Period Of Fieldwork Research Articles

‘The City Is Ours’: The Temporal Construction of Dominance among Poor Young Men on the Street in a Brazilian Elite Neighbourhood

AbstractThis article explores how young Brazilian men from poorer areas transcend socio-geographical boundaries by inhabiting the streets of an elite neighbourhood. Drawing on several periods of qualitative fieldwork, the article demonstrates the complex and dynamic character of the relationship between the young men and the formal residents and traders. It reveals temporal patterns of day and night, where the young men's social positions shift from subordinate diurnal (as serving workers) to dominant nocturnal positions (as potential attackers). Analysing the interactional patterns between the two groups regarding sentiments of trust and fear, the multifaceted and sometimes incoherent relations reveal social inclusion and exclusion as well as street protection and crime. The article also dismantles some common dichotomies within research on crime and fear of crime, emphasising that these young men are both victims and offenders, fearful and fearsome.

Chaperoning: practices of collaboration in the Panama Canal Expansion Program

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how project partners respond to contractually agreed collaboration in an infrastructural megaproject. Problematic performances of megaprojects have shifted away attention from the instrumental towards the interpretative, focusing on daily work life, practices, power, ambiguity and sense making in project organizations. Such an interpretative perspective helps to better understand practices of collaboration in complex mega projects, which the authors studied in the Panama Canal Expansion Program (PCEP).Design/methodology/approachGiven the focus on daily work life, the authors chose an in‐depth single case study. Practices of collaboration have been studied during a one‐year ethnographic fieldwork period in Panama, in which the daily work life of project participants was intensely observed.FindingsFirst, it was found that practices of collaboration in complex projects change in periods of conflict. In these periods actors are forced to reflect upon their practices and to negotiate about new practices. Second, the authors identified collaborative practices in which a consultancy firm teaches their client and supervises its appropriate behavior. The authors have labeled these as chaperoning.Practical implicationsThis study illustrates that when innovation in contracts requires an innovative relationship between project partners, specific attention to this innovation and the related practices of collaboration enhances the collaborative relationship among partners, which can prevent cost overruns and delays.Originality/valueEthnographic fieldwork has not been used frequently to study project management practices. The paper builds upon a one‐year ethnographic fieldwork period to study practices in the daily work life of the project participants from “within”.

A systematic review of Demographic and Health Surveys: data availability and utilization for research

To systematically review the public health literature to assess trends in the use of Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data for research from 1984 to 2010 and to describe the relationship between data availability and data utilization. The MEASURE DHS web site was searched for information on all population-based surveys completed under the DHS project between 1984 and 2010. The information collected included the country, type of survey, survey design, fieldwork period and certain special features, such as inclusion of biomarkers. A search of PubMed was also conducted to identify peer-reviewed articles published during 2010 that analysed DHS data and included an English-language abstract. Trends in data availability and in the use of DHS data for research were assessed through descriptive, graphical and bivariate linear regression analyses. In total, 236 household surveys under the DHS project were completed across 84 countries during 2010. The number of surveys per year has remained constant, although the scope of the survey questions has expanded. The inclusion criteria were met by 1117 peer-reviewed publications. The number of publications has increased progressively over the last quarter century, with an average annual increment of 4.3 (95% confidence interval, CI: 3.2-5.3) publications. Trends in the number of peer-reviewed publications based on the use of DHS data were highly correlated with trends in funding for health by the Government of the United States of America and globally. Published peer-reviewed articles analysing DHS data, which have increased progressively in number over the last quarter century, have made a substantial contribution to the public health evidence base in developing countries.

Emotion, Identity, and Death in the Greek Tradition and Beyond

The article examines emotion and identity in the Greek death cult to clarify certain contemporary political phenomena in the Mediterranean where the cult of the dead is a common cultural pattern. Why is this cult so persistent? What is the death cult and how does it manifest itself? The article delves into its importance in Greece, where the author has had several periods of fieldwork. To illustrate the persistence of this cultural pattern, its characteristic aspects are discussed. Festivals which are dedicated to deceased persons and domestic death rituals are compared with ancient sources. Based on this, a survey of the relationship between the death cult dedicated to deceased mediators, as it is manifested through laments, burials and the ensuing memorial rituals is made. Modern domestic rituals infl uence official rituals, and vice versa. A study of modern cult practices reveals many parallels with the official cult of the ancients, and suggests ways in which modern rituals can illuminate ancient rituals. The article seeks to demonstrate how new ideologies must be adjusted to older rituals and beliefs and how public and domestic rituals are connected. The article finally suggests how these similarities might represent a common way of expression within a larger geographical context.

