Chants at Columbia U

Have Students Stopped Reading?

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I get why social justice-oriented college students are furious with Israel.  (I am, too.)

I get why they are protesting to support Palestinians’ right to an independent homeland.  (I support that, too, though the boundaries are up for negotiation.)

While I find it a deeply offensive, emotion-based tactic, I even get why these students ignore the atrocities that Hamas terrorists committed on October 7th.  Acknowledging harm committed by their cause would render it problematic, vulnerable.

What I don’t get is how these university students have managed to avoid learning anything from the history, political science, and philosophy courses they have taken.  Or maybe they haven’t taken history, political science, or philosophy courses.  In that case, they should be wary of making arguments reliant on historical, political, or ethical claims.

Case in point: Let’s deconstruct just one of the many offensive taunts recently hurled at Jewish students at Columbia University, one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning.

“Go back to Poland!”

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This directive makes five deeply problematic assumptions.  It’s hard to know which is more historically inaccurate, politically simplistic, or morally outrageous.

The students easily hurling such insults are now paying over $350,000 for four years’ education at our nation’s most elite universities.  Oops, it seems they forgot to attend class.  When they remember why their education is being funded by a lot of hard-earned money (whether by their family, a foundation, or an endowment), here’s a sample emergency reading list they might consult, to encourage them to rethink the easy but devastatingly wrong assumptions implied by their shouted claims:

  1. All Jews come from Poland, right?  Nope.  Even for those with “Ashkenazi” backgrounds, America’s Jews hail from most countries across northern, central, and eastern Europe.  A browse through Francesca Bregoli and David B. Ruderman’s edited collection, Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in Early Modern Europe would quickly correct this nonsense.
  1. If they’re all from Poland, all Jews must be White, right?  Assuming that all Jews come from Poland would imply that all Jews are White.  But, nope.  Just skimming, say, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz’s The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism would give even a lazy student a run for their money.  And let’s not even bring up how “race” is a social construction, making easy classification of racial categories problematic at the theoretical level.  Surely, these “progressive“ students could have learned that, in one of their classes on identity formation.
  1. All Jews have “Ashkenazi” backgrounds originating in central or eastern Europe, right?  Nope again.  Simon Schama’s The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words, 1000 BC-1492 AD offers a magisterial but concise overview of the global Jewish diaspora.  Karen Primack’s breezy collection, Jews in Places You Never Thought of, expands that view to far-flung outposts of the Jewish diaspora.  Too busy protesting to read anything but social media posts?  A quick peek at the maps included in Eli Barnavi’s collection, A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, from the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present, doesn’t require engaging with texts.  Surely, the busiest of student protesters can take a break to peek at images, no?
  1. Jews don’t have a place in America.  Or so “Go back to Poland!” implies.  This taunt has such chilling echoes of the racist chants urging Black Americans to “return” to Africa heard across too many periods of US history that I can barely wrap my head around the echoes.  We are venturing far beyond anti-Semitism here.  Do we need scholarly references to remind passionately progressive students how historically absurd and ethically offensive it is to categorically police who gets to be “American”?
  1. Poland has a strong history of killing Jews, so “returning” to Poland sounds like a death sentence.  In Poland, Nazis murdered three million Jews — half the Jews murdered in the Holocaust.  Once that student chanting “Go back to Poland!” graduates, perhaps his degree will earn him enough money to do some affordable tourism in Poland.  There, he might visit the sites of the two most infamous concentration camps of the Holocaust — Auschwitz and Treblinka.  Had he known about those when he urged a “return” to Poland? Reading Jan T. Gross’s Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz might give him further pause.

*

“Stop killing children!”

“All you do is colonize!”

These taunts recently hurled at Columbia University Jewish students offer different problems.  Here, our passionate protester was accusing one person of representing — and being responsible for — all the policies that a government espouses, funds, and enacts.

This is a classic case of the part standing for the whole.  Literary theorists have a fancy name for this trope: synecdoche.  It works well in all manner of everyday expressions we use unthinkingly.  “All hands on deck” is the classic example evoked by English teachers, where “hands” stand for the rest of the human body (while “deck” stands metaphorically for any space of work).  No harm done here.

But when a person is used to stand for a nation, it’s hard to imagine not being offended. Let’s call this, the synecdochal fallacy.  Sound too abstract?  Here’s how it played out at Columbia University.

The Jewish students targeted by protesters were treated as if they were citizens of Israel, hence blamed for that government’s current policies.  But, wait.  Are Columbia University’s Jewish students who were being targeted all Israeli citizens?  Unlikely.  Now we are venturing even deeper into the land of the absurd.

Assuming that any Jew is automatically a citizen of Israel — and therefore a defender of all Israeli policies, up to and including “killing children” — smacks of just the sort of essentializing that anti-racists, feminists, and other progressives have rightfully decried for decades. Suddenly, essentializing is de rigueur among the progressive left?

Using this logic, the recipients of these offensive chants could have assumed with equal absurdity that their critics were citizens of the US, hence descendants of the original White settler colonialists who conquered the Native peoples who inhabited the territory that is now the US, hence supportive of all US political evils.  How would it have sounded if the Jewish students had yelled back:

“Go back to England!”

“Stop driving polluting cars!”

“All you do is enrich corporations and oppress people of color!”

You see the problem here?

It doesn’t make sense to blame individuals for the ills of a nation.

At best, students targeting fellow (Jewish) students for the horrendous policies of another nation (Israel) is an ill-thought-out tactic that has no rational goal, hence unbecoming of our most elite universities’ admissions choices. At worst, since these (Jewish) students are being inappropriately and offensively targeted, it smacks of anti-Semitism.

*

Taking issue with national policy is a contemporary luxury offered in the modern world. Respecting this luxury requires paying attention to how to enjoy it.  Those who decry national policies have every right to protest outside embassies or consulates that represent the nation.  Protesting against national policies by railing against random people with a particular religious affiliation who may or may not endorse those policies would seem silly, even laughable — if it weren’t so serious.  No, odious.

Moreover, branding Israel itself a “settler colonialist” nation has its own historical fallacies, as historian Simon Sebag Montefiore argued brilliantly last October.

Then, we have the moral quagmire of progressives supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization whose charter endorses killing Jews.  For students who haven’t read the Hamas charter, the Charter describes its armed Islamic Resistance Movement this way (Article 8):

“Jihad [commonly taken as “armed struggle”] is its path[,] and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”

Do our elite students recognize that they are repeating talking points articulated by a terrorist organization that is largely funded by Iran? (As of 2021, Iran supported Hamas to the tune of $100,000,000.)

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And what about their professors?

Teachers: Let’s remember why we chose our profession.  Isn’t our job to teach facts?  And, as long as those facts involve humans, don’t facts require appropriate interpretation to recognize nuance?

