Adrienne Pine was in a jam. The assistant anthropology professor at American University was about to begin teaching “Sex, Gender & Culture,” but her baby daughter woke up in the morning with a fever. The single mother worried that she had no good child-care options.

 

So Pine brought her sick baby to class. The baby, in a blue onesie, crawled on the floor of the lecture hall during part of the 75-minute class two weeks ago, according to the professor’s account. The mother extracted a paper clip from the girl’s mouth at one point and shooed her away from an electrical outlet. A teaching assistant held the baby and rocked her at times, volunteering to help even though Pine stressed that she didn’t have to. When the baby grew restless, Pine breast-fed her while continuing her lecture in front of 40 students.

American University professor breast-feeds sick baby in class, sparking debate

By Nick Anderson, Published: September 11

Not long ago, I received a text message from a young woman, a minor acquaintance I'd only met a couple of times:

Hi Barb its something personal bt I think u sud help me out plis… if posible plis I really want 2 make frend wit one of whom u knw who is interested with PNG girls plis im intrested. sicret u and me.

Though she didn't spell it out, the type of person she wanted to make “friends” with was, I knew, a white man. This wasn't the first time a young Papua New Guinean had asked me to help them find a white boyfriend or husband. On my first visit to the country in 2008, I found myself being asked to take carefully posed photos of 15 and 16 year old girls in their smartest, most fashionable clothes, which they subsequently directed me to show to my “brothers and friends back home.” Since then I've had many young women inquire about whether or not my male friends in America would be interested in being matched up with Papua New Guineans. As with my text messaging acquaintance, these requests were supposed to be “secret you and me”—these young women didn't want their families or other people to know that they hoped to “befriend” foreigners. Another companion even snuck a look at my phone while I was sleeping, and started sending flirtatious text messages to one of my contacts, whom she knew to be white, male, and single. (I found out about this much later, when he informed me, amused, of the messages he had been receiving late at night.) These girls are hardly “gold diggers” or loose women; most are churchgoing “good girls” with dreams of upward mobility and international travel that are tragically inaccessible to most Papua New Guineans.

These requests are always awkward for me. I find it hard to explain that dating works differently where I'm from, and that few American men in their twenties and thirties would be interested in, or even aware of, the possibility of striking up a long distance relationship with a Papua New Guinean girl. The fantasy combines a very Papua New Guinean approach to courtship, in which an intermediary establishes contact between two people with the hope of making a match, with a series of assumptions about how romance, sexuality, and love work in “the white countries”. Most of these assumptions are simply the inverse of racist stereotypes about Papua New Guinean men (which both men and women have internalized to an often upsetting degree). Unlike PNG men, girls tell me, white men are uniformly kind, monogamous, non-violent, non-jealous, sober, and financially responsible. They never hit their wives and don't cheat with other women. They don't drink, or if they do, they “know how to drink well and don't get drunk.” Even when they leave their wives, they do it better than Papua New Guineans do: “white people know how to divorce properly,” a woman in her fifties once informed me. (Needless to say, women who've actually lived overseas or spent time in expat enclaves often have a very different perspective on white men's fidelity and sobriety.) I've lost track of the number of times I've heard young women, and even a few older married ones, declare with exasperation that they're finished with PNG men and want to find a white husband. Many ask me about immigration opportunities, fantasizing out loud about, for example, going to pick fruit in Australia and nabbing a man at the same time, or going on a tourist visa to America and “just staying forever”.

I should emphasize here that most of these fantasies are just that: a way of expressing frustration with male behavior and marital restrictions on PNG women, as well as the unfair limitations on international migration and travel that Papua New Guineans face. The politics of migration in the Pacific are defined and policed by Australian authorities—for most Papua New Guineans, “overseas” means Australia, their former colonial overseer, and Australian media regularly expresses terror at the thought of masses of Papua New Guinean “boat people” crossing the Torres Strait. In these accounts, Papua New Guineans are often depicted as vectors for infectious diseases like cholera, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS, threatening Australian public health and the solvency of the Australian health care system. Public service announcements targeting the state of Queensland (where most of the migration traffic between PNG and Australia occurs) warn Australian men working in the mining industry of the health risks of sex with Papua New Guineans. In reality, while many PNG women would jump at the chance of overseas travel—something that is accessible to only a tiny minority of the population, usually through educational exchange and, yes, marriage to foreigners—most are deeply attached to their home and relations, and understand that life in other countries might be isolating and difficult. Moreover, many of them have met women who have been married to or otherwise involved with white men, and their life stories are not always fairytale romances. In many cases, desire for “white men” is actually desire for an imaginary life of leisure and plenty known primarily through TV, movies, magazines, and observations of the lavish lifestyles of tourists and other expatriates.

