The structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the critique of Feminist Anthropology are discussed in an Iranian.com piece on gender.

The problem with structuralism is that it discards the concepts of freedom and choice, merely emphasizing the way different social structures shape an individual’s experience, outlook and behaviour. As for the works of Lévi-Strauss, feminist anthropologists of the 1970’s criticised its theoretical approach and empirical contention by introducing the discursive category of ‘gender’. Gender was defined as the essential component of power relationships that are founded on apparent differences between the sexes (3). Actually since the 1980’s, “difference” and “power” have been the main elements of gender analysis in social and human sciences.

Read more here:

Conceptualizing Gender (2) Post-structural theories

by Azadeh Azad 03-May-2012 

Dillon Mahoney

#Anthropology

Once upon a time, in the late 19^th century, anthropology was popular, but it wasn't necessarily a good thing. From pseudo-scientific justifications of racial hierarchies to the displays of so-called primitive people at ethnographic expositions, anthropology satisfied an ever growing public yearning for the exotic thrill. This thrill for the exotic, for the occult, for the uncivilized, was fueled on the one hand by an assumption that gazing at exotic peoples was like traveling back in time, like staring at your own primitive reflection. On the other hand, and quite paradoxically, this nostalgia for an imagined past was fueled by a modern desire to eliminate the “primitive” aspects of modern, civilized society. In contrast to anthropological evolutionism with its origins in European colonization and natural history, the American anthropologist, Franz Boas, considered by many to be the father of American cultural anthropology, felt that anthropology had an obligation to counter incorrect assumptions about the superiority of the West. While Working on ethnographic exhibits at museums and “Pre-Colombian Expositions,” Boas believed in these early days of his career that, by making anthropological knowledge from long-term research with so-called “primitive cultures” publicly available, he could ingrain in average citizens certain ideas of cultural relativism – that while all cultures are different, none is better or worse, more “civilized” or less. He argued that anthropology had an important role to play in providing the public with beneficial examples of cultural differences and similarities that they might then use for self-reflection.

I think of Boas as I write this first post of Anthropology Now's Betwixt and Between, because just like Boas, our goal here is founded on a possibly naïve assumption that when presented with anthropological perspectives on contemporary events, the public will learn to think beyond simple “white” vs. “black,” “us” vs. “them” or “West” vs. “rest” ways of understanding cultural differences and similarities. Instead of connecting to the public through public displays like Boas, we will use the World Wide Web. Instead of looking for the exotic in history or in distant locations, we look for the exotic in our own home fields and look for the familiar in faraway places. Instead of invoking science to legitimize our ideas, we aim to encourage critical anthropological thought, of science too. In short, we hope that we can help make anthropological insights more popular and accessible without being superficial.

If it were not for the sudden explosion of excitement caused by Kony2012 and the accompanying viral video, I would not think back to Boas right now.  Within one week of being posted on YouTube by San Diego-based creators Invisible Children, Inc. The 25-minute video profiling Central African warlord Joseph Kony and his recruitment of child soldiers had received more than 80 million views, prompting a wave of youth mobilization in American high schools and furious critiques of Invisible Children, Inc. Having taught about Joseph Kony and his Lords Liberation Army in my Anthropology of Africa classes at Rutgers University, I was intrigued by any discussion of Kony.  However, and quite to my own disappointment, I could see the same problems encountered by Boas in the late 19th century emerging from Kony2012.  I cannot help but wonder if Invisible Children are not trying to achieve something similar to a 19th century Popular Anthropology through the use of videos like that profiling Joseph Kony.  Like the “exotic” and evolutionary-oriented anthropological exhibitions of the past, they allow us to gaze at a “primitive” reality (who would dare to argue that child soldiers represent progress?) at some far away exotic land from the comforts of our own familiar environment. And like the ethnographic expositions of the past, their popular message distorts more than it reveals. However, unlike the ethnographic expositions of the past, Kony2012 is free for everybody with high speed internet. Now, press “like” to make a change!