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The current crisis in the Middle East is nothing if complex.  Attending to history doesn’t mean renouncing the quest for justice.  But it does require looking into all the vexing places where injustices lie – in this case, not only at the heart of Israel’s current government, and among the Jewish settlers still maddeningly expanding into internationally accepted Palestinian territories, but also in the terrorist organization currently speaking for—and brutally using as human shields—Palestinians.  If today’s university students are incapable of understanding nuance and complexity that defy easy binary judgments, it’s our job to teach them.

As for university presidents: How about requiring a course on “Evaluating Evidence and Arguments” for all students, no matter their major?  And another one on “Binary Thinking: Seductions, Fallacies, Dangers,” for students who graft simple good guy/bad guy models onto multi-leveled geopolitical quagmires.

Source here

In short, let’s start equipping our students with the tools they need to think critically and assess complexity.  Surely, a $350K education ought to offer that.

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P.S. Fascinating op ed piece just up in Newsweek by a Palestinian peace activist from Gaza begging US students to rethink their protests. He urges: “You know what would help the Palestinians in Gaza? Condemning Hamas‘ atrocities.” 

P.P.S. A comment by a historian friend, Harry Liebersohn: “One book I would strongly recommend: Jeffrey Veidlinger, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust.  By going back to a moment before the Holocaust it allows you to see the patterns of violence against Jews going back to the late nineteenth-century pogroms in the Russian Empire and how October 7th was a continuation of those patterns.”

Binary thinking, Education, Essentializing, History, Israel, Judaism, Language politics, Learning, MidEast, Othering, Politics and society, Public anthropology, Sephardic Jews, Social activism, Teachers Read more

Let’s Agree . . .

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That the deaths of civilians killed by the IDF targeting Hamas leaders, command centers, and weapons caches are tragedies.

That the continuing occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights by Israeli settlers is unethical, illegal, and outrageous.

Once we agree on these disturbing points, it is equally critical for us to agree that . . .

Hamas’ charter justifying its existence abhorrently prioritizes genocide against Jews at its heart, as responsible journalists lay out (quoting directly from reliable English translations of the Hamas charter).

Hamas’ October 7th murder of some 1,400 Israeli civilians was brutal and unjustified, and Hamas leaders’ disingenuous claims denying their militias’ rapes of Israeli women as “Jewish dogs” have no reason to be believed.

These two sets of claims appear opposed because they appear to be “taking sides.” If you accept one set, you would, “of course,” reject the other set.

But that conclusion assumes that only one side can be entirely right and the other side, entirely wrong. If only live humans’ political institutions operated as simply as Disney movies’ good-guy and bad-guy cartoon characters.

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war has so many “wrong actors,” it’s becoming hard to count. Unfortunately, among them are those in the U.S. who view themselves as the fiercest of social justice warriors on the progressive Left.

Yes, Palestinian Arabs have a right to live, as any human (including Jews) should assert.

Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself, as any modern country (including the U.S.) would assert.

Both these can be true at the same time.

Which can lead to only one conclusion.

Political activists: let’s stop “choosing sides” — beyond the side of peace.

If there’s any choosing to be done, it’s at the ballot boxes in Israel and Palestine.

It’s time for Palestinians — a majority of whom did not support Hamas, in recent polls — to choose another party to govern them — a party that does not put genocide at its center, nor illegalize same-sex relations or sanction killing LGBTQ residents. A party that acknowledges that the Holocaust that killed some 60-63% of Europe’s Jews justified the creation of one country on the planet to provide a safe space for Jews, and that thus acknowledges Israel’s moral and historical right to exist.

It’s also time for Israelis — a majority of whom do not support Netanyahu, in current polls — to choose another party to govern them — a party that does not turn a blind eye to, let alone sanction, illegal new Jewish settlements in lands that Israel long ago agreed ought to be governed by Palestinian Muslims. A party that is not led by a leader being investigated for corruption crimes, and that does not threaten to un-do 75 years of democratic rule.

Image source here

Unless they just want to kill each other off, both groups deserve parties that take the history of some 1,400 years of more-or-less peaceful co-existence between Jews and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and Palestine and the Mid-East at large, as their model for the future.

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Update, Dec. 27, 2024: I recently collaborated with my colleague, Ron Duncan Hart, to write an opinion piece about the ongoing war in Israel/Palestine. Titled “At the Heart of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, Anthropology Matters as Much as History,” it appeared today on The Hill, here.

Anthropology, Anti-Semitism, Israel, MidEast, Palestinian rights, Politics and society, War, Women's issues Read more

Remembering My Friend, Véronique Amenan Akpoueh (d., Aug. 3, 2023)

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Ours was not an ordinary friendship.

Race, class, religion, citizenship, educational background, and (for 14 years) parental status divided us. Language brought us together. Curiosity and intellectual companionship kept us going.

Véronique and me in the village (1993) (photo by Philip Graham)


Initially, Véronique (given that personal name in the French colonial-style school she attended) grabbed the chance to practice her grade-school-era French with me, an uninvited visitor in her village bordering the rain forest. As for me, while I struggled to learn the tonal West African language surrounding me, I immediately felt grateful to find a woman who spoke a language I knew. Later, as my grasp of Beng developed, Véronique turned out to be a naturally gifted language teacher. She happily shared her love of her native language, finding ways to explain the nuances of proverbs, metaphors, and secret speech. From there, our friendship blossomed.

During my first month in her village in east-central Côte d’Ivoire, Véronique and I met daily as she oriented me to the new worlds confronting me. “Why do babies wear so much jewelry and make-up?” was the first question I had asked our new village father. “That’s secret women’s business,” he answered. “Ask my cousin, Véronique.” I did, and Véronique immediately explained the medical goal of this symbolically resonant bead and face paint, distinguishing it from that purely decorative bead and face paint.

Amenan readily distinguished the linear and circular medicinal treatments from the decorative eyeliner and eyebrow pencil adorning this baby boy (1993) (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

Here was a villager who operated far from her neighbors’ proclivity to conceal knowledge from a stranger—understandably wary (from decades of colonial and post-colonial oppression) of what I might do with it. Instead, Véronique delighted in sharing her knowledge of her world. Quickly, she moved from informant to instructor, and from there, to friend.

Back in 1979, both my academic mentors had firmly instructed me to choose a village with a population of fewer than 500 people for the year-plus of doctoral research I would conduct in rural West Africa, so I could get to know everyone in a face-to-face community. Véronique tried to convince me to remain in her village of 1,500 for the next 14 months. But my advisors’ instructions remained firmly in my head. So, after a month of browsing among the 20 or so Beng villages, my husband and I left Véronique’s welcoming space and moved to a village of 250 notoriously suspicious people some 2.5 miles up the road.