When I interview informants, they often take the opportunity to ask me personal questions about sexuality, romance, and racial difference. After an hour-long interview with two twenty-year-old men, one of them politely inquired if I would ever consider marrying a black man. At first, embarrassed, I wondered if he was hitting on me, but I quickly realized that he was actually asking a broader, political question about race relations: Why, he continued, did white people in PNG “keep to themselves” so much? Why did they seem unwilling to establish long-term relationships with blacks? Did the thought of intimacy with Papua New Guineans disgust them? Why did they come to the country if they had no interest in a lasting connection with its inhabitants?

In this young man's account, interracial marriage was a sign of commitment to the country's well-being and a willingness to participate in reciprocity with its people—a metonym of more equal relations between nations. The desire for connection with whites has parallels with the populist analyses of regional political economy, in which the commodities readily available in Papua New Guinea are derided as “rubbish from China,” and Australian, European, or American goods are imagined to be of superior quality. Papua New Guineans know they are exploited as both a resource-rich site for extractive industries and as a dumping ground for cheap, poorly made goods. Girls often compliment my athletic sandals not in terms of their being attractive or fashionable (which, in my opinion, they are not), but as being “strong.” They link this “strength” to their overseas origin, and often complain in the same breath that “we Papua New Guineans wear rubbish sandals that break quickly, because they're made in China.” They request gifts—usually phones and shoes—“from America”, apparently assuming that goods on the American market are not made in China. These analyses uncover an acute awareness of PNG's position in the global economy. What is highly disturbing to me is when this populist hatred of Chinese “exploitation” and derision of Papua New Guinean lifestyles combines with retro-colonial nostalgia for white supremacy. Decades of failed development, government corruption and manipulation by (largely invisible) global neoliberal forces have convinced many that black men are incapable of governing themselves or taking care of their dependents. When this political cynicism is transferred into the realm of romantic relationships, you get the false notion that white men are the answer to women's disempowerment and poverty.

I describe these political and economic analyses in the same breath as young women's romantic aspirations because I have come to see them as intimately connected. Race in Papua New Guinea, as Ira Bashkow has so elegantly shown in The Meaning of Whitemen (2006), is often understood through an idiom of consumption, and white people are known and appreciated through the goods they possess. People slip easily between discussing the qualities of commodities and the nature of the persons who use them—sometimes arguing, for example, that Papua New Guineans are poor because they spend all their money on “Chinese rubbish” and thus have trouble saving up to improve their lives. These analyses are upsetting to me because they misconstrue the effect of poverty as its cause,and continue the cycle of self-blame and self-hatred engendered by colonialism.

So what do I do when my informants ask me to help them find a “white man”? In the case mentioned at the beginning of this essay, I replied (truthfully) that I didn't know many white men in the town where I am conducting fieldwork, and that those I did know were taken. But for some reason I couldn't bring myself to criticize her desires—what would be the use, after all, of telling her that she should be satisfied with the romantic and economic opportunities already available to her? She shouldn't be. Her picture of a life of luxury and ease with a caring white husband might be an illusion, but it is predicated on a lived experience of dispossession that I would be wrong to dispute.

Barbara Andersen is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department at New York University. At the time of writing she was conducting research on nursing education and changing gender relations in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

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 

Speaking to Voice of America, Medical Anthropologist Elise Johansen joins the widespread call to end Female Genital Mutilation:

…FGM, a practice which dates back thousands of years, persists despite widespread recognition of its harmful physical and psychological effects on girls and women.

Involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, FGM’s immediate health complications include severe pain, shock and hemorrhage, and longer-term consequences such as cyst formation, infertility, increased risk of childbirth complications, and newborn deaths.