Gender, Buddhism and Social Resilience in the Aftermath of the Tsunami in Thailand

This paper addresses the recovery in Thailand after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The country worst affected by the tsunami was Indonesia, while in Thailand about 8,000 people were assumed dead. In all the countries affected more females were killed than males. Disasters test the strength of a society's structures and relationships, and this paper focuses on the interplay between gender, vulnerability and social resilience. It provides an overview of social resilience as a concept and theory and discusses vulnerability and resilience in disaster situations. The paper is based on findings from a long period of anthropological fieldwork, which included interviews with survivors and relatives and with Buddhist monks and nuns. Buddhist temples, monks and nuns played important roles after the tsunami and became a refuge for survivors, and this paper explores religion as a resilience factor. Religious explanations and daily and other religious practices were of major significance in the recovery process, and Thai people have shown themselves to be both vulnerable and resilient.

Recruitment using mobile telephones in an Irish general population sexual health survey: challenges and practical solutions

BackgroundNon-coverage of households without a landline telephone is a major concern of telephone survey researchers. Sampling mobile telephone users in national surveys is vital in order to gain access to the growing proportion of households that use mobile telephones extensively or exclusively. The complex logistics of conducting surveys with mobile telephones have been discussed in the literature. This paper outlines the actual challenges encountered during a recent national sexual health survey in Ireland, which utilized a mobile telephone sampling frame to recruit approximately half of the sample.MethodThe 2010 Irish Contraception and Crisis Pregnancy Survey (ICCP-2010) is a nationally representative sample of adults aged 18-45 years living in Ireland (n = 3002; 1416 recruited by landline telephone and 1586 recruited by mobile telephone). The overall response rate for the survey was 69% (79% for the landline telephone strand; 61% for the mobile telephone strand). All interviews were conducted using computer-assisting telephone interviewing.ResultsDuring the 18-week fieldwork period, five main challenges relating to the use of mobile telephones were encountered: (1) explaining to respondents how random digit dialling works in relation to mobile telephones; (2) establishing the respondent's eligibility; (3) calling the respondent with the Caller ID blocked or withheld; (4) calling the respondent when they are in any number of locations or situations; and (5) explaining to respondents the importance of refusal conversion calls for the response rate calculation. Details of how the survey protocols and procedures were monitored and adapted throughout the study to ensure a high response rate are outlined.ConclusionIt is undeniably more challenging to recruit respondents using mobile telephones as opposed to landline telephones. Respondents are generally not familiar with being contacted on their personal mobile telephone for the purposes of being recruited for a research study. The main challenge for survey methodologists and interviewers is to devise simple protocols to explain to respondents why they are being contacted on a mobile telephone. Recommendations for survey researchers interested in using this methodological approach in the future are discussed.