The tiny village I chose to live in during our first stay in Bengland (1979) (photo by Philip Graham)

Véronique warned me repeatedly that the residents of the village I selected—the seat of the local, secretive, traditional religion—had strong reasons to reject me. Attentive to these warnings, my husband encouraged me to remain with my new friend in her village. Stubbornly, I ignored both their urgings and promptly experienced firsthand all that Véronique had predicted.

But Véronique forgave me my arrogance; by the time I confessed my decision, our friendship had been sealed. As Philip and I packed up our suitcases, Véronique made me promise that I would return once a week to spend the day with her. And, so I did. Moreover, over the following 14 years, when we returned twice to Bengland (the second time, with our son, then six years old), we lodged in her compound.

Amused, Véronique watches our six-year-old son observing two girls pounding corn (1993) (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

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My writer-husband has written that “anthropology is gossip with footnotes.” Véronique had never heard of anthropology when we met, but by Philip’s definition, Véronique turned out to be a consummate anthropologist par excellence.

Every week of our first year’s stay, I drove or biked 2.5 miles to chat with Véronique in her village. No sooner had we completed the long, formulaic greetings required of a hostess-and-guest than Véronique launched into a monologue consisting of all the village goings-on I had missed over the past six days. Véronique was literate—one of two women in her village who had gone to elementary school—but she didn’t need to jot down notes about any of the week’s events to keep them in her mind. Out poured a list of the week’s highlights, from quotidian to momentous.

From these sessions, I soon learned the meaning of fɛn plã na. Literally, the expression means two days. But its reach is more than that, with two standing in metonymically for several. A better translation would be, in the past few days or, even more vaguely, recently. And so, within an hour of my weekly arrival, I heard about everything that, according to Véronique’s all-seeing ethnographic eye, had happened fɛn plã na. As Philip once described Véronique (referring to her by her Beng name, Amenan) as she eagerly approached us with village news, “Amenan was already making a beeline to us, her juicy-gossip face firmly in place—at times like this, Amenan was most Amenan.”

Nothing was out of bounds for Véronique’s skilled storytelling. I learned about breastfeeding woes suffered by a new mother, and a strange condition afflicting the rectum of an old man. I heard how a young girl had been sent to Abidjan as a companion for a childless aunt, and about the latest rants of the village madman. I learned who had broken the weekly sacred day by cursing a relative, and whose domestic dispute ended up in the village chief’s court. After this rich news catch-up, we would settle down under the shade of her coffee trees for a more systematic conversation about a topic of interest to us both, whether wily hyena folktales or witchcraft. But Véronique’s expansive mind was such that one recounting led to five more. I soon learned to restrain my impulse to return to the original story and let Véronique’s prodigious memory, knowledge fund, and chain of associations take her where they would.

Véronique and me in our signature spot under her coffee trees (1980) (photo by Philip Graham)

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The balance of power between the two ends of this financially unequal relationship tilted constantly. Véronique gave me intellectual gifts that became symbolic capital fueling my career. I brought material gifts that Véronique and her family valued (first, soaps, baby clothes, and dried fish; then, furniture; finally, we funded the construction of a new house and, more recently, an adult daughter’s business venture, and treatment for a serious sinus infection that threatened my friend’s eyesight). Véronique also readily offered advice whenever I solicited it (how should I respond to learning that the chief of our tiny village had blacklisted me, or to my husband who was angry with me for not fully translating something he needed to say?); I timidly returned the favor on the rare occasions that Véronique solicited advice (two of her daughters were fighting, or her Ghanaian husband had disappeared yet again). In these ways, across the darkness created by drastically divergent social histories, the sunlight of common humanity shone through.

Véronique and me walking to interview her uncle, the king of the Savanna region (1980) (photo by Philip Graham)

It was obvious enough what I gained from our relationship. But beyond the day-to-day gifts I could bring her (and the larger investments I was able to make later), what did Véronique have to gain?

I believe Véronique longed for a conversation partner of a different type from what her beloved family and neighbors offered. After all, she had attended school through the fifth grade. That modest level of education gave her expanded life experiences, compared to those of her peers. Following her five years at a Catholic elementary school, the nuns coordinating her education must have seen the bright spark of deep intelligence that drew her to me, for they soon offered Véronique a year’s job as an assistant, accompanying them as they conducted a regional program to promote rural health.

Based in the nation’s second-largest city of Bouaké some 80-miles-and-a-world away from her home territory, the program brought young Véronique from village to village—mostly, inhabited by Baulé people, not Beng. Her cultural horizons expanded as she gauged similarities to, and differences from, her homeland. She learned how to help women birth and breastfeed, how to diagnose diseases from Guinea worm to tetanus. She came to juggle two distinct religious systems—the spirit- and ancestor-based cosmology of the Beng world view, and the monotheistic cosmology of Christianity. And she gained knowledge of a new biomedical pharmacopeia that complemented the healing forest herbs she already knew. Beyond these technical funds of knowledge, making the rounds of villages beyond her own made Véronique a new sort of cosmopolitan. Returning to the somewhat insular bounds of her own village must have felt confining. By the time Philip and I showed up unannounced one hot September day in 1979 that surely started out like any other hot September day, I must have offered food for a hunger that had long but quietly gnawed in her belly.

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Véronique was born to political and religious privilege on both sides: her father’s older brother was king of the Savanna region, while her mother’s brother was the most senior Master of the Earth of her village.

L: Véronique’s paternal uncle, King Bonde Como, of the Savanna region (1980); R: Véronique’s maternal uncle, Kokla Kouassi, senior Master of the Earth (1980) (photos by Alma Gottlieb)

Dire poverty underlay all these rich cultural inheritances. More comfortable walking barefoot than wearing the rubber flipflops I once bought her, Véronique did, and did not, exude royalty.


From a lifetime of work—rising by 6 am to walk deep into the forest to chop down trees for firewood, carry a log on her head back to the village, use it to light a fire, then bathe babies, cook breakfast, and wash the dishes, all before returning to the forest for a full day of hard farming in her rice and vegetable fields, followed by cooking dinner, washes the dishes, and bathing the babies again—Véronique’s clothes were as threadbare as her neighbors’. Nor, at something like 4’ 9”, did her height visually mark her status. Her tall husband sometimes teased her in his lilting Ghanaian English: “She’s just a Pygmy, a regular Pygmy.”

Véronique carrying her baby grandson on her back and a log on her head


Yet, as Véronique walked through the village, her tiny frame commanded attention far beyond its dimensions. Everyone greeted her, and, as she returned the greeting, more often than not, she was asked for advice. A baby wasn’t eating, a child had developed a mysterious rash, a fever wasn’t disappearing, and what did Véronique advise?

Véronique helping a young relative learn to walk (1993) (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

Sometimes, she sold home-grown medical treatments for a shotglass of grain alcohol she made; more often than not, she dispensed herbal remedies at no charge. If her preparations healed, she was thanked; if they didn’t have the desired effect, I never saw her blamed—confidence in her knowledge, unshaken.