Since the early days of the industrial revolution, intellectuals have been warning of the dangerous myth of technology as an emancipatory force. First, because it is exactly what many of those in positions of power want us to think, and second, because it blinds us to the violent sides of so-called progress. We, as a new generation of anthropologists that have both the access and the understanding of new media, face the challenge of provoking the public to think beyond taken-for-granted notions of right and wrong in the face of widespread social injustice.

So we return to Boas.  By the eve of the First World War, Boas had left the museums for the classrooms at Columbia University and began to train a new generation of American cultural anthropologists.  His attempts to make the American public more aware of cultural differences and similarities had not worked as planned.  His confidence in the mobilization of the public, of popular anthropology, or of how the public would respond to anthropological knowledge presented through popular displays was shaken, especially after the Spanish American War and a continued rise in American imperialism throughout the early 20th century. In 1916, Boas wrote that “the number of people in [the United States] who are willing and able to enter into modes of thought of other nations is altogether too small … The American who is cognizant only of his own standpoint sets himself up as arbiter of the world.”  These words are just as true 100 years later, especially in light of the naiveté accompanying Kony2012.  How can Anthropology Now's guest blogger venue take on this new challenge of disseminating and translating anthropological knowledge, while learning from Franz Boas, Kony2012, and so many others who have attempted to bridge the gap between social knowledge and social action?  We are not completely sure, but this uncertainty implies numerous possibilities, and possibility is a wonderful place to start.

Dillon Mahoney teaches cultural and linguistic anthropology at Rutgers University. His research focuses on the politics of telecommunications and tourism development in East Africa. He has done research in Mombasa, Kenya since 2001.

Betwixt and Between is Anthropology Now's guest blogger venue. We welcome posts that engage the public with contemporary issues and anthropological thought. Betwixt and Between lies between the material and the virtual; between the local and the global; between the text and the hyper-text; between the real and the imagined; between academic-speak and daily-speak. It refers to a state of being in several worlds at once, to a state of being neither here nor there, while being here and there at the same time. It is a state of uncertainty, of insecurity and of numerous possibilities.

From Alex Argyriadis, a PhD Candidate in History and Anthropology at the University of Peloponnese, Greece:

The first Program on Everyday Life and Culture in Greece was recently instituted at The University of Peloponnese. Founder and Head of the Program is the anthropologist C. Nadia Seremetakis (www.seremetakis.com), known worldwide for her influential writings as well as her engagement with and contributions in public anthropology.

The Program, aiming to promote and sustain a dialogue between academia and the wider society, held its first public- multimedia-participatory Symposium on Taste and Memory in the S. Peloponnese (region of Messinia) from March 13 to 19, and will hold, by popular demand, more events in other regions in the coming months.

Based on Professor Seremetakis’s notion of “ethnography as performance” and drawing on her book The Senses Still, this event involved the active, voluntary participation of over 20 schools (elementary and high school) in the region, over 25 local cultural organizations, public organizations such as theater, dance, music, the area authorities (all six Mayors and municipalities of Messinia), 75 university students, and numerous citizens.

As Professor Seremetakis claims, the effective mobilization and collaboration of all these forces in presenting original works for a specific event like this—call it public anthropology, cultural management, public education, or whatever—, can only be attained by “good ethnography—ethnography as both research method and writing. The former trains you to ‘excavate’ and ‘communicate’, the latter to ‘synthesize’ effectively the uncovered fragments.”

This multidisciplinary event featured lectures by renown Greek scholars, artistic performances, and a four-level exhibition which included over 300 student’s paintings and ceramic creations of sweet and salty memories, numerous narrations and poems on “recipes with memory”, as well as collections of gastronomic metaphors in everyday speech, poetry, popular lyrics, ancient texts, fairytales, and much more. These were accompanied by homemade tit-bits and sweets offered by citizens, and local products by world-acclaimed food businesses.

Film projections included a video documentary which showed the mobilization and preparation of schools (students and teachers) in anticipating their participation in the event. This film was also produced by UoP students-doctoral candidates under the supervision of Prof. Seremetakis.

The aftertaste of the event included aesthetic and gustatory interventions in the eating areas of the university by both local citizens and students, as well as the installation of a handmade compost bin on the university campus.