The Event of Otherness: An Interview with James T. Siegel

The Event of Otherness: An Interview with James T. Siegel Joshua Barker (bio) and Vicente Rafael (bio) About the Interview, by Joshua Barker The following interview took place in Aceh, Indonesia, in 2007, against the backdrop of a short period of collaborative fieldwork conducted by James Siegel, Arief Djati, and myself. Aceh was the site of Siegel’s doctoral research in the early 1960s, and he has returned there on several occasions in the years since. For this visit, we rented a car and drove from town to town along the coast, from the southwest corner of the province up to Banda Aceh and back down the east coast. Prior to leaving on this trip, I sent out an email request to some of Siegel’s former students and colleagues for questions I could put to him in an interview. I received questions from a number of people, including Benedict Anderson, Rosalind Morris, John Pemberton, Pietro Pucci, Vicente Rafael, Danilyn Rutherford, and Andrew Willford. Upon our meeting in Indonesia, Siegel agreed to participate in the interview on the condition that I give him all the questions in advance so that he could decide how best to answer them, and in what order. He also indicated that he intended to record his own answers to the questions, without me being present. The interview as it transpired was thus an odd one. Each day for a period of about ten days, late at night or early in the morning, Siegel would record a reply to one or more of the questions posed by his interlocutors. I would then listen to the recording on my own, and we would discuss it together during the long hours of travel between towns. Sometimes Siegel would choose to record some further thoughts that addressed questions that emerged from that discussion. [End Page 33] In important respects, the form the interview took was consistent with the broader epistemological stance Siegel adopts in relation to cultural anthropology.1 We are all familiar with the critiques surrounding the manner in which ethnographic writing “orientalizes” or “others” the people it studies. The assertion of cultural difference, which was once thought to provide the basis for a critique of ethnocentrism, is said to reify and naturalize differences. Siegel is a bit unusual among American anthropologists in his continuing insistence that the problem of otherness and difference ought to remain the foundation of cultural anthropological work. In a certain respect, one could say that he drew very different conclusions from Anthropology’s self-reflexive moment in the 1970s and 1980s than those drawn by many others. Rather than reflexively problematizing his own culture’s tendency to “other” the object of inquiry, Siegel focused primarily on how the peoples he studies deal with the problem of otherness. In Solo in the New Order, for example, Siegel wrote about how urban Javanese use others, including the figure of the foreigner, to construct social hierarchies. Indeed, virtually all of his work since Solo in the New Order has focused on this question of how people deal with both proximate otherness, which can usually be symbolized and named, and more profound otherness that can only be symbolized, or whose effects can only be seen, in displaced form.2 This concern with otherness is also evident in his method of interviewing others. He gets people to start talking, and he allows their thoughts to direct the course of the conversation, much as a psychoanalyst would, and he listens for the appearance of various kinds of otherness in what they say. Otherness is not here understood in terms of an ethnic group, or any kind of social group necessarily; on our trip, we were looking at events that people would be trying to make sense of, but which might not be easy to assimilate, such as the tsunami, events in the civil war, or the killings of 1965–66. In Meulaboh, when we asked people about the tsunami and who had died, people repeatedly said that those who had been killed were not killed by the wave, they were killed by the garbage (carried by the wave). Rather than treat this kind of statement as insignificant, Siegel would...

How I Learned Batak: Studying the Angkola Batak Language in 1970s New Order Indonesia

