto in Venice, with the treatment of its Jewish inhabitants, and the growth of the city, but also with contemporary issues of social inequality and issues of space and place. Instructors might like this piece as background for a lecture on social inequality, space and place, or gentrification. I can also see it being an interesting think piece for upper year students to think about how social contemporary issues have connections to broader historical, political, and economic processes and precedents.

Aboot the Canadian "about"

Canadians -- like the authors of anthro everywhere! -- are pretty used to hearing English-speakers from the US and elsewhere in the world poke fun at our accents, especially our use of the all-purpose "eh," our frequent apologies (sorry!), and of course, how non-Canadians hear how we say "about."

The linguistic enigma of the Canadian "about" is what American author Dan Nosowitz addresses in: What's Going On with the Way Canadians Say ‘About'? (2016, Atlas Obscura). This short piece addresses some of the more interesting things that make Canadian English and our accent unique, including the Canadian Shift, Canadian Raising, introducing monophthongs and diphthongs, and connects all of these things historically to the Great Vowel Shift in English.

To say that Canadians are saying “aboot” is linguistically inaccurate; “ooh” is a monophthong and the proper Canadian dialect uses a diphthong. “A-boat” would actually be a bit closer, but still relies on a monophthong. Why can’t Americans get their heads around the Canadian “about”? 

To be fair, it's not just Americans who have trouble with this one. When I was doing research in the Netherlands, the Canadian Raising lead to a funny conversation about another friend's boat. Basically, it went like this: Rhiannon: "Dennis has a boat." Dutch friend: "Dennis is about what?" Rhiannon: "No, Dennis has a boat." Dutch friend: "Dennis is about what?!" Rhiannon: "No. Dennis, he Has... A... Boat." Dutch friend: "Oh..."

Anyway...

In addition to this fun article, you might also consider this short (cheesy, fun, and informative) documentary put together by the CBC, The Canadian Experience: Talking Canadian (2004, running time 43.30 minutes).

Quick links:

• What's Going On with the Way Canadians Say ‘About'? (2016, Atlas Obscura)
• Wikipedia entries for Canadian Shift & Canadian Raising
• via the All Things Linguistic blog: The Canadian Experience: Talking Canadian (2004, CBC, running time 43.30 minutes).
• Kailin Wright, “Eh is Canadian, Eh? Usage, Functions, and the Identity Crisis of Eh.” The English Language(s): Cultural and Linguistic Perspectives. Ed. C. Percy. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2006.
• Plus, just for fun, eh? Web comics writer Kate Beaton's Canadian Stereotypes Comics.

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." 

Valuing Aboriginal cultural knowledge in Western science

The relationship between Western science (scientists, government officials, etc.) and Aboriginal knowledge has often been rocky, with Westerners often only acknowledging the value of local indigenous knowledge when it corroborates their scientific findings, or when it can be exploited for profit. The negative effects of this habitual dismissal of local indigenous knowledge was highlighted in Canadian media in 2014. To much fanfare and after considerable expense to Canadian taxpayers, the federal government announced that they had 'found' the long lost wreck of the Franklin expedition. Immediately after the announcement, a flurry of news articles followed indicating that local Inuit groups had known where the ship had wrecked all along:

Inuit oral tradition said the two ships appeared on the northwest side of King William Island, said Kamookak. One was crushed in ice and the other drifted further south.

It was afloat for two winters before it sank. Elders said there may have been people living on it during the first winter, but there were no signs of people during the second winter. 