Whether working or relaxing, Véronique was widely appreciated by relatives and neighbors as an impromptu babysitter.

This set of photos of Véronique taking care of multiple infants (including “dry-nursing” one from her milk-less breast) was taken on a single day in 1993 (photos by Alma Gottlieb)

Her skill in massaging infants’ heads widely was especially sought out by new mothers.

Véronique massaging an infant’s head (1993) (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

Our own bonds spilled over beyond fictive kinship. I was present at the home birth of one of her daughters who, as coincidence would have it, bore the same Beng day name as mine. Véronique made sure to instruct baby Amwé that I was an important person in her life.

Véronique points to me and asks her baby Amwé, whose birth I observed, “Who’s that?” (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

Nor did her skills remain confined to the gender-stereotyped world of women. Men paid attention when Véronique directed animal sacrifices. On several occasions, she asked me to buy trapping line in the Bouaké market so she could set traps and hunt small animals.


Véronique overseeing the apportioning of meat from a sheep that was slaughtered in honor of Philip’s recently deceased father (1993) (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

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This week, I learned that Véronique had finally succumbed to an illness that had caused her much suffering over the past month. Medical care being what it is across much of the continent that Europe underdeveloped, her illness will forever remain unidentified. Two doctors to whom her daughter Lucie took her for consultations claimed they couldn’t do anything for her, and the emergency money I wired to Lucie didn’t make a difference.


Maybe it was pulmonary complications caused by chickenpox—which my American dermatologist, on hearing about the symptoms, named as a likely cause. Maybe it was something else. Maybe Western biomedicine could have effectively treated it, and Véronique would be alive today. My dermatologist said that had Véronique been in an ICU, round-the-clock nursing care would at least have alleviated the symptoms, and perhaps held death at bay. Or maybe Western biomedicine could not have identified or treated the disease, and no medicines yet exist that would have kept her alive.


Being a continent away, my imagination and guilt are both running riot. What if? I keep asking myself. But, no What if can rewrite history. The global North and the global South cohabit the same planet yet continue to produce human experiences worlds apart. As I contemplate how I can honor the ordinary-yet-extraordinary life that my friend Véronique lived, she continues to peer over at me through her framed photo.

Véronique’s signature look (1980) (photo by Alma Gottlieb)

Those wry, wise eyes remind me daily that we humans must constantly endeavor to bridge all that separates us. Our distinctive subjectivities may conspire with the institutional structures that divide us to keep us from ever fully knowing each other. But, as Véronique implied when I once expressed surprise that she—then, a 30-something woman—was good friends with an elderly woman well into her 70s—trying to see each other across our multiple divides is all we’ve got.

Véronique continues to watch over me in my home office as I work at my desk (2021); (photo by Philip Graham)

Update, Dec. 2023: If you’d like to support education in Bengland via the Beng Community Fund (a non-profit organization we established to provide sustainable assistance to the Beng community), we have created a GoFundMe campaign — you can make a tax-deductible contribution via the link here.


Africa, Africanist scholarship, Anthropology, Beng, Cultural Anthropology, Culture, Friendship, Humanistic anthropology, Intercultural communication Read more

What Day is It? Depends on whose Calendar You Consult

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Just when you think you know what day it is, along comes this research on the ancient Mayan calendar.

By fifth grade, most schoolchildren know that a week contains seven days, a month contains either 30 or 31 days (or 28 days, in those strange “leap years”), and a year contains 12 months and 365 days.

That seems self-evident, right?

Not so fast.

The quasi- (increasingly) hegemonic calendar long common across the global North and, now, parts of the global South has long had competitors—including the ancient Mayan calendar, which features an 819-day cycle.

What might have motivated Mayan scholars to orient a calendar around 819 days?

New research by anthropologists John Linden and Victoria Bricker from Tulane University suggests intriguing explanations. Ancient Mayans were astute astronomers and mathematicians and, according to Linden and Bricker, calculated human calendrical systems based on cyclical orbits of Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Saturn. The article linked here offers more detailed calculations that, to my non-mathematical eye, sure seem convincing.

When I lived among the Beng in Côte d’Ivoire, I became used to their indigenous temporal system, based on a six-day week. But the Beng also acknowledged the seven-day week of their neighbors, and they easily interdigitated the two systems: every 42 days, a sacred day required special rituals acknowledging the intersection of the two calendars.

In other words, the Beng don’t dismiss alternate calendars as mutually incompatible. Maybe they are better anthropologists than those in the global North who might easily deride the Mayan calendar as quaint but anachronistic.

Calendars, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Relativity, Culture, Maya, Time Read more

Science and “Alternative” Science; or, some Quick Meditations on the Virtues of a Feedback Loop

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Many non-Western epistemologies and healing systems have long posited close ties between mind, body, and emotion. Or, rather, these outlooks have categorized as a single feedback loop what Western world views, including biomedical science, have long categorized as three distinct zones of experience (not to mention, many sub-zones). Why else would modern science have developed separate specialties for professionals tackling issues with specific body parts, and other professionals tackling “behavioral” challenges, as if body and behavior inhabited different worlds?

Now, “modern” science is discovering what many across the global South have long known: that mind, body, and emotion indeed constitute a single, linked system. A new research study by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis shows “a literal linkage of body and mind in the very structure of the brain.”

With this new research, perhaps those health practices relegated by medical insurance companies to the dismissive category of “alternative” will begin to find their place in what mainstream medical professionals accept as legitimate. Imagine a world in which health insurance plans covered yoga classes, meditation circles, and foot massages—all well-traveled practices in reducing “stress.”

It warms my heart when scientists challenge themselves to rethink basic world views, after strange data unexpectedly show up that don’t support their assumptions.

Say what we will about the blind spots of science—and, yes, there are many. But, at its best, the scientific method organizes itself around its own feedback loop. As such, it contains within it the capacity to exceed itself.

It turns out that the model of feedback loop that underlies the work of many health practitioners across the global South likewise underlies the very scientific method that long disputed the relevance of the feedback loop as a model for human health.

Which means, the premise behind “alternative” medicine underlies the premise behind the scientific method.

Which means, we’re all in this boat together. Either we’re all “alternative” or none of us is. And, the logical conclusion must be: none of us is, because all of us can’t be.

Hidden Linkages: Scientists Find Mind-Body Connection Is Built Into Brain
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Gun Safety is a Philosophical Issue

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YES to far more sensible gun-purchase background checks and restrictions.

YES to more comprehensive mental health treatment options.

Credit: pikisuperstar via www.freepik.com

It’s not EITHER-OR.

I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the point that one of these strategies is assumed to exclude the other. (By “we,” I’m referring to the U.S. More on that later.)

On second thought, maybe I do know. Let’s take it from the top.

This is an issue of binary thinking gone amok.