How I Learned Batak: Studying the Angkola Batak Language in 1970s New Order Indonesia Susan Rodgers1 (bio) How were “local languages” and “local cultures” constituted during the New Order? How was the visiting anthropologist construed during the Soeharto regime? How were anthropology and “culture” itself imagined in New Order times by diverse parties engaged in these profoundly politicized (if veiled) narrative discourses? John Pemberton’s findings about New Order cultural imaginaries set out in his On the Subject of “Java”2 provide macro-level insight and excellent historical grounding for beginning to answer these questions, as Pemberton focuses on constructions of so-called traditions revolving around the royal court of Surakarta. This present essay offers an autobiographical, experiential parallel to Pemberton’s work by setting out my memories of working with a seventy-six-year-old retired schoolteacher who taught me the Angkola Batak language in 1974 as part of my first term of fieldwork in Sipirok, South Tapanuli, North Sumatra. My teacher’s pedagogies and language ideology were shaped by Dutch colonial visions of language and learning; his way of presenting his home language to me as a brilliant, civilizing gift was also animated by his discomfort and skepticism with the New Order government’s negative stereotypes about so-called [End Page 1] minority languages and minority peoples. This experimental memoir of language learning suggests that New Order “control” of places like South Tapanuli was ragged and superficial. Learning to speak a language means learning a world, anthropologists and ethnolinguists sometimes claim. This was also the conviction of several forthrightly opinionated retired schoolteachers from Sumatra’s rural South Tapanuli district in the mid-1970s—a group of no-nonsense Angkola Batak older men and women in the market town of Sipirok who took firm charge of my language-learning education there when I was a young (read: callow) visiting American anthropology PhD student from 1974 to 1977. They were teaching me to speak and read the Angkola Batak language. As our lingua franca we used Indonesian, the national language. I had already studied this in an intensive way in American universities before coming to Sumatra. This period of my fieldwork in Sipirok took place about a decade into the installation of the new national Indonesian government, the New Order. In power from 1965 to May 1998, the New Order was a thinly veiled military regime that stressed headlong economic development and centralized control of the ethnically and linguistically diverse country under the guidance of generals.3 In 1974, the county district (kecamatan) and town of Sipirok were caught up in fits of New Order-sponsored pembangunan, economic development. In the 1970s, some in South Tapanuli felt that the New Order was a scandal, an insult to actual Indonesian patriotism and national hopes for a true republic. For these commentators (many rather elderly then, like my Batak language teachers), the Indonesian national project seemed to have been placed on hold while the New Order state sucked the island of Sumatra dry of its once-abundant resources. Some even said that New Order hegemony in Sumatra was a contemporary form of colonialism, one that was repeating some of the worst aspects of Dutch control of the Indies, if with more irony this time. Other Sipirok residents just kept quiet and tried to endure New Order times. This political climate shaped the way I was taught the Angkola Batak language by my elderly mentors, who were leery of New Order plans and platitudes. This setting also influenced Sipirok residents’ comments to me about languages in general, about language ways in the remembered colonial Indies, and about language matters under the New Order. Talk about language issues was a favorite topic in Sipirok, I found. Language ideologies were shaped and expressed through much deliberate popular commentary on speech ways in the colonial Indies era; at issue, also, were relationships between languages and the relative prestige of different [End Page 2] languages on the national Indonesian stage.4 My Batak language teachers were among the most voluble on these subjects in informal talks with me. South Tapanuli was and is a sub-province of Indonesia located far from the centers of national power...

Chemical and Nutritional Composition of Tejate, a Traditional Maize and Cacao Beverage from the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico

Foam-topped cacao and maize beverages have a long history in Mesoamerica. Tejate is such a beverage found primarily in the Zapotec region of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico. Historically tejate has been ceremonially important but also as an essential staple, especially during periods of hard fieldwork. However, the nutritional contribution of traditional foods such as tejate has not been investigated. We analyzed tejate samples from three Central Valley communities, vendors in urban Oaxaca markets and one migrant vendor in California, USA for their proximate composition, amino acid content and scores, and mineral and methylxanthine content. Nutritional and chemical variation exists among tejate recipes, however, the beverage is a source of energy, fat, methylxanthines, K, Fe and other minerals although their availability due to presence of phytates remains to be determined. Tejate is a source of protein comparable to an equal serving size of tortillas, with protein quality similarly limited in both. Tejate provides the nutritional benefits of maize, and some additional ones, in a form appealing during hot periods of intense work, and year round because of its cultural significance. Its substitution by sodas and other high glycemic beverages may have negative nutritional, health and cultural consequences.

The Accompaniment: Assembling the Contemporary (review)

