Can we Control the Excesses of Industry in Tropical Forests?

Posted on 14 July 2013 by Carol

“We trust that this measure of discipline will serve as a stern warning that zeal for research must not be carried to the point where it violates the basic rights and immunities of a human person.”

(quoted in Skloot 2011, p. 135). 

Rebecca Skloot is quoting clinical guidelines for physicians newly created in the US in 1965.  This was long after the world in general had recognized the value of such ‘discipline’ in the Nuremberg Code, which has governed—in a voluntary sense—all human experimentation worldwide.  The Nuremberg Code was the global response to Hitler’s infamous crimes that had earlier prompted (and continued during) WWII.

Reading this phrase, I couldn’t help substituting ‘zeal for profit’ for ‘zeal for research’; and I thought about the possible good sense of substituting ‘human communities’ for ‘human person’.  The fact that in the US the medical profession has stopped the heinous practices (specifically, experimenting on black community members and prisoners without their knowledge or consent) that prompted the US guidelines gave me hope that businesses operating in and near developing country communities might be similarly kept in line.   US Universities and the US Government have had ethics boards (or Internal Review Boards) for decades now, groups that provide oversight for research done on ‘human subjects’ by faculty members and recipients of government funding, respectively.  Although such boards can be bureaucratic nightmares for anthropologists conducting ethnographic research, they have served to sensitize many researchers to possible ethical abuses and have surely also prevented many abuses.  However, academics are not the world’s powerful.

In the tropics, we still see companies and governments regularly committing egregious violations of what would now be considered human rights in the US and other ‘developed’ countries.  In tropical forests, many companies (with governmental acquiescence or even encouragement)

  • routinely usurp local people’s lands held within traditional ownership and management systems;
  • conduct logging, develop plantations and other agro-industrial operations with little or no regard for human health and safety;
  • discriminate against local people in favor of in-migrants from other regions or even other countries;
  • ignore issues of gender equity, providing jobs and benefits disproportionately to men.

There are efforts underway to develop appropriate guidelines, though they remain in their infancy.  Efforts to require FPIC—Free, Prior and Informed Consent—are a recent example.  Associated requirements have been developed by various parties in recent years.  But only a small minority of companies and projects have adopted such voluntary procedures.  There remain difficult quandaries about how to implement and monitor FPIC.  Like some US and international requirements for gender equity in projects, ‘faking it’ is not difficult: boilerplate paragraphs are easy to add to proposals (or PR statements) and ignore during implementation.  With FPIC, even defining its constituent parts is difficult.  Those whose consent is required may be illiterate, from very different and socially subordinate cultural systems and/or ethnic groups, unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the bureaucratic practices of companies and other outside agents.

There is also growing alarm about what many have called ‘land grabs’ in developing countries.  Although the alarm has only gained traction in recent years, as biofuel development has in some areas superseded food production, in fact land grabbing in developing countries has been underway for decades, no centuries. In Indonesia, a widespread trend since the 1970s has gone like this:

  • First logging companies entered traditional territories for which local people had no certificates of land ownership, with governmental encouragement. 
  • A few years later, an industrial tree plantation would be given by the government to the company that had logged the valuable timber from the lands these people had called their own.  As the plantation came in and usurped some 2-300,000 ha, the option of conducting swidden agriculture—the only food crops system that had really worked in the infertile tropical soils of Indonesia’s Outer Island—would disappear.  Unlike logging or swiddens, this conversion would be permanent. 
  • At the same time or shortly thereafter, the government would plan a transmigration project in the area, bringing in thousands of transmigrants from other islands to serve as the work force for the plantation (which in fact only needed a significant number of workers consistently in the very early stages of its operation).  The plan for these transmigrants to practice settled agriculture would fail, due to infertile soils and unpredictable weather.
  • So the government, in cooperation with industry, would plan rubber, or more recently oil palm plantations, converting the once-independent farmers (who’d practiced a cash poor, but socially, environmentally and nutritionally adequate way of life) into a much poorer rural proletariat, in some cases dependent on the company for their very survival.

Another, perhaps less egregious example, comes from conservation.  There, areas that people have seen and managed as their own are given by the government to a conservation group to manage.  Although experiences vary, in the most damaging instances local people are simply told they can no longer practice swidden agriculture, hunt, or collect other forest products, all central to their very survival.  Inadequate governance in many cases has meant that people were able actually to continue these practices, but were thereby automatically defined as criminals as they lived their lives in their accustomed way.  Such policies also reduced people’s confidence in their and their children’s future rights, which in turn reduced their commitments to maintaining and protecting their environment.  A vicious cycle of competition for land and products has often ensued in which neither people nor the environment benefits.  In Indonesia and many other tropical forest areas, land grabbing is nothing new—but globally it’s on the rise.

