From modan.1 at osu.edu  Sun May  1 00:16:13 2005
From: modan.1 at osu.edu (GABRIELLA MODAN)
Date: Sun May  1 10:06:28 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions
Message-ID: <2bb9ecb2bb7512.2bb75122bb9ecb@osu.edu>

It's not a zero-sum game. The conversations that we
have with each other are not necessarily the
conversations we have with people in the communities
we work in, although ideally those conversations
influence each other. It should go without saying
that just because researchers may have some
scholarly interests that may be abstracted from
practical issues (which is not to say that this was
even the case for the conference in question) does
not mean that those very same people are not doing
applied work, and applied work that is theoretically
informed. 

Galey Modan

----- Original Message -----
From: M Wolf-Meyer <wolf0358@umn.edu>
Date: Saturday, April 30, 2005 6:50 pm
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions

> Urban Anthropologists:
> 
> I, for one, think it utterly necessary that
anthropologists think 
> more 
> theoretically about what they attempt to capture
ethnographically, 
> hence the 
> need for more abstractions, not fewer.
> 
> My impression is that in the past 30 years
anthropology has become 
> increasingly insular (in part due to the
discipline's own self-
> critique), 
> and there is nothing more "navel-gazing" in my
mind than producing 
> library 
> dissertations and books that no one will read
(especially scholars 
> outside 
> of anthropology).  And I think that very
pragmatic, non-
> theoretical, 
> "applied" anthropology is more prone to this
critique than 
> anything remotely 
> "postmodern."  "Applied" anthropology often smacks
of anti-
> intellectualism, 
> engaging in the production of "facts" rather than
engagements, and 
> only 
> helping to produce in applied anthropologists
feelings of 
> intellectual 
> alienation (both from the people they attempt to
help and from the 
> discipline).  Compare the average contents in
Cultural 
> Anthropology to the 
> average contents of Medical Anthropology Quarterly
(a very 
> pragmatic 
> journal): The latter suffers from material that
engages in no 
> debates, and 
> comforts itself through a myopic empiricism that
assumes the lone 
> anthropologist publishing in a scholarly journal
can make a 
> difference in 
> the world.  The former, however, even when authors
are focused 
> geographically or topically, at least attempt to
engage in the 
> sort of 
> abstractions that allow a conversation to occur
(within the 
> discipine and 
> interdisciplinarily).
> 
> If anthropologists want to make a difference in
the world, the 
> first thing 
> they need to do is enter into debates with the
people they attempt 
> to 
> understand and effect.  Facts rarely produce
engagements; 
> abstractions, 
> metaphors and theories often do.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Matthew Wolf-Meyer
> Department of Anthropology
> University of Minnesota 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> URBANTH-L mailing list
> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
> 


From art.hansen at mindspring.com  Sun May  1 11:06:22 2005
From: art.hansen at mindspring.com (Art Hansen)
Date: Sun May  1 15:07:58 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Reply to need for useful urban anthropology
Message-ID: <410-2200550114622671@mindspring.com>

To my anthropological colleagues:

There are many ways for applied anthropologists to engage in “meaningful” applied anthropology. Admittedly, some projects and interests seem more esoteric than others that appear to be immediately applicable to urban engagement.
 
Let me draw your attention to a project that is immediately applicable in the US and has been ongoing in a number of urban (and rural) areas in the US for several years. This study is spearheaded by Elzbieta Gozdziak and Susan Martin at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown and looks at international immigration into “new” settlement sites and the responses of residents, communities, CBOs, NGOs, and authorities in the sites. 
 
This is a clear expression of globalization in terms of increasing international migration and is having significant impacts in many areas of the US that were previously little impacted by international-multicultural issues. The study has been presented at different SfAA conferences as well as at international conferences and has resulted in one book with more publications forthcoming.
 
This is really interesting intellectually because of its relevance to many debates and puzzles: the enclave debate, how immigrants reestablish livelihoods, networks, refugee resettlement, differences and similarities in responses among different types of immigrants (refugees, legal, and undocumented), local versus national and community versus agency control of siting new arrivals, etc. This immigration is also of immediate social and political concern. 
 
In terms of immediate applicability, let me speak only from my personal involvement in this study. I have been the principal investigator for the metropolitan Atlanta region, a place where historically (and still to a great extent) issues of integration are clearly in terms of black and white. However, the terms have shifted and expanded to include a wide variety of other nationalities and languages (especially Spanish), a change that confronts many communities, agencies, and authorities with the necessity to rethink historic precedents. I became involved in this because it became known that I was someone who was actually studying this phenomenon and had statistics and other useful information. Aside from being asked to participate in town meetings and workshops addressing the concerns arising from an increasingly international population, different local and state authorities have been asking me for information and to help them personally prepare to participate in debates and decision-making. 
 
Art Hansen
Clark Atlanta University
Atlanta GA
art.hansen@mindspring.com
From acjancius at ysu.edu  Sun May  1 17:02:09 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Sun May  1 16:02:01 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]ANN: INTBAU (Ecotourism)
Message-ID: <021001c54e88$aedd3aa0$05c992ac@toshibauser>

From: Matthew Hardy  <Matthew.Hardy@Princes-Foundation.org>

Mumbai Mills Design Workshop

The Mumbai Mills Design Workshop has just ended.  Participants from
India and abroad analysed the vacant mills of Mumbai/Bombay and produced
a masterplan with proposals for future developments. This event is the
first one under the responsibility of the newly founded International
Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU India)
and seems to have been a success, according to the reports sent from India.

The Indian media paid a significant interest in Mumbai Mills Design
Workshop, some of our colleagues from London were interviewed by the
national television. We don't have any footage _ but we happily give you
some links, where you can find some of the coverage.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/03/10/stories/2005031002720200.htm

http://www.indiaexpress.com/news/regional/maharashtra/bombay/20050306-0.html

http://mid-day.com/news/city/2005/march/105048.htm

http://147.208.132.198/news/181_1268413,000600010004.htm

http://www.gulfnews.com/Articles/WorldNF.asp?ArticleID=154834


Conferences and summer schools

This year the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism has 3 summer programmes:

- "Forgotten Modern" conference
Stockholm, 12-14 September 2005

A conference on the "Swedish Grace" style of the early 20th century, and its influence to be held at the Architecture Museum in Stockholm on 12-14 September 2005.  Delegates will be invited from around the world.  Please visit our website for more details http://www.intbau.org/forgottenmodern


- Morciano Summer School "The Architecture of Viticulture"
Italy, 18 June - 2 July 2005

The aim of the summer programme is to introduce architecture students and professionals to the issues of rural landscape and urban design, and to expose them to the rich architectural and cultural heritage of Emilia-Romagna regional context.  We hope to have some studentships available for this event (and will let you know if we do).  To see the programme and other details please visit http://www.intbau.org/Morciano


- Tuscan Summer School
Capitignano, Italy, 18 July - 9 August 2005

The aim of the summer program is to introduce art and architecture students, and professionals, to the larger mission of the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, and to expose them to the rich architectural heritage of Florence and Tuscany.  See http://www.intbau.org/Tuscan


There are more events coming soon, including a major conference in London, "Tradition and Modernity in Urban Form".  A call for papers will be issued very soon.  We should have more details on this on our website shortly.


INTBAU Romania

As mentioned in one of the previous newsletters, INTBAU has chapters in India, Germany and Scandinavia.  Soon we are going to have a branch in Romania with an office in Transylvania, Romania.  In the Saxon village of Laslea, INTBAU will have a preliminary info centre from 1 May.  At the same time will start the restoration work for House 344, envisaged as INTBAU headquarters, once the legal existence of the house - erased from legal records at some point - can be re-established.


Romania Ecotourism Workshop

Meanwhile, INTBAU will hold an Romanian Ecotourism Workshop, in Laslea, Transylvania, from 1-8 May.  The funding will be provided by the Norwegian Directorate of Cultural Heritage (PREM Project) and 6 scholarships will be offered to Romanian students.  The purpose of the workshop is to map existing guests houses, walking paths, hunting, possibilities etc., and make a plan for development of tourism in the municipality of Laslea.  Details will be on our website shortly.  For more details and to register please contact Audun Engh at audun.engh@broadpark.no


INTBAU out and about

Cyndi Chiao, who works as INTBAU Registrar will be in the US for most of April, and Aura Neag, who has been working as INTBAU's Communications director, will be in Romania for most of April.  Those of you who will be in the US or Romania in April and would like to meet them and ask for further details about our projects/workshops/work please let us know by email.

Cyndi's email is cyndi.chiao@princes-foundation.org

Aura's email is aura.neag@princes-foundation.org


Don't forget that you can join at any time by going to http://www.intbau.org/join.htm



With kind regards,

Matthew Hardy.

Dr Matthew Hardy, Secretary
International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism
From gardner at email.arizona.edu  Sun May  1 14:12:03 2005
From: gardner at email.arizona.edu (Andrew Gardner)
Date: Sun May  1 17:20:11 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response to Wolf-Meyer
In-Reply-To: <004a01c54dd7$2c883ac0$83fe6580@Lenin>
Message-ID: <000101c54e8a$0ab080c0$0f02a8c0@Pluto>

Matthew Wolf-Meyer,

I agree with Galey's recent email. Personally, I found your rebuttal as
worrisome as the message that kicked off this debate. Like Joe, you use
caricature to make your point; in his case that caricature concerned the
"postmodern" scholarship; in yours it concerns "applied" anthropology. In my
view, the problematic underpinnings of Joe's contentions have been well
articulated by Mark Peterson and Virginia Cornue, both of whom made their
points without disparaging the work of "applied" anthropologists. In your
argument, however, you seem content to plow ahead with the invectives
against applied anthropologists, and the caricature you use fits few of the
applied anthropologists I've come to know over the past eight years--most of
whom have strong records of theoretical contributions and durable
(un-"alienated") relations with the communities in which they work. 

There is certainly some debate about what "applied" anthropology exactly
means or comprises--and this debate is particularly lively with those who
operate under that banner. But whether one is reasonably comfortable with
the moniker of "applied" anthropology or, alternatively, prefers one of the
related titles described in Sam Beck's email, I'm sure there are others out
there who, like me, feel that the simple bifurcation through which you view
anthropology poorly characterizes our work in the discipline. As Galey
suggests, I'm interested in applying my work (and comfortable with the wide
ambit of that verb). I'm equally interested in using that same work to
contribute to social theory.

>From my perspective, the dichotomy you propose is more a "fact" produced as
part of the articulation of an academic discipline than a useful map of
anthropology as it is actually practiced. I'd urge you to revisit the work
of some portion of the thousands of applied/practicing/engaged/etc.
anthropologists before you write them off as anti-intellectual, alienated,
and theoretically disengaged. Hopefully, you can find some space for those,
like me, wish to straddle the divide you perceive.

Andrew Gardner
Department of Anthropology
University of Arizona




-----Original Message-----
From: urbanth-l-bounces@lists.ysu.edu
[mailto:urbanth-l-bounces@lists.ysu.edu] On Behalf Of M Wolf-Meyer
Sent: Saturday, April 30, 2005 3:50 PM
To: urbanth-l@lists.ysu.edu
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions

Urban Anthropologists:

I, for one, think it utterly necessary that anthropologists think more 
theoretically about what they attempt to capture ethnographically, hence the

need for more abstractions, not fewer.

My impression is that in the past 30 years anthropology has become 
increasingly insular (in part due to the discipline's own self-critique), 
and there is nothing more "navel-gazing" in my mind than producing library 
dissertations and books that no one will read (especially scholars outside 
of anthropology).  And I think that very pragmatic, non-theoretical, 
"applied" anthropology is more prone to this critique than anything remotely

"postmodern."  "Applied" anthropology often smacks of anti-intellectualism, 
engaging in the production of "facts" rather than engagements, and only 
helping to produce in applied anthropologists feelings of intellectual 
alienation (both from the people they attempt to help and from the 
discipline).  Compare the average contents in Cultural Anthropology to the 
average contents of Medical Anthropology Quarterly (a very pragmatic 
journal): The latter suffers from material that engages in no debates, and 
comforts itself through a myopic empiricism that assumes the lone 
anthropologist publishing in a scholarly journal can make a difference in 
the world.  The former, however, even when authors are focused 
geographically or topically, at least attempt to engage in the sort of 
abstractions that allow a conversation to occur (within the discipine and 
interdisciplinarily).

If anthropologists want to make a difference in the world, the first thing 
they need to do is enter into debates with the people they attempt to 
understand and effect.  Facts rarely produce engagements; abstractions, 
metaphors and theories often do.

Best wishes,

Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Department of Anthropology
University of Minnesota 


_______________________________________________
URBANTH-L mailing list
URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l


From cmaida at ucla.edu  Sun May  1 13:55:33 2005
From: cmaida at ucla.edu (Carl Maida)
Date: Sun May  1 17:20:54 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Reply to need for useful urban anthropology
In-Reply-To: <410-2200550114622671@mindspring.com>
References: <410-2200550114622671@mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <FAA13FA8-BA7A-11D9-BAC2-0011242E18B4@ucla.edu>

I agree with Sam Beck and Art Hansen about the intellectual relevance 
of applied anthropology to the discipline. As an anthropologist engaged 
in long-term fieldwork on urban quality of life issues in recent 
immigrant communities in Southern California, I have been able to study 
globalization, sustainability, and generational change. The challenge 
to applied anthropologists is to find the arenas, in print and at 
conferences, where they can discuss their research in the theoretical 
debates within the discipline.  Sam Beck and I have been attempting to 
create just such an arena at the annual AAA meeting over the past few 
years.

Carl Maida
UCLA


From af31 at nyu.edu  Sun May  1 17:11:50 2005
From: af31 at nyu.edu (Allen Feldman)
Date: Mon May  2 03:31:26 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response to Ellman: theory, practice/ pragmatics
Message-ID: <1df521b1e5.1b1e51df52@nyu.edu>

As an anthropologist who has since 1992 engaged intensively in action,
advocacy, and policy related research and program development for
homeless people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City, and as a theorist
who draws inspiration from European critical theory in the human science
( which is a much wider framework than the American literary and
strawdog receptions of "pomo,") I am compelled to question some of the
assumptions behind Ellman's appeal to the lost virtues of practicality 
and applicability in urban anthropology and some of the follow-up responses.

Such appeals to practicality never examine the history of practicality
and applicability in anthropology, thus reflecting a larger myopia that
artificially separates theory from practice, assuming that latter does
not have to be theorized ( including the practice of doing
policy-related research). Consider those historical periods in which
anthropology found itself most valued for its practical application,
such as the furtherence of British indirect rule in Africa and India,
the scholarly legitimation of cold-war era  US goverment sponsored rural
 development in Southern Europe. Latin America and Southern Asia, the
role of anthropologist in the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam, and
the current  engagement of anthropologists in the  Department of
Homeland Security to name a few.  Of course there are other examples of
anthropology benefiting the people it studies, but the moral and
epistemological complexity of the history of practical application begs
theorization. Theory is never more present and pervasive than when it is
being repressed in the name of pragmatics and action.  

In the last five years, smug in the conceit that anthropology has
become, if not postmodern, at least post-imperial and post-colonial, the
AAA has rung the bells for so-called Public Anthropology, which in part
seems to be inspired by  the central AAA office's proximity to policy
making centers in Washington D.C. The promotion of public anthropology
by the AAA, (which has to be distinguished from the actual work of many
anthropologist engaged in action and advocacy related research) has been
incredibly naive in its  lack of engagement with both a sociology and
politics of knowledge, that would subject practical and policy 
applications of anthropological technique  to theoretical and normative
critique. Policy related  research, including my own. is filtered
research, filtered by funding requirements, by the cultural literacy of
the funders and other auditors of such commissioned research, by overall
institutional governance frameworks which always regulate/censor the
circulation of available knowledge, and by overarching government
mandates and political agendas such as Homeland Security. How to promote
beneficial policy that cuts across the grains of these structures and
tendencies is not easy and many times is never achieved. But to realize
beneficial change based on ethnographic research one must perform an
ethnography of  the institutional filters that will not admit to, or act
on certain facts on the ground.   This requires a politics of knowledge
and an ethics of translation and on occasions an ethics of abstention
and confidentiality.

Yet, the AAA sees policy related public anthropology,  as comprised
largely of legitimation obstacles and strategies in the world of
real-politik i.e. " how do we get the centers of power to pay attention
to what we have to offer or sell on the expert knowledge commodity
market."That is how do we as a discipline become digestible to the
centers of  policy making. (The contemporary system of expert knowledge
practices and epistemologies remains the most under-analyzed social fact
in the AAA's Public Anthropology agenda, simply because they want to buy
into this  world of influence and interests).  Yes ethical issues are
recognized but largely in the framework of human subjects protection,
and not in terms of a political economy of knowledge.

I am not advocating a rejectionist position towards so-called practical
research or policy related work. But the division between the socalled
practical and the so-called theoretical needs to be subjected to the
type of epistemological critique that Geertz applied to common-sense as
a cultural system but with a good deal more political edge.  Nor, am I
saying that anthropologists should not engage in funded research
sponsored by policy making agencies, but to do so without  a  sociology
and political economy of knowledge in specific fields of policy making,
such an engagement will both  repeat a negative political history of
practical engagement as well as forget it. One may not dissuade
anthropologists from engaging  in  in politically skewed research 
harmful to its subjects, but at least we would be in a position to
assess its status within the wider disciplinary project and its history.

Economic Addendum:

Ellman correctly points out the economic/policy trends leading to the
casualization of employment in the academy and the creation of
economically marginalized agents of expert knowledge in anthropology.
But rather than remedy this situation, the  practical  coupling of
anthropology and policy related research, will simply ratchet up the use
of  part-time contract anthropologists, who will move back and forth
between project-specific/ time-limited contracted research and part-time
adjunct teaching. This is indeed a serious problem, and the AAA's skill
in  recent dealings with mobile labor issues in the hospitality industry
 does not give me great confidence that the causualization of
anthropological labor will be coherently addressed.


Nota Bene; The notion of tourist performance  proposes that tourists are
not just external and passive voyeurs of socio-cultural sites, but, as 
culturally and economically fashioned spectators, import  techniques of
the observer , techniques of the body, language practices, and a
politics of location from their own habitus into the tourist site;
thereby constructing a trans-cultural heterogeneous socio-economic 
affective space, that requires analysis. It is a project that has much
in common with the understanding  and cultural contextualization of
ethnographers' performance in the field.


Allen Feldman
Department of Culture and Communication
New York University

>From  	View message header detail FromYosee@aol.com 
Sent  	Thursday, April 28, 2005 12:32 pm
To  	urbanth-l@lists.ysu.edu 
Cc  	 
Bcc  	 
Subject  	Re: [URBANTH-L] conferences........


Thanks for keeping the list updated to conferences in our subfield (such as 
this post and the other about the German conference).  I must wonder, 
however, whether I made an incorrect assumption when subscribing to this
AAA 
division.  I thought urban anthropology was one of the more practical 
arms of our
discipline.  Either I was incorrect or we are turning  the clock back a few
years to when post-mo became the standard  "scholar-ese," unapproachable
to all
not well versed in the esoteric world of  literary criticism. 
 
I have to wonder how this is going to be helpful to our discipline  with
budget crunches in Higher Ed and tenured positions of  retirees turning into
multiple part-time adjunct pools.  Do we  not need to show our
colleagues and
administrators how anthropology is *more*  rather than *less* applicable
to today's
difficult economic times in  education?
 
Please think about trading in the seemingly self-important naval gazing for 
more fruitful, applicable and future-reaching approaches.
 
Joe Ellman, Ph.D.
 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> URBANTH-L mailing list
> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
> 
----- Original Message -----
From: Art Hansen <art.hansen@mindspring.com>
Date: Sunday, May 1, 2005 10:06 am
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Reply to need for useful urban anthropology

> To my anthropological colleagues:
> 
> There are many ways for applied anthropologists to engage in 
> ?meaningful? applied anthropology. Admittedly, some projects and 
> interests seem more esoteric than others that appear to be 
> immediately applicable to urban engagement.
> 
> Let me draw your attention to a project that is immediately 
> applicable in the US and has been ongoing in a number of urban (and 
> rural) areas in the US for several years. This study is spearheaded 
> by Elzbieta Gozdziak and Susan Martin at the Institute for the 
> Study of International Migration at Georgetown and looks at 
> international immigration into ?new? settlement sites and the 
> responses of residents, communities, CBOs, NGOs, and authorities in 
> the sites. 
> 
> This is a clear expression of globalization in terms of increasing 
> international migration and is having significant impacts in many 
> areas of the US that were previously little impacted by 
> international-multicultural issues. The study has been presented at 
> different SfAA conferences as well as at international conferences 
> and has resulted in one book with more publications forthcoming.
> 
> This is really interesting intellectually because of its relevance 
> to many debates and puzzles: the enclave debate, how immigrants 
> reestablish livelihoods, networks, refugee resettlement, 
> differences and similarities in responses among different types of 
> immigrants (refugees, legal, and undocumented), local versus 
> national and community versus agency control of siting new 
> arrivals, etc. This immigration is also of immediate social and 
> political concern. 
> 
> In terms of immediate applicability, let me speak only from my 
> personal involvement in this study. I have been the principal 
> investigator for the metropolitan Atlanta region, a place where 
> historically (and still to a great extent) issues of integration 
> are clearly in terms of black and white. However, the terms have 
> shifted and expanded to include a wide variety of other 
> nationalities and languages (especially Spanish), a change that 
> confronts many communities, agencies, and authorities with the 
> necessity to rethink historic precedents. I became involved in this 
> because it became known that I was someone who was actually 
> studying this phenomenon and had statistics and other useful 
> information. Aside from being asked to participate in town meetings 
> and workshops addressing the concerns arising from an increasingly 
> international population, different local and state authorities 
> have been asking me for information and to help them personally 
> prepare to participate in debates a!
> nd decision-making. 
> 
> Art Hansen
> Clark Atlanta University
> Atlanta GA
> art.hansen@mindspring.com
> _______________________________________________
> URBANTH-L mailing list
> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
> 
From afdandre at uchicago.edu  Sun May  1 17:25:54 2005
From: afdandre at uchicago.edu (Anthony D'Andrea)
Date: Mon May  2 03:31:29 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Re: Theory vs. Application?...
In-Reply-To: <021001c54e88$aedd3aa0$05c992ac@toshibauser>
References: <021001c54e88$aedd3aa0$05c992ac@toshibauser>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.62.0505011604340.4328@harper.uchicago.edu>


There is lots of room for purely theoretical and applied 
endeavors in science. Actually, being anthropology "the study 
of", applied anthropology is the study of its applications, not 
the application itself. Application is the stuff of social 
workers, managers, and activists - not anthropologists as such. 
(Or so I learned with Max Weber).

In any case, research policies should never be determined by the 
promise of applicability. Many revolutionary contributions come 
from purely theoretical speculations. Imagine, the applicability 
of theologian discussions between Einstein and Heisenberg: bye 
bye quantum physics...

In this connection, I was surprised to see the word "pomo" 
popping up on my screen, this old scapegoat for whatever we don't 
like or understand in academics. Read some British sociology and 
we will find how socially _relevant_ "pomo" has become. Read 
anthropology journals and we will find how wasteful and 
meaningless much of our discipline has become, along with other 
social sciences and humanities... Lack of "applicability", 
maybe?... Lack of meaning, lack of impact? What is that?

Hyper-specialization is a quite serious problem. It is worse than 
publishing about technicalities that only a handful of experts 
are interested in. We limit ourselves to voice or to patronize 
our own natives. And other than minor conceptual bridges, 
anthropology is currently incapable of dialoguing with other 
social sciences and humanities at large. And that's where the 
real danger is.

Let the apple fall on the philosopher's head in peace...

Anthony D'Andrea



"Keep the lamps burning, because love
  does not come from those who sleep." (Pascal)
________________________________________________________
Anthony Albert Fischer D'Andrea
PhD Candidate, Dept. Anthropology, University of Chicago
Lecturer, International Studies Program
Research Associate, Transnationalism Project
1126 E 59th St., Chicago, Il, 60637  USA
Phone: 001 (773) 684-2535
Fax:   001 (773) 702-4503


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May  2 13:53:14 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May  2 12:53:32 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 ANN: European Fellowship Programme, Future Urban Research in Europe
Message-ID: <020101c54f37$7132d700$e4a1afac@toshibauser>

From: Planum Newsletter <news@planum.net>

Planum Newsletter - Special 29/04/2005
Future Urban Research in Europe (text version)

FUTURE
Future Urban Research in Europe
Call for applications
(European Fellowship Programme, granted by the European Commission).
http://www.planum.net/showspace/future2005.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the coming four years the FUTURE project will support young scientists
for the research on the European City and enable them to participate in the
training programme for their chosen annual issue.

