For both Jews and Muslims, circumcision is a religious and cultural practice. Within the last few weeks, Germany outlawed the practice of male circumcision for any but the strictest medical reasons. An atypical alliance of Jews and Muslims successfully challenged the German court's ruling and Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised to make religious circumcision practices (on males, but not females) legal once again.

Read more from William M. O'Barr at huffingtonpost.com

Is Infant Circumcision a Violation of Human Rights?

William M. O'Barr 

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

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.

Nate Greenslit writes for From the Fields, a Wired Science op-ed series:

As an anthropologist of science, I am fascinated with how people create their own meaning from scientific content, which in turn shapes public understanding of science and, ultimately, scientific agendas themselves.

YouTube has become a lively repository for this kind of meaning-making. A great example is advertising for antidepressants: User-generated parody videos have given neuroscientific claims about depression a new cultural life.

So-called “direct-to-consumer” television and print advertising of antidepressants has been a controversial practice since its introduction in 1997, prohibited in all countries except for the U.S. and New Zealand. This sometimes-political lightning rod of the pharmaceutical industry has also been the de facto promulgator of putative neuroscientific theories of depression and anxiety disorders.

Read more here:

Op-Ed: Why YouTube Matters to the Science of Depression
By Nate Greenslit, February 28, 2012
Wired Scienece

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

The New York Times’ Room for Debate opinion section asks “Do We Want to Be Supersize Humans? If human bodies become taller, bigger and longer-living — is that progress?” Alexandra Brewis, a medical anthropologist, answers:

Height conveys all sorts of important meanings about each person’s own development history. A photograph in my office taken two decades ago shows me at 5 foot 6 towering almost two feet over an older Mayan woman. In this case, it shows the difference between having a dairy-rich childhood diet in New Zealand versus an early life struggling with rural poverty and food insecurity in Mexico…

We admire and value tall people in our society. We see shorter men in particular as less powerful and less poised for success. However, the assignment of these qualities to people based on height is arguably completely arbitrary. Viewed in terms of the ethnographic spectrum, many societies prefer moderate statures, or even small statures.

Does height represent progress? Probably not. Being short makes sense in many contexts. Perhaps not right here and right now, but as social and ecological conditions change, it likely will again

Click here to read the rest

Trade-Offs to Being Tall

Developed by cultural anthropologist, Dr. Tramayne Butler, AnthroSpa Logic combines beauty secrets from around the world and uses a combination of exotic, organic ingredients used for centuries by native peoples both medicinally and in beauty treatments to care for their skin.

I founded AnthroSpa Logic after receiving my Ph.D. because I felt that a natural, spa skin care line could benefit from the holistic and cross-cultural approach of anthropology. I became increasingly interested in natural products after my two sons were born. In the western world, we are exposed to a myriad of chemicals everyday and I wanted to minimize this exposure at least in my own home.

As a cultural anthropologist, I was inspired by my research in Kenya and the United States, as well as my travels to London, Paris, Nice, Italy and Monaco. We live in a globalized world where cultural boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred and I wanted to create a spa skin care line that reflected this phenomenon. I decided to combine the best of traditional skin care practices from around the world to create a truly natural yet global spa product line

AnthroSa Logic® (www.anthrospa.com)debuted in the Official Gift VIP Bags at the 53rd Annual GRAMMY® Awards in February.

Dr. Butler’s antioxidant-rich line combines skin care traditions from five continents. For instance, the beauty secrets of the Japanese Geisha are intertwined with those of other groups like African and Native American tribes. The upscale line is completely chemical-free, preservative free and filler-free and responds to a growing consumer demand for natural and organic, personal care products. Because they lack preservatives, the unique products are packaged dry, similar to dried foods and transform into a creamy consistence when consumers add water in the tub or shower. The multitasking products contain pure ingredients that are all 100% bioactive and are also soap-free as well as clay-free to maintain moisture and maximize their anti-aging effect.

Founder and CEO Dr. Butler, who was recently featured on the ABC 7 News “Live Green” segment in Chicago, felt that a spa quality skin care line could benefit from the global, holistic perspective of anthropology.