There are other attempts to provide useful guidelines to protect people’s rights:  CIFOR’s Criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management (CIFOR 1999), for community management (Ritchie et al 2000), and for plantation management (Sankar et al. 2000)  all included serious attention to human well being.  Some of these kinds of guidelines were incorporated into national guidelines (e.g., in Austria, Cameroon, Canada, Gabon, South Africa, USA), with varying impacts in the forests and forest communities.  More recent efforts have included a focus on human rights (e.g., Campese et al. 2009) or on improved oil palm plantation management (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO). In many countries inadequate governance has meant that no or few policies are really enforceable.  FLEGT, which aims to strengthen enforcement of laws has some worrying implications for local people’s livelihoods (see e.g., Colchester 2006), given the common definition of their subsistence system—swidden agriculture—as illegal!

So…with all these worrying and inadequate efforts, one can lose hope.  But reading the history of how the US managed to gain some control over the most heinous medical practices does provide an encouraging example.  It gives me hope that—perhaps—we can begin to harness these industries that still remain free to run roughshod over rural peoples with only minimal capacity to defend themselves.

 

 

 

References – some available on CIFOR.org

Campese, Jessica, Terry Sunderland, Thomas Greiber and Gonzalo Oviedo 2009. Rights-Based Approaches:  Exploring Issues and Opportunities in Conservation. In Rights-Based Approaches:  Exploring Issues and Opportunities in Conservation, 305. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR/IUCN.

CIFOR 1999. C&I Toolbox, Bogor, Indonesia, CIFOR.

Colchester, M. 2006. Reflections on the Social Dimensions of Verification in FLEGT Processes:  Issues, Risks and Challenges. Available: http://www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/4490.pdf.

Ritchie, Bill, Cynthia McDougall, Mandy Haggith and Nicolette Burford de Oliveira 2000. Criteria and indicators of sustainability in community managed forest landscapes: an introductory guide. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR.

Sankar, S., Anil, P. C. & Amruth, M. 2000. Criteria and Indicators for Sustainable Plantation Forestry in India, Bogor, Indonesia, CIFOR.

Skloot, R. 2011. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, New York, Random House.

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A Walk Down Memory Lane

Posted on 27 May 2013 by Carol

My trip to Cameroon wound up being routed through Istanbul, not something I’d initially planned, but still a thought that pleased. I left a chilly upstate New York (mid-May), where coming gardens, ending classes, and finishing professional papers occupied my thoughts. Such concerns gave way, as a I boarded the plane in New York City, to immersion in the world of my youth. The airline, Türk Hava Yolları, was the one I had first flown in Turkey in 1955[1]—at the age of nine! But the ‘equipment’ was much changed. Flying business class, occupying one of those modern ‘seats’ in which one can lie flat, I enjoyed listening to the sounds of the Turkish language fill my ear. I could catch many individual words, but had to struggle to identify phrases, and failed completely at understanding whole sentences. But the flight attendants—who beautifully exemplified Turkey’s famed hospitality—fed me wonderful Turkish food, and I basked in nostalgia. Börek (cheese-filled pastries) were advertised for breakfast, and I felt the sting of disappointment when this turned out not to be provided. But my good humour returned with the breakfast—a common one of fresh tomatoes, white cheese, and olives, green and black, on one plate; granola in creamy yoghurt on another; fresh fruit; tasty rolls. I remembered the tangy flavours and was struck by their distinctness, one from another. Now and then there was a light air of Turkish music filling the air. A trip to the restroom brought the scent of lemon eau de cologne, used widely in the Turkey I’d known.

My stay in Istanbul was only 1 hour, and our plane was late on the way to Cameroon, so I only got the slightest taste of Istanbul’s airport. Still, it was a pleasure to realize I was in this country of my youth. I’d left in 1961 and only been back twice, each time for brief stays.

Today, coming into Istanbul, it was daylight and I had a window seat. I could see the complex geography, with rivers and straits and seas and forests and city all interspersed in a lovely mosaic more visible from above than from the ground. It’s truly a lovely city. My eyes filled with tears of gratitude that I could see it again and in such a clear and panoramic way.

In the airport, I heard more Turkish all around me, though filtered through a cosmopolitan mélange of ethnicities, languages, sights and sounds. One store was aiming to replicate a Turkish bazaar, selling all sorts of Turkish memorabilia. Out front was a little ice cream stall with the salesman dressed in Ottoman attire. I remembered how I’d loved vişne dondurma (cherry ice cream), and asked if they had it; no, only chocolate, vanilla and pistachio. I got the mixture of the three, and was transported back to my youth—the smooth, creamy flavor caressing my tongue, delicious if different from American ice cream. The bazaar was not open and roomy like the rest of the airport; it had narrow paths through crowded shelves, somewhat like a real bazaar, and I was again transported. The wares included Duty Free items of course (alcohol, candy, perfume), but also beautiful silver jewelry, famous Turkish pottery, the delicate and distinctively rounded tea glasses. I bought two mugs with Turkish scenes to remind me of my stay there and a keychain for my grandson, Stone, who collects them. There was gold for sale in the airport too—something I was looking at in anticipation of my son’s coming marriage in a Muslim ceremony. But it was too expensive and not in tune with what I imagined his fiancée’s taste to be.