The idea of  FUTURE will be realised in 4 intensive training programmes.
Every training programme has a different annual issue (2005: Electronic
City, 2006: Urban Governance, 2007: Culture and City, 2008: Ethnically
Diverse City).

The DEADLINE for this years' annual issue of our project is the 1st of
July.

The Bauhaus University of Weimar is coordinating - in the frame of the
Marie-Curie Programme - the project together with four other European
Universities:

Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden;
?rebro University, Sweden;
Universidad Polit?cnica de Madrid, Spain;
Slovak University ofTechnology, Slovakia.

"Future Urban Research in Europe" supports research competencies, networks
and human potentials to meet the future challenges in the cities of Europe.

http://www.planum.net/showspace/future2005.htm


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May  2 13:49:39 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May  2 13:18:30 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Need for A Useful Urban Anthropology, Further Responses
Message-ID: <01ca01c54f36$f26d8820$e4a1afac@toshibauser>

Need for A Useful Urban Anthropology, Further Responses

From: Paul McDowell <paulanthropus@cox.net>

Henry David Thoreau put his nineteenth-century finger on today's academic
malaise when, replying to Emerson's comment that Harvard contained many
branches of knowledge, said "and none of its roots."

For a field supposedly holistic and cross-cultural in orientation,
anthropology is more branch than root. We have developed a forest of
specializations through endless analyses. Is it not time that we get on with
syntheses of the findings made across the discipline?

Paul McDowell
Instructor in Anthropology
Santa Barbara City College

=========================

From: E.J. Ford <edseljoe@earthlink.net>

Not that I wish to dip my oar into the raging currents of this particular
thread, but I would like to point out that applied anthropology is, in
fact, the application of anthropological knowledge to real life situations.
(Or so I learned in my Contemporary Applied Anthropology class here at
USF)...

While USF program graduates are required to demonstrate theoretical fluency
as part of their degree completion, many, if not most, do not work in
academic settings at all - either for their internship or their subsequent
place of employment.  Rather, they work for various non-academic
institutions in a variety of practical roles.

EJ Ford
MA - Applied Urban Anthropology

=========================

From: Micah Bump <bumpm@georgetown.edu>

Art, Thanks for seeing both the theoretical and practical value of the
"Beyond the Gateway" project. For those that are interested, the link to the
book description and order form is below.

Micah Bump
Research Associate
Georgetown University
Institute for the Study of International Migration
www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/isim

Beyond the Gateway: Immigrants in a Changing America
http://www.lexingtonbooks.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5E
DB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0739106368

Managing Complexity: ISIM's Training for Humanitarian Professionals
http://www.georgetown.edu/sfs/programs/isim/pages/ManagingComplexity.html


From imonik at temple.edu  Mon May  2 14:35:49 2005
From: imonik at temple.edu (Shea Michael Anderson)
Date: Mon May  2 15:56:02 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Re: Theory vs. Application?...
Message-ID: <c85680a.f63f6620.81be000@po-d.temple.edu>

I want to second those comments. Fruitful theoretical 
discussion amongst ourselves is all well and good, but the 
trouble that seems to emerge is moving from the realm of 
theory to the realm of practice, and finding solutions from 
theoretical discussion that have meaningful and beneficial 
impact on peoples' lives. 

Otherwise, we are preaching to the choir. 

Best, 
Shea

---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 1 May 2005 16:25:54 -0500 (CDT)
>From: "Anthony D'Andrea" <afdandre@uchicago.edu>  
>Subject: [URBANTH-L]Re: Theory vs. Application?...  
>To: urbanth-l@lists.ysu.edu
>
>
>There is lots of room for purely theoretical and applied 
>endeavors in science. Actually, being anthropology "the 
study 
>of", applied anthropology is the study of its applications, 
not 
>the application itself. Application is the stuff of social 
>workers, managers, and activists - not anthropologists as 
such. 
>(Or so I learned with Max Weber).
>
>In any case, research policies should never be determined by 
the 
>promise of applicability. Many revolutionary contributions 
come 
>from purely theoretical speculations. Imagine, the 
applicability 
>of theologian discussions between Einstein and Heisenberg: 
bye 
>bye quantum physics...
>
>In this connection, I was surprised to see the word "pomo" 
>popping up on my screen, this old scapegoat for whatever we 
don't 
>like or understand in academics. Read some British sociology 
and 
>we will find how socially _relevant_ "pomo" has become. Read 
>anthropology journals and we will find how wasteful and 
>meaningless much of our discipline has become, along with 
other 
>social sciences and humanities... Lack of "applicability", 
>maybe?... Lack of meaning, lack of impact? What is that?
>
>Hyper-specialization is a quite serious problem. It is worse 
than 
>publishing about technicalities that only a handful of 
experts 
>are interested in. We limit ourselves to voice or to 
patronize 
>our own natives. And other than minor conceptual bridges, 
>anthropology is currently incapable of dialoguing with other 
>social sciences and humanities at large. And that's where 
the 
>real danger is.
>
>Let the apple fall on the philosopher's head in peace...
>
>Anthony D'Andrea
>
>
>
>"Keep the lamps burning, because love
>  does not come from those who sleep." (Pascal)
>________________________________________________________
>Anthony Albert Fischer D'Andrea
>PhD Candidate, Dept. Anthropology, University of Chicago
>Lecturer, International Studies Program
>Research Associate, Transnationalism Project
>1126 E 59th St., Chicago, Il, 60637  USA
>Phone: 001 (773) 684-2535
>Fax:   001 (773) 702-4503
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>URBANTH-L mailing list
>URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
Shea Michael Anderson
Department of Anthropology
2nd Floor, Gladfelter Hall
Temple University
Philadelphia, PA 19122
215.370.0763
imonik@temple.edu

"The first sight of three hundred insane persons, assembled for an entertainment, and stimulated by a lighted and decorated apartment, and the presence of strangers, and the sound of music, and allowed to dance as freely, and even as fantastically, as each may choose, is one which an unfamiliar spectator can scarcely witness without feeling some immediate trepidation."

(Dr. John Connolly, 1848, "The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane". John Churchill: London)

(NY Times, International Section, December 9, 2003) 


From nanderso at utk.edu  Mon May  2 14:42:29 2005
From: nanderso at utk.edu (nanderso)
Date: Mon May  2 15:56:29 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response to practice, theory, usefullness of anth, and
	POMO politics
Message-ID: <42766F1E@webmail.utk.edu>

Dear All,

I find it rather amusing to read how each email starts off with a CV.  It is 
almost like school yard talk "mine is better than yours."  To keep with 
tradition here let me state my experience.

I am a graduate student. I come from a department that says "urban what?"  The 
only thing urban that goes on in my department is urban archaeology and a 
class once taught on urban anthropology by Faye V. Harrision, my mentor. Faye 
is no longer at the University of Tennessee.  As a result of her leaving, 
urban anthropology is no longer taught.

As a graduate student, I found myself not being challenged or excited about my 
assignments within other sub cultural areas like medical anthropology - an 
area that is well known in my department. I was equally bored with classes on 
social inequality.  Both of which I had been greatly exposed to as an 
undergraduate.  I became "jazzed" by all the readings and ideas presented in 
the urban anthropology literature. Ironically, my thesis is described as 
60%medical, 40%political, and %100 post everything. I have examined leprosy in 
St. Kitts and Nevis.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to apply urban anth 
to this thesis.  It is not because I have not tired, but it does not suit the 
data.

I also come from department where POMO is a bad word, but the department is 
doing its best to open its arms and hire "POMO types" - if there is such a 
thing. This is were we (all anthropologists) need to examine our own 
actions/behavior and question "are we creating the Other" - I think in the 
academic snob-ucratic since, we are.  Yes, I made up that word, but because 
some members of my committee are not open to made-up words - something that 
post everythingers are apt to do, I had to remove "snob-ucracy and 
snob-acratic."  I once made up the word "malafit" - opposite of benefit, 
right?  Seems only logical, but when I used it on a test, I received a comment 
"cool word, if it exists."  Why is there such a rejection to making up new and 
usable words in academics. I am sure that many of the professors in my 
department have come to embrace "Foshizzle."  Fortunately, not all of my made 
up words were rejected, you will have to read my thesis to see these wonderful 
contributions to English. Oh, and please cite me for the future use of these 
three words I have placed in this email ;)

What I have learned is that all fields, sub fields, of anthropology have good 
and bad aspects.  It is finding a place to land that is troubling.  I want to 
do urban anthropology, I find that the literature for urban can be is a nice 
bridge between medical and environmental anthropology. Where to land? I do not 
want to be labeled a medical anthropologist - not that there is anything wrong 
with that, but I take great concern with how I will be labeled in the future.  
I also do not want to be labeled a environmental anthropologist, for the same 
reasons. I do not want to limit myself by taking on such names.  I also want 
to be able to get a job and to have something that I can translate to a 
business type as to why I am valuable.  I want to do academics, but I also 
have to be realistic.  Unless the Baby-Boomer generation suddenly kills off or 
retires, I will remain a bottom feeder.  It is a good thing that AAA has a 
membership fee for the unemployed.

I do not reject the pre-post everything theories, but I found for the data 
that I was working with that a post position was more fitting.  I examined a 
number of methodologies and came back with the one I have.  I think it is 
dangerous to only apply one set of "rules." We can get complacent when we only 
go with only what we know. But then again, we all want to specialize. I think 
that many people do not understand POMO and therefore reject it.  I also think 
that for some POMO is an easier road and they do not want to deal with 
evolution or biocultural stuff.  I am not saying that POMO tract is easier, 
but for some perhaps if it means that you can do all of your research without 
applying any statistics, then so be it. The bottom line is that there is value 
in all of the methodologies - sometimes the value is in the history lesson - 
the reflection of time in which certain methodologies were used.

The lesson here is that many students get caught in the cross fire of POMO and 
anti POMO politics.  It is important for the student to understand the 
dynamics of anthropology and be able to understand how these positions are not 
having conversations.  However, it is more important that the students get a 
since that conversations can take place.  It seems that a sure way to get 
published is to bash the Other, the POMO, the MO, and the PREMO.  Yea this 
makes for high ratings, "good copy," but does it really do the people you are 
studying any good?  Are you not trying to do your best to represent the people 
who have educated you about their situation?  Okay, so say someone else also 
represents the same people, but they use a different theory - agree to 
disagree.  Everyone has their own experience in the field which impacts their 
representation. Then again, you have to get published, because the higher ups 
do not care about representation - they just want you to be published.

I have been very fortunate to have a committee that is both POMO and PREMO.  I 
have taken great care in making sure that everyone is satisfied without losing 
site of the data and what the people I represent want.

The saying goes "Life is about choice and sometime in this means compromise."  
I like to think that life is about choice and this means negotiation.  People, 
come to the table an agree to disagree if nothing else is achieved.

As for the practical side of Anthropology - it is more important for US to 
educate the non-anthropologist about "What can anthropology do for you?" than 
engage in applied and anti-applied politics.  We are our worst enemy - we all 
want to be employed and be able to practice anthropology - even if this means 
in an non-activist role.  It is important that more "anthropologist wanted" 
ads be placed in the non traditional setting. For now, the "anthropologist 
wanted" ads are in disguise as the employers know what they are looking for, 
but they just don't realize that there is a title for it.  This is evident by 
"ethnographers wanted" ads which are frequently placed.  We have to convince 
people that anthropology is the way to go, not sociology or psychology or even 
some aspects of urban planning (no offense to those who are these 
practitioners, but this is an AAA urban anth list serv ;) ).

I hope this has not distracted you from or contributed to your procrastination 
on getting something publsihed.  It has been one for me :)

Thanks for your time and inbox space,
Nancy





>===== Original Message From Allen Feldman <af31@nyu.edu> =====
>As an anthropologist who has since 1992 engaged intensively in action,
>advocacy, and policy related research and program development for
>homeless people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City, and as a theorist
>who draws inspiration from European critical theory in the human science
>( which is a much wider framework than the American literary and
>strawdog receptions of "pomo,") I am compelled to question some of the
>assumptions behind Ellman's appeal to the lost virtues of practicality
>and applicability in urban anthropology and some of the follow-up responses.
>
>Such appeals to practicality never examine the history of practicality
>and applicability in anthropology, thus reflecting a larger myopia that
>artificially separates theory from practice, assuming that latter does
>not have to be theorized ( including the practice of doing
>policy-related research). Consider those historical periods in which
>anthropology found itself most valued for its practical application,
>such as the furtherence of British indirect rule in Africa and India,
>the scholarly legitimation of cold-war era  US goverment sponsored rural
> development in Southern Europe. Latin America and Southern Asia, the
>role of anthropologist in the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam, and
>the current  engagement of anthropologists in the  Department of
>Homeland Security to name a few.  Of course there are other examples of
>anthropology benefiting the people it studies, but the moral and
>epistemological complexity of the history of practical application begs
>theorization. Theory is never more present and pervasive than when it is
>being repressed in the name of pragmatics and action.
>
>In the last five years, smug in the conceit that anthropology has
>become, if not postmodern, at least post-imperial and post-colonial, the
>AAA has rung the bells for so-called Public Anthropology, which in part
>seems to be inspired by  the central AAA office's proximity to policy
>making centers in Washington D.C. The promotion of public anthropology
>by the AAA, (which has to be distinguished from the actual work of many
>anthropologist engaged in action and advocacy related research) has been
>incredibly naive in its  lack of engagement with both a sociology and
>politics of knowledge, that would subject practical and policy
>applications of anthropological technique  to theoretical and normative
>critique. Policy related  research, including my own. is filtered
>research, filtered by funding requirements, by the cultural literacy of
>the funders and other auditors of such commissioned research, by overall
>institutional governance frameworks which always regulate/censor the
>circulation of available knowledge, and by overarching government
>mandates and political agendas such as Homeland Security. How to promote
>beneficial policy that cuts across the grains of these structures and
>tendencies is not easy and many times is never achieved. But to realize
>beneficial change based on ethnographic research one must perform an
>ethnography of  the institutional filters that will not admit to, or act
>on certain facts on the ground.   This requires a politics of knowledge
>and an ethics of translation and on occasions an ethics of abstention
>and confidentiality.
>
>Yet, the AAA sees policy related public anthropology,  as comprised
>largely of legitimation obstacles and strategies in the world of
>real-politik i.e. " how do we get the centers of power to pay attention
>to what we have to offer or sell on the expert knowledge commodity
>market."That is how do we as a discipline become digestible to the
>centers of  policy making. (The contemporary system of expert knowledge
>practices and epistemologies remains the most under-analyzed social fact
>in the AAA's Public Anthropology agenda, simply because they want to buy
>into this  world of influence and interests).  Yes ethical issues are
>recognized but largely in the framework of human subjects protection,
>and not in terms of a political economy of knowledge.
>
>I am not advocating a rejectionist position towards so-called practical
>research or policy related work. But the division between the socalled
>practical and the so-called theoretical needs to be subjected to the
>type of epistemological critique that Geertz applied to common-sense as
>a cultural system but with a good deal more political edge.  Nor, am I
>saying that anthropologists should not engage in funded research
>sponsored by policy making agencies, but to do so without  a  sociology
>and political economy of knowledge in specific fields of policy making,
>such an engagement will both  repeat a negative political history of
>practical engagement as well as forget it. One may not dissuade
>anthropologists from engaging  in  in politically skewed research
>harmful to its subjects, but at least we would be in a position to
>assess its status within the wider disciplinary project and its history.
>
>Economic Addendum:
>
>Ellman correctly points out the economic/policy trends leading to the
>casualization of employment in the academy and the creation of
>economically marginalized agents of expert knowledge in anthropology.
>But rather than remedy this situation, the  practical  coupling of
>anthropology and policy related research, will simply ratchet up the use
>of  part-time contract anthropologists, who will move back and forth
>between project-specific/ time-limited contracted research and part-time
>adjunct teaching. This is indeed a serious problem, and the AAA's skill
>in  recent dealings with mobile labor issues in the hospitality industry
> does not give me great confidence that the causualization of
>anthropological labor will be coherently addressed.
>
>
>Nota Bene; The notion of tourist performance  proposes that tourists are
>not just external and passive voyeurs of socio-cultural sites, but, as
>culturally and economically fashioned spectators, import  techniques of
>the observer , techniques of the body, language practices, and a
>politics of location from their own habitus into the tourist site;
>thereby constructing a trans-cultural heterogeneous socio-economic
>affective space, that requires analysis. It is a project that has much
>in common with the understanding  and cultural contextualization of
>ethnographers' performance in the field.
>
>
>Allen Feldman
>Department of Culture and Communication
>New York University
>
>>From  	View message header detail FromYosee@aol.com
>Sent  	Thursday, April 28, 2005 12:32 pm
>To  	urbanth-l@lists.ysu.edu
>Cc
>Bcc
>Subject  	Re: [URBANTH-L] conferences........
>
>
>Thanks for keeping the list updated to conferences in our subfield (such as
>this post and the other about the German conference).  I must wonder,
>however, whether I made an incorrect assumption when subscribing to this
>AAA
>division.  I thought urban anthropology was one of the more practical
>arms of our
>discipline.  Either I was incorrect or we are turning  the clock back a few
>years to when post-mo became the standard  "scholar-ese," unapproachable
>to all
>not well versed in the esoteric world of  literary criticism.
>
>I have to wonder how this is going to be helpful to our discipline  with
>budget crunches in Higher Ed and tenured positions of  retirees turning into
>multiple part-time adjunct pools.  Do we  not need to show our
>colleagues and
>administrators how anthropology is *more*  rather than *less* applicable
>to today's
>difficult economic times in  education?
>
>Please think about trading in the seemingly self-important naval gazing for
>more fruitful, applicable and future-reaching approaches.
>
>Joe Ellman, Ph.D.
>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> URBANTH-L mailing list
>> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
>>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Art Hansen <art.hansen@mindspring.com>
>Date: Sunday, May 1, 2005 10:06 am
>Subject: [URBANTH-L]Reply to need for useful urban anthropology
>
>> To my anthropological colleagues:
>>
>> There are many ways for applied anthropologists to engage in
>> ?meaningful? applied anthropology. Admittedly, some projects and
>> interests seem more esoteric than others that appear to be
>> immediately applicable to urban engagement.
>>
>> Let me draw your attention to a project that is immediately
>> applicable in the US and has been ongoing in a number of urban (and
>> rural) areas in the US for several years. This study is spearheaded
>> by Elzbieta Gozdziak and Susan Martin at the Institute for the
>> Study of International Migration at Georgetown and looks at
>> international immigration into ?new? settlement sites and the
>> responses of residents, communities, CBOs, NGOs, and authorities in
>> the sites.
>>
>> This is a clear expression of globalization in terms of increasing
>> international migration and is having significant impacts in many
>> areas of the US that were previously little impacted by
>> international-multicultural issues. The study has been presented at
>> different SfAA conferences as well as at international conferences
>> and has resulted in one book with more publications forthcoming.
>>
>> This is really interesting intellectually because of its relevance
>> to many debates and puzzles: the enclave debate, how immigrants
>> reestablish livelihoods, networks, refugee resettlement,
>> differences and similarities in responses among different types of
>> immigrants (refugees, legal, and undocumented), local versus
>> national and community versus agency control of siting new
>> arrivals, etc. This immigration is also of immediate social and
>> political concern.
>>
>> In terms of immediate applicability, let me speak only from my
>> personal involvement in this study. I have been the principal
>> investigator for the metropolitan Atlanta region, a place where
>> historically (and still to a great extent) issues of integration
>> are clearly in terms of black and white. However, the terms have
>> shifted and expanded to include a wide variety of other
>> nationalities and languages (especially Spanish), a change that
>> confronts many communities, agencies, and authorities with the
>> necessity to rethink historic precedents. I became involved in this
>> because it became known that I was someone who was actually
>> studying this phenomenon and had statistics and other useful
>> information. Aside from being asked to participate in town meetings
>> and workshops addressing the concerns arising from an increasingly
>> international population, different local and state authorities
>> have been asking me for information and to help them personally
>> prepare to participate in debates a!
>> nd decision-making.
>>
>> Art Hansen
>> Clark Atlanta University
>> Atlanta GA
>> art.hansen@mindspring.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> URBANTH-L mailing list
>> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>URBANTH-L mailing list
>URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l

Nancy R. Anderson
Graduate Student
University of Tennessee
Department of Anthropology
250 South Stadium Hall
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996
(865) 974-4408 / 3977
nanderso@utk.edu


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Tue May  3 12:00:11 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Tue May  3 11:23:22 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]CFP: The Globalization of Place
Message-ID: <009901c54ff0$d1018410$cbc892ac@toshibauser>

CFP: "The Globalization of Place: A Contest between Transnational Anonymity
and Presence" Sponsored by the Pace Institute for Environmental & Regional
Studies
Deadline: May 16, 2005

 For the PIERS fourth annual conference on environmental and regional issues
we are requesting papers and presentations that contextualize place within
the global process, particularly its emergence in cities, and how the old
and new custodians of places compete for political, economic, religious and
social recognition in a highly diverse and often hostile environment.

We welcome topics in the "new geography of centrality"-transnational
political arrangements and economic entitlements; the revival of
nationalisms; clash over the distinction between public and private
places-cultural genealogies of the public/private distinction; immigration
and reterritorialization as necessary consequences of globalization; the
connections between place, sustainable development and globalization; US
global centers (Los Angeles, New York.) as 'third-world' cities; and the
privatization of migration are only a few of many possibilities.

Submissions from diverse disciplinary perspectives are encouraged and will
be given preference. Disciplines include but are not limited to
anthropology, architecture, conservation biology, ecology, economics,
geography, history, language and cultural studies, legal theory, literature,
philosophy, psychology, sociology, theology, and urban studies-planning,
restoration.
The conference has been rescheduled for Friday June 17th at the Pace
University New York City Campus, 1 Pace Plaza from 10:30 - 5:30PM (Reception
6 - 9PM)

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words with biographical sketch to
Robert Chapman, Ph.D., Director-Pace Institute for Environmental & Regional
Studies
Pace University, 41 Park Row, room 718, New York, NY 10038

E-mail submissions are gladly accepted if and only if sent as attachments in
Microsoft Word format. Send to Rchapman@pace.edu.  Deadline for submission
of abstracts is May 16th 2005. Select papers will be published in
Proceeding, volume 4.

Hune Margulies, Ph.D. Department of Philosphy, Religion and Environmental
Studies. Pace University. 914-773-3965  Email: hmargulies@pace.edu


From af31 at nyu.edu  Tue May  3 16:41:02 2005
From: af31 at nyu.edu (Allen Feldman)
Date: Tue May  3 16:06:31 2005
Subject: Fwd: Re: [URBANTH-L]Response to Ellman: theory, practice/
 pragmatics
Message-ID: <6080be60a3e5.60a3e56080be@nyu.edu>

Sam

1. Your  last question or insinuation, I am not sure which, regarding
anthropologists funded by the Dept. of Homeland Security.

> especially
any
> information you
> have on anthropologists working with and for
Homeland Security, or
> did you
> make this up to make your point?


 impugns  my scholarly integrity, I do not fabricate
facts simply to score points and I resent your imputation here and what it
implies regarding the scholarly seriousness with which I treat the
discussions on this list and on the issue of Public Anthropology.

2. In
December 2004 the Humanities Institute at the University of Michigan
sponsored a 3 day conference at which I presented, entitled "Reframing
Infectious Diseases, at which two medical anthropologists presented  their
research funded by the Department of Homeland Security, on  first
responder planning and role play/virtual reality simulations regarding
bioterrorism scenarios. The presenters by and large were politically
agnostic about the implications of the department's work and their own
research. I felt that they framed their theoretical questions in such a
manner as not to transgress against the norms of the
institutions and agencies with whom they were working. However a former
head of Physicians for Social Responsibility  vehemently attacked the
bio-terrorism initiative as a unjustified  diversion of crucial medical
resources, personnel and funding from more immediate public health issues
in US society.  No such analysis/ critique was forthcoming from  the two
anthropologists.

The physician's critique approached what I term a political economy of
knowledge, where certain bio-medical risk related situations such as
HIV-AIDS, are logistically and fiscally downgraded in favor  of
quasi-mythical and apocalyptic scenarios of bioterrorism that implicitly
link up with religious orientation of the present administration. How is
that for a sociology of knowledge perspective? The relationship between
counter-terrorist planning and ideology and an eschatological Christian
fundamentalism.