Press here for the ABC7 News section

When one arrives at a new fieldsite, the only things one can know with any certainty are the changes in one’s own experience. Lacunas of knowledge burst into one’s consciouness like the appearance of crystal-clear lakes dotting the ground when viewed from an airplane. The sprawling complexity of a landscape simplifies to valleys of ignorance and peaks of impressions that lie waiting to be remapped into a coherent whole- or else the whole land will remain unknown and passed over by you.

I arrived in La Paz, Bolivia, the world’s highest capital city (11,000 feet) and a sprawling metropolis in one of Latin America’s poorest countries, in mid-June. I am here for three months to work on language training and conduct preliminary dissertation research, to be continued in earnest several months later. I have not arrived emptyhanded. Besides two giant suitcases of research materials and warm clothing (winter in the South American Andes chills to the bone, despite dermis-scalding heat during the day from a sun hanging merely feet above you), I come bearing a rather incongruous amount of ideas and questions. Having spent the past three years completing stateside research projects and anthropological theory courses, I am inclined to throw myself at my fieldsite like an overeager lover.

Here is what I want to know: How do people in the predominantly indigenous area of La Paz think about, attribute, and cope with chronic bodily pain? While not as well-known as the traditions of medicine in China or India, the Andes region, with its deeply indigenous history, has an ancient tradition of medicine all its own. Andean medicine is rooted in Andean cosmology, which is a circular and holistic system focused on the interrelatedness of person and environment. Regarding bodily health, Andean thought traditionally considers a person’s body in relation to the spirits that occupy each mountain and feature of the land, as well as in relation to other people (both those alive and those within the ancestral spirit world). Herbal knowledge and practices of divination feature prominently. I was drawn to this area because these holistic traditions of medicine, still a strong presence even in urban areas, stand in sharp contrast to the U.S. biomedical tradition that I have studied the past few years. In U.S. biomedicine, mind and body are considered separate realms, and material evidence of bodily dysfunction is paramount in receiving attention, care, and the hope of relief. Thus, by examining the problem of chronic pain in these two very different settings, I hope to shed light on the tacit assumptions of both cultures regarding the social status of people in pain, the moral dimensions of suffering and of attaining (or not) healing, and how these cultural frameworks affect the lived trajectories of people with chronic pain.

Masses of theoretical preparation, however, leave me only more aware of my clumsiness when approaching this singular, living and breathing, place: La Paz. La Paz is its own entity- pulsating, mysterious, self-contained- and she has no obligation to entertain my shy questions. The courting process of this place will be long. Thus, I work to educate myself on the topics people are actually discussing here. I read the daily papers and learn the recent history of the socialist (and first indigenous) president Evo Morales. I struggle through hours of daily classes in Aymara, a local indigenous language (over 60% of the population of Bolivia self-identifies as indigenous, and La Paz is considered the Aymara capital of the world), learning much more prosaic questions such as “How much are those oranges?” and the various words for animal dung (thaxa, llama dung, is most revered, in case you were wondering) and all of the specialized uses of said dung.

Constantly, I think about the things I do and do not know, and how they are literally re-shaping my sense of myself. The most basic moments of personal space and privacy that I have always taken for granted, have been mischievously rearranged. No longer do I stumble out of my bed in the morning to eat a bowl of oatmeal while checking my email; instead at first rise I sit myself around a table with my host family and strain my brain to decipher the rapid-fire speech, or even to participate once the first cup of wretched Nescafe begins to clear my morning fog. When I leave the house at night, I am subject to being grabbed and having my head flipped over while my “mother” grabs her blowdryer and dries my hair to her standards; it is not acceptable to leave the house in this winter weather with half-dried hair, as the cold will undoubtedly enter the body quickly and cause illness.