I was given a Turkish newspaper in English, and was amazed at an article about the terrible treatment of Armenians in the early 1900s—a topic utterly taboo for nearly a century in Turkey. The advances that Turkey has made, both in terms of material comforts and less concrete issues like freedom of the press, are phenomenal. I wish I could return for a longer stay and recoup some of my lost ability at speaking Turkish, among many other things. It’s probably not meant to be; but I am grateful for these tantalizing tastes of a time gone by.

[1] This was the year the airline took its present name. By 1958, they had 28 planes, mostly DC-3s; now they have 227 top-of-the-line planes serving 222 locations around the world (“80 Proud Years,” Skylife, May 2013) and still excellent service!

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Springtime and other ruminations

Posted on 15 May 2013 by Carol

I lie in my Peruvian hammock (obtained in 1983 and speckled with mold from years of disuse), gazing up at the blue, puffy-white-cloud-studded sky. I see the black angles and curves of the tree branches silhouetted against this sky, reminding me of my unsuccessful efforts as a child to reproduce such trees on paper. The clouds, some white, some grey, move slowly by overhead, changing shape, always so complex in their outlines to defy description. Such a peaceful pastime, gazing at the clouds, reminiscent of childhood; and such a pleasure to see the blue of a clear sky, after years—no, decades elsewhere—-of skies turned grey by pollution.

Swinging in the hammock, sipping my afternoon drink, I can’t think of much that could be more relaxing. We had a night of frost a couple of nights ago and associated worry about our fruit trees and other plants. We won’t know for months how much damage may have been done (temp: 25°F on 13 May!), but the leaves seem to have recuperated; there is hope for these ensuing pleasures too.

The landscape has changed from a rather bleak, leafless world (with its own wintry beauty) into something approaching spring: shades of mostly light green, punctuated by angular fields of yellow, brown and tan; and, here and there, dramatically beautiful flowering trees in shades of white, red, pink, and lavender. The landscape is a lovely reminder of what the world holds, the warmth and abundance that summer will bring.

This is a peculiarly temperate pleasure that I missed in the tropical world (which of course has its own delights—greenery all year long, bright flowers always dotting the countryside, warmth to soothe the spirit).

All this comes to mind as I contemplate my upcoming trip to Cameroon. I will enjoy Cameroon’s warmth, particularly so at the end of a long Ithaca winter. No need to dress in layers, use mittens or ski masks, hide my cheeks from the biting cold that hurts just by being. And old friends will be there.

I imagine it will be a pleasure. I think about the few hours in Turkey, the country of my youth, wishing there was a little longer time there, worrying about my likely exhaustion from the long trip, all the way to Istanbul and then back to Yaounde (a ticket that was MUCH cheaper than other options). Perhaps they will serve us Turkish food, which I would very much welcome!

What awaits me in Cameroon? Time with old friends, for sure. A chance to share the experience we’ve had working with communities, my convictions about its necessity, perhaps persuade others to follow. Can I be persuasive enough? Such a big question. I am always a minority voice within a cacophony of louder voices, voices that reflect the belief in the power of money over all else; and I do not have the charisma of a politician.

We will see what happens on CIFOR’s 20th anniversary in Yaounde.

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Another Interdisciplinary Dilemma: Nurturance and Competition, Consumption and Production, Sharing and Dividing

Posted on 7 April 2013 by Carol

I was persuaded, a year or so ago, to take on the task of reading all the chapters in a book that Malcolm Cairns is pulling together (A Growing Forest of Voices, it’s called—a sequel to his 2007 collection, Voices from the Forest), both on swidden fallows in Southeast Asia.  My task includes leading a ‘gender panel’ of experts to synthesize the materials presented on gender from these chapters.  Some chapters fail to mention gender at all; others mention such issues in passing; and a very few provide rich description of women’s and men’s roles, respectively.  Still fewer look at symbols, ideals, or values.

I have pulled together what we’ve found, and organized it in evolving drafts, see-sawing back and forth between an inductive approach of looking at the materials and building up a structure on the one hand, and trying, on the other, to link these findings to the conceptual framework outlined in The Gender Box (2013).  Our synthesis remains ‘a work in progress’—partly because not all the chapters are available yet, but also because I’m struggling with a dilemma.

Most chapters in this book are written, reasonably enough, by scientists who look at fallows from either a production or a conservation perspective.  They see human beings, men and women, as alternately problems or resources, and to some extent as beneficiaries; and they tend to write, if they attack the gender issue at all, about men’s and women’s division of labour, economic contributions, respective benefits—very practical, down to earth elements.