The event was attended by over 500 citizens, 179 of which received certification, among them 76 undergraduate and graduate students, and was covered by local and national media.

As Prof. Seremetakis stated to the media, this certainly offers a different picture of “Greek crisis” than the one prevailing in the news.

This, if I may add, is a prime example of public anthropology in a country where anthropology has no public face.

contact: Program on Everyday Culture, everydayculturehellas@gmail.com

Angela Garcia, Anthropology Now author, wrote an op-ed in LA Times on anti-addiction vaccines:

My aunt Marion is in the hospital dying of liver and kidney failure, the result of her 20-year struggle with heroin use. I was told of her imminent death the same day news broke about a vaccine against the drug. "Breakthrough heroin vaccine could render drug 'useless' in addicts," one headline read. "Scientists create vaccine against heroin high," proclaimed another.

Meanwhile, my aunt finds temporary relief in the ever more frequent administration of opiate pain medication — the very kind of drugs she used illegally.

The idea of an anti-addiction vaccine is not new. For nearly 40 years scientists have been working on vaccines against all kinds of addictions, including nicotine, marijuana and alcohol. There are even trials of vaccines to prevent obesity. None of the anti-addiction vaccines has yet received Food and Drug Administration approval, however, and most of the studies are still in their early stages.

Read the rest here:

Heroin vaccine won't 'cure' what ails addicts
By Angela Garcia
April 15, 2012

Before we can understand an alien civilization, it might be useful to understand our own.

To help in this task, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Canada studies the very human way that scientists, engineers and members of the public think about space exploration and the search for alien life.

From Star Trek to SETI, our modern world is constantly imagining possible futures where we dart around the galaxy engaging with bizarre alien races. Denning points out that when people talk about these futures, they often invoke the past. But they frequently seem to have a poor understanding of history

Read more at Wired Magazine

Q&A: The Anthropology of Searching for Aliens
By Adam Mann April 4, 2012

The White House named Jim Yong Kim as its nominee to head to World Bank. Jim Yong Kim is the president of Dartmouth College, an anthropologist, a physician and a global health expert. This nomination forms a radical break from the traditional profiles of the World Bank leaders. Shall this appointment be approved, this would be one of the most influential positions any anthropologist has ever reached. It remains to be seen how Jim Yong Kim anthropological understanding would translate into global and local policies.

Volume 4 / Number 1 / April 2012

This issue includes:

A Right to Beauty by Alexander Edmonds

Who Cares for the Caregivers? by Jonathan Stillo

The Prosperity of Gospel in Times of Austerity by Kate Griffiths Dingani

What's in a Laptop? by Hugh Gusterson

America ♥ CEOS? by Julian Brash

Visions of Mustangs by David Byers

and much more!

A Right to Beauty

Alexander Edmonds

While living in Rio de Janeiro in 1999, I saw something that caught my at­tention: a television broadcast of a Carnival parade that paid homage to a plastic sur­geon, Dr. Ivo Pitanguy. The doctor led the procession surrounded by samba dancers in feathers and bikinis. Over a thundering drum section and the anarchic screech of a cuíca (Brazilian friction drum), the singer praised Pitanguy for “awakening the self-esteem in each ego” with a “scalpel guided by heaven.”

It was the height of Rio’s sticky summer, and the city had almost slowed to a stand­still, as had my progress on the research for my anthropology doctorate on Afro-Brazil­ian syncretism. After seeing the parade, I be­gan to notice that Rio’s plastic surgery clin­ics were almost as numerous as beauty parlors (and there are a lot of those). New-stands sold magazines with titles like Plás­tica & Beauty, next to Marie Claire. I as­sumed that the popularity of cosmetic surgery in a developing nation was one more example of Brazil’s gaping inequali­ties.But Pitanguy has long maintained that plastic surgery was not only for the rich: “The poor have the right to be beautiful, too,” he has said.