Paul Rabinow, The Accompaniment: Assembling Contemporary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 248 pp. I. Anthropology is awash in novelty. New digital networks propagate and expand new political possibilities; synthetic biology creates new life-forms; new reproductive technologies require new legal recognitions of relationality; transnational connections produce new opportunities for engagements and encounters beyond boundaries. Emergence and possibility are very DNA of contemporary thinking. Meanwhile, of course, innovation in methods of anthropology-from multi-sited fieldwork to new forms of collaboration and communication through networks-is valued and celebrated precisely in order to capture and understand new ethnographic objects and contexts, and to form a new anthropology. Paul Rabinow has been one of most consistent chroniclers of biotechnical novelties and, reflexively, of anthropological response to what he calls the contemporary. He has produced pairs of books at regular intervals over past 15 years, one book reporting on his engagements with life sciences and then another reflecting on these engagements as a means to develop conceptual equipment adequate to this space of unexampled novelty. The part of latest entry in this intermittent series appears before research report. The latter, co-authored with Gaymon Bennett, comes out of their joint work as co- Principal Investigator and Director of ethical oversight, respectively, within a new institution for synthetic biology at Berkeley. They have chosen to call their thrust of NSF-funded center Practices and book, to be released later this year, is called Designing Human Practices. Alongside that book is aptly named The Accompaniment: Assembling Contemporary, a heterogeneous set of essays that together respond to challenge of remaking-remediating or reconstructing-the intellectual vocation as it is confronted by institutional and scientific novelties. In addition to providing his reflections on research in synthetic biology and parallel efforts he has made to reshape graduate teaching in anthropology, these essays together constitute an account of Rabinow's own long period of fieldwork in anthropology-his participation in universities, research teams, and philosophical pedagogy, and his various attempts to experiment with anthropological writing. What does it mean to think today, Rabinow asks, and how can we construct practices within universities that will foster thinking about contemporary problems? More crucially, what intellectual practices are most conducive to finding companions and contemporaries-inviting others to accompany us in responding to issues of day? Rabinow's technique of report and reflection in paired volumes, of course, was set with his first two books, an ethnographic monograph and recently-reissued Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (2007). Then, problem was less novelty of objects of knowledge than status of tradition and of culture as guides to understanding people's action and its forms, under changeful sign of modernization. Tradition, he wrote in 1975, in a phrase he has quoted in his recent attempts to define contemporary as a space of anthropological research, is a moving image of past, opposed not to modernity but to (2008:2). If life sciences are, as ethical thinkers fear, new space of alienation for and from humanity, then this is not, Rabinow tells us, something we can measure against any fixed background or measuring stick of the human or the social or even the modern. Rather this is a moving ratio that forms a problem-space for reflection, through engagement with practices that constitute this space of novelties. This engagement in a mobile problem-space, however, presents some perennial challenges for Rabinow anthropologist, such as institutional barriers to cooperation, blocked forms of collaboration, personal affinities, and potent misunderstandings. …

The Diorama

Abstract: * This paper uses an incident in which a diorama was set up at the entrance to the Final Assembly section of the BMW MINI plant near Oxford to anlayse the impact of gender and ethnic identities on cross-cultural management, through the anthropological concept of the 'native category'. Its aims are to explore the ways in which the diorama symbolically exposed tensions in the workplace relating to ethnicity and gender; to consider the role of a German dominance effect on the workforce; and to examine the implications of these for cross-cultural management. * The data was gathered through participant-observation on the assembly line and managers' offices, and through both unstructured and semi-structured interviews with managers and workers, during two fieldwork periods, the first in 2003 and the second involving intermittent visits from 2003-2006. * The paper explores the ways in which the diorama reflected and contributed to unspoken tensions within the workplace relating to ethnicity and gender, and assesses the role of the German dominance effect on the workforce. It investigates the impact of tacit discourses on organisations, and considers ways in which cross-cultural management activities can be successfully carried out in MNCs. * The management of gender and ethnicity within BMW were affected by the 'native categories' of British and German managers and workers; furthermore, taking a native categories approach to cross-cultural management reveals areas of friction, and sheds light on normally-overlooked problems in merged organisations. Keywords: Ethnicity * Gender * Dominance effect. Native categories. Micropolitics * Manager-worker relations Introduction This paper uses an incident during my ethnographic fieldwork at BMW MINI, in which a diorama was set up at the entrance to the Final Assembly section of the plant, as a lens for analysing the impact of gender and ethnic identities on cross-cultural management in the organisation, through the anthropological concept of the 'native category'. I will consider the immediate implications and meanings of the diorama itself, and, using the single-incident case study technique and the literature on native categories in business, explore how the incident exposes hidden tensions within the organisation regarding ethnic and gender relations. The aims of the paper are, first, to explore the ways in which the diorama symbolically exposed tensions in the workplace relating to ethnicity and gender. Second, to consider the role of the German dominance effect on the workforce, via the expatriate managers, through analysis of British and German native categories of ethnicity and gender. Finally, it will examine the implications of these for researchers' and practitioners' understanding of how cross-cultural management activities can be successfully carried out in acquired organisations. The contribution of the paper is to increase our understanding of the impact of tacit discourses such as native categories and social identity on transnational organisations, and cross-cultural management activities. Through an analysis of dominance effect and native categories as they relate to gender and ethnicity, I will help researchers and managers perceive and understand the complex impact of native categories on multinational corporations. Initially, I will lay out the methodological, infrastructural and theoretical background to the case study. I will then consider the diorama as a site from which to explore the complex Anglo-German relations within the organisation which were the most crucial discourse for the managers. I will then explore another prominent discourse in the organisation, that of the incorporation of multiculturalism into British working-class identity, which was the most crucial discourse for the plant's workers. Finally, I shall analyse the findings in detail with regard to how they met the aims of this paper and contributed to both theoretical and practical debates in international business. …