Does that seem too abstract? Stay with me.

The U.S. is rooted in a binary political system. Two major parties suck the air out of the room. Every once in a while, someone floats a wan attempt at a third party. But it quickly deflates. Occasionally, third parties have made a difference — think, the Green Party, which, statistically speaking, deprived both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton of presidential victories. Yet, no third party has risen to become a major component of our political system.

Then, too, we’ve got a stubborn attachment to a binary gender system. The first question most expectant American parents ask when they have a chance — whether from the technician reading the first sonogram, or from the OB/GYN in the delivery room — is typically not “Does the baby look healthy?” but “Is it a boy or a girl?”

The trendy “reveal parties” that have become so popular in recent years are so obviously about the revelation of gender of a baby still in utero that the invitations don’t even need to indicate that “gender” is what is being “revealed.”

And the creative methods that expectant parents have concocted to reveal this “essential” fact become ever more clever versions of culturally conventional color symbolism: pink- or blue-colored something-or-other, from over-the-top balloon extravaganzas to piñata-exploded confetti.

Popping this piñata produces a shower of either pink or blue confetti

The increasingly disturbing and violent backlash against, first, gay identities and, more recently, transsexual identities signals the intense commitment to binary gender categories that marks mainstream U.S. society today.

The propensity toward binary thinking takes on more intangible directions, too. Our movies regularly promote binary thinking when it comes to morality. As all the “super-hero” movies so easily and dramatically proclaim, it’s easy to tell apart the “good guy” from the “bad guy.” On the rare occasions when the two ethical positions overlap, or their identity becomes confusing — as when Darth Vader turns out to be Luke Skywalker’s father — such complicated personae remain emotionally powerful precisely because their ambiguity is so culturally unexpected.

Instagram post by Apartment3k.com, Dec. 28, 2015

Contemporary artists get this. They easily work in the “between” zone, leaving viewers to sort through the ambiguities of what they may or may not be seeing. This self-portrait by Portuguese painter, Paula Rego, unsettles precisely because she paints herself in a stereotypical male posture, while obviously female — no doubt, as Cath Pound asserts, to assert her right to enter the mostly male art canon.

Paula Rego, The Artist in Her Studio, 1993. Courtesy of Leeds City Art Gallery and Kunstmuseum Den Haag.

All of which brings us back to that vexing issue of gun violence in the U.S., and how to reduce it. The gender ambiguity in which Paula Rego revels may suggest a philosophical path forward beyond the binary thinking that has conceptually imprisoned us.

No, reducing gun violence doesn’t mean blaming only either individuals with mental illness or their families or lax gun ownership laws or troubling cultural values.

In other words: No, one level of responsibility doesn’t negate another level of responsibility.

And, so: No, we don’t need to choose between sensible gun-purchase background checks/restrictions on the one hand, and more comprehensive mental health treatment options on the other hand.

Surely, if social science has taught us anything, it’s that complex social problems have multiple social foundations.

Meaning, complex social problems require multiple social solutions.

Does that sound too challenging?

Let’s remember: We are a clever species. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Binary thinking — it’s this OR that, but surely not this AND that — has gotten us into too many messes.

For a change, let’s imagine that politics doesn’t always have to be a zero-sum game, with one side the winner and the other, the loser.

The Democrats are right that outrageously lax gun ownership laws make it far, far too easy for Americans to legally play with, buy, and own guns.

A child aims a gun, at the 2013
National Rifle Association Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As of 2017, the U.S. has, by far, the highest rate of gun ownership on the planet: 120 guns per 100 people. We are followed, only very distantly, by the Falkland Islands and Yemen, which have 62 and 53 guns per 100 people, respectively.

By contrast, Japan has 0.3 guns owned per 100 people. Why? It’s way, way harder for a private citizen to buy a gun in Japan.

As noted in the World Population Review, “For Japanese citizens to purchase a gun, they must attend an all-day class, pass a written exam, and complete a shooting range test, scoring at least 95% accuracy. Candidates will also receive a mental health evaluation, performed at a hospital, and will have a comprehensive background check done by the government. Only shotguns and rifles can be purchased. The class and exam must be retaken every three years.”

Is it a coincidence that Japan also has one of the world’s lowest rates of gun deaths, at 0.2 per 100,000 people?

By contrast, the rate of gun deaths in the U.S. — at nearly 14 deaths per 100,000 people — is higher than that of such violent places as Iraq, Eritrea, and the Philippines.

Surely the stark comparison between the U.S. (with the world’s laxest gun ownership laws and one of the world’s highest gun death rates) and Japan (with the world’s strictest gun ownership laws and one of the world’s lowest gun death rates) ought to give pause.

Still, all these stark statistics don’t mean that drastically regulating gun ownership will solve all problems of interpersonal violence in the U.S.

The Republicans are also right that there’s a mental health crisis, and it’s time to fund mental health far, far more comprehensively, and proactively.

Well, ironically, Republicans may not actually believe this line that they like to tout. As attorney Tristan Snell observed on Twitter recently, almost no Republicans actually vote to fund mental health initiatives:

But that’s the subject for another blog post.

For now, let’s take Republicans at their (un-trustworthy) word and imagine we can transcend the binary thinking implicit in assuming that either the Republicans or Democrats are right on this issue, but not both.

If this past year’s horrendous gun death statistics are any prediction, a lot of lives depend on it.

Binary thinking, Gun control, Philosophical anthropology Read more

What Do Hair Salons Have to Do with Prayer, Magic, and the Development of Literacy?

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It turns out, the first complete sentence ever written by a human (at least, as of what we know now) concerned hair.

New archaeological evidence — discovered in Israel in 2016 and analyzed recently — confirms that “the oldest instance of a sentence written using the alphabet is on an inscription on an ancient ivory comb” — and it highlighted head lice.

Some 3,700 years ago, a wealthy man in Tel Lachish, an ancient Canaanite city in the foothills of central Israel, wrote seven words in the Phoenician (or Canaanite) alphabet that can be translated roughly as: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and beard.”

The ancient author was not being paranoid: “A tooth of the comb was actually discovered to possess the tough outer shell of a head louse.” 

From analyzing technical components of the writing, the brilliant archaeologists who discovered this amazing find (Daniel Vainstub et al.) believe that the comb was produced not long after the earliest forms of the Phoenician alphabet was created. Given that the Phoenician alphabet eventually served as the foundation of what became the Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Cyrillic alphabets, dare we speculate that modern Western writing systems have their origins in efforts to control the natural world via supernatural means?

Another interesting point suggested by this find: The author inscribed his wish on ivory from an elephant’s tusk that would likely have come from Egypt. This provenance suggests that the comb’s owner was wealthy enough to buy a luxury item imported from a distance.