3. I was not mounting a personalized attack on Ellman, he
expressed view- points that are quite common in the discipline and which.
in my view, fetishize a fictive dichotomy between theory and utility or
practice in order to score  points. That is why I enlarged my discussion
to address the current
version of Public Anthropology in order to point to the  complex
entanglements of theory/ practice and utility largely not recognized by
the AA newsletter's promotional campaign for public anthropology.
 
4. On the  political economy or critical sociology of knowledge, it
certainly implicates any institution that governs the admissibility of
knowledge and
regulates its circulation within authorized policy making channels. But,
it is certainly a  pressing concern for those who present ethnographic
based research to policy making and policy enforcing agencies who filter
admissible knowledge in very specific ways. Any ethnographer who has
worked in this field knows what it means to  fashion their reportage in
order to present  data that may severely question
entrenched policy orientations, is such a way that it will be given a
hearing and treated with due diligence and hopefully alter policy and
practice. And many ethnographers have encountered institutional deafness to
their research, which is a significant piece of ethnographic data as much
as the research that is not heard.

5. Sam you wrote  > I think the
remarks about the AAA leadership are unproductive.
> There is
> every
reason to expand the role of anthropology in the world of
> experts.
>Not everyone doing action type research is tied to funding source
>ideologies and commitments.  On the other hand, we all have
>specific ideological orientations that shape research.  Nothing new here,
right?

My issue here is not the presence or absence of ideological
orientations of the researcher-- another false dichotomy. Nor was I
proscribing action, applied research or public anthropology, which I
professionally practice.

I was addressing the  lack of theorization  of the normative frameworks
in which a contracting agency operates and how that normative framework
functions as a default mechanism in admitting/excluding/distorting
ethnographic data. How this may end up shaping the contracted
ethnographer's biases is another but a related question. But such a task
means that practice has to be theorized, and utility norms have to be
historicized.

Allen
 
----- Original Message -----
From: Sam Beck
<sbeck@med.cornell.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 3, 2005 1:14 pm
Subject: Re: [URBANTH-L]Response to Ellman: theory, practice/ pragmatics

> Woa!
Allen:  I am not sure Ellman deserved that.  However,  I am
> very  >
interested in what you are thinking about, especially any
> information
you
> have on anthropologists working with and for Homeland Security, or
> did you
> make this up to make your point?
>
> The theory-practice point is central to the entire argument and is
> related
> more to the political economy of the Academy (Universities and
> Colleges)
> than is to the political economy of knowledge (or should we think
> about
> these as overlapping?).  The academy has lost its position as a
> critical,
> uncensored, "neutral" voice as much as the media has.  Academicians
> are
> tied to purse strings not under their control as institutions of
> higher
> learning have become business driven and corporate structured and
> as the
> faculties has lost their power.
>
> I think the remarks about the AAA leadership are unproductive.
> There is
> every reason to expand the role of anthropology in the world of
> experts.
> Not everyone doing action type research is tied to funding source
> ideologies and commitments.  On the other hand, we all have
> specific
> ideological orientations that shape research.  Nothing new here,
> right?!  All of us make choices about research agendas.  Louise
> Lamphere
> recently suggested that dissertation work should include an
> explicit action
> component.  This is an important direction to take that makes
> explicit the
> impact that research has on a given population and articulates the
> intent
> of the research, besides personal advancement and theoretical
> interests.
> Thanks for your thoughtful comments.  You broaden the area of debate.
>
> Sam
From dfeldman at brockport.edu  Tue May  3 01:25:30 2005
From: dfeldman at brockport.edu (dfeldman@brockport.edu)
Date: Tue May  3 16:07:05 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions
Message-ID: <d8ad9e69c6fe.4276c4fa@brockport.edu>

Hi Matthew and URBANTH listserv readers,

Regarding your critique of applied anthropology as being fact-based, and your praise of postmodernism as engaging in intellectual discourse:  I would argue that theory, abstractions, and metaphors without facts (an excellent definition of postmodernism) is a rather useless exercise, only interesting other postmodernists in and out of anthropology.  Applied anthropology, on the other hand, both uses facts to develop theory, and uses theory to unify facts.  The anti-science bias of postmodernism is so unfocused that it could support both New Age religious philosophy, as well as the right-wing NeoCon ideology of the Bush Administration (which doesn't rely on evidence-based reality either).  And that's why postmodernism in anthropology is not just frivolous;  it is downright dangerous.

Doug

Douglas A. Feldman, Ph.D.
Professor 
Department of Anthropology
SUNY Brockport
350 New Campus Drive
Brockport, NY 14420 USA
585-395-5709
dfeldman@brockport.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: M Wolf-Meyer <wolf0358@umn.edu>
Date: Saturday, April 30, 2005 5:50 pm
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions

> Urban Anthropologists:
> 
> I, for one, think it utterly necessary that anthropologists think 
> more 
> theoretically about what they attempt to capture ethnographically, 
> hence the 
> need for more abstractions, not fewer.
> 
> My impression is that in the past 30 years anthropology has become 
> increasingly insular (in part due to the discipline's own self-
> critique), 
> and there is nothing more "navel-gazing" in my mind than producing 
> library 
> dissertations and books that no one will read (especially scholars 
> outside 
> of anthropology).  And I think that very pragmatic, non-
> theoretical, 
> "applied" anthropology is more prone to this critique than 
> anything remotely 
> "postmodern."  "Applied" anthropology often smacks of anti-
> intellectualism, 
> engaging in the production of "facts" rather than engagements, and 
> only 
> helping to produce in applied anthropologists feelings of 
> intellectual 
> alienation (both from the people they attempt to help and from the 
> discipline).  Compare the average contents in Cultural 
> Anthropology to the 
> average contents of Medical Anthropology Quarterly (a very 
> pragmatic 
> journal): The latter suffers from material that engages in no 
> debates, and 
> comforts itself through a myopic empiricism that assumes the lone 
> anthropologist publishing in a scholarly journal can make a 
> difference in 
> the world.  The former, however, even when authors are focused 
> geographically or topically, at least attempt to engage in the 
> sort of 
> abstractions that allow a conversation to occur (within the 
> discipine and 
> interdisciplinarily).
> 
> If anthropologists want to make a difference in the world, the 
> first thing 
> they need to do is enter into debates with the people they attempt 
> to 
> understand and effect.  Facts rarely produce engagements; 
> abstractions, 
> metaphors and theories often do.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Matthew Wolf-Meyer
> Department of Anthropology
> University of Minnesota 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> URBANTH-L mailing list
> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
> 


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Tue May  3 17:36:17 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Tue May  3 16:36:24 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Editor's Note
Message-ID: <001e01c5501f$c20e1c00$2d5c8696@ysu.edu>

As I prepare to leave tomorrow for the SANA conference in Merida, Ben Vegara
<bvergara@sfsu.edu> is now handling full moderation
of this debate (until my return on 5/7). Before clocking out entirely,
however, I'd like to make the general suggestion that contributors remain
collegial and respectful in their disagreement.  This discussion will be
more fruitful if everyone makes an effort to avoid personal attacks and to
practice friendly net-etiquette.  - Angela Jancius



From cmaida at ucla.edu  Tue May  3 15:55:02 2005
From: cmaida at ucla.edu (cmaida@ucla.edu)
Date: Tue May  3 20:43:07 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response to Ellman: theory, practice/  pragmatics
Message-ID: <200505032255.j43Mt2822011@webmail.my.ucla.edu>


With respect to doing ethnography and qualitative studies on public
issues. I have been involved as an evaluation with the UCLA-Duke National 
Center for Child Traumatic Stress, funded by the Substance Abuse an
Mental Health Services Administration, specifically its Terrorism and
Disaster Branch. Most recently, my colleagues in this group of child and
adolescent psychologists and psychiatrists received a grant from the
National Institute of Mental Health to develop a five-year training
program to improve the quality of child and adolescent mental health
research after a mass casualty event. Ten research teams across the
nation will be trained using a curriculum that is under development by
the grantee. As the evalutor of the grant, Ihave worked with the
investigators to employ structured interviews, expert review panels,
focus groups, and eventually some ethnography along with other
qualitative frameworks to ensure good process or formative evaluation
data. We have used a standard ethnographic program to analyze the focus
group transcrips, and have received IRB approvals from two universities
and a large hospital system in the New York City metro area.

In addition to the formal evaluation, we have number of  ways  to
critically evaluate the normative framework and the disciplinary or
ideological preconceptions that are routine in a study of this scale
.There is a bioethicist on the study team to ensure that research ethics
are included within the training curriculum, and that the discussion of
ethical issues is an ongoing part of the study. The other members of the
study team are politically well-informed both at the local-level and in
the national political arena. Further, the  NIMH grant is embedded within 
a nationwide network of over fifty child and adolescent treatment
development and/or application centers, so that there are hundreds of
colleagues who are aware of the study, who are being informed of its
progress, and whose feedback is welcomed. Web-based dissemination and
feedback is part of the grant requirement.

I came upon evaluation later in my career, and only after two years of
post-doctoral research in medical anthropology at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric 
Institute, 15 years of NIMH-NSF funded research studies in children's
mental health following natural disasters. and the publication of a book
in the area.  My interest in evaluating programs in this area comes
directly out of my scholarly work in the field as an anthropologist, who
is not a clinician.   The offer to evaluate these programs came from
colleagues in psychiatry and psychology who have worked with me over the
years. I have been fortunate to work among highly skeptical and critical
colleagues who are dedicated to their scientific fields, and who work in
institutions where academic freedom is highly valued. As a professor
within the UC system,  corporate trends and unionization concerns are a
part of everyday life in the twenty-first century university. Corporate
and governmental influences on the uses of anthropological knowledge are
key concerns emerging from this type of research, and these are often not 
a part of the discourse heard in my multidisciplinary study team, where I 
am the sole anthropologist.  That is why Sam Beck and I have been
chairing sessions at AAA over the years to provide a reflexive dimension
to these issues in our own professional arena.



From cornue at rci.rutgers.edu  Tue May  3 22:57:49 2005
From: cornue at rci.rutgers.edu (Dr. Virginia Cornue)
Date: Wed May  4 13:26:06 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions
References: <d8ad9e69c6fe.4276c4fa@brockport.edu>
Message-ID: <42782C1D.4060007@rci.rutgers.edu>

> I must disagree that postmodernist analysis is dangerous to 
> anthropology or lacking in fact basis. Neglecting to understand power 
> in all its forms is precisely what can enable the disenfranchisement 
> of vast numbers of people. That power is a good and a bad is the 
> nature of power and the nature of those who wield it in manifold ways 
> (as effective action, as suppression, as dominance, as the ability to 
> get things done, as current neocon)...not the danger of Postmodernist 
> analysis. Using postmodernism along with other forms of analysis, I 
> believe, rounds out the practical toolkit of anthropological 
> practioners whether applied or theoretical. This form of analysis is 
> exquisitely effective in searching the crevices where power lodges. 
> This is why I talked in an earlier submission about how the term 
> political correctness has become a very effective method of dismissing 
> weak peoples efforts at being included and empowered.
>
> I direct attention to Boas's example of racism that was "fact" based, 
> when he showed pictures of twin girls who were greatly different in 
> size...the one raised in the Islands (somebody help me out here) and 
> the other raised in the US. He pointed to differences in nutrition as 
> the reason for difference in size (sounds like this could be applied 
> anthropology to me). His fact based example was evidence disputing 
> early 20th century race theory that was based on "facts", for example, 
> smaller brain size of women meant they were dumber. (Given that the 
> President of Harvard has just reiterated a similar notion, maybe we 
> should drag out the Boas example again.) I chaired a conference in 
> Shanghai in 1992 (just as the market economy was making huge changes) 
> in which anthropologists and sociologists from the Shanghai Academy of 
> Social Sciences (only the very best are inducted into the academy) put 
> forward as fact that women were biologically suited to be secretaries 
> and clerks and work in light industry, because they had tiny fingers 
> and small brains and patient natures. The language they used was fact 
> that has supported the mass layoff of hundreds of thousands of women 
> from high level jobs.
>
> The language of postmodernism is very difficult and can be simplified 
> to grasp it more easily, BUT the effectiveness of Postmodernist 
> analysis is wonderful in opening the workings of power. And isn't 
> redressing and understanding power and how it keeps people OUT one of 
> the main points of applied anthropology?
>
>
>
> dfeldman@brockport.edu wrote:
>
>>Hi Matthew and URBANTH listserv readers,
>>
>>Regarding your critique of applied anthropology as being fact-based, and your praise of postmodernism as engaging in intellectual discourse:  I would argue that theory, abstractions, and metaphors without facts (an excellent definition of postmodernism) is a rather useless exercise, only interesting other postmodernists in and out of anthropology.  Applied anthropology, on the other hand, both uses facts to develop theory, and uses theory to unify facts.  The anti-science bias of postmodernism is so unfocused that it could support both New Age religious philosophy, as well as the right-wing NeoCon ideology of the Bush Administration (which doesn't rely on evidence-based reality either).  And that's why postmodernism in anthropology is not just frivolous;  it is downright dangerous.
>>
>>Doug
>>
>>Douglas A. Feldman, Ph.D.
>>Professor 
>>Department of Anthropology
>>SUNY Brockport
>>350 New Campus Drive
>>Brockport, NY 14420 USA
>>585-395-5709
>>dfeldman@brockport.edu
>>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: M Wolf-Meyer <wolf0358@umn.edu>
>>Date: Saturday, April 30, 2005 5:50 pm
>>Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Urban Anthropologists:
>>>
>>>I, for one, think it utterly necessary that anthropologists think 
>>>more 
>>>theoretically about what they attempt to capture ethnographically, 
>>>hence the 
>>>need for more abstractions, not fewer.
>>>
>>>My impression is that in the past 30 years anthropology has become 
>>>increasingly insular (in part due to the discipline's own self-
>>>critique), 
>>>and there is nothing more "navel-gazing" in my mind than producing 
>>>library 
>>>dissertations and books that no one will read (especially scholars 
>>>outside 
>>>of anthropology).  And I think that very pragmatic, non-
>>>theoretical, 
>>>"applied" anthropology is more prone to this critique than 
>>>anything remotely 
>>>"postmodern."  "Applied" anthropology often smacks of anti-
>>>intellectualism, 
>>>engaging in the production of "facts" rather than engagements, and 
>>>only 
>>>helping to produce in applied anthropologists feelings of 
>>>intellectual 
>>>alienation (both from the people they attempt to help and from the 
>>>discipline).  Compare the average contents in Cultural 
>>>Anthropology to the 
>>>average contents of Medical Anthropology Quarterly (a very 
>>>pragmatic 
>>>journal): The latter suffers from material that engages in no 
>>>debates, and 
>>>comforts itself through a myopic empiricism that assumes the lone 
>>>anthropologist publishing in a scholarly journal can make a 
>>>difference in 
>>>the world.  The former, however, even when authors are focused 
>>>geographically or topically, at least attempt to engage in the 
>>>sort of 
>>>abstractions that allow a conversation to occur (within the 
>>>discipine and 
>>>interdisciplinarily).
>>>
>>>If anthropologists want to make a difference in the world, the 
>>>first thing 
>>>they need to do is enter into debates with the people they attempt 
>>>to 
>>>understand and effect.  Facts rarely produce engagements; 
>>>abstractions, 
>>>metaphors and theories often do.
>>>
>>>Best wishes,
>>>
>>>Matthew Wolf-Meyer
>>>Department of Anthropology
>>>University of Minnesota 
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>URBANTH-L mailing list
>>>URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>>>http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>URBANTH-L mailing list
>>URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>>http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
>>
>>    
>>
>


dfeldman@brockport.edu wrote:

>Hi Matthew and URBANTH listserv readers,
>
>Regarding your critique of applied anthropology as being fact-based, and your praise of postmodernism as engaging in intellectual discourse:  I would argue that theory, abstractions, and metaphors without facts (an excellent definition of postmodernism) is a rather useless exercise, only interesting other postmodernists in and out of anthropology.  Applied anthropology, on the other hand, both uses facts to develop theory, and uses theory to unify facts.  The anti-science bias of postmodernism is so unfocused that it could support both New Age religious philosophy, as well as the right-wing NeoCon ideology of the Bush Administration (which doesn't rely on evidence-based reality either).  And that's why postmodernism in anthropology is not just frivolous;  it is downright dangerous.
>
>Doug
>
>Douglas A. Feldman, Ph.D.
>Professor 
>Department of Anthropology
>SUNY Brockport
>350 New Campus Drive
>Brockport, NY 14420 USA
>585-395-5709
>dfeldman@brockport.edu
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: M Wolf-Meyer <wolf0358@umn.edu>
>Date: Saturday, April 30, 2005 5:50 pm
>Subject: [URBANTH-L]Necessary Abstractions
>
>  
>
>>Urban Anthropologists:
>>
>>I, for one, think it utterly necessary that anthropologists think 
>>more 
>>theoretically about what they attempt to capture ethnographically, 
>>hence the 
>>need for more abstractions, not fewer.
>>
>>My impression is that in the past 30 years anthropology has become 
>>increasingly insular (in part due to the discipline's own self-
>>critique), 
>>and there is nothing more "navel-gazing" in my mind than producing 
>>library 
>>dissertations and books that no one will read (especially scholars 
>>outside 
>>of anthropology).  And I think that very pragmatic, non-
>>theoretical, 
>>"applied" anthropology is more prone to this critique than 
>>anything remotely 
>>"postmodern."  "Applied" anthropology often smacks of anti-
>>intellectualism, 
>>engaging in the production of "facts" rather than engagements, and 
>>only 
>>helping to produce in applied anthropologists feelings of 
>>intellectual 
>>alienation (both from the people they attempt to help and from the 
>>discipline).  Compare the average contents in Cultural 
>>Anthropology to the 
>>average contents of Medical Anthropology Quarterly (a very 
>>pragmatic 
>>journal): The latter suffers from material that engages in no 
>>debates, and 
>>comforts itself through a myopic empiricism that assumes the lone 
>>anthropologist publishing in a scholarly journal can make a 
>>difference in 
>>the world.  The former, however, even when authors are focused 
>>geographically or topically, at least attempt to engage in the 
>>sort of 
>>abstractions that allow a conversation to occur (within the 
>>discipine and 
>>interdisciplinarily).
>>
>>If anthropologists want to make a difference in the world, the 
>>first thing 
>>they need to do is enter into debates with the people they attempt 
>>to 
>>understand and effect.  Facts rarely produce engagements; 
>>abstractions, 
>>metaphors and theories often do.
>>
>>Best wishes,
>>
>>Matthew Wolf-Meyer
>>Department of Anthropology
>>University of Minnesota 
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>URBANTH-L mailing list
>>URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>>http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>URBANTH-L mailing list
>URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
>http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
>
>  
>

From af31 at nyu.edu  Wed May  4 04:15:38 2005
From: af31 at nyu.edu (Allen Feldman)
Date: Wed May  4 13:26:11 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response to Ellman: theory, practice/ 
 pragmatics
Message-ID: <76c507773a6e.773a6e76c507@nyu.edu>

As an anthropologist who has also engaged in ?process evaluation,? in
addition to ?outcomes evaluation,? ?quality assurance- best practices
assessment,? ?fourth generation?  evaluation and "program logic models."
I would suggest that all the prior terms and many of those found in
Maida's post below, despite their faux-self evident aura, and 
institutionalization by funding streams and by expert knowledge systems
are entangled with metaphysical and theoretical constructions of social
reality, historicity, and just crude political ideology. They are as
densely layered as any concept advanced by Derrida or Foucault. And
their anchorage in empirical reality is equally questionable.


?Child Traumatic Stress,?
 (The checkered history of traumatic stress syndrome has already been
the subject of anthropological inquiry see Ian Hacking and  Alan Young)

?Substance Abuse? 

A medicalized juridical concept applied to socio-cultural behaviors that
more often than not legitimates the criminalization of ethnic, racial
and economic minorities and that is crucial to the economic well being
of the American prison system.

?Terrorism and
Disaster Branch?
(A organ of government that that never acknowledges State terror unless
committed by a so-called ?rogue or outlaw state or an axis of evil.? 

?good process or formative evaluation?

( a concept that mainly analyses institutional practice within the
framework of  narrowly defined instrumental rationalities and mission
statements, that tends to bracket out multi-plex life-world realities
and phenomenological experiences.)

?mass casualty event?

( a new type of historical occurrence congruent with statist
intervention mandates, that excludes ethnocide and genocide, and first
world state generated political terror in  American governmental
lexicons- see 'collateral damage" "Shock and Awe" which are used to
identify unacknowledged "mass casualty events")

?bioethicist? 

( a disciplinary specialization with deep metaphysical assumptions and
historical precedents in 19th century disciplinary discourses of the
body,social hygiene and public health; see Foucault and Agamben on the
relation between modern state sovereignty and the formation of bio-
political subjects.)

I do not make these points to disqualify these concepts, but to show how
utilitarian, and applied frameworks are deeply implicated in many
unexamined theoretical abstractions, presuppositions and untheorized
historical contexts.

And was not this observation below my original point?


?corporate governmental influences on the uses of anthropological
knowledge are key concerns emerging from this type of research, and
these are often not a part of the discourse heard in my
multidisciplinary study team, where I am the sole anthropologist.?

Lets not limit this to the uses of anthropological knowledge, at least
in our discipline we try to pose these questions as Beck and Maida are
doing.

Allen Feldman
----- Original Message -----
From: cmaida@ucla.edu
Date: Tuesday, May 3, 2005 6:55 pm
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response to Ellman: theory, practice/  pragmatics

> 
> With respect to doing ethnography and qualitative studies on public
> issues. I have been involved as an evaluation with the UCLA-Duke 
> National 
> Center for Child Traumatic Stress, funded by the Substance Abuse an
> Mental Health Services Administration, specifically its Terrorism and
> Disaster Branch. Most recently, my colleagues in this group of 
> child and
> adolescent psychologists and psychiatrists received a grant from the
> National Institute of Mental Health to develop a five-year training
> program to improve the quality of child and adolescent mental health
> research after a mass casualty event. Ten research teams across the
> nation will be trained using a curriculum that is under development by
> the grantee. As the evalutor of the grant, Ihave worked with the
> investigators to employ structured interviews, expert review panels,
> focus groups, and eventually some ethnography along with other
> qualitative frameworks to ensure good process or formative evaluation
> data. We have used a standard ethnographic program to analyze the 
> focusgroup transcrips, and have received IRB approvals from two 
> universitiesand a large hospital system in the New York City metro 
> area.
> In addition to the formal evaluation, we have number of  ways  to
> critically evaluate the normative framework and the disciplinary or
> ideological preconceptions that are routine in a study of this scale
> .There is a bioethicist on the study team to ensure that research 
> ethicsare included within the training curriculum, and that the 
> discussion of
> ethical issues is an ongoing part of the study. The other members 
> of the
> study team are politically well-informed both at the local-level 
> and in
> the national political arena. Further, the  NIMH grant is embedded 
> within 
> a nationwide network of over fifty child and adolescent treatment
> development and/or application centers, so that there are hundreds of
> colleagues who are aware of the study, who are being informed of its
> progress, and whose feedback is welcomed. Web-based dissemination and
> feedback is part of the grant requirement.
> 
> I came upon evaluation later in my career, and only after two years of
> post-doctoral research in medical anthropology at UCLA's 
> Neuropsychiatric 
> Institute, 15 years of NIMH-NSF funded research studies in children's
> mental health following natural disasters. and the publication of a 
> bookin the area.  My interest in evaluating programs in this area 
> comesdirectly out of my scholarly work in the field as an 
> anthropologist, who
> is not a clinician.   The offer to evaluate these programs came from
> colleagues in psychiatry and psychology who have worked with me 
> over the
> years. I have been fortunate to work among highly skeptical and 
> criticalcolleagues who are dedicated to their scientific fields, 
> and who work in
> institutions where academic freedom is highly valued. As a professor
> within the UC system,  corporate trends and unionization concerns 
> are a
> part of everyday life in the twenty-first century university. 
> Corporateand governmental influences on the uses of anthropological 
> knowledge are
> key concerns emerging from this type of research, and these are 
> often not 
> a part of the discourse heard in my multidisciplinary study team, 
> where I 
> am the sole anthropologist.  That is why Sam Beck and I have been
> chairing sessions at AAA over the years to provide a reflexive 
> dimensionto these issues in our own professional arena.
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> URBANTH-L mailing list
> URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
> http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l
> 
From salmons at newschool.edu  Tue May  3 23:19:42 2005
From: salmons at newschool.edu (Scott Salmon)
Date: Wed May  4 13:26:15 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Position in Urban Education
Message-ID: <s277f915.093@igate.newschool.edu>

Please find below an announcement for a vacancy in Urban Education at Eugene Lang College, New School University.  This is a visiting (1 -3 year renewable) position but we anticipate advertising a full-time opening in the Fall.  Please contact me if you have questions about the position.
Apologies for cross-postings.
scott.

