This interesting anthropology-related news bite appeared at ESPN:

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia’s top prosecutor is questioning why a shaman, or medicine man, was paid $2,000 to keep rain away from the closing ceremony of the Under-20 World Cup.

The attorney general’s office opened the investigation Tuesday after the comptroller’s office in Bogota questioned cost overruns of more than $1 million — the shaman’s charges included. The official cost of the August ceremony was $2.5 million.

Anthropologist Ana Marta de Pizarro helped organize the ceremony and says the shaman was justified.

She said: “Had it rained, the event would not have taken place. It didn’t rain on the ceremony, it was successful and I would use him again if I needed to.”

Pizarro said the shaman had been used at other outdoor events in the country.

The Under-20 World Cup was held for three weeks last year across Colombia, with Brazil winning the final.

Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press

Hiring of Shaman Questioned

The Associated Press

Anthropologists discuss football/soccer and culture at The New York Times and CNN:

Beatriz Vélez, former anthropology professor at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, studied the gender dynamics of football in her home city beginning in the 1990s. First, she wrote about the grudging acceptance girls received as token participants in the Football for Peace program, established after the murder of Andrés Escobar in 1994. Interviews betrayed the prejudice that girls face daily as they are pressured, subtly or directly, toward domestic life and ideals of feminine beauty. Boys in the program wanted the field clear of girls so they could play “real football.”

“In almost all Latin American countries,” Vélez writes, “the sovereignty of football among street games and leisure-time or break activities for men is absolute. All types of workers can be seen relaxing with this game.”

Read more at The New York Times: In Colombia, a Soccer Paradox By JOHN TURNBULL

Referring to Japan’s World Cup victory,

Merry White, a professor of anthropology at Boston University and an expert on Japanese culture, said the women’s performance illustrated some key qualities of Japanese society: hard work and resilience.

“It wasn’t only skills that got them close. … It’s the effort that counts,” White said.

“They believe in will,” she said, showing “when we put our minds to something we can do it.”

Read the rest at CNN: Japan’s character seen in women’s World Cup victory