The Picture Show Blog : NPR.

Exhibit details here.

These images present several layers of identity: Christian, multi-generational, black, agricultural, Kentuckian. I would love to have been along for these photography trips, to ask each person to tell me about their community. I bet I would hear great stories and many more identity markers than listed above.

*To some, ethnography implies studying “the other.” Not here. Its real meaning is “description of culture.”

Scientists have identified a previously unknown type of ancient human through analysis of DNA from a finger bone unearthed in a Siberian cave.

The extinct “hominin” (human like creature) lived in Central Asia between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago. The discovery raises the intriguing possibility that three forms of human – Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and the species represented by X-woman – could have met each other and interacted in southern Siberia.

Via BBC News – DNA identifies new ancient human dubbed ‘X-woman’.

Denisova Cave, Siberia

Curiously, the ground layer in which the bone was found also contained a bracelet and tools associated with modern humans. A result of mixed layers, or cultural artifacts from a previously unknown group? Full results are published in Nature.

An article in USA Today, New Ghost Towns, warns, “Industrial communities teeter on edge of survival” (March 2, 2010). The piece focuses on Ravenswood, West Virginia, where 650 of the town’s 4,000 people were laid off during an aluminum plant closing one year ago, leaving the community “one plant shutdown from oblivion.”

The current unemployment rate amongst industrial workers rivals that of the Great Depression. However, in the past, “people could leave a ghost town – miners to new veins, farmers to till fresh land, merchants to move closer to road or rail,” but now the unemployed see no such options. What will happen in Ravenswood? “People will start leaving here. It’s that or a minimum-wage job at Wal-Mart.”

The pattern recurs in so many communities in America: First, local businesses shrink because consumers favor cheap imported goods from chain stores. Then, factory production dwindles against cheap imported materials. What is the ultimate cost of valuing the cheapest option?

What if American culture shifted away from cherishing the cheap to valuing local sustainability? I daresay, what if it became a matter of national pride to support your local economy?

So, to the farmer’s markets I went, with the intention of asking questions as customers marveled at pumpkins and fondled peppers. “Why do you come to the farmer’s market instead of Kroger or anywhere else?” Most answers fell into the following three categories: Quality, Knowing the source, and Supporting alternatives to big-box stores. This is the first in a series of posts. You’ll see more analysis in the ones that follow.

Quality

Quality and the variety of foods available were the most commonly cited reasons. I heard many stories of people feeling like they had discovered food for the first time after cooking with fresh, organic produce.

“Real food makes you feel so good,” says Amber, mid-twenties, as she and her boyfriend have brunch at a picnic table in the middle of the market. He smiles at her and tells me that his very favorite thing is when she comes home from the farmer’s market on Saturday morning with fresh eggs and peppers and makes hella good migas. Apparently, it’s the best cure for a hangover.

“I mean seriously, have you ever tasted a real banana? They’re amazing!” Greg, early thirties, explains that, despite having grown up the rural area of Paducah, Kentucky, all he had experienced before was trucked-in or canned foods. Bananas that tasted like banana were a revelation to him.

Knowing the Source

“It’s like you can trust it,” explains Karla, mid-forties. People showed they value the source when talking about all locally produced goods — gifts, household items, paper, records, clothing, whatever — but particularly food.

The knowledge of the growers is a huge asset to the success of markets. People frequently said that their primary reason for shopping there is being able to discover new foods and having the growers there to answer questions about where they’re grown and how to best cook them. One shopper wagered that the guy in the produce department of a chain store is not likely to know the nuances of where to slice a habanero pepper to find the best flavor, or what the heck that beautiful and strange looking thing over there is, much less how to cook it.

Many interviewees revealed that they value having a connection with the growers and raisers of their food, either directly or indirectly. Several expressed feeling disenfranchised when shopping at larger stores, where their selection is limited to whatever an anonymous, absent person decided to order that week.

Supporting alternatives to big box stores

“I hate Wal-Mart. It’s the lowest common denominator of American culture. Over-sterilized, over-advertized and impersonal. Everyone there is miserable, especially the person working there.” Peter, late twenties, softens and offers a smile. “Now, when you go to the market, the seller hands that squash over to you like it’s precious, as if it were his life’s work. And it is, I guess.” He goes on to say that customers feel like they are valued and that what they’re buying is valuable.