Visiting FT Faculty
Urban Education
Eugene Lang College 
Eugene Lang College, a division of New School University seeks to hire a full-time visiting faculty member in the area of urban education for the academic year 2005-2006. The visitor will teach five courses (or the equivalent) per year and bear advising responsibilities. The appointment will be renewable for up to three years.

Responsibilities
Successful candidates will offer courses in sociology urban education to undergraduates at Eugene Lang College. We are particularly interested in candidates who can locate a critical understanding of the challenges facing city schools within the context of the broader urban, political, and economic processes that shape urban education. Additional responsibilities include assisting in the development of an urban education track within Lang College's Urban Studies program.

Requirements
Earned PhD in education or relevant social science discipline. A record of publication and teaching experience investigating the processes and practices of education in an urban context is necessary. Administrative experience, including interest and expertise in curriculum and program development, is desirable. 


Interested candidates should send a CV, cover letter, one-page statement of teaching philosophy, outline of research program, sample of written work, and three letters of recommendation to: Lisa Soares, Eugene Lang College, 65 West 11th Street, New York, NY 10011, or e-mail to: NSUjobs@newschool.edu. Be sure to indicate the search #22665 and discipline in subject line and include search #22665 in all correspondence. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.


New School University is committed to a policy of equal opportunity in all its activities and programs, including employment and promotion. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, physical handicap, veteran or marital status.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
scott salmon
chair, urban studies
eugene lang college &
milano graduate school
new school university

room c110, 64 West 11th St.
new york, ny 10011

(212) 229 - 5100 x 2269
(212) 979 - 6561 (fax)
salmons@newschool.edu
www.newschool.edu


From bchappel at Bridgewater.EDU  Wed May  4 10:38:44 2005
From: bchappel at Bridgewater.EDU (Ben Chappell)
Date: Wed May  4 13:26:18 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]thanks, Nancy
In-Reply-To: <E1DSh22-0001eT-8a@unix1.cc.ysu.edu>
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.1.20050504092751.01a61830@mail.bridgewater.edu>

My CV is a state secret, and if I told you, I'd have to kill you...

Nancy, great point about how you have to follow the material into the 
theoretical areas that suit it. I find that people who want to lambast 
"pomo" (or name trends like "specialization" in the field) are 
overgeneralizing on a scale that they wouldn't accept in an undergraduate 
paper.

First of all, what is often called "postmodern anthropology" is a far, far 
cry from the "see Madonna, here's a big word, cool" kind of stuff that 
serves as a stereotype of "pomo." What, do we want to get rid of 
reflexivity, or considering the voices of research "subjects," or working 
toward decolonization or our field? Come on, now.

At its best, what postmodernism offers is a critique, in the spirit of 
Marx's words, a "ruthless" one of "everything." When people don't want to 
extend critical faculties to their own positions as researchers, I wonder 
what they're afraid of. Also, how can one then talk about rigor or empiricism?

"Postmodernism" as a publishing category (has it ever been this, actually?) 
may very well disappear, but we can't and shouldn't pretend that nothing 
has happened in theory over the past thirty years or so.

By the way, Nancy, Roland Barthes in Mythologies has a quotable rationale 
for neologisms, I believe.

back to grading...
Ben
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ben Chappell, PhD
Assistant Professor of Sociology/Cultural Studies
Bridgewater College, Virginia
http://www.bridgewater.edu/~bchappel
http://cultcrit.blogspot.com

If you are the big tree /  /  /
We are the small ax /  /  /

Bob Marley


From evatessza at hotmail.com  Thu May  5 00:35:11 2005
From: evatessza at hotmail.com (Eva Tessza Udvarhelyi)
Date: Thu May  5 10:37:49 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]law against begging
Message-ID: <BAY24-F1168BC53A6283A08C99710B7190@phx.gbl>

Dear Colleagues,

I am a Hungarian anthropologist (actually in my last year of university at 
ELTE, Budapest) and Im involved in research about and social action for 
homeless people in Budapest. The town hall of Budapest is just about to 
introduce a new law against begging in central public spaces. We social 
workers, anthropologists, sociologists and some civil organizations) are 
trying to present some arguments to the city hall against this new law 
before it gets accepted and we would like to ask you for your experience and 
contacts related to this issue. Can any of you give me examples of past 
actions/arguments/measures etc against such laws or ordinances in their own 
countries, or sources or people that we possibly could consult?

We would be very grateful for any information you could give us because this 
seems to be our last chance to mount some opposition to the law (it has 
already been approved of by the Ministry of Justice as well... and now it is 
waiting for the approval of the city representatives). We already presented 
our own arguments to them and they seem quite indifferent and now we would 
like to know if there is any methods or ideas that worked in other countries 
that we might be able to try also here...

Thank you very much for your help and sharing of experience!

Warm regards,

Tessza Udvarhelyi

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


From bvergara at sfsu.edu  Thu May  5 08:35:55 2005
From: bvergara at sfsu.edu (bvergara@sfsu.edu)
Date: Thu May  5 10:38:12 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]response from Carl Maida
Message-ID: <1115303755.427a2f4b6f825@webmail.sfsu.edu>

>From cmaida@ucla.edu

Allen,

I knew that I was leaving myself open to deconstruction, however I was bored
during office hours and wrote up this little narrative about an evaluation
project that I became involved with after the 9/11 attacks.

Your style of hypercritical anthropology has become fairly marginalized, except
in graduate seminars where postmodernist thinking is tolerated as a moribund
practice that certain students need to work through and to get  beyond.  The
response reads like a grad student or other novice taking apart a difficult
passage, line by line, to grasp the meaning.

Even more interesting are the various evaluation techniques attributed to me
that were not even discussed in my narrative, but rather assumed to be the case.
That is precisely why ethnographers need to stay focused on reality,
and the reality that I have chosen is normal and not-so-normal child and
adolescent development  in low-income urban communities, and the institutions
that promote or inhibit it.

I did not see anything in your critique related to children's suffering: their
abuse/neglect by addicted parents, gang violence and rape, HIV/AIDS. This is
what I discuss with colleagues at the Children's Hospital where I evaluate
trauma treatment for kids trying to survive at home, in the streets, and in
California's second largest school district.

And of course, there is no discussion of the Oklahoma City bombing or 9/11 and
their impact on kids, and what we have learned about trauma, grief, and
resilience as a result of our work.

>From the perspective of public finance, I am pleased that the legislative
process worked back in 2000-2001 and that the federal government set aside tax
dollars for states and localities on behalf of this initiative. Better in the
cities than in the pockets of defense contractors and Pentagon planners.

The world that you allude to is a fairly paranoid place where dark entities
("states") are trying to provoke fear in their subjects and control them through
mass education and psychiatric treatment.

I view things a bit differently:

There is a "new class" of professionals that has been gaining ground since the
1930s and that currently controls the discourse on the life course, illness, and
urban institutional life. This new class is what Laura Nader challenged us to
study ("study up') in the late sixties and early seventies. You do not get into
"new class" professional networks (think tanks, clinics, urban school districts)
by hanging out on the fringes, rather you have to get beyond "perching" and
enter the arenas where "new class" professionals are talking among themselves.

That is the kind of ethnography I have been most interested in.

Carl

From bvergara at sfsu.edu  Thu May  5 08:36:56 2005
From: bvergara at sfsu.edu (bvergara@sfsu.edu)
Date: Thu May  5 10:38:16 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]response from Allan Feldman
Message-ID: <1115303816.427a2f883eee5@webmail.sfsu.edu>

>From af31@nyu.edu:

Carl
1. You keep on interpreting my response as a dismissal of your work or
career. I have repeatedly stated I am practitioner of action research. I
cited other evaluation methods you did not mention to demonstrate my
participation in this mode of research.

2. Well nothing I pointed out is my invention or qualifies as
deconstruction-- another misapplied term. My observations were much
closer to ideology critique or to the  sociology of knowledge,
(Mannheim, Berger). The diverse critiques of these terms and categories
I rehearsed are circulating out there, but the categories you cite  have
become so reified and so tied to funding-streams, organizational culture
and technical rationality that  theoretical and empirical critiques have
little purchase. However to say this about post-traumatic stress
disorder which has been around since 1916-18 is one thing. But to say it
in reference to a notion like "mass casualty event?, or the current
social science acceptance of the ideologeme "terrorism" is another and
is very disturbing. The diagnostics of drug abuse and the drug-related
incarceration of minority youth has been an issue pursued by many
scholar activists such as Angela Davis and has been questioned by many
medical anthropologists working with harm reduction frameworks, but
again we see the quasi-juridical term accepted without question as
empiricist classification.

I am not suggesting anything qualitatively different then Asad's or
Clifford's historical assessment of ethnographic practice.

4. I have no idea what you or anybody on this list means by
post-modernist it tends to shift its meaning in a very post modernist
fashion! My training was in phenomenology, structuralism Marxism,
cultural Marxism semiotics, social history, oral history,
post-structuralism, (which IS a methodological perspective.), material
culture studies, performance studies and visual culture. Post Modernism
is a periodization in art history, architecture and music; it is also a
vague perception about epochal transition. Most of the traits attributed
to post-modernist theory, persona and values have been in existence
since 1900, particularly in literary genres but also in Art and
philosophy and technology. I do not see how post-modernism as it is
currently being used on this list translates into methodological norms.

>I did not see anything in your critique related to children's
> suffering: their abuse/neglectsuffering: their abuse/neglect
> by addicted parents, gang violence and rape, HIV/AIDS. This is what
> I
> discuss with colleagues
> at the Children's Hospital where I evaluate trauma treatment for
> kids
> trying to survive
> at home, in the streets, and in California's second largest school
> district.

No of course not, worthy and urgent issues all, but that was not the
point of my commentary, unless you claim that there is only one
prescribed mode of researching, classifying and redressing these dire
situations?

>And of course, there is no discussion of the Oklahoma City bombing
> or
> 9/11 and their
> impact on kids, and what we have learned about trauma, grief, and
> resilience as
> a result of our work.

Well its is has been pointed out by many commentators that the
Department of Homeland Security is uninterested in domestic American
"terrorism" but again "community resilience" studies in which Homeland
secuirty is very interested  sums up another constellation of normative
sociological assumptions tied to the routinization and normalization of
violence and war. And we have yet to see community resilience studies of
those folks affected by the market place bombings in Baghdad and other
collateral damage episodes.

I think at this point we should take the discussion off-list.

Best


Allen

From bvergara at sfsu.edu  Thu May  5 08:29:25 2005
From: bvergara at sfsu.edu (bvergara@sfsu.edu)
Date: Thu May  5 11:52:49 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Response from Doug Feldman
Message-ID: <1115303365.427a2dc557ef1@webmail.sfsu.edu>

>From dfeldman@brockport.edu:

Hi Virginia,

Certainly, I have no disagreement with the view that not all facts are accurate
facts.  We need new theoretical perspectives or conceptualizations to
re-evaluate our facts, rather than accepting them uncritically at face value. 
And certainly, understanding power differentials in our world today is
important.  But critical anthropology theory, cultural materialism, and conflict
theory are ways of understanding the role of the political economy without
having to resort to postmodernism.  

The problem I have with postmodernism is its hyper-relativism and its false
presumption that there is no reality out there.  The truth is (oops -- sorry for
using a postmodernist obscenity!); the truth is that there is a reality out
there.  As an applied medical anthropologist, I have been very eclectic in using
different theoretical perspectives and various methodological approaches.  But
as far as I can see, postmodern theory is not just another useful building block
in anthropological theory and method.  Rather, to me, it is more like a hand
grenade ready to go off and destroy the rubric of anthropology at any moment.

Doug

From bvergara at sfsu.edu  Thu May  5 10:52:50 2005
From: bvergara at sfsu.edu (bvergara@sfsu.edu)
Date: Thu May  5 13:15:34 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]moderator's note
Message-ID: <1115311970.427a4f62c24a3@webmail.sfsu.edu>

Due to increasing complaints from listmembers, I encourage the people involved
in the recent discussions -- as Allan Feldman had suggested in his last e-mail
-- to take the conversation offlist.

Choosing to approve and post the messages are, of course, the moderator's
responsibility, and so today's messages on the postmodernism / applied
anthropology thread -- which I thought should go out to the list anyhow -- will
most likely be the last.

Sincerely,
Ben Vergara
Department of Asian American Studies / Anthropology
San Francisco State University

From acjancius at ysu.edu  Sun May  8 20:38:55 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May  9 15:27:50 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]CONFANN: Creating Livable Communities Symposium
Message-ID: <010401c554cd$217df960$b63f86ac@toshibauser>

From: Lynn Josse <lynnjosse@sbcglobal.net>

4th annual
Creating Livable Communities Symposium:
Linking Public History and Community Revitalization
May 21, 2005
University of Missouri - St. Louis

This year's "Creating Livable Communities Symposium" is a one-day
program focusing on history and place as tools for community
building.  Twelve concurrent sessions and workshops will share the
experience of educators, community organizers, preservationists, oral
historians, and activists exploring the question of how public history
can be part of the revitalization of cities and neighborhoods.

Plenary speaker Marci Reaven of "Place Matters" (www.placematters.net)
will discuss meaningful public history processes that can empower
citizens and inspire communities.  Presenters include Michael Frisch
(SUNY - University at Buffalo) who will demonstrate the democratizing
potential of new oral history methods.  Professor Frisch will also
deliver a free pre-symposium lecture on Friday on Worlds Fair
Centennial experiences.

For more information, including a schedule of speakers, visit the
Symposium web site at http://www.umsl.edu/~conted/conferences/clcs.htm

Lynn Josse
Community Fellow
Public Policy Research Center
University of Missouri - St. Louis
From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May  9 15:11:15 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May  9 15:43:02 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Miles on Kohn, _Radical Space_
Message-ID: <016601c554cf$3c422b20$b63f86ac@toshibauser>

[x-posted from H-Urban]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Urban@h-net.msu.edu  (May 2005)

Margaret Kohn. _Radical Space: Building the House of the People_. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. x + 203 pp. Illustrations, notes,
index. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8014-3992-2; $19.95 (paper), ISBN
0-8014-8860-5.

Reviewed for H-Urban by Malcolm Miles <M.F.Miles@plymouth.ac.uk>, 
Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom

People Make Places But Places Make People, Too

This book is a potentially important contribution to scholarship in the
field of social architecture on two grounds: it reintroduces a dialectical
approach to architectural space, which gives due attention to its
occupation, and to the somatic aspects of that occupation; and it
investigates an otherwise little known architectural type, the House of the
People (_casa del popolo_) in Italy, in which working people met in the
earlier decades of the twentieth century. It is also of more general
interest because it grounds its specific investigation unusually well in
discourses of space, place, and power. This is done in the first few
chapters, which would be helpful reading for students in disciplines from
architecture to social anthropology and cultural studies. There is useful
material, also, on wider aspects of the growth of the Italian labor
movement, and developments in Italian politics, from the 1890s to the
1920s. The author compares buildings designed in Europe for workers'
movements and fascist organizations, and thus adds another dimension, and
some unexpected findings. Examples discussed include Victor Horta's Maison
du Peuple in Brussels, opened in 1899, and Giuseppe Terragni's Casa del
Fascio (1932-36) in Como which, like Horta's building, has a central
atrium, spaces for offices and social services, and emphasizes the effects
of light through glass to produce a monumental transparency. Kohn's
research draws, then, both on theory and the detail, derived from secondary
sources in Italian as well as from studies of specific buildings and
places, of Italian labor history. But it does so not to produce a collage
of two kinds of material but to construct an incisive argument that
"[p]olitical spaces facilitate change by creating a distinctive place to
develop new identities and practices" (p. 4). The book takes, as this
suggests, a politicized approach to architecture, and is underpinned by
Kohn's hope "that a careful analysis of sites of resistance...might
strengthen a conception of democracy that is useful today" (p. 2). I am
persuaded by the book's clear writing and excellent mapping of its subject
matter that this is so.

The book has nine chapters, moving from broad theoretical coverage of space
and politics, and the public sphere, to particular investigations of the
factory as a site of discipline, the cooperative movement as resistance and
mutual aid, and the house of the people as a new architectural entity from
the 1890s onwards. It continues to look at the chamber of labor, and the
idea of municipalism, as articulating twentieth-century social and civic
values, and ends with a short concluding chapter that sums up the book's
main arguments and aims. Among Kohn's conclusions are that the power of
place results from its contextualizing a shared world, making a visceral as
well as intellectual impact; and that the uses of certain spaces such as
those studied in this book is a definite (by which I mean defined and
specific) factor in the growth of workers' movements. As Kohn writes: "In a
political movement, these spaces facilitate and deepen the connection
between militants and supporters of the cause as well as between times of
mobilization and normal periods. Sites of resistance are a microcosm of the
polity itself, and therefore they provide important political training and
experience that is otherwise unavailable to the disenfranchised" (p. 156).
To create such spaces is a world-building act, beset by contradictions and
uncertainties but always evidently the work of human beings who have, as
the history of the house of the people demonstrates, a capacity to
intervene in the conditions of their lives. In this respect dialectical
materialism permeates the book as much as the histories to which the book
refers. I very much welcome that.

The book could, at first glance, be put beside, for instance, David
Harvey's _Spaces of Hope_ (cited on p. 91); but I think a more appropriate
way to situate it would be in the same critical terrain as recent writing
by Jane Rendell or Kim Dovey. [1] My point is that the book is, primarily,
a critical commentary on the Houses of the People and not a description of
them, though it provides considerable detail even so. In her central
chapter (6, "The House of the People"), Kohn goes further than Harvey in
defining a relation between place and radical action. Beginning with
Foucault's idea of the heterotopic space as housing radical difference from
the dominant society which might lead to resistance, even in sites such as
the boarding school (a heterotopia which marks a liminal stage in human
individuation) or prison (a heterotopia of deviance), Kohn argues that
Harvey refutes Foucault to say that alterity does not as such produce
resistance, or even critique. [2] Hence sites of mass consumption "employ
their distinctiveness to perfect rather than to dismantle dominant
patterns" (p. 91). She then draws on the work of Francesca Polletta to
introduce the precise concept of a heterotopia of resistance: "a real
countersite that inverts and counters existing economic or social
hierarchies. Its function is social transformation rather than escapism,
containment, or denial" (p. 91). The Houses of the People are for Kohn such
sites. From my reading of Kohn I would suggest that without such spaces the
workers' movement would have been less able to contest exclusionary forces
in bourgeois society, initially, and then later in 1930s fascism.

As the reader will have gathered, I like this book. Its concise and
incisive argument on space and power is usefully pinned down in the
specific cases it reviews. It is well written throughout, and carries a
sense of hope seldom found in writing on space today, even in the work of
Marxist geographers such as David Harvey or Edward Soja. It has a
distinctly European intellectual quality in its scrutiny of the rhizomatic
shifts of the urban lifeworld, and says much which remains relevant in
today's desperate political climate. My only reservations are that it is
printed on rather cheap paper so that the archive photographs do not
reproduce very well; and that personally I find the Harvard system of
referencing more user-friendly than the Chicago system used in the book
(and this review of it).

Notes

[1]. Jane Rendell, _The Pursuit of Pleasure: Gender, Space and Architecture
in Regency London_ (Athlone Press, 2002); see also Jane Rendell, Barbara
Penner and Iain Borden (editors), _Gender Space Architecture: An
Interdisciplinary Introduction_ (Routledge, 2000) ; Kim Dovey, _Framing
Places: Mediating Power in Built Form_ (Routledge, 1999). Also relevant is
Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin (editors), _Giving Ground: The Politics of
Propinquity_, (Verso, 1999).

[2]. Michel Foucault, '"Of Other Spaces"', in Neil Leach (editor),
_Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory_ (Routledge, 1997):
pp.350-355;. David Harvey, _Spaces of Hope_ Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000); Francesca Polletta, "Free Spaces in Collective
Action", _Theory and Society_ 28 (1999)_:, pp. 1-38.

         Copyright (c) 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
         the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
         educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
         author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
         H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
         contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May  9 15:34:56 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May  9 15:45:13 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]ANN: Concordia Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cosmopolitan
	Studies
Message-ID: <017401c554cf$91945cb0$b63f86ac@toshibauser>

THE CONCORDIA POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP IN COSMOPOLITAN STUDIES

Closing date for applications: 1 August 2005
Further details can be acquired from the above website, also by
emailing: <nigel.rapport@concordia.ca>

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia
University, Montreal, is pleased to announce a post-doctoral
fellowship in Cosmopolitan Studies.

This is a writing fellowship whose purpose is to provide a scholar
at an early stage of his or her career (normally within 5 years of
completing a doctorate) with an opportunity to spend up to a year
redrafting their doctoral thesis as a monograph for publication. The
scholar will normally already have had at least one shorter piece of
writing accepted for publication, but will not already have a
tenure-track position at a university. The fellowship will normally
run from the beginning of September.

The fellowship is open to any post-doctoral scholar whose work
addresses 'cosmopolitanism', broadly defined. He or she might have a
doctorate in social or cultural anthropology, sociology, psychology,
philosophy, literature, politics, history, or a related discipline,
and be interested to take forward a project that inquires into 'the
human' as a singularity over and above proximal categorizations of
nation, ethnicity, class, religiosity, gender and so on.

The writing project might be ontological in character (defining the
human), or methodological (gaining access to the human), or
political-cum-moral (securing the human). It might address, for
instance: global citizenship; human rights as global discourse;
trans-nationalism and supra-nationalism; the city as global space;
home and movement; liberalism and communitarianism; humanism and
universal values; agency, artistry, empathy as human capacities and
practices; individuality and embodiment; the individual as a global
actor; freedom as a global political project.

Applicants are encouraged to visit the website of the Concordia
Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies at:
<http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/socanth/centre_cosmo_studies.html>.)

Job Description
The successful candidate will, during the tenure of the fellowship:

*complete a publishable manuscript from work undertaken for a PhD;
*submit a book proposal to a publisher;
*prepare a bid for further research funding from an external funding
body;
*liaise with the Director of the Concordia Centre for Cosmopolitan
Studies, provide progress reports as requested, and undertake small
amounts of work for the Centre as appropriate;
*give a seminar presentation near the beginning of the fellowship to
the Concordia University Department of Sociology and Anthropology;
*have the opportunity (with extra remuneration) to teach a senior
undergraduate course in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
on a topic of the candidate's choice.

The fellowship will offer a salary of $35,000 Canadian dollars.
Office space will be provided, use of a computer, access to email
and the internet, and to Concordia University Library.

How to Apply
Applications should include three copies of the following:
i) a letter of up to two pages summarising the case for the
applicant's appointment;
ii) a full curriculum vitae;
iii) three letters of reference (one of which should be from the PhD
supervisor);
iv) details (up to three pages) of the writing plans to be carried
out during the fellowship (this might take the form of a draft book
proposal, with chapter summaries, intended market, and so on);
v) one or two short samples of written work, such as a chapter of
the doctoral thesis or an article submitted for publication.

Mail applications to:

Professor Nigel Rapport
Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Concordia University
1455 de Maisonneuve Boulevard West
Montreal
Quebec  H3G 1M8
CANADA

Closing date for applications: 1 August 2005
Further details can be acquired from the above website, also by
emailing: <nigel.rapport@concordia.ca>
From robrien at temple.edu  Mon May  9 23:18:47 2005
From: robrien at temple.edu (Robert T. O'Brien)
Date: Mon May  9 23:26:12 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Info on AAA Survey
Message-ID: <26812b7a.fa09ff35.83e2300@po-a.temple.edu>

Please be sure to respond to this survey. Neither the email 
below (from AAA) nor the survey provide much detail. 

Folks should be aware that there is currently a boycott led 
by UNITE HERE Local 2. The boycott began in November and has 
recently escalated. There is a good potential for the boycott 
and/or other labor actions to continue. Both the hotel chains 
and UNITE HERE are dug in due to the importance of the San 
Francisco market as a union stronghold with good political 
support. This suggest the potential to disrupt the 2006 AAA 
meeting.

Please take the time to respond to the survey link below.

AND: Don't forget to vote on the AAA ballot, which is due May 
15th.