Tell El-Amarna, 2011–12

Two periods of fieldwork are covered in this report. The first, from late 2011, was primarily a further season of excavation at the South Tombs Cemetery, which saw an exploratory trench run across the flat wadi floor, confirming that it had, at least in part, been used for burials. A notable find was of a decorated wooden coffin that included an image of a canine-headed god. A programme of repairs at the North Palace was also completed. The second, in the spring of 2012, saw the start of a new project, the re-examination of the Great Aten Temple foundations, specifically an area at the front and another towards the rear where a stela and statue had been set up. The season ended with the study of the human bones from the 2011 excavations by the University of Arkansas bioanthropology team.

Socially embedded workers at the nexus of diverse work in Russia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore an important nexus of formal/informal economic activity in Russia: “normative” workers (in waged formal employment) by virtue of a strongly embedded work‐related social identity and characterized by a significant number of weak social ties, move with little “effort” between formal and informal work.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents extensive ethnographic data from the Russian provinces on workers and diverse economic practices. It utilizes participant observation and semi‐structured interviews from periods of fieldwork over the course of a year (2009‐2010).FindingsThis study traces the theoretical debates on the informal economy from 1989 to 2008 and argues for a substantivist position on household reproduction that focuses on the interdependence of social networks, employment, class‐identity and (informal) work. The findings demonstrate significant performative and spatial aspects of embedded worker identity, including the workspace itself as a contested domain, that facilitate movement between formal‐informal work.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper resides in its ethnographic approach to informal economies under post‐socialism and the substantivist evaluation of diverse economic practices in Russia as supported by formal work‐based shared identities.

Spatial and temporal dynamics in eddy covariance observations of methane fluxes at a tundra site in northeastern Siberia

In the past two decades, the eddy covariance technique has been used for an increasing number of methane flux studies at an ecosystem scale. Previously, most of these studies used a closed path setup with a tunable diode laser spectrometer (TDL). Although this method worked well, the TDL has to be calibrated regularly and cooled with liquid nitrogen or a cryogenic system, which limits its use in remote areas. Recently, a new closed path technique has been introduced that uses off-axis integrated cavity output spectroscopy that does not require regular calibration or liquid nitrogen to operate and can thus be applied in remote areas. In the summer of 2008 and 2009, this eddy covariance technique was used to study methane fluxes from a tundra site in northeastern Siberia. The measured emissions showed to be very dependent on the fetch area, due to a large contrast in dry and wet vegetation in between wind directions. Furthermore, the observed short-and long-term variation of methane fluxes could be readily explained with a nonlinear model that used relationships with atmospheric stability, soil temperature, and water level. This model was subsequently extended to fieldwork periods preceding the eddy covariance setup and applied to evaluate a spatially integrated flux. The model result showed that average fluxes were 56.5, 48.7, and 30.4 nmol CH4 m(-2) s(-1) for the summers of 2007 to 2009. While previous models of the same type were only applicable to daily averages, the method described can be used on a much higher temporal resolution, making it suitable for gap filling. Furthermore, by partitioning the measured fluxes along wind direction, this model can also be used in areas with nonuniform terrain but nonetheless provide spatially integrated fluxes. (Less)

Challenging the Biopsychosocial Model in a Chronic Constipation Clinic

In this article we discuss the results of an ethnographic study of professionals' and patients' experiences within a specialist constipation clinic in England. Chronic constipation tends to be poorly understood and inadequately treated. Eleven patients were followed through their illness trajectory during a 5-month fieldwork period, involving 21 home interviews, clinic-based interviews, participant observation, and a focus group. Professionals were likewise observed and interviewed. The clinic could be broadly described as biopsychosocial in its approach. However, professionals expressed uncertainty about how best to provide biopsychosocial care and suggested that some patients were not "open" to psychosocial therapies or to discussing psychosocial aspects of their disease. Patients' concerns were with being taken seriously, receiving treatment, and narrating intersections of life events, emotional well-being, and the bowels. We situate these findings within the discourse of "functional" disorders and discuss why implementing a biopsychosocial approach is problematic in this case.