The beauty of the human body has raised distinct ethical issues in different epochs. The literary scholar Elaine Scarry pointed out that in the classical world a glimpse of a beautiful person could imperil an observer. In his “Phaedrus” Plato describes a man who after beholding a beautiful youth be­gins to spin, shudder, shiver, and sweat. With the rise of mass consumerism, ethical discussions have focused on images of fe­male beauty. Beauty ideals are blamed for eating disorders and body alienation. But Pitanguy’s remark raises yet another issue: Is beauty a right, which, like education or health care, should be realized with the help of public institutions and expertise?

The question might seem absurd. Pitan­guy’s talk of rights echoes the slogans of make-up marketing (e.g., L’Oreal’s “Because you’re worth it” campaign). Yet his vision of plastic surgery reflects a clinical reality that he helped create. For years he has per­formed charity surgeries for the poor. More radically, some of his students offer free cos­metic operations in the nation’s public-health system.

After a long wait, I began new fieldwork among a “tribe” of Cariocas (residents of Rio) less familiar to me: socialites and their maids, divorced housewives, unemployed secretaries, aspiring celebrities, transvestite prostitutes, and other patients who were making Brazil, as a national news magazine bragged, the “empire of the scalpel.”

I first met Ester through her former employer, a successful plastic surgeon, for whom she’d worked as his personal cook. Ester lived near the surgeon in Vidigal, a favela flanking the brilliant white sand beach of Leblon. One day, after she’d prepared dinner for his family, she shyly told him in private, “Doc­tor, I want to put in silicone.”

After reading up on prosthetic materials in an Internet café, she’d settled on a mid-cost model of breast implant (1,500 real, or about $900), size (175 cm), and shape (nat­ural), and convinced the doctor in a minute that she was a good candidate. Hesitant to perform the surgery on his domestic em­ployee, he referred her to a young resident in Pitanguy’s clinic.

Ester left school at 14 to work beside her mother as a maid, and now has two young kids. While taking night classes to get her high-school diploma, she dreamed of “working with numbers.”� Job prospects were grim, however, and she said she’d take anything, even “working for a family” (a eu­phemism for domestic service). I asked her why she wanted to have the surgery. “I didn’t put in an implant to exhibit myself, but to feel better. It wasn’t a simple vanity, but a … necessary vanity. Surgery improves a woman’s auto-estima.”

Ester mentioned a key concept in Pitan­guy’s vision of plastic surgery’s healing po­tential: self-esteem. A prolific writer, Pitan­guy says he takes a “humanistic” approach to medicine. Most of his 800-plus publica­tions are technical, but some cite thinkers, such as Michel Foucault and Claude Lévi-Strauss, rarely found in medical works (hence Pitanguy’s sobriquet, given by a col­league: the “philosopher of plástica”). With its wide-ranging reflections, this oeuvre has earned Pitanguy a place in Brazil’s presti­gious academy of letters.

It also outlines a radical therapeutic justi­fication for cosmetic surgery. Pitanguy ar­gues that the real object of healing is not the body, but the mind. A plastic surgeon is a “psychologist with a scalpel in his hand.”

This idea led Pitanguy to argue for the “union” of cosmetic and reconstructive pro­cedures. In both types of surgery beauty and mental healing subtly mingle, he claims, and both benefit health. Pitanguy still makes a distinction between cosmetic and recon­structive operations. Santa Casa—which is run with a mix of charity and state fund­ing—offers the latter for free, but charges a small fee to cover the costs of anesthesia and medical materials for cosmetic opera­tions. But other surgeons, including some of Pitanguy’s students, have gone further, offer­ing free cosmetic surgery in public hospi­tals.

We might ask: if you’re psychologically suffering, why not have psychological treat­ment? One doctor had this response: “What is the difference between a plastic surgeon and a psychoanalyst? The psychoanalyst knows everything but changes nothing. The plastic surgeon knows nothing but changes everything.”

He was joking, but he hit on a change in Brazil’s therapeutic landscape.

Psychoanalysis and plastic surgery, both once maverick medical specialties, overlap closely in their historical development. While the “talking cure” treated bodily complaints via the mind, plastic surgery healed mental suffering via the body. Histo­rian Sander Gilman called plastic surgery “psychoanalysis in reverse.” In Brazil, as in Argentina, psychoanalysis enjoyed extraor­dinary popularity among wealthier Brazil­hans.