Rob

AAA is scheduled to hold its 2006 Annual Meeting from 
November 27 to December 1 at the Hilton Hotel in San 
Francisco, CA.  Presently, hotel employees are working under 
terms of an expired labor contract.  Organized labor and 
hotel management have not been able to come to agreement on a 
new labor contract, and the union of hotel employees is 
urging a boycott of all meetings in this and 13 other hotel 
properties in San Francisco. 

If hotel employees and management cannot come to an agreement 
on a new labor contract, the AAA Executive Board will 
consider rescheduling and/or relocating the meeting.  This 
decision will be made well in advance of the meeting, before 
members have purchased airline tickets or made hotel 
reservations.  In preparation for that decision, the AAA 
Board is seeking your views about how a potential 
labor/management dispute at the hotel would affect your 
attendance at the meeting. 

This survey has just 4 questions, and should take no more 
than a minute to complete.  Your answers will be held in the 
strictest confidence.  No individual responses will be 
reported. Only summary responses of the membership as a whole 
will be reported. Your participation will provide the AAA 
Executive Board will much needed information.  To complete 
the survey, please click on the link below: 

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB224BP9JQ4KK 

****************************************
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out. 
Forget this and attaining Enlightenment 
will be the least of your problems. 

Robert T. O'Brien 
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology 
Temple University 
robrien@temple.edu 
215-803-5181

AAAUnite Ad Hoc Committee
http://AAAUnite.blogspot.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aaaunite/

From rthomas at aaanet.org  Tue May 10 10:27:03 2005
From: rthomas at aaanet.org (Richard Thomas)
Date: Tue May 10 10:18:49 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Info on AAA Survey
Message-ID: <73673AD67A72304380D2DC771119F481A6DED9@aaa_mail.aaanet.org>

This survey is only for active members of AAA.

Richard Thomas

Visit Our On-Line Career Center at 
http://www.aaanet.org/careers.htm
AAA 
2200 Wilson Blvd Ste 600
Arlington VA 22201-3357
ph 703-528-1902 x 3030
fx 703-528-3546
rthomas@aaanet.org



-----Original Message-----
From: Robert T. O'Brien [mailto:robrien@temple.edu]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 10:19 PM
To: aaaunite@yahoogroups.com; Angrad; H-Medanthro; Urbananth-l
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Info on AAA Survey
Importance: High


Please be sure to respond to this survey. Neither the email 
below (from AAA) nor the survey provide much detail. 

Folks should be aware that there is currently a boycott led 
by UNITE HERE Local 2. The boycott began in November and has 
recently escalated. There is a good potential for the boycott 
and/or other labor actions to continue. Both the hotel chains 
and UNITE HERE are dug in due to the importance of the San 
Francisco market as a union stronghold with good political 
support. This suggest the potential to disrupt the 2006 AAA 
meeting.

Please take the time to respond to the survey link below.

AND: Don't forget to vote on the AAA ballot, which is due May 
15th.

Rob

AAA is scheduled to hold its 2006 Annual Meeting from 
November 27 to December 1 at the Hilton Hotel in San 
Francisco, CA.  Presently, hotel employees are working under 
terms of an expired labor contract.  Organized labor and 
hotel management have not been able to come to agreement on a 
new labor contract, and the union of hotel employees is 
urging a boycott of all meetings in this and 13 other hotel 
properties in San Francisco. 

If hotel employees and management cannot come to an agreement 
on a new labor contract, the AAA Executive Board will 
consider rescheduling and/or relocating the meeting.  This 
decision will be made well in advance of the meeting, before 
members have purchased airline tickets or made hotel 
reservations.  In preparation for that decision, the AAA 
Board is seeking your views about how a potential 
labor/management dispute at the hotel would affect your 
attendance at the meeting. 

This survey has just 4 questions, and should take no more 
than a minute to complete.  Your answers will be held in the 
strictest confidence.  No individual responses will be 
reported. Only summary responses of the membership as a whole 
will be reported. Your participation will provide the AAA 
Executive Board will much needed information.  To complete 
the survey, please click on the link below: 

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB224BP9JQ4KK 

****************************************
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Breathe out. 
Forget this and attaining Enlightenment 
will be the least of your problems. 

Robert T. O'Brien 
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology 
Temple University 
robrien@temple.edu 
215-803-5181

AAAUnite Ad Hoc Committee
http://AAAUnite.blogspot.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aaaunite/

_______________________________________________
URBANTH-L mailing list
URBANTH-L@lists.ysu.edu
http://lists.ysu.edu/mailman/listinfo.cgi/urbanth-l

From antemg at langate.gsu.edu  Tue May 10 12:11:27 2005
From: antemg at langate.gsu.edu (Emanuela Guano)
Date: Tue May 10 13:47:03 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]SUNTA Graduate Student Prize
Message-ID: <s28096e9.029@mailsrv21.gsu.edu>

SUNTA GRADUATE STUDENT PRIZE

The deadline for submitting papers for the 2005 SUNTA Graduate Student Paper Prize ($250 award) is July 15, 2005. Papers should address issues pertaining to urban, national, and transnational anthropology, and/or any of the topical areas of interest to SUNTA, including space and place, poverty and homelessness, and
refugees and immigrants. Papers must be based on original ethnographic research. Submissions from all graduate students (not just SUNTA members) are welcome. Professors and practicing anthropologists are urged to nominate worthy candidates. The winner will be announced at the 2005 AAA meetings. The winning paper will be considered favorably for publication in City and Society.

For further information or to submit entries contact Emanuela Guano: eguano@gsu.edu


Emanuela Guano, PhD
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Anthropology and Geography
Sparks Hall 339A
Georgia State University
Atlanta, GA 30303
USA
Tel. (404) 651-1764
Fax (404) 651-3235

From acjancius at ysu.edu  Tue May 10 15:38:43 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Tue May 10 14:39:12 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 Call for Articles: "Gender and the State Reform in Latin American
 and the Caribbean"
Message-ID: <001c01c5558f$8176fbb0$1ea796ac@toshibauser>

Pol?tica y Gesti?n

"Gender and the State Reform in Latin American and the Caribbean"

 

The peer-reviewed journal Pol?tica y Gesti?n, hosted by the Escuela de Pol?tica y Gobierno at the Universidad Nacional de San Mart?n (Buenos Aires, Argentina), is organizing a thematic issue on gender and the state reform in Latin America and the Caribbean.  This issue seeks to provide a forum for studies that deal with the relationships between the first and second generation of state reforms and cultural, economic, and social situations of women.  Papers on gender differences in the civil service, cultural stereotypes of bureaucracy, and women as clients of changing organizational services and structures are welcome.  We also strongly encourage discussions into new terrains such as the relations between gender and the privatization of public utilities and women's collective action and incidence on public policies concerning the transformation of the state.

 

Papers can be submitted in Spanish, English, or Portuguese.  If accepted, the author will have to provide a Spanish version of the article.  The review panel is composed of international scholars from institutions in Latin America, Europe, and the US.  The deadline for submission is August 2005.  The expected publication date is March 2006.  All papers should be sent electronically to:  revistapoliticaygestion@unsam.edu.ar, Attn. Ana L. Rodr?guez-Gust?, Guest Editor.  For further information about style and guidelines contact:  revistapoliticaygestion@unsam.edu.ar.
From acjancius at ysu.edu  Wed May 11 13:08:38 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Wed May 11 12:09:21 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]TOC: Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist
	Geography
Message-ID: <013001c55643$b78bfed0$a35ea6ac@toshibauser>

TOC: Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography

Volume 12 Number 1/March, 2005 of Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of
Feminist Geography is now available on the Taylor & Francis web site at
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk.

This issue contains:

Women Rule? Globalization and the feminization of managerial and
professional workspaces in the Caribbean. p. 1
Beverley Mullings
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=T820M96578J8G1K5

Scrutiny in the Modern City: The Domestic public and the Toronto Local
Council of Women at the turn of the twentieth century p. 29
Phillip Gordon Mackintosh
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=M71Q01452813882V

The Entwined Spaces of 'Race', Sex and Gender p. 49
Tobie Saad, Perry Carter
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=L2T3200325N6V42N

'AIDS Capital of the World': Representing race, sex and space in Belle
Glade, Florida p. 53
Meredith Raimondo
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=M3716V01W6463505

MakingG?eras: Selling white identities on late-night Mexican television p.
71
JAMIE WINDERS, John Paul Jones III, Michael James Higgins
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=L46N361815364H44

Guada-narco-lupe, Maquilara?as and the Discursive Construction of Gender and
Difference on the US-Mexico Border in Mexican Media Re-presentations p. 95
Margath A. Walker
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=R20858117473317H

Contesting Identity: Politics of gays and lesbians in Toronto in the 1970s
p. 113
Catherine Jean Nash
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=GTL24574L3674182

Book Reviews p. 137
Orna Blumen
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=X70578079J175520



If you are not a current subscriber to this publication, you can request a
free sample issue here.
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=csi;100640

ONWARD DISSEMINATION OF CONTENTS PAGES
List owners and Moderators: we would welcome the opportunity of telling your
list members about our free SARA service and positively invite all
Moderators to mention the service to their members and to encourage them to
sign up personally on our Home Page at http://www.tandf.co.uk/sara



From acjancius at ysu.edu  Thu May 12 11:56:47 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Thu May 12 10:58:06 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]ANN: Volunteer with Refugee Populations
Message-ID: <001101c55702$d55a1950$b6ff9cac@toshibauser>

ANN: Volunteer with Refugee Populations

Unite For Sight
Contact Information: Jennifer Staple
Email: JStaple@uniteforsight.org

URL http://www.uniteforsight.org Description

Unite For Sight has volunteer opportunities in refugee camps in Ghana,
Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Volunteers work with the refugee
communities to document their stories and help them achieve their goals,
whether through education or through starting small businesses. Unite For
Sight volunteer opportunities also include health-related programs:
prescribe eyeglasses; implement eye health education programs; screen for
eye disease and coordinate eye care by doctors.


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Sat May 14 17:02:45 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Sat May 14 16:04:06 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 CFP: Developments and Patterns of Migration Processes in Central
 and Eastern Europe (Prague)
Message-ID: <004701c558bf$e8858730$769185ac@toshibauser>

PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE! THANK YOU

***************************************************************
WORKSHOP ON DEVELOPMENTS AND PATTERNS OF MIGRATION PROCESSES IN
CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, 25 - 27 August 2005 in Prague
***************************************************************

Deadline for submitting abstracts is 15 JUNE 2005

The Multicultural Center Prague and Faculty of Humanities of Charles
University in Prague will hold a three-day workshop on `Migration
Processes in Central Eastern Europe'. The aim is to bring together
researchers and experts from academia and non-governmental
organisations to discuss current migration patterns and related issues
in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We invite both
young and more experienced specialists to submit an abstract of their
presentation for the afternoon seminar sessions of the workshop (see
description below).

The workshop will incorporate debates about migration theories,
presentations of empirically based research in the "region," and
experiences of non-governmental representatives dealing with the issue
of migration in CEE.

Additionally, the initiative is envisaged as the first step towards
long-term cooperation of migration analysts and experts, thus creating
an interdisciplinary network for a dynamic dialogue. The main
coordinator - the Migration Online section of the Multicultural Center
Prague - specializes in providing information and analyses of
migration processes and policies in the Czech Republic and other (not
only) Central Eastern European countries. Its website
www.migrationonline.cz shall serve as the platform for the future
cooperation. This workshop is organized with the generous support of
the Open Society Fund Prague within the framework of the East East
Program and UNHCR Czech Republic.

Organisation of the workshop
****************************

1) Three morning PANELS, delivered by invited key speakers and
experts. Some of the invited participants are: Dusan Drbohlav (Charles
University, Prague), Nina Glick Schiller (Max Planck Institute for
Social Anthropology, Halle), Endre Sik (ELTE University, Budapest),
Dariusz Stola (Center of Migration Research, Warsaw), Claire Wallace
(Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna), Dumitru Sandu (Bucharest
University).

- Migration patterns and policies in Central and Eastern Europe
- Socio-Anthropological challenges for studying migration
- Reception of refugees in Central Eastern Europe

2) The afternoon sessions will consist of SEMINARS organised around
the following areas:

- Integrating gender, class, ethnicity and age into the studies of
migration
- Refugees in Central and Eastern Europe: reception, integration and
various institutional responses
- The impacts of migration on local social structures: `receiving' and
`sending' settings, urban and rural, international and national
- Borders and borderlands of the European Union
- Migration management: the role of non-governmental organizations,
experts and researchers
- Migration policies and migrants' practices
- Comparing forms of migrants' exclusion and inclusion in Central
Eastern Europe: from citizen(-ship), denizen, asylum-seeker to
foreigner, alien and illegal

SUBMITTED ABSTRACTS SHALL ADDRESS ONE OF THE TOPICS OF THE SEMINARS.

While researchers are expected to present a paper based on their
research, NGO representatives can also deliver a presentation based on
their experiences with assisting migrants, cooperating and negotiating
with governmental organizations and/or other NGOs, etc. All
presentations should not be longer than 15-20 minutes.  The written
draft of the presentation shall be submitted two weeks before the
workshop. The working language will be English and there will be no
translation provided.

More detailed descriptions of the topics along with the registration
form and other information on the workshop will soon be available at
www.migrationonline.cz/workshop.shtml.

Interested applicants shall write an abstract (not more than 500
words), fill in the registration form, and send it along with their
curriculum vitae (including a list of publications if any) to
migrace@mkc.cz. Completed applications are to be submitted
electronically at the latest by 15 June. Applicants will be notified
about the results of the application by 21 June. Should you have any
further questions, do not hesitate to contact Marek Canek at
Multicultural Center Prague, Vodickova 36, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech
Republic, email: mise@mkc.cz, tel./fax +420 - 296 325 345.
From acjancius at ysu.edu  Sun May 15 21:45:20 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Sun May 15 20:46:38 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Call for Articles: "Bridging National Borders in North
	America"
Message-ID: <003c01c559b0$8d5f0ce0$5e4a83ac@toshibauser>

 "Bridging National Borders in North America"

Proposals for scholarly papers concerning the U.S-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican
borders are solicited for a symposium co-sponsored by the William P.
Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University (SMU)
and the Department of History at Simon Fraser University (SFU). A workshop
for participants and initial public presentations will be held at SFU in
greater Vancouver in Fall 2006, to be followed in Spring 2007 by a
conference at SMU in Dallas, Texas. Ultimately a university press will
publish the papers as a volume edited by conference organizers Andrew
Graybill and Benjamin Johnson.

These two meetings will bring together scholars of both of North America's
borders. Long ignored or given little attention by historians, borders have
recently become the sites of deep scholarly interest. Today both the
Canadian-U.S. and Mexican-U.S. borderlands are burgeoning economically and
demographically, and the movements of goods and people through them are
important subjects of political debate and agitation. For historians, the
physical edges of nations may reveal the most about the contingency of
national histories and provide the best prospects for creating accounts of
the past that transcend both the geographic and conceptual limits imposed by
international boundaries. Nevertheless, students of the Canadian-U.S. and
Mexican-U.S. border regions generally work in isolation from one another.
Indeed, "borderlands" is generally used as shorthand to refer to the
present-day U.S. southwest and Mexican north, with little thought to the
border that divides Canada and the United States.

The goal of the symposium is to explore what scholars of the Canadian-U.S.
and Mexican-U.S. borders might learn from one another. To what extent is
there a shared history of North America's borders? How, for example, did
Indian peoples/First Nations respond to the bisection of their traditional
homelands in the nineteenth century? How did borders hinder and foster labor
migrations? How have "vice" industries developed in similar ways along both
borders? What were the environmental implications of border-making, such as
the impact upon migratory animal populations or trans-border ranching and
farming industries? To what extent did disparate groups such as U.S. policy
makers, Chinese labor contractors, drug smugglers, and commercial fishermen
apply the knowledge gained in one borderlands to the other? Although there
is no pre-set list of topics or chapters, our hope is to assemble a volume
that demonstrates how joining the history of both of North America's borders
might further the agenda of borderlands history.

We welcome submissions focusing on any time period from the creation of
national borders to the present from scholars of any rank, from graduate
student to full professor. Papers may compare a common dynamic on both
borders, or, alternatively, may analyze one border in a way that invites
direct comparison or pairing with another essay concerning the other border.
Please send a CV and description of an original, ongoing project to Andrew
Graybill by September 15. The description, of up to five pages, should both
describe the research and explain how it serves the goals of the conferences
and resulting book. Approximately eight papers will be chosen for the
conferences and resulting volume. Queries can be directed either to Graybill
or Johnson.

Benjamin Johnson
bjohnson@smu.edu
Andrew Graybill
agraybill2@unl.edu
Department of History
612 Oldfather Hall
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE 68588-0327


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May 16 18:32:26 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May 16 17:33:53 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Updates to Cyberhood Website
Message-ID: <003d01c55a5e$c414f2a0$24c480ac@toshibauser>

The CyberHood's mission is to build a virtual community where students,
scholars, practitioners, and social activists, who want to change urban
society and improve the plight of people of color, can find each other,
share information, exchange ideas, and build professional relationships. Our
goal is to build a community that encourages dialogue, facilitates research,
and spawns joint ventures. The CyberHood is a place where people come
together to understand and change the world. Please visit our website at
www.thecyberhood.net.

The following updates have been made to the Cyberhood website
(www.thecyberhood.net)

1. A New Featured Question Has Been Added

2. A New Featured Site Has Been Added - www.livingcities.org

3. A New Featured Program Has Been Added - Urban Planning Program,
University at Kansas

4. A New Featured Paper Has Been Added - "Democracy and Bureaucracy in a
Community Planning Process" by Robert J. Chaskin.

5. New Urban Community Projects Have Been Added

In addition, books and syllabi are updated in an ongoing manner.

Remember to send any materials to be added to the Cyberhood along with
comments for website development.


From tamardiana at yahoo.com  Sat May 14 21:47:29 2005
From: tamardiana at yahoo.com (Tamar Diana Wilson)
Date: Wed May 18 17:53:13 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]New book:  Subsidizing Capitalism
Message-ID: <20050515034729.64649.qmail@web31809.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Since everyone is posting their new books (and it is
nice to know of them), I would like to post mine.

Wilson, Tamar Diana.  2005.  Subsidizing Capitalism:
Brickmakers on the U.S.-Mexican Border. Albany:  SUNY
Press (Studies in the Anthropology of Work) 
Forthcoming in July, unfortunately not in paperback.

Subsidizing Capitalism:  Brickmakers on the
U.S./Mexican Border
	In Mexicali, as elsewhere in Mexico, brickmakers may
labor at a piece-rate on brickyards owned or rented-in
by others, may rent-in brickyards, may become
brickyard owners, and as owners or renters-in may use
unpaid family members and /or employees to work for
them.  There is thus a heterogeneous relation to the
“means of production” in this informal sector
activity.  The labor of wives and offspring may aid
brickmakers to move from non-owner to ownership
status.  The economic activities of self-employed
brickmakers may be considered counterhegemonic in that
they avoid proletarianization in the formal sector. 
Their production is subsumed by capitalism, however;
their labor and the labor of their wives and children
subsidizes capitalist enterprise by providing bricks
to build tourist hotels, factories, bank and office
buildings and shopping malls at a cost below that
which would be acceptable for a brick factory run
according to profit-making principles and hiring
formalized labor.  
	Combining Chayanovian and neo-Marxist approaches,
Subsidizing Capitalism:  Brickmakers on the
U.S./Mexican border discusses the similarities between
peasants and brickmakers, the trajectory from  piece
worker to petty commodity producer to petty
capitalist, the economic value of women and children’s
work as part of the family labor force, and how the
neo-patriarchal household is intrinsic to petty
commodity production.  It also compares the structural
position of garbage pickers to brickmakers. An
appendix compares the findings of the author with
those of Scott Cook, pioneer in the studies of the
Mexican hand-made brick industry. Interspersed
throughout the monograph are short stores and poems
either giving the brickmakers’ point of view, or
presenting their lives in a format alternative to
academic prose.  Twenty-three photographs are included.

From acjancius at ysu.edu  Sun May 22 22:10:07 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Sun May 22 21:11:36 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]ESSHC conference on "migration and border control"
Message-ID: <018901c55f34$2adb7250$e66b9fac@toshibauser>

From: Barbara Luethi <barbara.luethi@unibas.ch>

Dear all,

For the ESSHC conference I am looking for participants interested in a 
panel on the topics "Migration and Border Control" and/or "Medicine at 
the Borders". Is anyone interested in sharing a panel with me? My own 
work deals with the medicalization of border control in the US (mainly 
between 1880 and 1930). I would be greatful for any contacts.

All the best,


Barbara L?thi

------------------------------
Dr. des. Barbara L?thi
Historisches Seminar
Universit?t Basel
Hirschg?sslein 21
CH - 4051 Basel
Switzerland
barbara.luethi@unibas.ch
From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May 23 13:19:38 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May 23 12:20:55 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 Savage Minds: A web log to bring anthropology to a wider audience
Message-ID: <006601c55fb3$39bd9e40$da24abac@toshibauser>


http://savageminds.org/


Savage Minds

About Savage Minds:

Savage Minds is a collective web log devoted to both bringing anthropology 
to a wider audience as well as providing an online forum for discussing the 
latest developments in the field. We are a group of Ph.D. students and 
professors teaching and studying anthropology and are excited to share it 
with you. You can find out more about the contributors by clicking on the 
'about' pages on the right for each of us.


Anthropologists as Counter-Insurgents

Posted by oneman under Academia , Culture Notes

...It is generally assumed that anthropologists are CIA agents or otherwise 
connected with Western military apparatus. It certainly helps 
anthropologists in dealing with these accusations if they can honestly say 
that they are not. This is why most anthropologists look down on covert 
research, why Franz Boas exposed the activities of anthropologists who had 
worked as spies during WWI -in the words of the current referendum to 
uncensure Boas:

Boas insisted on the distinction between researchers - scientists whose 
lives are dedicated to "the service of truth" - and spies under the 
employment of the US Government..

It is crucial that anthropologists be taken at their word in the field-not 
being able to dispel these perceptions can be harmful not only to our 
research, but to our lives. ... 

From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May 23 13:31:54 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May 23 12:33:16 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]World Urban Forum III, Vancouver, Canada 
Message-ID: <009f01c55fb4$f1fe6420$da24abac@toshibauser>

World Urban Forum III, Vancouver, Canada
Vancouver, Canada, 19 to 23 June 2006
http://www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2006/

UN-HABITAT and the Canadian government have started preparations for the 3rd
World Urban Forum, a meeting that will bring together public and private
institutions, experts and decision-makers from around the world to discuss
the key urban challenges facing the world today. The 3rd World Urban Forum
will take place in Vancouver, Canada, from 19 to 23 June 2006.
It is projected that in the next fifty years, two-thirds of humanity will be
living in towns and cities. A major challenge is to minimize burgeoning
poverty in cities and improve the urban poor's access to basic facilities
such as shelter, clean water and sanitation.

The number of people attending the World Urban Forum (WUF) has risen sharply
from 1,200 at the 1st World Urban Forum in Nairobi in 2002
(http://www.unhabitat.org/uf/index.htm), to 4,400 at the 2nd World Urban
Forum in Barcelona in 2004 (http://www.unhabitat.org/wuf/2004/default.asp).
The Forum is successful because it provides for the effective participation
of non-governmental organizations, community-based organizations, urban
professionals, academics, governments, local authorities and national and
international associations of local governments. It gives all partners a
common platform in the conceptual, preparatory and formal discussions.

The WUF differs from UN governing bodies because it does not follow the
formal rules of procedure that usually govern official UN meetings. The
working arrangements of the Forum are deliberately kept simple and
relatively informal to generate a healthy and inclusive debate on urban
issues.
The 3rd World Urban Forum will retain the format of dialogue meetings that
provide the main focus of the Forum, and networking events that allow
Habitat Agenda Partners to meet a narrower, more specialized audience.
UN-HABITAT has also taken into account feedback on the 2nd World Urban Forum
from participants to further improve the organization of the next Forum. The
agency will announce the main theme of the 3rd World Urban Forum based on
the results of initial consultations with its partners.