"For us Inuit it means that oral history is very strong in knowledge, not only for searching for Franklin's ships but also for environment and other issues," Kamookak said. (Franklin find proves 'Inuit oral history is strong:' Louie Kamookak, CBC, 2014)

Unlike the ill-fated Franklin expedition, or the government's ill-considered hunt for these artifacts, new scientific studies and conservation projects are increasingly underscoring the mutual benefit of valuing indigenous knowledge and practices. This is the discussion in Researchers around the world are learning from Indigenous Communities. Here's why that's a good thing (Ensia, 2016)

“The hardest thing is to sit in a room with scientists who think they’ve discovered something, but their scientific discovery just confirms what our oral histories have talked about forever,” says William Housty, a member of British Columbia’s Heiltsuk First Nation and director of Coastwatch, a science and conservation program. “That’s been the biggest hump for us to overcome, to get people to think about our culture on the same level as Western science.”

The article covers many interesting cases from Canada’s Far North to Australia showing how working together can create better shared knowledge, and relationships that are more respectful of indigenous lifeworlds and the natural environment.

Quick links:

• Researchers around the world are learning from Indigenous Communities. Here's why that's a good thing (Ensia, 2016)
• Franklin find proves 'Inuit oral history is strong:' Louie Kamookak (CBC, 2014)
• Franklin Expedition search cost twice as much as Harper government claimed (iPolitics, 2015)
• Leading Inuit historian discusses the Franklin ships (Canadian Geographic, 2014)

The state of indigenous language and culture in Canada

The Canadian government's program of cultural genocide in residential schools included the erasure of aboriginal languages. In Undoing Linguicide (an hour long audio documentary for CBC Radio's Ideas from the Trenches series), PhD student Lorena Fontaine talks about the fight for the recognition of indigenous language and language rights in Canada.

Interestingly, in two Canadian cities, we also see a recognition and celebration of indigenous traditions and voices in institutional settings:

• Edmonton's Kiwanis Festival makes history by celebrating Cree, Métis culture (2016, Edmonton Journal).
• Halifax names Mi'kmaq slam poet Rebecca Thomas new poet laureate (2016, CBC's Unreserved)

Africa is not a country!

In spite of many students' regular claims in term papers and on tests, anthropology instructors know that Africa is not a county. (To be fair to our students, claiming that Africa is a country is a crime that journalists and politicians in the West regularly commit.)

Over the past few years in my intro classes I have taken the time to discuss this common misnomer/ slip of the pen with my students. For one, it often means that I don't have to write "Africa is not a country!" a dozen times come marking season, but I find that it is also a useful discussion to have when introducing the issues of representation, ethnocentrism/ Eurocentrism, power, and colonialism. In doing this, Kai Krause's True Size of Africa map has been very useful. (I sometimes also like to show this 4 minute clip from The West Wing on the Mercator projection map that most students know.)

Other links:

• Inspired by both Krause and The West Wing, The True Size of... is an interactive mapping tool that allows users to compare the sizes of any country.
• Al Jezeera's Reality Check: Africa is not a country (3 October 2015) debunks a slew of stereotypes in just 2 minutes
• Africa is not a country (The Guardian, 24 January 2014) highlights media prejudice against Africa
• For those who insist, Africa is a Country is a critical blog whose authors/ artists and editors "deliberately challenge and destabilize received wisdom about the African continent and its people in Western media."

The Anthropology of Terrorism: Learning about threat, fear, and community building in times of loss and anguish

I chose today to write about terrorism as another bomb blast rocks the European world, not because it was any more important than the blasts that rocked Ankara just last week but because the media coverage, and backlash, will be much more pronounced here in Canada and North America in general than what came of the former (see Rhiannon's previous post on who and what makes the news to understand why). It is also another event in a series of terrorist threats and actions that seemingly culminates around the terrorist group ISIS.

Let me ask, do any of the words in the above title of this post strike you as odd? While I'm sure the words threat and fear will be used in media coverage over the next week, as well as loss and perhaps anguish, community building might wait to surface until the aftermath of this event. That is, what happens in everyday life in Brussels after the alarm and urgency of this tragic event have passed (and just a note here, I speak for both myself and Rhiannon when I write that we are both deeply saddened by the loss of life and the wounds inflicted by this event - it is not my intention to only use this event as a set of circumstances to discuss anthropology but instead, to write and discuss the very real and pertinent way this event will/has affect(ed) us all, and how an anthropological perspective can help us make sense of such events that connect local lives with global processes).