“All Cubans are doctors!” news coverage of health and bioexceptionalism in Cuba

In a multi-country study of media coverage of health, professionals often deem reporters as only interested in selling newspapers and criticizing physicians. Since the health system and the media are controlled by the socialist state, Cuba provides an interesting test case. Health, the key symbol of the Cuban revolution, is constantly characterized as unique. In this study I asked: will health media also exhibit bioexceptionalism—will coverage differ dramatically from that in capitalist countries? I compiled all health stories published in 2002 in three national newspapers, others appearing 2003–2011, plus television and radio coverage (totaling 961). I recorded interviews during fieldwork periods in 2005, 2006, and 2008 with health and media professionals and laypersons; ethnography focused on media and health institutions and lay reception. Cuban health news stories generally project knowledge as produced in biomedical institutions, circulated by media and health professionals, and received by laypersons, a model common in capitalist countries. A second type lauds “achievements of the revolution” but similarly subordinates lay participation. Nevertheless, avid reception of biomedical knowledge leads many Cubans to describe themselves as “frustrated doctors” who know as much as their physicians. Inviting charges of self-medication, lay reception most closely embodied bioexceptionalism. Stories projecting the quality, accessibility, and humanism of Cuban medicine gained importance as the post-Soviet “Special Period” catalyzed shortages of medications and services and greater inequality; nevertheless, the frustrated citizen-consumers described by researchers do not figure in health coverage or lay reception. Media constructions of laypersons as passive recipients of professional knowledge contradict appeals for popular participation and reveal how political ideologies and health policies often fail to match the way that media coverage differentially projects contributions by professionals and laypersons.

From Boy Scout to Hired Gun: An Interview with J. Anthony Paredes

From Boy Scout to Hired Gun:An Interview with J. Anthony Paredes Samuel R. Cook, co-editor In this issue we begin a series of interviews with anthropologists who have distinguished themselves as contributors to development of and dialogue concerning collaborative anthropological endeavors. Acknowledging that collaboration is not a new idea but an ever-evolving ideal, we thought it would be fitting to launch the series by interviewing an anthropologist whose long track record exemplifies the spirit of collaboration. J. Anthony Paredes, like so many American anthropologists, was drawn into the discipline by an interest in American Indians. And like so many of us, he has taken to heart the criticism that anthropologists have sustained from indigenous peoples and scholars worldwide. However, he has distinguished himself through his humility in the field and his professionalism on all fronts. Paredes has worked with the Poarch Band of Creeks in Alabama since the early 1970s, conducting research based on an ethic of service and a willingness to place community concerns before self-interested research agendas. His work with the Creeks is just one of many stellar examples from his long career as an anthropologist in the American South. He served most of his tenure at Florida State University, crowning it with innovative work in cultural resources management for the National Park Service in the Southeast region after attaining emeritus status from FSU. As past president of the Society for Applied Anthropology he stands as a model for anthropologists wishing to forge their careers in the steel of public engagement. In the interview that follows, Samuel R. Cook engages Paredes in a thoughtful dialogue concerning the relationship between anthropology and science, research and reality, and the future of our discipline in a global age. [End Page 155] Cook: To what extent did the applied aspect of anthropology influence your decision to become an anthropologist? Paredes: I'll get to that question but let me give you a little background first. For the longest time, I didn't know there was anything but applied anthropology, even though I didn't know it by that name. I came into anthropology by virtue of a very long-standing interest in American Indians. I don't know how it started, but it endured, and I never gave up. There were side-tracks. But I continued with that interest, which led me to the Boy Scouts, and ultimately meeting people who guided me to the Orlando public library and to things like the Bureau of American Ethnology reports. And thanks to that library, and thanks to the encouraging people in the Boy Scouts, I really got very deeply into the literature on American ethnology, and got to know indirectly about people like Kroeber, and Wissler, and Lowie and people like that. My reading took me into the modern times as well. I think particularly of a book that my mother's brother—fittingly enough—gave me when I was an early teenager, a book by Oliver La Farge, A Pictorial History of American Indians. It had an excellent section on modern Indians and their problems, and the Code Talkers, and all of that, of course. I didn't really get it as to what an anthropologist was, I don't think, other than those people who wrote those Bureau of American Ethnology reports. But in the tenth grade I read in English class a book called Two Hands and a Knife. It was about the son of an ethnologist—an occupation I had never heard of before—who is stranded on an island in Canada after a period of fieldwork with the Ojibwa. And he survives through his knowledge of Ojibwa woodcraft. At that point, I think the idea that one could make a living as an anthropologist entered into my brain, and I believe that's the only point when I thought of anthropology as anything other than applied. I think I thought of anthropologists as professional Indian experts, who provided information for all those Boy Scouts and hobbyists across the world. At some point after that I said, "This is not very practical." For one thing, how was I going to pay to go to college...