In his invitation to participants of the 2nd World Urban Forum to join
Canada and UN-HABITAT to the next Forum , Canada 's Minister for Labour and
Housing, Mr. Joe Fontana, observed that "a thread across all countries is
that each of our citizens is working to build a safe and healthy life for
themselves, their families and their communities. The World Urban Forum
brings us together to exchange information, insights and best practices on
the challenges of the new millennium."
The Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, expressed her
pleasure at hosting the next World Urban Forum in Vancouver , Canada , the
site of the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, which led
to the establishment of a UN agency dedicated to human settlements
development two years later. At the conclusion of the 2nd World Urban Forum
in Barcelona, Mrs. Tibaijuka told participants: "As we close this final
session of the second World Urban Forum, the focus will now shift to
Vancouver and Canada, site of the third World Urban Forum in 2006. I would
like to thank the Government of Canada for inviting us to return to
Vancouver , the birthplace of UN-HABITAT in 1976. "


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Tue May 24 16:13:06 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Tue May 24 15:48:50 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Army's Take on Anthropology's Involvement in the Military
Message-ID: <008901c56094$a37d95b0$5324a2ac@toshibauser>

I'm not sure if the counter insurgency bit [referred to in the Savage Minds
weblog] was in reference to the below article, but this was just printed by
the Military Review, Department of the Army Headquarters Mar/Apr 2005. It is
the Army's take on the last century of US Cultural Anthropology:
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=150529

Andy Newman
Graduate Student
Department of Anthropology
Graduate Center, CUNY

Full Article:
Rednova.com
by  Montgomery McFate, J.D., Ph.D.
http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=150529
Posted on: Wednesday, 18 May 2005, 03:00 CDT

Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious
Relationship

SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS is going on inside the U.S. Department of Defense
(DOD). Over the past 2 years, senior leaders have been calling for something
unusual and unexpected-cultural knowledge of the adversary. In July 2004,
retired Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr., wrote an article for the Naval
War College's Proceedings magazine that opposed the commonly held view
within the U.S. military that success in war is best achieved by
overwhelming technological advantage. Scales argues that the type of
conflict we are now witnessing in Iraq requires "an exceptional ability to
understand people, their culture, and their motivation."1 In October 2004,
Arthur Cebrowski, Director of the Office of Force Transformation, concluded
that "knowledge of one's enemy and his culture and society may be more
important than knowledge of his order of battle." In November 2004, the
Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) sponsored the Adversary Cultural Knowledge and National Security
Conference, the first major DOD conference on the social sciences since
1962.

Why has cultural knowledge suddenly become such an imperative? Primarily
because traditional methods of warfighting have proven inadequate in Iraq
and Afghanistan. U.S. technology, training, and doctrine designed to counter
the Soviet threat are not designed for low-intensity counterinsurgency
operations where civilians mingle freely with combatants in complex urban
terrain.
The major combat operations that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime were
relatively simple because they required the U.S. military to do what it does
best-conduct maneuver warfare in flat terrain using overwhelming firepower
with air support. However, since the end of the "hot" phase of the war,
coalition forces have been fighting a complex war against an enemy they do
not understand. The insurgents' organizational structure is not military,
but tribal. Their tactics are not conventional, but asymmetrical. Their
weapons are not tanks and fighter planes, but improvised explosive devices
(IEDs). They do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, nor do they appear to
have any informal rules of engagement.

Countering the insurgency in Iraq requires cultural and social knowledge of
the adversary. Yet, none of the elements of U.S. national power-diplomatic,
military, intelligence, or economic- explicitly take adversary culture into
account in the formation or execution of policy. This cultural knowledge gap
has a simple cause- the almost total absence of anthropology within the
national- security establishment.
Once called "the handmaiden of colonialism," anthropology has had a long,
fruitful relationship with various elements of national power, which ended
suddenly following the Vietnam War. The strange story of anthropology's
birth as a warfighting discipline, and its sudden plunge into the abyss of
postmodernism, is intertwined with the U.S. failure in Vietnam. The curious
and conspicuous lack of anthropology in the national-security arena since
the Vietnam War has had grave consequences for countering the insurgency in
Iraq, particularly because political policy and military operations based on
partial and incomplete cultural knowledge are often worse than none at all.

A Lack of Cultural Awareness

In a conflict between symmetric adversaries, where both are evenly matched
and using similar technology, understanding the adversary's culture is
largely irrelevant. The Cold War, for all its complexity, pitted two powers
of European heritage against each other. In a counterinsurgency operation
against a non-Western adversary, however, culture matters. U.S. Department
of the Army Field Manual (FM) (interim) 3-07.22, Counterinsurgency
Operations, defines insurgency as an "organized movement aimed at the
overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed
conflict. It is a protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken
government control and legitimacy while increasing insurgent control.
Political power is the central issue in an insurgency [emphasis added]."
Political considerations must therefore circumscribe military action as a
fundamental matter of strategy. As British Field Marshall Gerald Templar
explained in 1953, "The answer lies not in pouring more troops into the
jungle, but rests in the hearts and minds of the . . . people." Winning
hearts and minds requires understanding the local culture.

Aside from Special Forces, most U.S. soldiers are not trained to understand
or operate in foreign cultures and societies. One U.S. Army captain in Iraq
said, "I was never given classes on how to sit down with a sheik. . . . He
is giving me the traditional dishdasha and the entire outfit of a sheik
because he claims that I am a new sheik in town so I must be dressed as one.
I don't know if he is trying to gain favor with me because he wants
something [or if it is] something good or something bad." In fact, as soon
as coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein, they became de facto players in
the Iraqi social system. The young captain had indeed become the new sheik
in town and was being properly honored by his Iraqi host.

As this example indicates, U.S. forces frequently do not know who their
friends are, and just as often they do not know who their enemies are. A
returning commander from the 3d Infantry Division observed: "I had perfect
situational awareness. What I lacked was cultural awareness. I knew where
every enemy tank was dug in on the outskirts of Tallil. Only problem was, my
soldiers had to fight fanatics charging on foot or in pickups and firing
AK-47s and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. Great technical intelligence.
Wrong enemy."

While the consequences of a lack of cultural knowledge might be most
apparent (or perhaps most deadly) in a counterinsurgency, a failure to
understand foreign cultures has been a major contributing factor in multiple
national- security and intelligence failures. In her 1962 study, Pearl
Harbor: Warning and Decision, Roberta Wohlstetter demonstrated that although
the U.S. Government picked up Japanese signals (including conversations,
decoded cables, and ship movements), it failed to distinguish signals from
noise-to understand which signals were meaningful-because it was
unimaginable that the Japanese might do something as "irrational" as
attacking the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific fleet.
A101st Airborne Division trooper examines a captured RPG and makeshift
bamboo launcher, 1969.
Such ethnocentrism (the inability to put aside one's own cultural attitudes
and imagine the world from the perspective of a different group) is
especially dangerous in a national-security context because it can distort
strategic thinking and result in assumptions that the adversary will behave
exactly as one might behave. India's nuclear tests on 11 and 13 May 1998
came as a complete surprise because of this type of "mirror-imaging" among
CIA analysts. According to the internal investigation conducted by former
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David Jeremiah, the real problem
was an assumption by intelligence analysts and policymakers that the Indians
would not test their nuclear weapons because Americans would not test
nuclear weapons in similar circumstances. According to Jeremiah, "The
intelligence and the policy communities had an underlying mind-set going
into these tests that the B.J.P. [Bharatiya Janata Party] would behave as we
[would] behave."

The United States suffers from a lack of cultural knowledge in its
national-security establishment for two primary, interrelated reasons.
First, anthropology is largely and conspicuously absent as a discipline
within our national-security enterprise, especially within the intelligence
community and DOD. Anthropology is a social science discipline whose primary
object of study has traditionally been nonWestern, tribal societies. The
methodologies of anthropology include participant observation, fieldwork,
and historical research. One of the central epistemological tenets of
anthropology is cultural relativism-understanding other societies from
within their own framework.

The primary task of anthropology has historically been translating knowledge
gained in the "field" back to the West. While it might seem self-evident
that such a perspective would be beneficial to the national security
establishment, only one of the national defense universities (which provide
master's degreelevel education to military personnel) currently has an
anthropologist on its faculty. At West Point, which traditionally places a
heavy emphasis on engineering, anthropology is disparagingly referred to by
cadets as "nuts and huts." And, although political science is well
represented as a discipline in senior policymaking circles, there has never
been an anthropologist on the National security Council.

The second and related reason for the current lack of cultural knowledge is
the failure of the U.S. military to achieve anything resembling victory in
Vietnam. Following the Vietnam War, the Joint Chiefs of Staffcollectively
put their heads in the sand and determined they would never fight an
unconventional war again. From a purely military perspective, it was easier
for them to focus on the threat of Soviet tanks rolling through the Fulda
Gap, prompting a major European land war-a war they could easily fight using
existing doctrine and technology and that would have a clear, unequivocal
winner.

The preference for the use of overwhelming force and clear campaign
objectives was formalized in what has become known as the Weinberger
doctrine. In a 1984 speech, secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
articulated six principles designed to ensure the Nation would never become
involved in another Vietnam. By the mid-1980s, there was cause for concern:
deployment of troops to El Salvador seemed likely and the involvement in
Lebanon had proved disastrous following the bombing of the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut. Responding to these events, Weinberger believed troops
should be committed only if U.S. national interests were at stake; only in
support of clearly defined political and military objectives; and only "with
the clear intention of winning."

In 1994, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell (formerly a
military assistant to Weinberger) rearticulated the Weinberger doctrine's
fundamental elements, placing a strong emphasis on the idea that force, when
used, should be overwhelming and disproportionate to the force used by the
enemy. The Powell- Weinberger doctrine institutionalized a preference for
"major combat operations"-big wars-as a matter of national preference.
Although the Powell-Weinberger doctrine was eroded during the Clinton years;
during operations other than war in Haiti, Somali, and Bosnia; and during
the second Bush Administration's pre-emptive strikes in Afghanistan and
Iraq, no alternative doctrine has emerged to take its place.

We have no doctrine for "nationbuilding," which the military eschews as a
responsibility because it is not covered by Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which
outlines the responsibilities of the military as an element of national
power. Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations and Support Operations, was
not finalized until February 2003, despite the fact the U.S. military was
already deeply engaged in such operations in Iraq. Field Manual
3-07.22-meant to be a temporary document-is still primarily geared toward
fighting an enemy engaged in Maoist revolutionary warfare, a type of
insurgency that has little application to the situation in Iraq where
multiple organizations are competing for multiple, confusing objectives.

Since 1923, the core tenet of U.S. warfighting strategy has been that
overwhelming force deployed against an equally powerful state will result in
military victory. Yet in a counterinsurgency situation such as the one the
United States currently faces in Iraq, "winning" through overwhelming force
is often inapplicable as a concept, if not problematic as a goal. While
negotiating in Hanoi a few days before Saigon fell, U.S. Army Colonel Harry
Summers, Jr., said to a North Vietnamese colonel, "You know, you never
defeated us on the battlefield." The Vietnamese colonel replied, "That may
be so, but it is also irrelevant." The same could be said of the conflict in
Iraq.

Winning on the battlefield is irrelevant against an insurgent adversary
because the struggle for power and legitimacy among competing factions has
no purely military solution. Often, the application of overwhelming force
has the negative, unintended effect of strengthening the insurgency by
creating martyrs, increasing recruitment, and demonstrating the "brutality"
of state forces.
The alternative approach to fighting insurgency, such as the British
eventually adopted through trial and error in Northern Ireland, involves the
following: A comprehensive plan to alleviate the political conditions behind
the insurgency; civil-military cooperation; the application of minimum
force; deep intelligence; and an acceptance of the protracted nature of the
conflict. Deep cultural knowledge of the adversary is inherent to the
British approach.

Although cultural knowledge of the adversary matters in counterinsurgency,
it has little importance in major combat operations. Because the Powell
Weinberger doctrine meant conventional, large-scale war was the only
acceptable type of conflict, no discernable present or future need existed
to develop doctrine and expertise in unconventional war, including
counterinsurgency. Thus, there was no need to incorporate cultural knowledge
into doctrine, training, or warfighting. Until now, that is.
On 21 October 2003, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing to
examine lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom. Scales' testimony at
the hearing prompted U.S. Representative "Ike" Skelton to write a letter to
secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in which he said: "In simple terms, if
we had better understood the Iraqi culture and mindset, our war plans would
have been even better than they were, the plan for the postwar period and
all of its challenges would have been far better, and we [would have been]
better prepared for the 'long slog' . . . to win the peace in Iraq."

Even such DOD luminaries as Andrew Marshall, the mysterious director of the
Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, are now calling for "anthropologylevel
knowledge of a wide range of cultures" because such knowledge will prove
essential to conducting future operations. Although senior U.S. Government
officials such as Skelton are calling for "personnel in our civilian ranks
who have cultural knowledge and understanding to inform the policy process,"
there are few anthropologists either available or willing to play in the
same sandbox with the military.

The Current State of the Discipline

Although anthropology is the only academic discipline that explicitly seeks
to understand foreign cultures and societies, it is a marginal contributor
to U.S. national-security policy at best and a punch line at worst. Over the
past 30 years, as a result of anthropologists' individual career choices and
the tendency toward reflexive self-criticism contained within the discipline
itself, the discipline has become hermetically sealed within its Ivory
Tower.

Unlike political science or economics, anthropology is primarily an academic
discipline. The majority of newly minted anthropologists brutally compete
for a limited number of underpaid university faculty appointments, and
although there is an increasing demand from industry for applied
anthropologists to advise on product design, marketing, and organizational
culture, anthropologists still prefer to study the "exotic and useless," in
the words of A.L. Kroeber.

The retreat to the Ivory Tower is also a product of the deep isolationist
tendencies within the discipline. Following the Vietnam War, it was
fashionable among anthropologists to reject the discipline's historic ties
to colonialism. Anthropologists began to reinvent their discipline, as
demonstrated by Kathleen Cough's 1968 article, Anthropology: Child of
Imperialism, followed by Dell Hymes' 1972 anthology, Reinventing
Anthropology, and culminating in editor Talal Asad's Anthropology and the
Colonial Encounter.

 Rejecting anthropology's status as the handmaiden of colonialism,
anthropologists refused to "collaborate" with the powerful, instead vying to
represent the interests of indigenous peoples engaged in neocolonial
struggles. In the words of Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, anthropologists would
now speak for the "subaltern." Thus began a systematic interrogation of the
contemporary state of the discipline as well as of the colonial
circumstances from which it emerged. Armed with critical hermeneutics,
frequently backed up by self- reflexive neo-Marxism, anthropology began a
brutal process of self- flagellation, to a degree almost unimaginable to
anyone outside the discipline. The turn toward postmodernism within
anthropology exacerbated the tendency toward self-flagellation, with the
central goal being "the deconstraction of the centralized, logocentric
master narratives of European culture." This movement away from descriptive
ethnography has produced some of the worst writing imaginable. For example,
Cultural Anthropology, one of the most respected anthropology journals in
the United States, commonly publishes such incomprehensible articles as
"Recovering True Selves in the Electro- Spiritual Field of Universal Love"
and "Material Consumers, Fabricating Subjects: Perplexity, Global
Connectivity Discourses, and Transnational Feminist Research."

Anthropologist Stephen Tyler recently took fourth place in the Bad Writing
Contest with this selection from Writing Culture, a remarkable passage
describing postmodern ethnography: "It thus relativizes discourse not just
to form-that familiar perversion of the modernist; nor to authorial
intention-that conceit of the romantics; nor to a foundational world beyond
discourse-that desperate grasping for a separate reality of the mystic and
scientist alike; nor even to history and ideology-those refuges of the
hermeneuticist; nor even less to language-that hypostasized abstraction of
the linguist; nor, ultimately, even to discourse- that Nietzschean
playground of world-lost signifiers of the structuralist and grammatologist,
but to all or none of these, for it is anarchic, though not for the sake of
anarchy, but because it refuses to become a fetishized object among
objects-to be dismantled, compared, classified, and neutered in that parody
of scientific scrutiny known as criticism."

The Colonial Era

>From the foregoing discussion, it might be tempting to conclude that
anthropology is absent from the policy arena because it really is "exotic
and useless." However, this was not always the case. Anthropology actually
evolved as an intellectual tool to consolidate imperial power at the margins
of empire.

In Britain the development and growth of anthropology was deeply connected
to colonial administration. As early as 1908, anthropologists began training
administrators of the Sudanese civil service. This relationship was quickly
institutionalized: in 1921, the International Institute of African Languages
and Cultures was established with financing from various colonial
governments, and Lord Lugard, the former governor of Nigeria, became head of
its executive council. The organization's mission was based on Bronislaw
Malinowski's article, "Practical Anthropology," which argued that
anthropological knowledge should be applied to solve the problems faced by
colonial administrators, including those posed by "savage law, economics,
customs, and institutions." Anthropological knowledge was frequently useful,
especially in understanding the power dynamics in traditional societies. In
1937, for example, the Royal Anthropological Institute's Standing Committee
on Applied Anthropology noted that anthropological research would "indicate
the persons who hold key positions in the community and whose influence it
would be important to enlist on the side of projected reforms." In the words
of Lord Hailey, anthropologists were indeed "of great assistance in
providing Government with knowledge which must be the basis of
administrative policy."

A North African soldier serving with Free French and American forces
sharpens his bayonet.
Anthropology as a tool of empire was, however, not without its detractors.
In 1951, Sir Philip E. Mitchell wrote: "Anthropologists busied themselves
[with] all the minutiae of obscure trial and personal practices, especially
if they were agreeably associated with sex or flavoured with obscenity.
There resulted a large number of painstaking and often accurate records of
interesting habits and practices, of such length that no one had time to
read them and [which were] often, in any case, irrelevant. . . ."

The World War I Era

After the classic age of empire came to a close, anthropologists and
archeologists became key players in the new game in town- espionage. Their
habits of wandering in remote areas and skill at observation proved to be
quite useful to the government. Although a number of anthropologists worked
as spies during World War I (including Arthur Carpenter, Thomas Gann, John
Held, Samuel Lothrop, and Herbert Spinden), the most famous was
Harvard-trained archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, who had discovered the
ancient city of Naachtun and had direeled the reconstruction of Chichn Itz
while serving as head of the Carnegie Archaeological Program from 1914 to
1929. Morley, who was one of the most respected archeologists of the early
20th century, was also the "best secret agent the United States produced
during World War I."

In 1916, when German agents were allegedly attempting to establish a Central
American base for submarine warfare, the Office of Naval Intelligence
recruited Morley, who used archeological fieldwork as cover to traverse
2,000 miles of remote Central American coastline, enduring "ticks,
mosquitoes, fleas, sand flies, saddle-sores, seasickness, barrunning,
indifferent grub, and sometimes no grub at all, rock-hard beds, infamous
hostelries, and even earthquakes." While Morley and company found no German
submarine bases, he did produce nearly 10,000 pages of intelligence reports
documenting everything from navigable shoreline features to the economic
impact of sisal production.

Morley's activities were not well regarded by many anthropologists. On 20
December 1919, Franz Boas, the most well- known anthropologist in America,
published a letter in The Nation, to the effect that Morley and others
(although they were not named directly) "have prostituted science by using
it as a cover for their activities as spies. A soldier whose business is
murder as a fine art . . . accept[s] the code of morality to which modern
society still conforms. Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life
is the service of truth."

A German Jew by birth, Boas was an adamant pacifist and an outspoken critic
of the war, writing multiple editorials and newspaper articles expressing
his opinion that World War I was a war of imperialist aggression.
(Ironically, many of Boas' students, including Margaret Mead and Ruth
Benedict went on to work for the military in roles Boas would have, no
doubt, questioned.)
For his public allegations against the unnamed anthropologists, the American
Anthropological Association censured Boas in 1919. The criticism of Morley
by his peers for his espionage activities and the resulting scuffle within
the American Anthropological Association (AAA) foreshadowed the reemergence
of the issue of covert anthropological support to the U.S. Government during
the 1960s.

The World War II Era

During World War II, the role of anthropologists within the
national-security arena was greatly expanded. Many anthropologists served in
the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the institutional predecessor to
both the CIA and Special Forces. Anthropologists served in a research
capacity and as operatives. Carleton Coon, a professor of anthropology at
Harvard, trained Moroccan resistance groups in sabotage, fought in the
battle of Kasserine Pass, and smuggled arms to French resistance groups in
German-occupied Morocco. His book about life in the OSS, A North Africa
Story: The Anthropologist as OSS Agent, contains a highly amusing account of
developing an IED in the shape of a donkey dropping.

Stretcher bearers prepare to evacuate American wounded near Buna, New
Guinea, 1942.
Other anthropologists also saw direct action: British ethnologist Tom
Harrisson parachuted into Borneo to train indigenous guerrillas to fight the
Japanese. Cora Du Bois, who served as Chief of the Indonesia section in the
OSS Research and Analysis Branch, became the head of the Southeast Asia
Command in Ceylon, where she ran resistance movements in Southeast Asian
countries under Japanese occupation. Du Bois received the Exceptional
Civilian Service Award in 1945 for her work with the Free Thai underground
movement.

Perhaps the most famous anthropologist who served in the OSS was Gregory
Bateson. Bateson, a British citizen, spent many years conducting
ethnographic research in New Guinea, the results of which were published in
1936 as Naven. At the beginning of World War II, having failed to find a
position with the British War Office, Bateson returned to the United States
and was recruited by the OSS, where he served as a civilian member of a
forward intelligence unit in the Arakan Mountains of Burma.

In addition to intelligence analysis, Bateson designed and produced "black
propaganda" radio broadcasts intended to undermine Japanese propaganda in
the Pacific Theater. He found the work distasteful, however, because he
believed that truth, especially the unpleasant truth, was healthy. Despite
his misgivings about deceitful propaganda, Bateson was a willing and
competent operative. In 1945, he volunteered to penetrate deep into enemy
territory to attempt the rescue of three OSS agents who had escaped from
their Japanese captors. For this service, Bateson was awarded the Pacific
Campaign Service Ribbon.

Bateson had remarkable strategic foresight concerning the effect of new
technology on warfare. While in the Pacific Theater, he wrote to the
legendary director of the OSS, "Wild Bill" Donovan, that the existence of
the nuclear bomb would change the nature of conflict, forcing nations to
engage in indirect methods of warfare. Bateson recommended to Donovan that
the United States not rely on conventional forces for defense but to
establish a third agency to employ clandestine operations, economic
controls, and psychological pressures in the new warfare.31 This
organization is, of course, now known as the Central Intelligence Agency.

Later in his career, Bateson was allegedly involved with a number of
experimental psychological warfare initiatives, including the CIA's
Operation MK-Ultra, which conducted mind-control research. It is generally
accepted that Bateson "turned on" the Beat poet Alien Ginsberg to LSD at the
Mental Research Institute, where Bateson was working on the causes of
schizophrenia.

Among anthropologists, Bateson is generally remembered not for his
activities in the OSS, but as Mead's husband. In 1932, he met Mead in the
remote Sepik River area of New Guinea. After conducting fieldwork together
in New Guinea, Bateson and Mead coproduced ethnographic films and
photodocumentation of Balinese kinesics.

Like her husband, Mead was also involved in the war effort. In addition to
producing pamphlets for the Office of War Information, she produced a study
for the National Research Council on the cultural food habits of people from
different national backgrounds in the United States. She also investigated
food distribution as a method of maintaining morale during wartime in the
United States. Along with Bateson and Geoffrey Gorer, Mead helped the OSS
establish a psychological warfare training unit for the Far East.

Like Bateson, Mead had reservations about the use of deceitful propaganda,
believing that such methods have "terrible possibilities of backfiring."
Mead's larger concern, however, was the "tremendous amount of resentment"
against using anthropological insights during the war. In particular, she
noted that using anthropologists to advise advisers is ineffective; to be
useful, anthropologists must work directly with policymakers.

In 1942, Mead published And Keep Your Powder Dry, a book on U.S. military
culture. According to Mead, Americans see aggression as a response rather
than a primary behavior; believe in the use of violence for altruistic,
never for selfish purposes; and view organized conflict as a finite task to
be completed. Once finished, Americans wal\k away and move on to the next
task. William O. Beeman points out that Mead's observations of U.S. national
strategic character seem to be borne out by the current administration's
characterization of the conflict in Iraq as a defensive war, prompted by the
imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction ready for imminent use and
undertaken for altruistic reasons, such as "bringing Democracy to Iraq,"
that would be short and limited in scope.36
In 1943, Benedict, Mead's long-time friend and collaborator, became the head
(and initially the sole member) of the Basic Analysis Section of the Bureau
of Overseas Intelligence of the Office of War Information (OWI), a position
Benedict sought to use "to get policy makers to take into account different
habits and customs of other parts of the world." While at OWI, Benedict
coauthored The Races of Mankind, a government pamphlet which refuted the
Nazi pseudo-theories of Aryan racial superiority. Conservative congressmen
attacked the pamphlet as communist propaganda, and the publicity surrounding
it led to the sale of 750,000 copies, its translation into seven languages,
and the production of a musical version in New York City.

