Where do I even begin to explain what I'm thinking and feeling about how children are appearing in the coverage, being responded to on the ground, and what's actually happening to kids in Haiti?  When I'm feeling sour (like right now) I think, well, Haitians don't have pets so unlike Katrina where we covered all the puppies and kittens, we're focusing on the helpless kids.  As a way of avoiding the real issue. My main research focus is kids, so I take them very, very seriously.  In a hilarious moment in class the other day, when I was pushing my students to examine why they found the idea of childhood sexuality so unthinkable, one student blurted out, "Well to me an 8-year-old child isn't even, you know, HUMAN!"  It isn't surprising that given the very particular ways we think about children and childhood in the wealthy world that is Europe and the US (that is, the bulk of the...

===In response to the terrible devastation in Haiti, Anthropology Now is offering special coverage of events in Haiti. For the next few weeks, Press Watch will be a dedicated Haiti Watch. Elizabeth Chin, a professor of anthropology at Occidental College who has worked for many years in Haiti joins us as a Featured Special Report guest blogger.For her previous posts, Click on 'Read More' in Press Watch. We will also be tracking news coverage of anthropologist Paul Farmer and his work on the relief efforts. And we encourage all concerned readers to donate generously to Partners in Health, the organization Paul Farmer co-founded that is working on the ground in Haiti. Please contact us with links and news on Haiti that we can share with our readers.=== *Special Report blogger Elizabeth Chin is an anthropologist who has studied Haitian Folklore dance for over 20 years, both in the US and...

Even now,  I'm sure, so much of Haiti is breathtakingly beautiful.  There is something of an upside to the country not having had enough money or cachet to get utterly overdeveloped and paved over.  The mountains up above Miragoane, for instance, with their breezes that arrive from both sides of land, are cool, misty, piney, and clear-skied; meanwhile I'm sure that many of the little pocket beaches along the southern coast near Jacmel are still as magically warm and blue and seaweedy as I remember. I'm sick to death of hearing about the ugliness of Haiti -- and so much of the beauty goes beyond anything natural and is deeply cultural.  There is, of course, the painting tradition for which Haiti is rightly famous, and the sequin art is something staggeringly rich and imaginative, especially the beaded flags with their overlays of Catholic and Vodou imagery. The language, too, is...

Research takes perseverance and grit, but there is no denying that it comes with certain pleasures, too. In Palestinian society, research feeds both mind and body. Once, I was interviewing two young men who were in a hurry to go on an afternoon excursion. Still, they presented me with soda and then coffee on a shiny round tray. During another interview, I enjoyed watermelon and ice cream cake. As I ate, I pondered: What could be easier than research in which people conceive of the researcher as a guest? Obviously, though, the work of research is more than just managing the watermelon juice that threatens to escape from the sides of one’s mouth as one poses the next question. Another juicy challenge of this project has been tracking key terms as they circulate between U.S. news articles and Palestinian interpretations. The word “chaos” popped up often in U.S. news...