Adapting to Cuba's Shifting Food Landscapes: Women's Strategies of Resistance

La escasez y el aumento de precios de productos alimenticios, productos de las secuelas destructivas de los huracanes Gustav, Ike y Paloma en el otoño de 2008 ejemplificaron una vez más las interrupciones frecuentes en el sistema alimenticio con que los cubanos, y especialmente las mujeres cubanas, han tenido que luchar desde el comienzo del Período Especial en la década de los 90. Empleando un enfoque de género para analizar la adquisición y preparación de alimentos, se examina las consecuencias de las periódicas escaseces de alimentos sobre el uso de tiempo y las estrategias informales de resistencia que las mujeres cubanas han adoptado para alimentarse a si mismas y a sus familias.

Birth choices in Timor-Leste: A framework for understanding the use of maternal health services in low resource settings

The high rate of maternal mortality in Timor-Leste is a persistent problem which has been exacerbated by the long history of military occupation and ongoing political crises since independence in 1999. It is similar to other developing countries where there have been slow declines in maternal mortality despite 20 years of Safe Motherhood interventions. The national Ministry of Health, United Nations (UN) agencies and non-government organisations (NGOs) have attempted to reduce maternal mortality by enacting policies and interventions to increase the number of births in health centres and hospitals. Despite considerable effort in promoting facility-based delivery, most Timorese women birth at home and the lack of midwives means few women have access to a skilled birth attendant. This paper investigates factors influencing access to and use of maternal health services in rural areas of Timor-Leste. It draws on 21 interviews and 11 group discussions with Timorese women and their families collected over two periods of fieldwork, one month in September 2006 and five months from July to December 2007. Theoretical concepts from anthropology and health social science are used to explore individual, social, political and health system issues which affect the way in which maternal health services are utilised. In drawing together a range of theories this paper aims to extend explanations around access to maternal health services in developing countries. An empirically informed framework is proposed which illustrates the complex factors that influence women's birth choices. This framework can be used by policy-makers, practitioners, donors and researchers to think critically about policy decisions and where investments can have the most impact for improving maternal health in Timor-Leste and elsewhere.

Bigger than Beijing 2008: Politics, Propaganda and Physical Culture in Pyongyang

More than six decades after the end of the Second World War, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) still face each other across the highly fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where the Cold War proved more frigid than anywhere else in the world. In both Korean states, reunification is a high priority political goal and a prominent element of the political and public discourses. However, it is currently a political utopia since the status quo of two coexisting Korean states is beneficial to all parties concerned, not only to the two superpowers, China and the USA, but most of all to the two Koreas. This contribution examines the use of sport as a foreign policy tool before and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics and analyses the symbolic potency of sport in the context of the reunification theme, with particular reference to North Korea's political agenda attached to the staging of mass gymnastic games, i.e. the Arirang Festival that premiered in 2002 and the new ‘Prosper the Motherland’ show. The largely qualitative research was conducted during several fieldwork periods in South and North Korea between January 2006 and September 2008.