Benedict also undertook research on Japanese personality and culture, the
effect of which cannot be overstated. Near the end of the war, senior
military leaders and U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt were convinced
the Japanese were "culturally incapable of surrender" and would fight to the
last man. Benedict and other OWI anthropologists were asked to study the
view of the emperor in Japanese society. The ensuing OWI position papers
convinced Roosevelt to leave the emperor out of the conditions of surrender
(rather than demanding unconditional surrender as he did of dictators Adolph
Hitler and Benito Mussolini). Much of Benedict's research for OWI was
published in 1946 as The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, considered by many as
a classic ethnography of Japanese military culture, despite Benedict never
having visited the country.

Since fieldwork in the traditional sense was impossible during wartime,
culture had to be studied remotely. The theoretical contribution of World
War II anthropologists to the discipline is commonly known as "culture at a
distance." Following the war, from 1947 to 1952, Mead, Benedict, and others
established a research program at Columbia University. Working under
contract to the U.S. Office of Naval Research, anthropologists developed
techniques for evaluating cultural artifacts, such as immigrant and refugee
testimonies, art, and travelers' accounts, to build up a picture of a
particular culture.

Most of the culture-at-a-distance studies were rooted in the premises of
developmental psychology, such as that the so-called national character of
any group of people could be traced to commonalities in
psychological-development processes. While some of their conclusions now
seem ridiculous (for example, Gorer's "swaddling hypothesis" to explain the
bipolar swings in Russian culture from emotional repression to aggressive
drinking), other research results were not only accurate but useful in a
military context.

Small Wars

In January 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy met with national security
adviser Walt Whitman Rostow to discuss various national- security threats.
Kennedy and Rostow turned their attention to the subject of Vietnam, and
Kennedy said: "This is the worst one we've got. You know, Eisenhower never
mentioned it. He talked at length about Laos, but never uttered the word
Vietnam."

Kennedy and Rostow's discussion (and Kennedy's approval of the
"Counterinsurgency Plan" for Vietnam 10 days after taking office) was
inspired by Major General Edward G. Lansdale's report on the situation in
Vietnam. Lansdale, who was widely believed to have been the model for Alden
Pyle in Graham Greene's The Quiet American, was a former advertising
executive who almost single-handedly prevented a communist takeover of the
Philippines. Lansdale helped install Ngo Dinh Diem as president of the
American-backed government of South Vietnam and, later, ran Operation
Mongoose, the covert plot to overthrow by any means necessary Fidel Castro's
government in Cuba.

Much of Lansdale's counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines can best
be described as applied military anthropology. For example, in the 1950s, as
part of his counterinsurgency campaign against the Huk rebels of the
Philippines, he conducted research into local superstitions, which he
exploited in "psywar": "One psywar operation played upon the popular dread
of an asuang, or vampire. . . . When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the
ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol.. . . They punctured
his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion, held the body up by the heels,
drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks
returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade,
every member of the patrol believed that the asuang had got him and that one
of them would be next. . . ." Lansdale noted that such tactics were
remarkably effective.

During the Huk Rebellion, the real guerrilla-warfare expert was Captain
Charles Bohannan, who later coauthored one of the best studies of practical
counterinsurgency, Counter-Guerrilla Operations: The Philippine Experience.
Bohannan, who fought as an anti-Japanese guerrilla in New Guinea and the
Philippines during World War II, remained in the Philippines as an Army
counterintelligence officer. He was a natural pick for the team when
Lansdale returned to the Philippines in 1950. Bohannan continued to work
with Lansdale in Vietnam (and apparently Laos) throughout the 1950s and
1960s, serving as deputy commander of the covert "Saigon Military Mission"
that Lansdale headed. Quite likely, Bohannan was also the military planner
for the Bay of Pigs.

Latin American soldiers receiving heliborne training from U.S. Special
Forces, 1969.
Bohannan had completed advanced graduate work in anthropology and was a
strong advocate of local cultural knowledge and "total immersion" during
training and operations.45 He was particularly interested in "operations
intended to influence the thinking of people." In 1959, for example, he was
a member of the secret U.S. "survey team" sent to Colombia to evaluate the
insurgency and provide a plan for U.S.-Colombian action. Much like
anthropologists conducting fieldwork, the team traveled more than 23,000
kilometers and interviewed more than 2,000 officials, civilians, and
guerrilla leaders. Their three-volume report reviewed the history of the
violence, the underlying socioeconomic conditions, and issued
recommendations for social, civil, and military reform to the Colombian and
U.S. governments.

Bohannan was a believer in the use of minimum force in counterinsurgency. In
an unpublished 1964 paper from a Vietnam posting, he objects to totalitarian
methods of counterinsurgency as being potentially counterproductive: "Mass
arrests, wholesale searches, and other seemingly easy methods of "population
control" can only strengthen opposition to the government." And, according
to Lansdale, overwhelming force was simply not effective for fighting an
insurgency: "Only unabashedly totalitarian governments, Communist or
colonialist, with relatively unlimited resources, can seriously think of, or
attempt, killing or capturing most of the insurgents and their supports."

Bohannan's mentor, Rufus Phillips (a former CIA operative who later headed
the Rural Affairs Section of the U.S Agency for the International
Development Mission in Vietnam) observed in a 1964 memorandum that the U.S.
military was bound by "conventional military thinking." The American command
was guided by neither a British-style dedication to a political
objective-however abusive the measures used to achieve it-nor any particular
interest in the nonmilitary side of U.S. counterinsurgency: "Everybody talks
about civic action and psychological warfare, but little command emphasis is
placed on it and it is not understood. The major emphasis remains on
'killing Viet Cong'."

The Vietnam War

Despite the authority of men like Lansdale and Bohannan within high-level
military and policy circles during the Vietnam War, the military preference
for overwhelming force frequently trumped the hearts and minds aspect of
counterinsurgency. Anthropologists such as Gerald Hickey, who went to
Vietnam as a University of Chicago graduate student and remained throughout
the war as a researcher for the RAND Corporation, found that their deep
knowledge of Vietnam (valuable for counterinsurgency) was frequently ignored
by U.S. military leaders who increasingly adopted a conventional-war
approach as the conflict progressed. Mickey's career raises a number of
issues that even now plague anthropological research in a military context,
such as the politics of research inside the beltway, the inability to change
counterproductive policies, and backbiting by other anthropologists hostile
to the military enterprise.

Hickey, who wrote Village in Vietnam, a classic ethnography of a southern
Vietnamese lowland village, was recruited by RAND in 1961 to produce a study
funded by DARPA. The study followed the newly established Strategic Hamlet
Program that sought to consolidate governmental authority in pacified areas
through a defense system and administrative reorganization at the village
level. Central to the study was the question of how highland tribes could be
encouraged to support the South Vietnamese Government.

Hickey's research indicated that the strategic hamlets might be successful
if farmers saw evidence their communal labor and contribution of time, land,
and building materials actually resulted in physical and economic security.
Although Hickey's observations were probably correct, his views were often
dismissed as too pacifistic. When Hickey debriefed Marine General Victor
Krul\ak, the general pounded his fist on his desk and said, "We are going to
make the peasants do what's necessary for strategic hamlets to succeed!" As
Hickey noted, peasants have many methods of passive and active resistance,
and force is often counterproductive as a motivator. Disliking the results
of the study, the Pentagon pressured RAND to change the findings and, in the
interest of impartial research, RAND refused. In the end, none of Hickey's
findings were implemented, and the Strategic Hamlet Program was a failure.

In 1964, a major uprising of Montagnard highland tribal groups occurred
under the banner of FULRO (The United Front for the Straggle of Oppressed
Races). Although the Montagnards sided with the United States against the
communist north and were supplied by (and fought alongside) U.S. troops,
they violently opposed the South Vietnamese Government's efforts to control
their region and assimilate the population.

Dealing with the revolt was a major imperative for the military and the
South Vietnamese Government because the central highlands were of strategic
importance and included the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the main North
Vietnamese infiltration and supply route. Hickey, who had worked closely
with the Montagnards for years, advised the senior commander of U.S. forces
in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, on the reasons for the rise of
ethno- nationalism among the tribes and how to cope with the revolt. Hickey
also successfully acted as an intermediary between highland leaders and the
U.S. and South Vietnamese governments.

As the war dragged on, Hickey became increasingly frustrated with the
military-strategy viewpoint held by officers such as U.S. Army General
William E. Depuy, who believed a war of attrition would defeat the
communists. Hickey's view was that the war in Vietnam was a political
struggle that could only be resolved in political terms, not through pure
military force. As an anthropologist, he recognized that elements of
Vietnam's own culture could be used to promote peace between the existing
nationalist political parties, religious groups, and minorities-none of whom
welcomed communist rule.
In a remarkable paper titled "Accommodation in South Vietnam: the Key to
Sociopolitical Solidarity," Hickey explored the indigenous Vietnamese
cultural concept of accommodation. While Taoist roots of the Vietnamese
value system stressed individualism, in the Vietnamese worldview,
accommodation was also necessary to restore harmony with the universe. In
Washington, D.C., Hickey's views on accommodation were treated as heresy. In
1967, at the conclusion of Hickey's brief to a Pentagon audience, Richard
Holbrooke said, "What you're saying, Gerry, is that we're not going to win a
military victory in Vietnam." Because it did not conform to the prevailing
view of the conflict, Hickey's message was promptly dismissed. Regardless of
the improbability of a military victory, to U.S. leaders, "accommodation"
meant "giving in," and that was not an acceptable alternative. In the end,
the American solution to the conflict was the use of overwhelming force in
the form of strategic bombing and the Accelerated Pacification Campaign,
neither of which resulted in victory.

Vietcong guerrillas in a hidden tunnel, circa 1966.

For his "ethnographic studies,""contributions to the enhancement of U.S.
Advisor/Vietnamese Counterpart relationship," and "presence and counsel
during periods of attack by Viet Cong Forces and Montagnard uprisings,"
Hickey was awarded the medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary
of Defense Robert McNamara. Despite his medal (or perhaps because of it),
Hickey was not able to get an academic job when he returned to the United
States. He was refused a position at the University of Chicago by fellow
anthropologists who objected to his association with RAND. Ironically,
Hickey was also forced out of RAND because it was no longer interested in
counterinsurgency. Following the lead of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, RAND was
no longer going to undertake research on unconventional warfare, but turn
its attention to "longer-range problems of tactical, limited war and
deterrence under the Nixon Doctrine."

Project Camelot

Testifying before the U.S. Congress in 1965, R.L. Sproul, director of DARPA
said: "It is [our] primary thesis that remote area warfare is controlled in
a major way by the environment in which the warfare occurs, by the
sociological and anthropological characteristics of the people involved in
the war, and by the nature of the conflict itself."

The recognition within DOD that research and development efforts to support
counterinsurgency operations must be oriented toward the local human terrain
led to the establishment of the Special Operations Research Office (SORO) at
the American University in Washington, D.C. With anthropologists and other
social scientists on staff, SORO functioned as a research center into the
human dimension of counterinsurgency. Many SORO reports took a unique
approach. In 1964, the Army commissioned an unusual paper titled
"Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic, and Other Psychological Phenomena, and Their
Implications on Military and Paramilitary Operations in the Congo." Authored
by James R. Price and Paul Jureidini, the report is a treatise on paranormal
combat, discussing "counter-magic" tactics to suppress rebels who are backed
by witch doctors, charms, and magic potions.

In 1964, SORO also designed the infamous Project Camelot. According to a
letter from the Office of the Director of the Special Operations Research
Office, Project Camelot was "a study whose objective [was] to determine the
feasibility of developing a general social systems model which would make it
possible to predict and influence politically significant aspects of social
change in the developing nations of the world." The project's objectives
were "to devise procedures for assessing the potential for internal war
within national societies; to identify with increased degrees of confidence
those actions which a government might take to relieve conditions which are
assessed as giving rise to a potential for internal war; [and] to assess the
feasibility of prescribing the characteristics of a system for obtaining and
using the essential information needed for doing the above two things."

An American Huey pilot talks with Thai villagers, 1962.

Project Camelot, which was initiated during a time when the military took
counterinsurgency seriously as an area of competency, recognized the need
for social science insights. According to the director's letter: "Within the
Army there is especially ready acceptance of the need to improve the general
understanding of the processes of social change if the Army is to discharge
its responsibilities in the overall counterinsurgency program of the U.S.
Government."

Chile was to be the first case study for Project Camelot. Norwegian
sociologist Johan Galtung was invited to design a seminar for Project
Camelot. Although he refused, he shared information about the project with
colleagues. Meanwhile, Hugo Nuttini, who taught anthropology at the
University of Pittsburgh, accepted an assignment for Project Camelot in
Chile. While there, he concealed Camelot's military origin, but word leaked
out. Protests arose from Chile's newspapers and legislature and the Chilean
Government lodged a diplomatie protest with the U.S. Ambassador. In
Washington, D.C., following congressional hearings on the subject, McNamara
canceled Project Camelot in 1965.

The Thai Scandal

Shortly after the Project Camelot scandal, the issue of clandestine research
surfaced again in Thailand. In March 1970, documents that appeared to
implicate social scientists in U.S. counterinsurgency programs in Thailand
were stolen from a university professor's file cabinet. The documents were
given to the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and
were subsequently published in The Student Mobilizer. A number of
anthropologists and other social scientists were allegedly gathering data
for DOD and the Royal Thai Government to support a counterinsurgency program
that would use development aid to encourage tribal villages to remain loyal
to the Thai Government rather than joining the insurgents. Although
anthropologists claimed to have been using their expertise to prevent Thai
villages from being harmed, heated debates took place within the AAA's
Committee on Ethics.

As a result of Project Camelot and the Thai scandal, government funding and
use of social science research became suspect. Anthropologists feared that,
were such research to continue, the indigenous people they studied would
assume they were all spies, closing off future field opportunities abroad.
Many anthropologists also believed the information would be used to control,
enslave, and even annihilate many of the communities studied. The result of
these debates is the determination that for anthropologists to give secret
briefings is ethically unacceptable. The AAA's current "Statement of
Professional Responsibility" says: "Anthropologists should undertake no
secret research or any research whose results cannot be freely derived and
publicly reported. . . . No secret research, no secret reports or
debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or given." These guidelines
reflect a widespread view among anthropologists that any research undertaken
for the military is de facto evil and ethically unacceptable.

The Perils of Incomplete Knowledge

DOD yearns for cultural knowledge, but anthropologists en masse, bound by
their own ethical code and sunk in a mire of postmodernism, are unlikely to
contribute much of value to reshaping nationalsecurity policy or practice.
Yet, if anthropologists remain disengaged, who will provide the relevant
subject matter expertise? As Anna Simons, an anthropologist who teaches at
the Naval Postgraduate School, points out: "If anthropologi\sts want to put
their heads in the sand and not assist, then who will the military, the CIA,
and other agencies turn to for information? They'll turn to people who will
give them the kind of information that should make anthropologists want to
rip their hair out because the information won't be nearly as directly
connected to what's going on on the local landscape."

Regardless of whether anthropologists decide to enter the national-security
arena, cultural information will inevitably be used as the basis of military
operations and public policy. And, if anthropologists refuse to contribute,
how reliable will that information be? The result of using incomplete "bad"
anthropology is, invariably, tailed operations and failed policy. In a May
2004 New Yorker article, "The Gray Zone: How a Secret Pentagon Program Came
to Abu Ghraib," Seymour Hersh notes that Raphael Patai's 1973 study of Arab
culture and psychology, The Arab Mind, was the basis of the military's
understanding of the psychological vulnerabilities of Arabs, particularly to
sexual shame and humiliation.

Patai says: "The segregation of the sexes, the veiling of the women . . . ,
and all the other minute rules that govern and restrict contact between men
and women, have the effect of making sex a prime mental preoccupation in the
Arab world." Apparently, the goal of photographing the sexual humiliation
was to blackmail Iraqi victims into becoming informants against the
insurgency. To prevent the dissemination of photos to family and friends, it
was believed Iraqi men would do almost anything.62
As Bernard Brodie said of the French Army in 1914, "This was neither the
first nor the last time that bad anthropology contributed to bad strategy."
Using sexual humiliation to blackmail Iraqi men into becoming informants
could never have worked as a strategy since it only destroys honor, and for
Iraqis, lost honor requires its restoration through the appeasement of
blood. This concept is well developed in Iraqi culture, and there is even a
specific Arabic word for it: al-sharaf, upholding one's manly honor. The
alleged use of Patai's book as the basis of the psychological torment at Abu
Ghraib, devoid of any understanding of the broader context of Iraqi culture,
demonstrates the folly of using decontextualized culture as the basis of
policy.

Successful counterinsurgency depends on attaining a holistic, total
understanding of local culture. This cultural understanding must be thorough
and deep if it is to have any practical benefit at all. This fact is not
lost on the Army. In the language of interim FM 3-07.22: "The center of
gravity in counterinsurgency operations is the population. Therefore,
understanding the local society and gaining its support is critical to
success. For U.S. forces to operate effectively among a local population and
gain and maintain their support, it is important to develop a thorough
understanding of the society and its culture, including its history, tribal/
family/social structure, values, religions, customs, and needs."64
To defeat the insurgency in Iraq, U.S. and coalition forces must recognize
and exploit the underlying tribal structure of the country; the power
wielded by traditional authority figures; the use of Islam as a political
ideology; the competing interests of the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds; the
psychological effects of totalitarianism; and the divide between urban and
rural, among other things.

Interim FM 3-07.22 continues: "Understanding and working within the social
fabric of a local area is initially the most influential factor in the
conduct of counterinsurgency operations. Unfortunately, this is often the
factor most neglected by U.S. forces."

And, unfortunately, anthropologists, whose assistance is urgently needed in
time of war, entirely neglect U.S. forces. Despite the fact that military
applications of cultural knowledge might be distasteful to ethically
inclined anthropologists, their assistance is necessary.

Montgomery McFate, J.D., Ph.D.
Copyright Department of the Army Headquarters Mar/Apr 2005


Source: Military Review


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Wed May 25 00:44:06 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Tue May 24 23:45:55 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]ANN: Penn Humanities Forum Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship
Message-ID: <00b001c560dc$07c093a0$368387ac@toshibauser>

PENN HUMANITIES FORUM - UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities

2006-?2007 Topic: TRAVEL

APPLICATION DEADLINE: October 15, 2005

Five Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowships are available for the 2006-2007
academic year from the Penn Humanities Forum of the University of
Pennsylvania for untenured junior scholars who are no more than eight
years out of their doctorate.

The programs of the Penn Humanities Forum are conceived through yearly
topics that invite broad interdisciplinary collaboration. The Forum has
set TRAVEL as the topic for the 2006-2007 academic year. Research
proposals on this topic are invited from a variety of theoretical
perspectives in all areas of humanistic study except educational
curriculum-building and the performing arts.

Fellows teach one freshman seminar each of two terms. $42,000 stipend,
plus health insurance. The fellowship is open to all scholars, national
and international, who meet application criteria.

Full guidelines, Travel topic description, and application online:
http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu
Questions? Email or call Jennifer Conway, Associate Director, Penn
Humanities Forum, humanities@sas.upenn.edu, 215.898.8220 


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Wed May 25 11:37:13 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Wed May 25 10:38:40 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]the Army's Take on Anthropology (Responses)
Message-ID: <007501c56137$40ea7550$2ff2a6ac@toshibauser>

From: Paul McDowell <paulanthropus@cox.net>

Perhaps if the army really took anthropology seriously--and for that matter
the U.S. government--we wouldn't be in this hellish mess. I hope that
anthropologists avoid doing this kind of dirty work, but as usual there is
always one--hundred thousand.

Paul McDowell
Instructor in Anthropology
Santa Barbara City College

----------------------

From: Virginia Cornue <cornue@rci.rutgers.edu>

A little look back to our own war history might be in order as well: 
Weren't we taught that  the Am Revolutionaries defeated the British, 
because they hid in the trees and picked off the Red Coats who were in 
formation in the fields? the British unable to imagine war in any other 
form. Well, not that simple, but....



From acjancius at ysu.edu  Thu May 26 14:37:34 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Thu May 26 13:39:20 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 Fellowship: Postgraduate Research Studentship at the Academy for
 Irish Cultural Heritages 
Message-ID: <003c01c56219$9fee34a0$431f89ac@toshibauser>

UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER
Postgraduate Research Studentship at the Academy for Irish Cultural
Heritages

A research studentship, attached to the Chair of Comparative Ethnology and
Folk Life (Prof. Ullrich Kockel), is available at the University's Academy
for Irish Cultural Heritages. Applications are invited from UK, European
Union and overseas students. Applicants must have or expect to obtain in
summer 2005 the minimum of an upper second class honours degree (or
equivalent) including an appropriate discipline, such as European ethnology,
cultural/social anthropology, folkloristics, or cultural studies, and should
be able to demonstrate skills and experience in field and/or archival work
at or above the level expected of a good final year dissertation in the
respective subject area.

Successful candidates will enrol in September 2005, on a full-time programme
of research studies leading to the award of the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy.

The studentship will comprise fees and an annual stipend of ??12,000 and
will be awarded for a period of up to three years subject to satisfactory
progress. The studentship is tenable in the Faculty of Arts at the Magee
Campus.

The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 17th June 2005

Interviews will be held in early July 2005

Applicants should submit a completed research application form together with
a research proposal on no more than two sides of A4, outlining their initial
research questions, sources, and methodology. Proposals should address one
or more of the following themes; comparative projects will be particularly
welcome:

- cultural encounters in the context of historical and contemporary
migrations within the British Isles, and between the British Isles, Europe
and North America
- religious heritages in Ireland, and among the Irish Diaspora
- heritage, tradition and identity in border regions and other ethnic
frontiers
- sustainable development of communities, localities and regions, involving
heritage/traditions as resources
- economy as culture, including informal economy relationships
- alternative lifestyles, including the cultural impact of "countercultural"
immigrants
- history of ideas in Irish and European ethnology

Application materials are available at
http://www.ulster.ac.uk/research/rps/forms/rs1.pdf and completed
applications should be returned to:

Hazel Campbell
Research Office,
University of Ulster,
Cromore Road,
Coleraine,
BT52 1SA

For a preliminary discussion of their project, applicants may contact
Professor Kockel via e-mail (g.thornton@ulster.ac.uk).


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Thu May 26 14:34:44 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Thu May 26 13:39:29 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Call for Contributions: Global Indigenous Media
Message-ID: <003601c56219$9be83cc0$431f89ac@toshibauser>

Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Practices, and Politics:

We are seeking contributions to a collection that will address the role of
indigenous media in societies around the world, with particular emphasis
on the ways in which the increased access by indigenous peoples to new
media technologies for production and distribution of media work has
raised the profile of indigenous aesthetic perspectives and
cultural/political issues both in the mainstream and in new venues for
indigenous media expression. This collection will pay careful attention to
the diversity of this expression by incorporating discussions of the full
range of production: feature film, documentary, video art, multimedia
works, television programs, radio broadcasts, internet activism, and
journalism. Clearly, growing international and national support has
multiplied the outlets for cultural expression: combating discrimination,
preserving indigenous cultures and environments, and advocating for
cultural rights, such as the right to one's own language, protection of
indigenous traditional knowledge and sufficient provision of resources to
indigenous peoples and their media to promote indigenous language use. 
Given the expansiveness of the category of indigenous media, we would like
to encourage contributions that think across the divides of geographies,
technologies (film, television, radio, internet), cultures, and politics.
Moreover, we would like this collection to reflect the interdisciplinarity
of indigenous media studies. We thus welcome contributions from Native
American studies, cinema and television studies, visual anthropology,
cultural studies, art history, journalism, and communication. We will
include historical research, local case studies, interviews with
producers, cross-cultural analyses,international perspectives, as well as
metacritical work.