“It’s definitely political,” says Joe, early thirties. Shopping at farmer’s markets can be viewed as social activism. It favors a smaller, regional economic system over the national corporate model. Buying local cuts down on the social costs of trucking goods cross-country and of a country growing sick from an excess of processed foods. “It’s worth a few extra dollars to support local,” says Amber. Why? “Because then my money stays here, instead of going to some company somewhere.”

Those who expressed this near disdain for corporate food sellers where firm about it. However, many shoppers mentioned they are happy that their neighborhood has both the convenience of Kroger and the luxury of the farmer’s market.

That’s all for now, but there is more to come. If you’re a market shopper, please feel free to comment with your reasons.

You might notice that even though my pursuits are academic, I use a casual voice. I firmly believe that everyone should have access to knowledge and be encouraged to question their own society. Keeping the fields of Anthropology, Sociology and American Studies preserved in the ivory tower of academia, bounded by dense language, is exclusionary, and it has no place here. In a way, I myself am doing exactly what I suspect I will find in my studies: a reflection of values in dialogue. I aim for my language to reflect that I value the readership and input of the people I study, us. All of us.

Thanks for stopping by!

New York Times Obituary

Happy Birthday Ursula K. Le Guin | Savage Minds

Le Guin, as many people know, is the daughter of two great anthropologists — Alfred Kroeber and his wife Theodora. Her fiction, poetry, and essays on writing defy easy classification. Her stories are like pieces of wood furniture — simply and sturdily written, with a beautiful simplicity and craftmanship. They are easy enough for children to read, but have an emotional profundity that gives them great depth. Before her, no one thought to combine Boasian anthropology, Daoist inclinations, and keen sense of place rooted in Northern California, and after her the niche is pretty well filled. Like ethnographies, LeGuin’s best pieces — which for me means Left Hand of Darkness and especially The Dispossessed — ask universal questions through the exploration of particular times and places.

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Last weekend in Richmond, CA a 15 year old girl was gang raped after a homecoming dance by around 10 teenage and adult men. A larger crowd of onlookers formed. They watched it, allowed it, encouraged it, recorded it, and made cell phone calls inviting others to come see it. The rape lasted over 2 hours. The victim was abandoned in critical condition.

Stories like this remind me that women in the U.S. are still very much a social minority, subject to abuse for their status. There isn’t necessarily anything inherent about the male sex that makes this so; it is our culture that fosters this type of behavior. The onlookers’ actions and inactions drive home the social implications of this crime. In light of cases like this, one cannot argue that violence against women results only from a very small group of disturbed mens’ actions. It’s a much larger and more complicated issue than simple perversion or psychopathy. A combination of cultural rhetoric and individual behavior allows such abuse.

The news story states that the community is shocked because they don’t feel it’s representative of them. But it is. Violence against women and gang violence reflect our cultural reality, just as hate crimes do. Historians and anthropologists alike will attest that a people’s violence–particularly ritualized or ceremonial violence–does in fact reflect culture, to some degree at least.

It could be argued that this story has more to do with gang violence than violence against women. However, violence against women is too common a problem in America for this to be limited to just one subculture. And, gang culture cannot be dismissed as a mere pocket in which bad things happen anomalously to the rest of America. It has been part of our cultural identity for longer than most of us care to admit.

Through both personal behavior and popular media, gang culture, including denigration of women, is increasingly becoming a louder voice in our national identity. Behavior such as overt crime broadcasts that women are targets; they are subject to abuse because of their gender. That message will be internalized in profound ways. Some will process it through art. Subsequently, the cycle of art imitating life imitating art will create representation: extreme violence accompanied by hyper-sexualization of women (such as your average trailer for an action movie or “street” movie), and hip-hop songs that reduce women to “nothing but bitches and hos”. Thus, the combination of violent behavior and pop culture normalize the abuse and disparagement of women in America.

A final voice in our national dialogue related to gender is one of moral superiority held by the U.S. over the countries we target. Our moral outrage over girls not being allowed into Afghan schools reiterates the American fable of equal opportunity and personal freedom for all, regardless of ethnicity or gender. This critical piece of our national identity is belied by the commonplace brutality against women that this country witnesses every day as a result of social inequality. One. In. Four.

Here is the radio story that inspired this: Number of arrests growing in California

I’m reminded of a lecture on moral psychology that explains the dichotomy between the values of our two major political parties: Talk. Here, Dr. Jonathan Haidt postulates that conservatives and liberals have different sets of values which drive their decisions and reactions. Haidt says liberals value fairness and inclusiveness for all, even if it means disrupting social order, while conservatives value social order and tradition, even if it means sacrifices for some. These are fundamentally different approaches to community.