“The poor prefer surgery.”

ians. But many veterans of Freudian or La­canian therapy have supplemented or sup­planted it with plástica. For the patients at public hospitals, psychoanalysis had never been “an option,” a psychologist who worked in Pitanguy’s clinic told me. Echo­ing the words of the mischievous Carnival designer, she explained, “The poor prefer surgery.”

Pitanguy’s ideas would have had little influ­ence if it were not for his reputation as a skilled surgeon. Starting in the 1940s Pitan­guy trained with leading plastic surgeons in Europe and the United States. One of his mentors in Britain was Sir Harold Gillies, who pioneered techniques in modern plas­tic surgery while operating on mutilated World War I veterans. His long career thus spans the 20th-century transformation of the specialty from primarily reconstructive tech­niques to primarily cosmetic improvements. Over the last five decades, Pitanguy has trained over 500 surgeons. His students have in turn trained new generations of sur­geons, spreading their mentor’s techniques and “philosophy” as they open up practices around the country and abroad.

Pitanguy’s views of plastic surgery are in some ways no different than those of the wider specialty. Plastic surgery gained legiti­macy in the early 20th century by limiting itself to reconstructive operations. The “beauty doctor” was a term of derision. But as techniques improved they were used for cosmetic improvements. Missing, however, was a valid diagnosis. Concepts like psy­choanalyst Alfred Adler’s inferiority com­plex—and later low self-esteem—provided a missing link.

Victorians saw a cleft palate as a defect that built character. For us it hinders self-realization and merits corrective surgery. This shift reflects a new attitude toward ap­pearance and mental health: the notion that at least some defects cause unfair suffering and social stigma is now widely accepted. But Brazilian surgeons take this reasoning a step further. Cosmetic surgery is a consumer service in most of the world. In Brazil it is becoming, as Ester put it, a “necessary van­ity.” Or as one surgeon said, “Faced with an aesthetic defect, the poor suffer as much as the rich.”

Oddly enough for a plastic surgeon, Pi­tanguy is an aesthetic relativist. Some plas­tic surgeons cite Greek mathematicians to argue there is a universal beauty ideal based on classical notions of proportion. But Pi­tanguy, whose patients often have mixed African, indigenous, and European ancestry, stresses that aesthetic ideals vary by epoch and ethnicity. What matters are not objec­tive notions of beauty, but how the patient feels. As his colleague says, the job of the plastic surgeon is to simply “follow desires.”

Yet, such desires are not simply a matter of psychology. Brazil’s pop music and TV shows are filled with talk of a new kind of celebrity: the siliconada. These actresses and models pose in medical magazines, the mainstream women’s press, and Brazilian versions of Playboy, which are read (or viewed) by female consumers. Patients are on average younger than they were 20 years ago. They often request minor changes to become, as one surgeon said, “more per­fect.” Unlike fashion’s embrace of playful dissimulation and seduction, this beauty practice instead insists on correcting pre­cisely measured flaws. Plastic surgery may contribute to a biologized view of sex where pleasure and fantasy matter less than the anatomical “truth” of the bare body.

While Pitanguy views plastic surgery as part of mental health, it is also becoming a rou­tine intervention in women’s health. As else­where in the world, the majority of patients in Brazil are female. Ester said, “I was a mother twice. I had an enormous belly and it never returned to normal. Plástica can give you a muscular correction, they stretch the skin, cut it.” Happy with the results of her breast surgery, she was now saving up for abdominoplasty and liposuction. Some women (and plastic surgeons) blame preg­nancy and breast feeding for breasts that are “fallen,” “shrunken,” or “shriveled like a passion fruit left in the refrigerator drawer,” and which can be corrected with cosmetic surgery.

In the United States, the growth of the “mommy job” has provoked a medical and cultural controversy. Bloggers have vehe­mently denounced “yuppie yummy mum­mies,” while the New York Times warned about the “pathologization” of motherhood. But in Brazil, such postpartum body con­touring is in many ways becoming inte­grated into mainstream reproductive and sexual health practices.