Submitted essays will be grouped in the following sections:
* Histories
* Contemporary Practices, Technologies, Industries, & Politics
*Producers-Interviews, Manifestos, Portraits and Monographs
*Local Case Studies
*Connections: Indigenous Media in a Global Perspective
*Indigenous Media Practices and Political Activism-Supranationalism,Group
Rights, Sovereignty
*Festival Networks
*Activist and Artist Networks
*The State of the Field

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: August 1, 2005
Please send submissions (abstracts or essays in MLA format) to the
co-editors:

Dr. Michelle Stewart
Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Literature
SUNY-Purchase College
Michelle.stewart@purchase.edu
and
Dr. Pamela Wilson
Associate Professor of Communication
Director of International Studies
Reinhardt College
Psw@reinhardt.edu

From kate.browne at colostate.edu  Fri May 27 09:07:43 2005
From: kate.browne at colostate.edu (kate browne)
Date: Fri May 27 13:15:06 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]cultural economy in French Caribbean 
Message-ID: <B1DBE0E9-CEB8-11D9-9722-000A95BA80D4@colostate.edu>

Dear SUNTA members,
As a member, I am pleased to announce my new book, Creole Economics. I 
have written it especially for undergraduates without training in the 
fascinating complexities of Caribbean societies. The focus is on the 
French Caribbean, where men of all class positions pursue a source of 
status and autonomy from earning income that is illegal, but morally 
defended. The history of slavery figures importantly in this 
creole-style of economic practice. The book considers also the role of 
post-colonial tensions (Martinique/France) in feeding this form of 
cultural pride.

Creole Economics is intended for courses in Caribbean Studies, Black 
Atlantic History, Gender and the Economy,  Postcolonial Studies, 
Francophone Cultures, and Development Studies.

Creole Economics: Caribbean Cunning Under the French Flag
by Katherine E Browne published by University of Texas Press, 2004

"In this innovative work, Browne pierces the silence that has hidden 
the world of creole economics in the literature on the Antilles. The 
men's social world of creoleness has been much written about. But the 
ways that creoleness infuses everyday economic life, the ways that 
these practices that were built up in resistance (first to slavery, 
later to colonialism) actually operate, has never before been laid 
bare. A fine example of how anthropology still has something original 
to teach us."?
  ?Richard Price, Dittman Professor of American Studies, Anthropology, 
and History at the College of William & Mary

What do the trickster Rabbit, slave descendants, off-the-books 
economies, and French citizens have to do with each other? Plenty, says 
Katherine Browne in her anthropological investigation of the informal 
economy in the Caribbean island of Martinique. She begins with a 
question: Why, after more than three hundred years as colonial subjects 
of France, did the residents of Martinique opt in 1946 to integrate 
fully with France, the very nation that had enslaved their ancestors? 
The author suggests that the choice to decline sovereignty reflects the 
same clear-headed opportunism that defines successful, crafty, and 
illicit entrepreneurs who work off the books in Martinique today.

  Browne draws on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and interview data 
from all socioeconomic sectors to question the common understanding of 
informal economies as culture-free, survival strategies of the poor. 
Anchoring her own insights to longer historical and literary views, the 
author shows how adaptations of cunning have been reinforced since the 
days of plantation slavery. These adaptations occur, not in spite of 
French economic and political control, but rather because of it. 
Powered by the "essential tensions" of maintaining French and Creole 
identities, the practice of creole economics provides both assertion of 
and refuge from the difficulties of being dark-skinned and French.

  This powerful ethnographic study shows how local economic meanings and 
plural identities help explain work off the books. Like creole language 
and music, creole economics expresses an irreducibly complex blend of 
historical, contemporary, and cultural influences.

Special web pricing available for a limited time at:? 
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/brocre.html.

Katherine E. Browne is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Colorado 
State University. Her research in the French Caribbean involves the 
study of postcolonial economies and cultural issues of self-identity 
and morality. Her current projects are funded by National Science 
Foundation and include a three-year comparative project on gender and 
entrepreneurship in French, British, and Spanish-colonized islands of 
the Caribbean, and a documentary film about female entrepreneurs in the 
Caribbean.



**********************************
Katherine E. Browne
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787
970-491-5813
kate.browne@colostate.edu
**********************************

From acjancius at ysu.edu  Fri May 27 15:37:46 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Fri May 27 14:39:45 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 REV: Barnhill on Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico_
Message-ID: <023b01c562eb$34fb53d0$de7284ac@toshibauser>

[x-posted from H-Migration]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Migration@h-net.msu.edu (May 2005)

Jeffrey H. Cohen. _The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico_. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2004. x + 195 pp. Tables illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-292-70570-0; $21.95
(paper), 0-292-70592-1.

Reviewed for H-Migration by John H. Barnhill, Independent Scholar,
Houston

We all know about Mexican migrants.  All we have to do is read the daily
news, where we are saturated with coverage of the millions of illegal
immigrants, undocumented workers who overburden our social support
structure and deprive our low-end workers of sorely needed employment.
That is the stereotype, and that is less than half the story.  Not only
is the story of the illegal aliens more complex than that, but it also
has another aspect.  Undocumented workers do not suddenly appear from
nowhere. They all come from somewhere.  Most of them come from 
northern Mexico, but not all--and that might be changing.

Oaxaca, the point of departure of the migrants, is the subject of this
anthropological study.  Rather than dealing with the northern migrants,
who have been examined extensively at both the place of departure and
destination, Cohen has selected Oaxaca, in southern Mexico.  This area
is relatively new to migration and to migration studies, but Cohen has
been working there periodically for fifteen years.  Cohen wants to
generalize as best he can, so he made his study broad rather than deep.
He rejected a single-community study for an examination of multiple
communities reflecting the diverse economic, social, and cultural range
of the valley, including its mixture of indigenous and mestizo
populations.  Also, he has not selected communities or individuals but
households as the level of examination.

The methodology seems on target.  Cohen made a random selection of
households within the chosen communities, established back-up procedures
to cover those occasions when a householder opted out of the process,
and developed two surveys--household and cultural consensus, followed by
in-depth interviews as appropriate.  The surveys are attached to the
text, as is a table of population characteristics by community.  The
sample size is 256 migrant households.

The work consists of five chapters.  The chapter entitled "The Household
and Migration" establishes that the decision to migrate depends mostly
on the household.  Other factors are less important.  Household needs or
desires are more important than community or individual; resources,
abilities and traditions; or the attractiveness of the destination.  And
the household remains intact once the migrant heads north.  Most migrant
households maintain contact with their migrant or migrants.

Households are usually poor, and survival requires the pooling of
resources.  Only the rare individual has the wherewithal to be sole
household support.  Migrants do not lose their ties to the community
easily.  Social responsibilities remain to be filled.  The migrant
satisfies community obligations during periodic returns of up to one
year, occasionally more, after leaving the United States.  Roughly 10
percent of migrants cut their ties with those remaining behind, denying
the household remittances, labor, and a parent.

Other patterns apply to the migrants.  About two-thirds of migrants
follow networks of relatives and friends to their new destination.  The
poor and rich do not migrate because one has no need and the other has
no resources.  Proximity to an urban center--Oaxaca City--lessens
migration because good paying jobs are nearby.  In more remote
communities, farming, domestic labor (including selling of tortillas and
such), and low-paying construction and other labor are the sources of
household income.

Although the author does not mention it, Oaxacan migrants resemble
immigrants of the late-nineteenth century to the United States, at least
in why and how they migrate.  As sojourners holding onto their home
roots, they share a pattern with maybe 30 percent of immigrants.

Cohen begins "History, Trajectory, and Process in Oaxacan Migration"
with a section on the 1992-93 experiences in one of the small towns near
Oaxaca that led him to this project.  The anecdotal introduction, which
describes the way of life that the migrants leave and what they find
during their temporary or permanent migrations, is effective as a
transition to the subject of local migration experience.  From the
1930s, Cohen notes, Oaxacan migration has been local, to the larger
Mexican cities, or to the United States.  Currently, Oaxacan sojourners
ignore Southern California as they move past Chicago to Poughkeepsie,
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Cohen ignores the parallels to other 
migrating groups that initially concentrate then disperse from a given 
locale.  The pattern holds for migrants to the United States, from 
nineteenth-century Poles and Irish to twentieth-century Vietnamese 
and Somalis.

The chapter breaks Mexican migration into three historical periods.  The
first covers the Mexican Revolution through the Depression, with a
proto-Bracero program of World War I providing seasonal work for west
and central Mexicans.  The second historical era covered the true
Bracero program from the 1940s into 1967.  This program turned into a
source of cheap migrant farm labor, and both employers and migrants
worked around it. In its later stages, illegal migration became rampant.
The third phase, after the Bracero years, is dominated by illegal
immigration.

Within this third phase, beginning in the 1980s but not taking off until
after 1995, the Oaxacans began international migration in numbers.
Previously, they migrated to work in the local cities and even Mexico
City in the first half of the twentieth century.  And they found work on
the Pan American Highway.  Overall, the 1962 Oaxacan participation in
the Bracero program was only 2.9 percent of the total.  Internal
migration to the cities increased in the 1950s-1970s because cities
meant opportunity and amenities such as electrification.  Mexican
economic conditions in the 1980s altered the pattern.

Once Oaxacans migrants began moving to the United States, they quickly
became an important element in their households.  In 2000, 34 percent of
Oaxacan families had a member in the United States, even as internal
migration continued.  Cohen makes an important point:  by 2000 the
migrations had become self-sustaining; the original push or pull
persisted, but migration continues even when conditions change.
Migration paths were now clearly marked, with family or others support
at the other end.  Still, only about 7 percent of Oaxacans migrated to
the United States versus 23 percent or more from states closer to the
border.

This chapter also discusses the push factors in the 1970s and 1980s.
>From some rural areas, it was easier to migrate to the United States
than to commute to Mexico City or even Oaxaca City.  Demography also
mattered--as infant mortality declined and the population density grew,
and as more families expected cars and other expensive goods, the
migration increased. For some indigenes, moving to Mestizo cities 
meant facing racism--going to the United States meant being just 
another Mexican.

The chapter entitled "Contemporary Migration" deals with the decade
since 1994.  This chapter attempts to define the typical migrant, with
caveats that no one is truly typical.  The "typical migrant" is probably
married, in his mid-twenties, with two or three children and lives in
close proximity to his siblings, who provide support as necessary and
possible. He farms and his wife tends the house, while earning extra 
income from selling produce or tortillas or bringing in such work as 
ironing and laundry.  He migrates out of a desire to add on to the house 
or otherwise improve his material condition.  He takes a route established
by earlier migrants, whether internal or external.  He has established
avenues for getting the migration money, and he leaves his wife to take
on a greater role in preserving community affairs and tradition.  This
chapter includes statistical analyses of the differences among the four
types of community--three with migrants (commuter, internal, external)
and one without.  Cohen finds that it is impossible to generalize about
causes.

"Migration, Socioeconomic Change, and Development" begins by
establishing that people go where the money is.  Then it quickly gets to
remittances and their impacts.  Migration leads to remittance--where the
patterns are as variable as the causes of migration.  From an initial
negative impact on economic well being, over time, they become positive.
Cohen provides several pages of tables showing frequencies as well as
explanation and examples gleaned from the surveys.  He makes an
interesting point:  a mature migration community has fewer remittances,
because the remitters have grown away from their home ties, but it also
has at least potentially 100 percent access to migration, so those who
would otherwise receive remittances are able to migrate themselves
instead.  Migrant families have more income and expenses, on average and
excluding remittances, than non-migrant ones.  Migrant families mostly
use remittances for daily needs, perhaps home improvement, and those
that migrate for investment purposes stay away much longer, sometimes
twenty years or more--or they make more trips.

"Nonmigrant Households" include about 40 percent of households in the
valley.  These are the households where people choose not to migrate
because they lack kinship networks, are too poor or too well off (or
satisfied with being in the middle), and find the same rewards in Oaxaca
City as migrants do in Los Angeles.  Although the border crossing has
become more dangerous and expensive since the mid-1990s, this is not a
deterrent if the other conditions are favorable.  It is, however, more
reason to stay longer to recoup the expense.  Potentially, Cohen notes,
it may lead to a future diminishment of migration

Cohen's concluding chapter recapitulates the earlier chapters.  Then it
moves beyond to stress that migration should not be taken in isolation.
Cohen's communities have incorporated it into their culture as they
adapt to other changes.  Urbanites are moving into the rural areas for
safety, evangelicals are a new presence in a traditional Catholic
community, government supports such as crop subsidies are declining, and
land is shifting to private rather than communal ownership.  Isolation
is harder to maintain as the Oaxaca valley globalizes.  The culture of
migration is a new of the process and it bears examination over the long
term.

The book shifts the traditional focus of migration studies.  Rather than
the destination, it examines the community of origin.  There has been a
smattering of work with this emphasis, but much more remains to be done.
Perhaps future studies will look more at non-anthropological works,
maybe incorporate a bit of European or Asian history.  This book shows
how to do it and how much such studies can improve our understanding of
why the same community and conditions make some people into migrants
while keeping others at home.


        Copyright (c) 2005 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
        the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
        educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
        author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
        H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
        contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Sat May 28 14:29:22 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Sat May 28 13:31:20 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 FELLOWSHIP: UN University - Institute of Advanced Studies PhD Fellowship 
Message-ID: <00f101c563aa$ce233090$38bba4ac@toshibauser>

United Nations University Fellowship Program

*United Nations University - Institute of Advanced Studies PhD Fellowship
Programme 2005*

*Closing Date:  6 May 2005 at Yokohama, Japan*

UNU-IAS Fellowship Awards offer financial and material support necessary for
the successful completion of doctoral research that is closely related to 
UNU-IAS's own research programmes to commence on 1 October 2005.

*Eligibility:*
Research topics should relate clearly to one of the following current
research areas of the UNU-IAS:
*1. Biodiplomacy* (Policy oriented research for international
negotiations processes relating to conservation and use of biodiversity,
access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, protection of
traditional knowledge, intellectual property rights, bioethics, biosafety
and biosecurity).

*2. Sustainable Development Governance* (Studies on effectiveness
of institutions for sustainable development, interlinkages between MEAs,
both at global and regional levels; WTO and sustainable
development in developing countries, relationship with the WTO and the
multilateral environmental agreements, WTO and investment in
developing countries, and impacts of WTO accession on sustainable
development).

*3. Science Policy for Sustainable Development* (This is a policy
oriented programme that involves research and human capacity building in
policy related    matters.  Current priorities of the Programme include:
Issues related to technology transfer under Multilateral Environmental
Agreements, biotechnology development and transfer with main
focus on developing countries, application of science and technology for
achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and     improving the
effectiveness of science and technology advice in policy formulation).

*4. Urban Ecosystems* (Application of the ecosystem approach to the
study and management of cities.  Current priorities include exploring
the drivers of urban environmental and ecosystem change, urban
metabolism and other ecosystem approaches to understanding cities.  The
programme is also exploring the relevance and effectiveness of
ecosystem approach influenced policies as they are applied to urban
regions).

*5. Education for Sustainable Development* (Case Studies of
Regional Centres of Expertise (RCE) on education for sustainable
development around the globe.   An RCE is a group of organisations who
deliver education for sustainable development to a local community.
Research will document how an RCE translates and    articulates a global
vision of education for sustainable development into the context of the
local community in which it operates, thereby critically examining
whether an RCE can serve as a mechanism to promote locally relevant
and culturally appropriate education for sustainable
development.  The programme also deals with questions of education
for sustainable development curriculum development and reorientation).

*Stipend:* The Fellowship provides a monthly stipend of JPY260,000 from
which a monthly usage charge for accommodation is deducted.  A 
one-time only instalment of JPY80,000 will be granted to each
fellow at the commencement of the programme for adjustment expenses and
incidental costs.

*Accommodation: * PhD Fellows will be provided accommodations by 
UNU-IAS, located in Yokohama City, 30 minutes from the Institute.  
The accommodations are fully furnished and include kitchen and
bathroom facilities.  Usage charges other than utilities (electricity,
water, gas, telephone, etc) are as follows:

Single Room Apartment (for one person)   JPY80,000 or more 
per month

Twin Room Apartment (for couples)  JPY130,000 or more per
month

*Number of Awards: * The Fellowship Programme targets 5 PhD 
candidates from educational institutions around the world who can 
benefit from a period of stay of up to 10 months at UNU-IAS facilities 
in Yokohama.

*Application Procedure: An application form must be completed.* Application
forms, Eligibility Criteria and Guidelines can be accessed at the UNU-IAS 
website at www.ias.unu.edu/fellowships/apply.cfm
http://www.ias.unu.edu/fellowships/jspspostdoc.cfm

In addition to the application form, the following documents in English or
with English translation
must be submitted:

1.      Certified copies of Academic Transcripts
2.      Detailed PhD Research Proposal and Chapter Outline (an early
chapter, if available, may also be submitted)
3.      Two Publication samples (if unavailable, please send two
chapters from your dissertation)
4.      Two ORIGINAL supporting letters of reference (please ensure the
letters signed by referees)
5.      Evidence of English language proficiency (only required if PhD
dissertation is not to be submitted in English) eg: TOEFL Score, Certificate
of Proficiency

*Completed Applications should be sent to:*

*PhD Fellowship Programme*
*United Nations University - Institute of Advanced Studies* *6F,
International Organisations Centre*
*Pacifico-Yokohama*
*1 - 1 - 1 Minato Mirai*
*Nishi-ku, Yokohama 220-8502 Japan*

*Email:  fellowships at ias.unu.edu *

*United Nations University - Institute of Advanced Studies PhD Fellowship
Programme 2005*

From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May 30 15:13:24 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May 30 14:15:44 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]CFP: Art and the City
Message-ID: <014401c56543$4785c350$c52eabac@toshibauser>

CALL FOR PAPERS
Art and the City

A Conference on Postwar Interactions with the Urban Realm
Amsterdam, 11-12 May 2006

Since the Second World War, the metropolises of Europe and the United States
have undergone a period of enormous growth, in some cases followed by an
almost equally rapid decline and eventual rebirth. Even today, in an era of
supposed globalization, cities continue to generate and project a unique
identity. In all cases, these developments have brought with them not only
economic and social change, but also significant cultural transformations,
which have found their reflection in the visual arts, literature, film and
music. The physical city - its streets, sidewalks, caf?s, buildings and
transportation systems - as well as its mental spaces have proven a fertile
breeding ground for art in general. The products of this interaction, as
well as its precise mechanisms, are the subject of this conference. How have
artists, writers, filmmakers, composers and musicians dealt with the
singularity, complexity and diversity of their urban surroundings? What is
the city they create or reveal? In what ways does the metropolis contribute
to their work? How have they absorbed and transformed their various
environments? And how, in turn, do these works alter the city and our
perception of it? What do they tell us about how we live, or can live, in
the places like New York, London, Paris or Berlin?
In addition to papers examining the "imaging" of the city in diverse media
(visual arts, film and photography, but also architecture, design,
advertising, performance, literature and music), we are also seeking papers
on the following: use of the material objects and aspects of the city;
communication and interaction with the city's inhabitants; fetishization of
the urban realm; utopias and/or heterotopias; transformative and
performative practices in the public sphere; the artist's "civic" body; the
urban unconscious and/or repressed, etc. Central to all these themes should
be the artistic interaction with the city as a physical entity and a mental
space. Moreover, the committee is interested in papers that discuss the
challenges this research object poses on current historical and analytical
research methods.
Abstracts of no more than 200 words, accompanied by a brief biography (70
words maximum) should be sent to: icg-fgw@uva.nl Subject line: Art and the
City Conference

Deadline: 1 September 2005

Organizing Committee:
Rachel Esner
Margiet Schavemaker
Esther Cleven

Instituut voor Cultuur en Geschiedenis
Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen
Universiteit van Amterdam
Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
icg-fgw@uva.nl
www.hum.uva.nl/ich

Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis
Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen
Universiteit van Amterdam
Spuistraat 134
1012 VB Amsterdam
asca-fgw@uva.nl
www.hum.uva.nl/asca


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May 30 15:15:33 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May 30 14:17:56 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]
 CFP: Children, Youth, and their Education in a Globalizing India
Message-ID: <014a01c56543$94a913d0$c52eabac@toshibauser>

CFP: Children, Youth, and their Education in a Globalizing India
The Centre for Postcolonial Education, Varanasi, 22nd-24th December 2005.

Recent interest in children, youth, and education highlights how much more
is needed as dialogue between the various conventional subject areas that
include these foci-such as religion, caste, and nationalism-and the newer
perspective of globalization as constituted by the local. This conference
purports to be a site of dialogue for completed and in-progress work on any
aspect of interaction between the so-called "local" and the so-called
"global" with particular reference to children and youth. The conference
builds on a broad definition of education as inclusive of institutional
processes, and also as the learning that takes place in other sites. These
sites include, but are not exhausted by, the home, the neighbourhood, the
town or village, language, media, apprenticeship, parenting, social
conflict, and discourses of history, the self, and the state. The conference
will be divided into sub-themes, which will be finalized upon receipt of
proposals. Papers will be grouped into both thematic panels and according to
inter-disciplinary articulation.

The Centre for Postcolonial Education, located at N 1/70 Nagwa, Varanasi, is
a Humanities and Social Sciences research center that is presently headed by
Dr Nita Kumar. Submissions for papers are invited for the present
conference. Please send an abstract of 250 words to the address below by
15th June 2005 on a related topic of your choice. We will select up to
fifteen of the most appropriate papers for presentation, and invite others
to participate in discussion and eventual publication. The Centre can pay
within-India travel costs to the chosen participants, and in-Varanasi
hospitality will be extended to all participants. Please send submissions
to: Rohit Setty, Conference Organizer, Email: settyrb@umich.edu


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Mon May 30 15:18:41 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Mon May 30 14:21:06 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]ANN: Multi-Country Research Fellowship Program 
Message-ID: <015001c56544$08681eb0$c52eabac@toshibauser>

ANN: Multi-Country Research Fellowship Program

Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC)

Description: It is anticipated that approximately ten awards of up to $9,000
each will be given to scholars who wish to carry out research on broad
questions of multi-country significance in the fields of humanities, social
sciences, and related natural sciences. Scholars must carry out research in
at least one of the countries which host overseas research centers. CAORC
member centers to which fellows may affiliate include the American Academy
in Rome; the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman; the American
Institute for Maghrib Studies (Tunisia and Morocco); the American Institute
for Sri Lankan Studies; the American Institute for Yemeni Studies; the
American Institute of Bangladesh Studies; the American Institute of Indian
Studies; the American Institute of Iranian Studies; the American Institute
of Pakistan Studies; the American Research Center in Egypt; the American
Research Institute in Turkey; the American School of Classical Studies at
Athens; the Center for Khmer Studies, the Cyprus American Archaeological
Research Institute; the Mexico-North Research Network, the Palestinian
American Research Center; the West African Research Association (West
African Region); and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research
in Jerusalem. Given changing restrictions to many countries, applicants
should contact CAORC before preparing a proposal. For more information and
the application package, please visit www.caorc.org.

Contact Information
Program Assistant
Email: fellowships@caorc.org
URL http://www.caorc.org


From acjancius at ysu.edu  Tue May 31 20:13:33 2005
From: acjancius at ysu.edu (Angela Jancius)
Date: Tue May 31 19:16:28 2005
Subject: [URBANTH-L]Technical Cultural Anthropologist Opening
Message-ID: <004e01c56636$62dd13d0$1e0583ac@toshibauser>

From: Kelly Neiman <kelly_neiman@yahoo.com>

Hello.  My name is Michelle DeChene.  I am an Account Executive for
TechSource Staffing Solutions.  I have over 15+ years in Global Solution
Sales, Knowledge Management, Consulting, Offshore, and Executive
Recruiting experience. Currently, I am searching for Technical Cultural
Anthropologist - Ethnography candidates.  

Might you know of anyone who would be interested in the opening?  Please
email all qualified resumes for review to mdechene@techsourcejobs.com.
If there is a match in the candidate's background and experience, we
will contact the candidate directly.  If there is not a match, the
resume will be kept on file for any future available positions.

Please contact me with any questions at mdechene@techsourcejobs.com.
Thank you for your time, review, and consideration.   

Regards,
Michelle DeChene - Account Executive
TechSource Technical Staffing Solutions
Email:   mdechene@techsourcejobs.com 
Web:     http://www.techsourcejobs.com

Job 150-633
Technical Cultural Anthropologist Opening
Job Description:
This position is a mid-level management position.  We are seeking
qualified candidates for a Cultural Anthropologist Position with an
emphasis in Ethnography.  After approximately two-years, there is
potential career growth to a possible position in the Research
Organization.  This candidate must have "Stage Presence."
Location:  Redmond, Washington
Duties include:
* PhD or Master's (Working towards a PhD)
* 7+ Years Experience (Master's & Related Working
Experience/Projects)
* Inductive Analysis
* Excellent Verbal and Written Communication Skills
* Solid Technology & Internet Capabilities
* Compiling data and presenting results via reports
* Being able to effectively communicate this data to global
audiences