Four contemporary implications I take away from this fascinating research:

  • then as now, attention to hair responds to an elemental human need
  • then as now, income inequality allowed a minority of elites to gain access to rarities inaccessible to most
  • then as now, riches didn’t inure humans from pest-based afflictions
  • then as now, prayer — as a particular, verbal form of magic — was a tempting solution to all sorts of life’s troubles, including itchy head bugs.

I was never very good at archaeology (don’t ask), but I love learning what intrepid archaeologists uncover.

Curious about how the scholars managed to decode the faintly visible scrawls? Read the details of their impressive methods here.

Ancient Israel, Archaeology, Hair, Literacy, Magic, Prayer Read more

Why “The Great Replacement Theory” is not a Theory, and why that Matters

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The notion of a “theory” comes from science. As such, the term conveys all the legitimacy upon which the scientific method relies. It should not be tossed around casually like a frisbee in the park.

The so-called “Great Replacement Theory” we are now reading about in mainstream publications is not a theory. Therefore, it should not be called a theory. And it should not be graced with capital letters. Both these practices suggest unearned legitimacy. And, unearned legitimacy carries great risk.

We now know that repeatedly making false claims will train people to slowly accept those false claims. Recent research by a team of psychologists and cognitive scientists warns us that we humans tend to increase our belief in any claims—true or false, reasonable or unreasonable, likely or unlikely—the more often we hear or read about them. So, as we repeatedly encounter something being called a “theory,” we become more easily inclined to agree that it IS a theory. Once that happens, it moves into the realm of science. As such, we begin to attribute it truth status.

What does it mean that a “theory” is grounded in the scientific method? Here’s one statement from Scientific American:

A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing.

The American Museum of Natural History expands on this basic principle:

A theory not only explains known facts; it also allows scientists to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. Scientific theories are testable. New evidence should be compatible with a theory. If it isn’t, the theory is refined or rejected. The longer the central elements of a theory hold—the more observations it predicts, the more tests it passes, the more facts it explains—the stronger the theory.

What is now being called the “great replacement theory” has nothing of the attributes of a theory. It has not been “substantiated through repeated experiments.” It has not been “substantiated through testing.” It does not “explain known facts.” It is not “compatible with new evidence.”

Jews are not “replacing” Christians. (As one Jewish studies scholar notes, “America’s Jewish birthrate has fallen, and Jews are barely replacing themselves, let alone the white population as a whole“). Nor are people of color “replacing” white people. True, the demographic profile of the U.S. is changing. But that is nothing new. In fact, it has always been the case. Since the founding of the Republic, new groups of refugees (starting with the Pilgrims), followed by newer groups of immigrants, have continually brought new languages, new musics, new cultural practices, new cuisines, and new religious traditions to these shores. Given this history that undergirds all American history, it should not surprise us that, as one recent study notes, most Americans do not care about the “changing” demographic profile of the American population. “Change” is the one constant of U.S. demographic history.

But some white Christians are afraid of such scenarios. Their fears are stoked by right-wing talk-show hosts promoting outlandish fantasies of racist and anti-Semitic “what-if” schemes. As they have been at other times in the past, these schemes are now being interbraided, with the fate of Western history’s two great “othered” groups—Jews and Blacks—being once again bound by linked stereotypes.

With fear a powerful motivator, these invented “replacement” plots slip easily into the vaunted category of “fact,” once they are covered with the veneer of science . . . simply by being called a “theory.”

Or, should I write, “Theory”?

Adding a capital letter to a word claiming to be something it is not makes matters worse. As one professional author/editor explains it, some people erroneously think that “sticking a capital letter at the front of a word would make it seem more grand, more important, more worthy of respect.” But, as another professional editor notes, this practice is nothing more than “rogue capitalization.” 

YOUR Words Matter

All of which is to urge:

Journalists and politicians: please stop mindlessly repeating the offensive, misleading, and dangerous phrase, “Great Replacement Theory”!

When referring to this notion—which has inspired all too many recent massacres, from El Paso to Buffalo—don’t be afraid to use more words, if more words are required for accuracy. Call it out for what it is. How about . . .

the dangerous claim known as “great replacement theory” that is rooted in racist and anti-Semitic paranoia.

Update Nov. 2022: I’ve just learned of a new M.A. thesis by Cheryl Hege about “white replacement theory” completed from the perspective of political science. It looks quite promising. If you have an account with ResearchGate, you can find it at no charge online here.

Anti-racist activism, Anti-Semitism, Journalism, Journalists, Language and culture, Language politics, Pundits, Racism, Writing Read more

A Strange Past Returns Strangely

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The last time I heard anyone utter the name, Przemysl, I must have been ten or eleven years old. In his thickly Yiddishized English, my maternal grandfather must have been telling me something about his early life. And I must have been listening more intently than I realized.

I don’t recall exactly what he was recounting. Maybe it was something about his parents requiring him to drop out of school after third grade so he could spend his days on the streets with a pushcart, selling stuff and more stuff to contribute to his family’s meager household income. Maybe it was something about his decision in 1911 to leave that unpromising life of poverty and anti-Semitism and somehow, at age 19 or 20, make his way to Hamburg and, thence, board a ship (as a stowaway, as I found out decades later — maybe, like many other young Jewish men around him, creatively escaping conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army?) that was bound for New York.

What I did recall was that strange-sounding name. Przemysl. Only decades later would I find out how to spell it.

I had to hire a professional genealogist friend to find out where my grandfather was born. (Thank you, Joy Kestenbaum!) It turns out, it wasn’t in Przemysl but a town some 50 miles to the east, with another odd-sounding name I’d also heard during my childhood. I remembered it as Zeluzutz; my brilliant genealogist friend identified it as Zaliztsi.

There had also been talk of another town that I remembered sounding something like Tarnopol. My memory wasn’t too far off on that one. Joy identified it as Ternopil.

And another city that I remembered as sounding like Lavuv — in, I now know, its Russian pronunciation. That turned out to be Lviv — as the Ukrainians call it.

Throughout my childhood, all these hard-to-pronounce toponyms belonged to another era. I wasn’t sure how they fit together, or to which countries they belonged — sometimes my grandfather said Poland, sometimes Austria (by which, I later figured out, he meant the Austro-Hungarian empire)— or which one my grandfather had called home. But I knew he had some relationship to all these distance spaces.

A week or two into my senior year in high school, I mentioned to my grandfather that I’d just started taking a beginning course in the Russian language. Immediately, my grandfather switched to speaking in Russian. Where did that come from? I wondered. All he said, in a faraway voice, was that he’d picked up some Russian along the way.

“But I thought you were from Poland,” I vaguely protested.

“The border was always changing,” he mumbled. “Sometimes Poland. Sometimes Russia. Sometimes Austria.” Then he must have changed the subject. Or gone silent. All I remember is no explanation.

It would be some years before I read enough history to understand the painful complexities of that perplexing statement.