Some ob-gyns and psychologists refer pa­tients to plastic surgeons. Ob-gyns may also counsel expectant mothers how to manage weight gain, balancing between health and aesthetic factors. News media run features on women’s health that juxtapose advances in dieting pills and breast implants next to improvements in techniques for breast can­cer screening. Brazil also has a highly inter­ventionist tradition of medical managing of women’s health. It is perhaps not coinciden­tal that Brazil has not only high rates of plastic surgery, but also high rates of Ce­sarean sections (70 percent of deliveries in some private hospitals), tubal ligations, and other surgeries for women. Plástica can be seen as a means to correct a scar or flaccid­ity following a C-section, or else more sub­tly as a “gift to the self” after the sacrifice of childbirth and the pain of other surgeries. Other women see elective surgeries as part of a modern standard of care, more or less routine for the middle class, but only spo­radically available to the poor. One favela resident remarked: “If a girl from Ipanema can have a 5,000 reals breast job, then I have the right, too.”

Brazil also provides a “good working en­vironment,” surgeons say, compared to the United States or Europe. One resident re­marked, “Patients here do not feel they have the right to pursue a malpractice suit.” He linked this to a cultural trait: “The Latin pa­tient is friendly, more open, more sentimen­tal. This is better for us because even if the patient is not satisfied, she is less likely to sue.” In the United States, patients must sign a form saying they understand the risks of sur­gery—a formality often dispensed with in Brazil. In public hospitals, which often have very short consultations, some patients were uninformed about the possibility of compli­cations or unaware that operations would leave a scar. When complications do occur, surgeons sometimes blame the patient’s “re­sponse to surgery.” Or else, patients simply blame themselves. One woman said, “Plás­tica is a lottery. Because of the first opera­tion I had to do others, and others, and oth­ers. They cut the nerves. It was an elaborate and sad road. … I was one of the rare ones who failed with plástica.”

While the rate of complications may be low, a surprising number of patients I meet are seeking a touch-up. Due to the subjec­tive nature of body-image, it’s not always clear whether a resident botched the job, or the patient is simply disappointed with the results. But aside from the quality of the sur­gery, the “popularization” of plastic surgery raises another question: Are scarce public healthcare funds being diverted from other purposes?

Santa Casa and some public hospitals house residency programs that provide ex­traordinary opportunities for training in cos­metic procedures. In the United States, plas­tic surgeons usually get experience in cosmetic surgery through a lengthy appren­ticeship in a private practice. In Brazil, resi­dents—some of whom receive scholar­ships—do cosmetic operations beginning in their first year. One resident who performed ninety-six surgeries in one year said, “There is nowhere else in the world where I could have gotten that kind of experience in so short a time.” Such opportunities attract doctors from around the world. At Santa Casa, I met residents from Italy, Switzerland, India, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia.

This experience is a valuable resource for the novice surgeon. Many plastic surgery residents later find work in the private sec­tor, where pay is much higher. Brazilian cities have some of the highest densities of plastic surgeons in the world, which creates downward pressure on prices. Younger sur­geons often open practices in smaller cities or in the interior of the country. Landlocked Minas Gerais now has more plastic sur­geons than the state of Rio de Janeiro. Cheaper prices and reputation for quality is also luring medical tourists from North America, the Middle East, and Europe. What these patients may not realize is that their surgeon’s expertise—offered at a com­petitive price—was gained through an op­portunity to perform state-subsidized cos­metic operations.

Pitanguy’s philosophy is disturbing for many reasons, yet it suggests a point about the sig­nificance of attractiveness often overlooked in academic discussion. Pierre Bourdieu ar­gued that nearly all aspects of taste reflect social class. He extends his argument to the body itself: posture, gesture, even habits of chewing food. Curiously, and almost in passing, he makes an exception for physical attractiveness. Bodies “should,” he writes, “be perceived as strictly corresponding to their ‘owners’ position in the social hierar­chy.” And yet they aren’t. “The high and mighty,” he argued, “are often denied the “bodily attributes of their position, such as height or beauty.” In other words, attractive­ness is a quality that is at least partially in­dependent of other social hierarchies. For

In poor urban areas, beauty often has a similar importance for girls as soccer (or basketball) does for boys: it promises an almost magical attainment of recognition, wealth, or power.