In January 2015, Scott Atran, an anthropologist who interviews "would-be and convicted terrorists about their extreme commitment to their organizations and ideals," was interviewed for an article in Scientific American in order to help answer questions that juxtapose religion, European culture and influence from terrorist organizations. Atran is noted as one of the few anthropologists studying in this area and uses this article to try and describe what events could lead human beings to decide to carry out a terrorist attack.

Below are some of the highlights from this interview:
1. ISIS cultivates would-be terrorists by appealing to feelings and experiences of social inequality. They tell them: "Look, you're on the outs, nobody cares about you, but look what we can do. We can change the world."
2. Terrorists must be self-motivated - "Even if people buy into the [ISIS or Al Qaeda] ideology, buy into the values, it’s far from a sufficient condition [to carry out an attack]". Instead, these actions are cultivated over time through a network of similarly-minded individuals: "The best predictors turn out to be things like who your friends are and whether you belong to some action group".
3. Mosques are not fertile ground for terrorist plots. Atran states (and was questioned in relation to the Paris attacks): "In the case of the Kouachi brothers [who committed the Charlie Hebdo attack], [they] had the greatest bonding experience - prison [Atran notes earlier in the article that "France has about 7.5% Muslims and [they make] up to 60–75% of the prison population. It’s a very similar situation to black youth in the United States"]. But it could be soccer, it could be whitewater rafting". This follows what Atran stated earlier in the interview: "Plots never occur in mosques: you have to be quiet in a mosque. They occur in fast food places, soccer fields, picnics and barbecues".

There is a lot of emotion surrounding any terrorist attack (I've been using the word 'event' above as a means to think through what is happening in a less emotional manner). As an anthropologist, one might take a step back to look at events holistically: What is happening at this moment in Belgium or the EU that would lead to the culmination of these events? What would lead these attackers, on a societal level, to commit such acts?  

One might also think about the specificity surrounding such an event. In the news articles coming out of Brussels, many of those interviewed noted that they heard 'yelling in Arabic' before the bomb exploded. An anthropologist might make note of the following:

All Arabic speakers are NOT terrorists
All Muslims are NOT Arabic speakers
All terrorists are NOT Muslims
Individuals commit terrorist acts. Full stop.

Thinking about these perpetrators as individuals committing actions on behalf of a small group (even if they act on behalf of ISIS) is important to remember when thinking about the potential fall out this event could have for those living in Brussels and in greater Belgium (including Muslim Belgians).

As Robb Willer has recently argued, terrorist events drive up feelings of nationalism, particularly in presidential elections. Although it likely comes as no surprise, demagogue Donald Trump has already phoned into right-wing news houses to lay blame at Brussels' feet, he has linked these attacks to the recent refugee crisis, and whipped up more terror and fear among the American public. Willer goes on to note that terrorist attacks not only bring national communities together but create a more sharp dividing line between who is and who is not a part of the national community.

It's with an anthropological lens, and other critical social science theories and approaches, that one might think not only of the short term but long term effects of the actions following such an attack.

My heart and thoughts are with those in Brussels today.

Market exchange, gift economies, and other social contructs

"Even though some anthropologists have long known the barter system was just a thought experiment, the idea is incredibly widespread. And this isn’t just an academic curiosity—the idea of barter may have altered history." ("The Myth of the Barter Economy," The Atlantic, 26 February 2016).

This article quotes and features a number of anthropologists, including David Graeber, who address how the barter economy discussed by Adam Smith has never actually existed. When we refer to the ethnographic record on 'gift economies' in different cultures we can see how the simplified barter economy theorized by Smith is not only a fiction, but one that has deeply shaped our contemporary 'exchange-based mentality'.