War: Morality vs. Rationality
Scott Atran writes about war at The Huffington Post: “The art of war,” Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “is certainly the noblest of all arts.” In every culture, war is considered society’s most noble endeavor (recent threat of nuclear war and mass annihilation has made a slight dent in this universal passion), […]
What Might The Media’s Short Term Attention to Disasters Tell Us About Ourselves?
One of the most interesting turn of events during the current nuclear crisis in Japan is how by Thursday, March 17, 2011 the ongoing drama of the catastrophe was displaced from the headlines by stories about the rebellion in Libya. Just as it seemed the story of the nuclear crisis came to a head with […]
The War in Libya
“The Libyan Revolution is Dead” declares Maximilian Forte in his Zero Anthropology Blog. …this is an autopsy, identifying the weapons used, and the criminals responsible for killing the Libyan revolution. This is no longer a Libyan story–that chapter is now closed. My autopsy is divided into several broad categories of actors: the humanitarians, the rebels, […]
On Libya’s Tribal Dynamics
Philip Carl Salzman, a McGill University professor of anthropology tells CNN, “Libyans have a strong loyalty to tribe…A tribe provides welfare in times of need…they have a collective responsibility.” However, Khalil Ali Al-Musmari, a retired professor of anthropology and sociology in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, says “the foreign media have often crudely misrepresented the […]
William Beeman on Libya
A PressTV interview with Professor William Beeman, Chairman of Anthropology department of University of Minnesota “The US led the regularization of relations with Colonel Gaddafi, after he had given up his nuclear program, which in my opinion was non-existent anyway. But the US issued a declaration saying this is a new era of friendship, legitimizing […]