Along the way, I discovered more languages that my grandfather could at least get by in. There was Yiddish, of course — his first language. And Hebrew, from all his time in the synagogue. (As an adult, there was one across the street from his apartment building in the Bronx.) Was Polish his third language, and Russian, his fourth? Or was it the other way around? He knew some German, too, I discovered later. Either way, he would have picked up English as his sixth language, from his long-ago, emergency needs as a new immigrant. Unless he spoke some Ukrainian, as well. (Did he? Now, I imagine it quite likely.) In that case, English would have been #7.

All those early tongues must have forged plenty of neuronal pathways that demanded more traffic. During the 50 years that he worked as a waiter in various Jewish delis in New York’s Lower East Side, my grandfather spent his lunch breaks scouring the trash cans along the Bowery, looking for books. The French and Spanish grammar texts he found lodged between discarded newspapers and half-eaten sandwiches served as sources for his independent study of yet two more languages. Later, my husband-to-be borrowed that beat-up Spanish primer as he crammed for the foreign language exam he would soon take, to complete his graduate program in creative writing.

My grandfather was that strange mix of working-class cosmopolitan with untapped skills. An elementary school dropout who could have excelled in a university. A polyglot who could have become a linguist. A tinkerer who could have become an engineer. A mandolin player who could have become a musician. A refugee who could have become embittered. He became none of those things.

Instead, my ever-calm grandfather (I never once heard him raise his voice or even scowl) enjoyed his one cigar a day. Beyond that indulgence, he led a frugal but fulfilled life. He and my grandmother raised my mother and my aunt in a one-bedroom, rent-controlled, third-floor-walk-up apartment that they rented for 50 years. Their frugality helped fund my expensive college education.

It was to these thoughts that I turned when I heard Przemysl featuring in a news broadcast this week. Of the 700,000-and-counting Ukrainians fleeing a land suddenly turned treacherous, most, the journalist claimed, were crossing the border into Poland. Indeed, most were massing at Lviv, the western-most city on the Ukraine-Polish border, waiting to cross — from towns such as Ternopil — into Przemysl, the Polish city on the other side of that border.

Przemysl? Really?

Przemysl, Poland. 27th Feb. 2022. After crossing the border from Shehyni in Ukraine to Medyka in Poland, refugees seek clothing and blankets provided by Polish volunteers from police officers.
Many Ukrainians leave the country after military actions by Russia on Ukrainian territory.
Credit: Michael Kappeler/dpa/Alamy Live News

Was it from there that my grandfather continued trekking for another 221 hours (with stops along the way) the 1,085 additional kilometers to Hamburg, maybe hitching a ride or two from a farmer in an oxcart before he reached Berlin? And, lacking both a GPS and money, how did he find his way from there to Hamburg?

These trajectories of early 20th century challenges seemed to belong to an alien era until last week, when Vladimir Putin decided brutally to revive them.

New histories of suffering are now being forged, creating new generations of refugees, Jewish and otherwise. A world away from my comfortable American life, those emergency refugees feel like unexpectedly kindred spirits as I imagine my grandfather in the spaces that fleeing Ukrainians are now negotiating with increasing desperation.

Yes, if we are lucky, we make our lives anew. That, after all, has been the promise of America for thousands of immigrants to these shores. But even as we claim to forge selves from our own goals and grit, the ghosts of our ancestors hover around us, remind us of their histories, and both haunt and heal us, one traumatic story at a time.

Ancestors, Anti-Semitism, Citizenship, Current Issues, History, Humanistic anthropology, Immigration, Linguistic Anthropology, Memoir, Refugees, Russia, Self, Ukraine Read more

Ten Treasures (and a Bonus): A Selection of Anthropological Gems You Might Have Missed from the Past Few Years

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I began interviewing authors of fabulous new anthropology books for this space back in 2016. While completing 11 interviews, I also amassed a backlog of more terrific books whose authors I planned to interview. One thing led to another, and my embarrassingly accumulating backlog fell hostage to a pandemic. I’ve finally harnessed my guilt and bundled these beauties into a group. No author interviews this time (who has time for that in a pandemic?), but below, you’ll find capsule descriptions of why I love every entry in this archive.

To be sure, my selection is idiosyncratic. I don’t claim that these books are the only works in anthropology worth reading that were published in the past few years. Yet, individually, each of these books grabbed my attention because of its brilliant analysis of some topic(s) I judge to have critical importance to the world. Plus, the writing in all these books is oh-so-readable. Collectively, they remind us: Anthropology is not only alive and well, the discipline continues to offers unique insights into vexing issues in ways that only long-term immersion can produce.

Acknowledgments: In curating this collection, I’m inspired by Philip Graham‘s “Some Books You May Have Missed” posts for the literary/arts magazine, Ninth Letter, for which he serves as Editor-at-Large. (You can read his latest literary rundown of great new fiction and creative non-fiction here.)

So, here goes.

*

C. Richard King, Redskins: Insult and Brand (University of Nebraska Press)

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, one of the many critical lessons that at least some of white America has learned is this: Representation matters. In that sense, Richard King‘s brilliant book provided an overdue argument that at least one sports team has finally heard. In 2020, the Washington Redskins at last acknowledged the racist foundation to their team’s name, which they changed (temporarily) to the Washington Football Team (with a new name soon to be announced here). The placeholder name may be boring— but boring is better than offensive. For its part, King’s scholarly exercise in a theoretically and historically informed argument can now be considered a paragon of engaged, critical anthropology. A review in the Chicago Tribune called this a “must-read book.”

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Amy Starecheski, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City (University of Chicago Press)

Over the past two pandemic years, real estate stories have dominated the news, from personal tragedies (eviction stories following job loss) to personal triumphs (the privileged few scooping up “deals” outside major metropolitan areas). Lurking behind those individual tales chronicling the human joys and costs of gentrification lies a broader story of economic trends (falling prices in some markets, skyrocketing prices in others). In that sense, this book by anthropologist/oral historian Amy Starecheski remains more timely than ever. A beautifully crafted narrative balances individual tales of urban squatters’ experiences across three decades of New York City’s increasingly unaffordable housing market with “big-picture” trends of macroeconomic, political, and legal developments in New York and beyond. This book contains so many lessons about where and how to make a livable space for “home.” A “recommended” book by Choice.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Rosa De Jorio, Cultural Heritage in Mali in the Neoliberal Era (University of Illinois Press)

Rosa De Jorio‘s early research in West Africa concerned women’s political participation in Mali.  In this book, De Jorio focuses on the same country but has switched gears to focus on cultural heritage.  Political scientists rarely pay attention to artistic and cultural performances, while art historians rarely focus on political structures.  In a broad sense, this book might be characterized as an engagement of political perspectives with humanistic spaces.  As such, I take this work—based on careful field research in urban Mali over the course of 16 years—as a model for how scholars working elsewhere might unpack the questions De Jorio asks here surrounding the politics of culture and the culture of politics. Jean-Loup Amselle calls this book “in the tradition of Michel Foucault’s work.” The title appeared in the Interpretations of Culture in the New Millenium series (now closed), edited by Norman E. Whitten, Jr.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*