Considering this, it might be fair to say that the people of the U.S. have conflicting values: personal success and the success of the community. I find this conflict interestingly timed. In the last month, I’ve heard talking heads frothing angrily on U.S. news programs. They say it’s not our responsibility to pay for the mistakes and choices of others. They say large social programs are un-American. In the same month, I also heard voices external to the U.S. comment on how America is known for taking care of one another, and for having a government that cares about its people.

The external voices cover seemingly disparate cultures, but both involve people who feel their communities have been failed by their government. The first is an article called “Shattered Somalia,” and the second is a documentary about Mexican border communities emptied by migrant labor, “The Other Side of Immigration.” In an interview in “The Other Side of Immigration,” a man who had returned after working for over a decade in the states said that the problem is Mexico. It is crazy. The corruption and lack of resources and support for the people make Mexico crazy. It doesn’t take care of its people the way the U.S. does, so people have to leave. Considering the angry rhetoric mentioned above, I was almost surprised to hear the U.S. described this way.

In “Shattered Somalia,” Somalis and the writer described the people of Somalia as abandoned. The devastated country examples the product of a laissez-faire system. The interviewees felt that their government and their people’s fend-for-yourself mentality have failed them. Safety of person is not a basic human right there. The problem goes beyond politics: “In the Somali psyche, fierce nationalism coexists with equally fierce pastoral individualism.  It is not their way to look to government for solutions.” The same conflict between nationalism and individualism exists in U.S. culture, although in very different forms.

Could the current conditions in Mexico and Somalia point to a possible outcome of tipping that balance between nationalism and individualism? Can we see Somalia as an example of how a laissez-faire attitude of government may result?

I think the term “un-American” can be lodged against both sides of the current healthcare debate, and that perhaps is why the issue is stirring such a response. (Because, really, healthcare regulation is not a sexy topic.) It touches a still-raw division between our people: those who see “America” as a place of fairness for all, and who do not fear social change, and those who see it as a place of unbridled economic opportunity and who disapprove of the instability inherent to change. I would argue that both are central to our national identity.

It’s something we hear about a lot, in the news, movies, and while we travel. Americans are perceived by the rest of the world in certain romanticized or despised ways. United States citizens are aware of this very general idea, but we don’t talk about it much.

I asked an Anthropology professor a long time ago if one could specialize in American culture. She replied that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AMERICAN CULTURE, only American cultureS. We are too varied and diverse a people to all fall under one “American culture.” Interestingly, though, every non-academic person I’ve told this to says, “Huh? Of course there’s an American culture.”

I wondered, why are the pro’s missing what the laypeople see? Why is the discipline whose job it is to identify patterns of behavior—values and norms shared by groups of people—missing this seemingly obvious group? Why don’t anthropologists study American culture?

The first and most relevant answer is that my professor was right to a degree. There is a lot of cultural diversity here. But, all immigrant groups, sub-cultures and co-cultures face the issue of assimilation. Doesn’t that necessarily imply that there is a way of life to assimilate into? Well, what is “American” then? From the inside, it’s easy to think there are so many different ways to live here that one could never come to an agreeable definition. But there is a perceived model of “Americans” abroad. And as such, the grouping has already been done, so we might as well talk about it.

I believe that there is a strong sense of American identity felt by those who live here and perceived by those who don’t. And defining that, exploring how that identity and perception is developed and maintained or changed is my life’s intellectual passion.

The product of this investigation will be to explore and celebrate the ways in which individuals and groups identify American-ness—how they describe our national culture, if they see one, and how they feel their experiences align or differ from it, and to do the same with groups and people abroad. I would love to compare the descriptions of what it means to be American as told by people from California to Calcutta.

The second argument is that there already is a study of American culture. It’s called American Studies, and it’s a fine discipline. The reason I want to pursue this as an anthropological inquiry rather than an Americanist one is, A) I am only interested in pop culture in how it helps to define and export macro-American culture, whereas American Studies takes greater care in analyzing media, and B) I really want to talk about values, identity and behavior. Anthropology has an academic empire of theory and methodology with which to do that.

I like the anthropological approach. I just want to apply it here. Studies of bush people were of interest for a time and helped the discipline form and grow. Now we have sharpened tools and need a bigger cut of meat. How about an enormous, highly varied and relatively young culture that is conceived of in every corner of the globe? Chopped up in bite size pieces by careful ethnography? It sounds like an unwieldy, large project, but really it’s just conversations.