Dec. 15: Anthropology and our futures

• distrubing
• san population driven away from water wholes
• traffic of safari drives animals away

• in my lifetime --> world population from 5 billion to 9 billion
• demographers predict it will peak off at 12 billion
• the lowerst part of chart shows that most of this growth occurs in poorer countries
• sudden growth leads to environmental problems, wars, and public health issues

• exceptionally reliable predictor of both slowing population growth, and decreasing rural poverty

• lang loss like burning of lib of congress

• "anthropology demands the open mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess" - margaret mead
• "enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in dnager of failing to recognize the immense riches accumulated by the human race....by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished" -levi-strauss
• "anthropology is the daughter of natural science by esthetic humanism. it started with a glowing sense of discovery in studying culture. it is truly called intellectualizing romanticism. but it is never called sterily or toneless" -john v. murra

• biomedicine sees diseases as impersonal states of organic systems
• folk medicine sees illnesses as results of relationships with people, nature, and the superhuman

• the army's argument ; constructive engagement
• not tactical intelligence

• about 400 are now engaged ina prgoram called human terrain systems

• controversy about whether its ok for anthropologists to serve the military is not new
• boas denounced military involvements early in the 20th century
• yet about 80% of anthropologists in US served in WWII
• hostility to the military among anthropologists became prevalent in the 1970s
• also a result of the newer tendency for anthropologsts to think they should take sides politicall as advocates of the people they study

• folk medicine conditions what people do or won't do in connection with health
• examples: recent intensive research in southern african countries about why some people decline to use condoms in areas with high rates of HIV infection

• illnesses: emically conceived states of health
• disease a state of body conceived as biological conditions

• loren miller sought US patent on AMazonian hallucinogen
• challenged by coalition of Ecuadorian indigenous groups
• US law still allows patenting of unpublished traditional knowledge from any country
• biopiracy problem creates hostility to research

• a few are anthropology phds
• mission to provide commraders with basic ethnographic understanding of local population

the clinic staff thought this irrational, because the village has severe land shortage already BUT rural poor have high population growth rates because there is no substitute for children as helpers numerous births hedge against infant mortality people with many kin have wider nets of reciprocity the marginal cost of an additional child is small children are the pensions of the poor excess children move to cities provide cash and social connections retirement support conservation and ignorance has not thing to do with it C

• for example, the culture-specific disease soul loss in hmong culture

• revoked patent in 1999
• used by shamans but did not talk about intellectual property rights of indigenous

• there is no substitute for children as helpers
• numerous births hedge against infant mortality
• people with many kin have wider nets of reciprocity
• the marginal cost of an additional child is small
• children are the pensions of the poor
• excess children move to cities provide cash and social connections

• the ayahuasca patent lawsuit 1986

• useless to preach contraception alone

• ruth benedict japanese eperor's reign to continue as part of japan's surrender in 1945
• edmund leach, led a force of kachin fighters- the indigenous group he was studying in burma- against japanese occupation

• Mahmood Mamdani in the punjab found that rural people accept birth control pills from family planning clinics but then refuse the use them. Why?
• the clinic staff thought this irrational, because the village has severe land shortage already BUT
• rural poor have high population growth rates because
• retirement support
• conservation and ignorance has not thing to do with it

• NGOs and development organizations
• government agencies including military
• cultural resource management like national parks
• world bank and other policy institutions

• commercial applications
• noncommercial sectors

• it makes anthropological information private, secret
• it is used knowing it may result in harm to persons studied
• no safeguard against use as tactial intelligence
• hts cannot influence policy or decide against whom force is used

• Central kalahari game reserve (Botswana)
• removal of san foragers at urging of conservationists and tour industry
• resettlement at water-poor sites of the reserve
• 2006: san reserve court decision allowing expulsion;; granting hunting permits --> FRICTION CONTINUES
• barren camps on edge of reserve
• results
• In amazon; green interests, development interests, and indigenous interests conflict

• usefult o increase the earning power of young people, especially female education
• when each child becomes a better earner then the number of children people see as "enough" will fall

• business
• management ethnography
• culturally oriented marketing

• since 2007, the us military has been placing social scientists ina rmy and marine combat units

• have often provided enormously valuable technologies such as
• who has property rights in unpatented traditional knowledge
• 40000 plant species with nutritional and medicinal value --> not many studied yet

• new tech. at expense of knowledge systems
• What about more strictly cultural issues
• the controversy of "biopiracy"

• applied anthropology

• it costs about half a million dollars for a middle class household to raise a child through college
• middle class norm favoring small families of intensively educated children
• people of prime reproduction, insecure in jobs, are likely to postpone pregnancies
• increased career expectations for women encourage postponing pregnancies
• scattering of families: very small nuclear households puts childcare burdens on parents with little support of kin

• quinine to cure malaria
• curare, the first successful cardiac drug
• aspirin from willow bark