Elise Johansen, a Medical Anthropologist for the World Health Organization (WHO), says that although traditional circumcisers remain the primary practitioners of FGM, doctors, nurses and other health-care providers are increasingly conducting the procedure, perpetuating the so-called medicalization of FGM.

“By allowing health care providers to perform FGM, it signals that this is an okay practice, that maybe it is healthy or harmless,” she says, explaining that the WHO strongly opposes the practice. “So it actually contributes to make sure that the practice continues, I think.”

Read more here:

Health, Rights Groups Demand Tougher Anti-FGM Laws
Lisa Schlein | Geneva

Illana Gershon of Indiana University appeared at WBEZ91.5 and discussed some the finding presented at her book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media:

When anthropologist Illana Gershon interviewed her Indiana University students as part of her research on social media and relationships, she posed this question to one of her classes: If you and your sweetie are “Facebook official,” what happens when the relationship ends? Whose job is it to change the relationship status: the person who got dumped or the person who did the dumping?

An attractive blonde replied with great confidence, “I know the answer to this one! My entire sorority knows the answer to this one!”

“It’s always the one who’s dumped,” she explained.

She then paused for a moment, “But not everyone on campus knows this.”

Read/listen to the rest here, at WBEZ91.5 website

Reflecting upon Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran, this Slate Magazine article discusses recent anthropological research conducted by Barry and Bonnie Hewlett and considers if homosexuality exists in every human society

At a press event two weeks ago, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to elaborate on his notorious assertion from 2007 that there were no homosexuals in Iran. “My position hasn’t changed,” replied the defiant Ahmadinejad. He then acknowledged to Blitzer, begrudgingly, the tiny sliver of a possibility that there could be such monsters living amongst even the Sharia-centric Iranians. “Perhaps there are those who engage in [homosexual] activities … but these are not known elements within Iranian society. Rest assured, this is one of the ugliest behaviors in our society … but as the government, I cannot go out in the street and ask [my people] about their specific orientation.”

Read the rest here:

Ahmadinejad’s Nightmare
Does homosexuality exist in every human society?
By Jesse Bering|Posted Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011

(Ahmadinejad’s image was amended and originally posted at Flicker by CooperKettle.

The original image available here)

Type the name of Philipp Lahm into the Google search engine and the first thing its “autocomplete” feature throws up about Germany’s national football captain is “Philipp Lahm schwul” – “Philipp Lahm gay”.

[...]As elsewhere in Europe, Germany has no openly gay men in the professional leagues. Given the amount of repressive hide-and-seek going on, it’s perhaps only natural that public debate returns regularly to the issue of gay footballers.

[...]Cultural anthropologist Tatjana Eggeling, who writes regularly on the issue and advises gay footballers, suggests the issue will return on a regular basis until professional players out themselves.

She suggests the secrecy and fear of discovery is not down to outright homophobia in soccer.

“The football stadium is the last bastion of masculinity where a man can give in to his sadness if his team is relegated,” she wrote in a recent paper.

“Football is very emotional. Everything is exploited to abuse and belittle the opponent: regional and social background or physical weakness.”

In this context homosexuality is seen as the ultimate weakness to be attacked, she suggests, ensuring gay players do everything possible to remain undiscovered. Though no figures exist, she suggests there are fewer than average gay men in professional football.

Read more at The Irish Times:

Football captain tackles rumours but can’t kick gay debate into touch

DEREK SCALLY

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

CNN runs a two-part story on the traumas of rape in wartime. The first part highlights the work of Vitoria Sanford among Mayan women in Guatemala:

It began as a headache. Then her throat started to feel tight. A dull pain welled in her chest and her joints ached.

But Victoria Sanford continued to do the interviews. Even in the middle of the night, the women in Guatemala always managed to find her, the “gringa” they heard had come to listen to them.

It was the early 1990s, years before the international community would formally recognize the Guatemalan government’s role in the systematic rape of its Mayan women — and decades before the current violence in Libya and elsewhere around the Middle East would once again remind the world of the brutal effectiveness of rape as a weapon of war.

Sanford was then in her early 30s and pursuing an anthropology doctorate at Stanford University. A Spanish speaker who had worked with Central American refugees, she befriended the few Mayans who had moved to California.

Press here to read the rest

Rape in wartime: Listening to the victims