There are many moments of regression to social childhood like this, both the overt blowdryer-type ones and the constant nagging awareness of insufficiency at the business of caring for myself. Temperamentally, this is a challenge. And yet, there are small moments of success. Late one day, unused to a full household of people and constant motion, I find a quiet bench in a sunny park where I sit to watch children scamper over a playground. I am quickly reminded that even the simple choice to sit alone here, under the spotlight of my pale skin, does not belong solely to me. A small boy, a lustrabota (shoe-shiner) approaches me and we begin a lively back-and-forth about the necessity of having clean shoes. While I fully concede his point that mine are dirty, we are less in agreement about the undesirability of this state, and even less so about the monetary value of remedying the situation. (I’m a sweatshirt-wearing grad student; who cares?) I concede, of course, to a shoeshine after realizing that I am sitting in front of the boy eating a scoop of gelato, an undeniable luxury item. But at least my recent inquiries about this particular job (there is a huge number of lustrabotas in Bolivian cities- they are generally young men and children who are working to pay for school or other basic expenses), allows me to understand the situation and his remarkable persistence for this foreigner’s shoes. It also allows me to pay the culturally appropriate price for his service, rather than the fourfold “tourist” price initially demanded. I consider this a draw, in my daily learning game: the price of an unneeded shoeshine for a semi-competent cultural encounter.

Recently, I had my coca leaves read. (Coca is one of the most important plants in Andean culture, revered for its ability to give energy and suppress hunger, and for its medicinal and spiritual uses.) I was walking around El Alto, a deeply indigenous area around La Paz. Here there are many traditional healers, and I was exploring a long street lined with the small blue huts of curanderos (“curers”) and yatiris (literally, “one who knows,” from the Aymara verb “to know,” yatiña). Curious about the practices inside these little huts, I stopped at one whose sign read “Maestro curandero,” followed by a long list of his services and skills. Greeting the middle-aged man inside, I chose the most basic service- a reading of my coca leaves, to advise me about my future. I asked for advice about working in Bolivia and about which research questions, of the many interesting medical issues I’m discovering, to focus on. He tossed coca leaves over the table and examined the patterns in which they fell. Occasionally he selected specific leaves to arrange in front of him, murmuring to himself as he did so.

My questions, regrettably, were not answered nearly as specifically as I would have liked. But the overall message was positive: Bolivia will be good to me, he foresaw. I will have success here. All this came, however, with the repeated caveat: Conpaciencia. “With patience.” Not right away. But eventually… yes.

Con paciencia. Perhaps, as a response to my questions about the future, such an answer is a total cop-out. (Do people with abundant patience often try to read into the future?) Perhaps it is just solid advice for beginning in the field. I am certain at least of the latter.

Abbe Rose Kopra is a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, studying medical and psychological anthropology in the interdisciplinary Department of Comparative Human Development. Her research focuses on the problem of chronic pain; she is interested in cultural interpretations and attributions for chronic pain, how individuals cope psychologically with chronic pain, and the connection between the two. She is currently spending the summer in the Bolivian Andes, studying the language of Aymara and doing preliminary research for her dissertation fieldwork next year. This is her first summer in her chosen field site, and here she reflects about different aspects of the experience in a series of essays for Anthropology Now's 'Fieldnotes' category.

Findings is a new, regular column contribution appearing in the magazine, Anthropology Now. Each column highlights emerging anthropological research through a series of short reviews co-authored and co-edited by a diverse student collective from The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The website is happy to be able to offer a sample of this column appearing in the new Fall issue #2 of Anthropology Now. If you like what you see, please visit Paradigm Publishers for more information on how to subscribe and get full access to the magazine, Anthropology Now.

The student collective is composed of Akissi Britton, Risa Cromer, Chris Grove, Carwil James, Martha Lincoln, Michael Polson, Sophie Statzel, and John Warner.

Retracing Histories of Race
Jemima Pierre. “Beyond Heritage Tourism: Race and the Politics of African-Diasporic Interactions.” 2009. Social Text 27 (1 98): 59–81.

Many hope that Barack Obama’s election points to a “postracial” age. However, lingering histories of racism were on the minds of many as Obama visited the West African nation of Ghana this summer. Ghana’s historic role as the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence and its Elmina slave castle make it a premier site for diaspora tourism. As the first African American president of the United States, Obama’s first official “return” trip to sub-Saharan Africa is tremendously symbolic—not only for African Americans (and other Blacks in the African Diaspora)—but for continental Black Africans too. Indeed, while it is often imagined that race only has significance in the United States and the African Diaspora, Jemima Pierre reminds us that race has been central to self-understanding for continental Africans.