Beauty is unfair: the attractive enjoy priv­ileges and powers gained without merit. As such, it can offend egalitarian values. Yet, while attractiveness is a quality “awarded” to those who don’t morally deserve it, it can also grant power to those excluded from other systems of privilege. It is a kind of “double negative”: a form of power that is unfairly distributed but which can disturb other unfair hierarchies. For this reason it may have democratic appeal. In poor urban areas, beauty often has a similar importance for girls as soccer (or basketball) does for boys: it promises an almost magical attain­ment of recognition, wealth, or power.

In Brazil’s favelas many dreams for social mobility center on the body. NGOs offer free lessons in fashion modeling. Marriage is often seen as an out-of-reach luxury, se­duction a means of escaping poverty. Pow­erful attractions that cross class lines are a favorite theme in telenovelas. And working-class women face long lines at public hospi­tals to have cosmetic surgery. These social facts stem from the lack of other opportuni­ties for many women. Yet, they also reflect an accurate, not deluded, perception of the role of physical attractiveness in consumer capitalism.

For many consumers, attractiveness is es­sential to economic and sexual competition, social visibility, and mental well-being. This “value” of appearance may be especially clear for those excluded from other means of social ascent. For the poor, beauty is often a form of capital that can be exchanged for other benefits, however small, transient, or unconducive to collective change.

Winner of the 2001 Miss Brasil contest. After she divulged she’d had multiple cosmetic surgeries, the Brazilian media dubbed her “Miss Siliconada.”

Note

This article is adapted from an essay titled “A Necessary Vanity”that was first published in the New York Times series on philosophy, “The Stone,” on August 13, 2011.

Alexander Edmonds is assistant professor of an­thropology at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex and Plastic Surgery in Brazil (Duke University Press). More about his work can be found at http://home .medewerker.uva.nl/a.b.edmonds/.

Image from http://www.riobookings.com

Elinor Ochs’ latest research on child-rearing practices among middle class US families receives wide spread media attention:

Anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles have studied family life as far away as Samoa and the Peruvian Amazon region, but for the last decade they have focused on a society closer to home: the American middle class.

Why do American children depend on their parents to do things for them that they are capable of doing for themselves? How do U.S. working parents’ views of “family time” affect their stress levels? These are just two of the questions that researchers at UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families, or CELF, are trying to answer in their work.

By studying families at home—or, as the scientists say, “in vivo”—rather than in a lab, they hope to better grasp how families with two working parents balance child care, household duties and career, and how this balance affects their health and well-being.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal:

A Field Guide to the Middle-Class U.S. Family
By SHIRLEY S. WANG, March 13th

Also, read responses to the original article at The Washington Post and Slate Magazine

Janice D’Arcy - Are we asking enough of our kids? Anthropologists don’t think so

Libby Copeland  - The American Middle Class: Guilty Parents and Lazy Kids

A year after whole neighborhoods were killed by the Japanese tsunami, rumors of ghosts swirl in Ishinomaki as the city struggles to come to terms with the tragedy.

One reconstruction project appears stalled because of fears the undead spirits of those who perished last March will bring bad luck.

”I heard people working to repair the store became sick because of ghosts,” Satoshi Abe, 64, says, gesturing to a half-repaired supermarket. ”People died everywhere, here and there. The city is full of such stories

…anthropologist Takeo Funabiki says it is only ”natural” that stories of the supernatural abound after such an event.

”Human beings find it very difficult to accept death, whether they are inclined by nature to superstition or are very scientifically minded,” he says. ”A sudden or abnormal death, anything other than someone dying in bed of old age, is particularly difficult for people to comprehend.”

Read the rest at The Sydney Morning Herald

Tsunami recedes but ghosts linger
March 10, 2012
Everything from building work to taxi services are still affected by fears of undead spirits, writes Miwa Suzuki.