Jane C. Desmond, Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science, and Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press)

Some years ago, I made a case for an anthropology of infancy.  In this book, Jane Desmond makes something of a similar case for an anthropology of animals.  In both arenas, subjects communicate with us in ways that we adults/humans understand only partially, and with difficulty—as if through a scrim.  Of course, the same can be said for all communication among human adults . . . but the barriers appear more extreme and daunting with both human infants and non-human animals.  In a provocative set of thematically linked essays (think: pet cemeteries, taxidermy, roadkill), Desmond makes a persuasive case for developing a robust ethnography of non-human animals and, perhaps more broadly for an inter-species ethnography.  An NPR review called it “an important and moving book.” The title appears in the terrific new Animal Lives series at Chicago edited by Desmond.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes (eds.), Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration (University of Chicago Press)

If the predominant narrative of Covid-19 emphasized immobility, that memo didn’t reach African migrants. Over the past two years, refugees fleeing Africa’s multiple postcolonial catastrophes have continued to seek more hospitable living spaces. This rich collection co-edited by Jennifer Cole and Christian Groes thus speaks to continuing hemispheric challenges, even as it centers personal experience. Moving discussions humanize the dehumanizing images, statistics, and political directives that dominate so much discussion of African migrants in Europe. Eleven case studies range from intimate topics such as child fostering, bi-national marriages, and coming-of-age rituals to explorations of the ways that government actors, laws, and policies shape migrants’ lives.  As such, this volume serves as a welcome, “bottom-up” corrective to the “top-down” trope of “migrant crisis” that too often frames both government policies and journalists’ stories coming out of the EU. The book won the Most Notable Recent Collection Award from the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Andrew Bank, Pioneers of the Field: South Africa’s Women Anthropologists (Cambridge University Press)

The notion of a “scholarly canon” is a bit of an oxymoron. Do what passed as the great works in any given field in the past still deserve pride of place today? By contrast, in re-reading “the classics” year after year, what hidden treasures might we have overlooked because of unconscious biases surrounding what “counts” as quality scholarship . . . and who “counts” as serious scholars? The brilliant scholars who have become so demonized by the U.S. right of late in promoting critical race theory prompt us to recognize the importance of regularly revisiting “the canon,” to rethink our understanding of history with new eyes and new questions. In Pioneers of the Field, historian of science Andrew Bank has done our discipline a great favor by reminding us of six brilliant women scholars of the early/mid-20th century whose work had a major impact both within and beyond South Africa. If you’re an Africanist up on your early British social anthropology, you might at least have heard of Audrey Richards, Monica Wilson, and Hilda Kuper, but if Winifred Hoernlé, Ellen Hellman, and Eileen Krige weren’t even on your radar, they will be now. Elizabeth Colson called this volume a “major contribution to intellectual history.” No History of Anthropology course should neglect this correct-the-record book.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Ana Mariella Bacigalupo, Thunder Shaman: Making History with Mapuche Spirits in Chile and Patagonia (University of Texas Press)

There’s a good reason this marvelous book received Honorable Mention for the 2017 PROSE Award for Anthropology offered by the Association of American Publishers. Ana Mariella Bacigalupo challenges stereotypical images of shamans as either extinct or anachronistic religious practitioners long left behind by history. Based on extraordinary research that Bacigalupo conducted from 1991 to 2015, the book serves, at once, as a biography of a single Mapuche shaman who accepted the author into her life in a deep, cross-cultural friendship; and an argument for a reëxamination of how we define what counts as “religion” in the modern world.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Naomi Leite, Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging (University of California Press)

When I lived in Lisbon in 2006-07, I found myself shocked and appalled at the extent to which the nation’s long, rich, and traumatic Jewish history had been rendered virtually invisible. In this riveting book, anthropologist Naomi Leite profiles a small group of Portuguese who are actively reclaiming their ancestral Jewish ancestry hidden from them, and from the nation, for centuries. With its beautiful narrative writing allied with a thoughtful analytic engagement linking hyper-local spaces in Lisbon with hyper-global spaces of international Jewish tourists, it’s easy to see why the book won two awards and was a finalist/honorable mention for two more:

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Timothy R. Landry, Vodún: Secrecy and the Search for Divine Power (University of Pennsylvania Press)

This intriguing work offers another fascinating look at international religious tourism. In this case, Western tourists travel from the U.S. and Europe to Bénin, homeland of the famed religion of Vodún (a.k.a. “voodoo”), in search of a West African spirituality. Becoming apprenticed to a Vodún priest, Timothy Landry offers, at once, an outsider’s and insider’s look at Vodún practice from the intertwined perspectives of practitioner, acolyte, seeker, and casual tourist. Along the way, he engages with issues ranging from the challenges inherent in representation of a stigmatized religious tradition to the ethical quandaries inevitably brought on by participant-observation. The book won the Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. It appears in the Contemporary Ethnography series that I edit for Penn Press.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Michelle Johnson, Remaking Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon—Mecca—Bissau (Indiana University Press)

Grounded in rich fieldwork in both Guinea-Bissau and Portugal conducted across 20 years, this book is an ethnographer’s dream. Oozing with gorgeous ethnographic details, the book at the same time tackles all the issues one could hope to think about concerning West African Muslims’ lives in Europe. Challenges of racism. Challenges of Islamophobia. Challenges by mainstream Muslims of heterodox practices. All these big-picture issues frame the stories Michelle Johnson exquisitely tells. Those stories center stunning discussions of life-cycle and other rituals—including a never-before-described practice of “writing on the hand” to initiate young students into learning the Qu’ran. Along the way, Johnson explores how immigrant African women and men rethink and adapt rural practices of female genital cutting, pilgrimages to Mecca, and funerals to urban neighborhoods in a European capital. Paul Stoller predicts: “Given the depth of its analytical insights and the grace of its presentation, this is a work that will be read, savored, and debated for many years to come.” This fabulous book appears in Indiana’s Framing the Global series.

Publisher’s webpage here.

*

Cati Coe, Changes in Care: Aging, Migration, and Social Class in West Africa (Rutgers University Press)

Hot off the press, this new ethnography, like Johnson’s, sings with all that contemporary anthropology can offer. Over the course of 20+ years, Cati Coe has lived and conducted research for long periods both in Ghana, and in the U.S. with Ghanaian migrants. The result is just the sort of rich ethnography that centers global flows, while also remaining deeply grounded in knowledge of intimate practices of the local. A short film accompanies the book, available online here. The book appears in Rutgers’ wonderful Global Perspectives on Aging series, edited by Sarah Lamb.

Publisher’s webpage here.

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