In her article “Beyond Heritage Tourism: Race and the Politics of African-Diasporic Interactions,” Pierre uses Ghana’s booming heritage tourism industry (one avenue that facilitates interaction between Africans and Diaspora Blacks) as a point of departure. She adeptly argues that to comprehend Ghanaians’ history and self-understanding, one must understand the country’s complicated racial history. Africa is not just a land of “ethnic conflicts” or “indigenous cultural traditions,” but it is also shaped by conceptions of race and related racial dynamics and tensions— dimensions many social commentators avoid. A focus on “ethnicity” and “nation” alone fail to consider how Africa, as well as local events in Ghana, relate to global inequalities and power imbalances that rely on race and racism.

Similarly, the diaspora cannot continue to be construed as a privileged site of racial understandings—race has a long and complex history in Ghana, via slavery, colonialism, development, Cold War politics, and pan-Africanist movements. This history is marked by local, continental, and global socioeconomic hierarchies that shape Ghanaian experiences in ways similar to those of Blacks throughout the diaspora (62). Heritage or “roots tourism” is often viewed as a harmful imposition of “racial” ideologies upon an apparently nonracial Ghanaian public. This ignores the history of race within Ghana. Ghanaians have lived and are living within a cosmopolitan society, whose commercial and political interactions connect them to global ideas about race. As Obama follows the “return” route of so many diasporic Blacks to Ghana, Pierre reminds us that this doesn’t simply hold significance in the United States but has a real— and racial— importance in contemporary continental Africa. Indeed, this importance has roots in a long history of African interactions with its diaspora amid shifting global hierarchies.

—Akissi Britton

Caring about Dementia
Janelle S. Taylor. 2008. On Recognition, Caring, and Dementia. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 22(4): 313–35.

Like millions of Americans caring for aging parents, anthropologist Janelle S. Taylor is the primary caretaker for her mother, who lives with dementia. Taylor reflects on the question that sympathetic friends always seem to be asking: “Does she recognize you?” These queries about her mother’s memory encourage Taylor to explore a larger social phenomenon: “Why is it apparently so difficult for people to “recognize”—as a friend, as a person, as even being alive— someone who, because of dementia, can no longer keep names straight? How does the turning away of friends, at the level of personal networks, relate to processes of “social death,” social exclusion, and abandonment of people with dementia on a broader level? In short, how do questions of “recognition” in its narrowly cognitive sense get implicated in the “politics of recognition” on a broader scale?” (324–325).

This second meaning of “recognition” is the one raised by political movements working to achieve official governmental acknowledgement, including movements to legalize gay marriage. “Recognition politics” movements aim beyond pragmatic goals to seek social recognition for their members and thus a sense of legitimacy or selfhood. But as Taylor notes, dementia complicates key assumptions of recognition politics. She explores how claims to social and political recognition are often linked to cognitive capacity, the ability to “recognize” people and things. How then can people such as Taylor’s mother retain social visibility in an age of recognition politics and popular horror stories about “losing” a loved one to dementia? Taylor argues for a new politics of recognition that would let people such as her mother retain their social visibility as caring—and cared for—individuals.

In the 1990s, a movement began within medical institutions that championed a humanist concern for recognizing the essence of the person within dementia, or what other anthropologists of senility describe as the “personhood turn.” This movement resists the treatment of people with dementia as “socially dead”—an idea that links personhood to cognitive capacity. Taylor shares this movement’s concern, but she suggests that we think about personhood not as something one has, like an essence or a capacity, but as something defined through social interactions, such as caring and relating. She cites memoirs from adult caretakers and personal memories of afternoons spent with her mother to illustrate ways to relate to, and thus “recognize,” people with dementia. For example, Taylor describes instances that might be interpreted as her mother’s failure to follow social norms, such as her hyper-attentiveness to neatness, as ways her mother “cares back.” This alternative approach offers ways to see and care anew. For elderly people who suffer from dementia, Taylor’s proposal for a new politics of recognition offers personal evidence to affirm how caring is a political and regenerative act.

—Risa Cromer

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