Gender scholars, on the other hand, tend to be far more interested in issues that are difficult or impossible to quantify:  issues of value (social, not monetary), symbolism, ideals—the sources of people’s core motivations.  Besides their (our) interests in the non-quantifiable, gender scholars use a very different language to discuss these interests, a language that is pretty much inaccessible to a normal biophysical scientist (and to much of the general population as well!).

This difference, and its relevance for the synthesis I’m struggling with, struck me forcefully last week.  On Thursday last, Penny Van Esterik,  a well respected member of our gender panel, made a presentation at Cornell University.  She has concluded that in Southeast Asia generally, nurturance is a valued pan-human trait, not, as in the West, associated uniquely with femininity or women (look for her upcoming book with Richard O’Conner, The Dance of Nurturance).  She also mentioned her pleasant and unusual observation (one I shared as well), on arriving in Southeast Asia decades ago (Thailand, in her case; Indonesia, in mine), that she and other women were generally greeted and reacted to as competent human beings—an experience at variance with much western experience.  How does one portray such a fundamental observation, which has deep practical implications for the lives of Southeast Asian men and women, in such a way that it is not disregarded as idiosyncratic, personal and therefore irrelevant to those many foresters and ecologists with directly pragmatic human concerns?

My own eclectic background should give me an advantage in translating between these two very different realms of scholarly pursuit and ways of looking at the world.  My career has shifted back and forth between women’s reproductive health, family planning, gender studies, on the one hand; and natural resources, forest management, agriculture, and gender on the other.  I am familiar with both vocabularies and bodies of theory; yet still, bringing the two together in away that speaks to both audiences represents an enormous challenge.

Besides the issue of disciplinary language, there is a fundamental western world view, which has valued male things over female things.  Although there are strong counter-currents to such ideas now, the western linking of male with good has resulted, Penny has argued persuasively, in an emphasis on competition and assertiveness—seen once in the West as male, and now seen perhaps as pan-human, traits.  Certainly the natural resources literature emphasizes competition, negotiation, conflict and nearly completely ignores nurturance, sharing and cooperation—surely as ubiquitous as the former ‘masculine’ set.  Nurturance is absolutely fundamental to human life.  Without it, none of us would survive to adulthood.

I like Penny’s use of this term. When I’ve tried to write about my own observations in East Kalimantan, I’ve focused on Kenyah Dayak emphasis on sharing (e.g., The Longhouse of the Tarsier, 2009, or earlier in Beyond Slash and Burn, 1997). Ravi Prabhu and I struggled in the late 1990s, when we were developing the adaptive collaborative management program at CIFOR (http://www.cifor.org/acm/) with our shared perception that Asians focused on ‘cooperation’ more than ‘competition’; we wanted to build on that in our work. Both sharing and cooperation could well be subsumed under the nurturance concept.

I agree with Penny that the value of nurturance is far more widely acknowledged, accepted, assumed, in Southeast Asia than it is either in the West or in academic natural resource-related analyses.  Few would deny that there are competitive and assertive women; but how many in the West are ready to acknowledge the nurturing behaviour of men?  What besides nurturance is the protective ideal that many men support and enact?  What besides a nurturing value is a forester’s or ecologist’s protection of plants, animals, the biosphere?  And surely few have failed to observe the nurturance of most fathers with their own infants. Yet many (dare I say most?)  ‘gender studies’ about men focus on ‘hegemonic masculinity’, domestic abuse, warfare, and drug use (e.g., The Other Half of Gender, 2006).

To return to my specific dilemma in this chapter, how do I incorporate this needed perspective of nurturance when the chapters provide so little nurturing ‘fodder’?  How do I (we) make a ‘baby step’ toward a more balanced view of production and consumption, competition and cooperation, dividing and sharing?  All of these are part of human existence and all have links to the fallows about which A Growing Forest of Voices is to be written.

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Integrating science, social science, and the humanities

Posted on 31 March 2013 by Carol

In Cornell’s IGERT program on Food Systems and Poverty Reduction, we’ve been trying to bring budding scientists of various hues together with (a few) social scientists [IGERT stands for Integrative Graduate Education, Research and Training and such programs are funded by the US National Science Foundation].  Last week, our one Development Sociology PhD student, Holly Buck, made a convincing case for broadening our scope to include the humanities.  She plans to look at the role of Western narratives in international development (with particular attention to issues like land grabs and climate change).

Her talk led me to re-visit this issue with anecdotes from my professional life.  When I was in graduate school, I too was interested in the balance, within Anthropology, between art and science, feeling even then that both were needed.  Yet I realize that my own work has not fully addressed the arts, partly because of the environments—-somewhat inhospitable to the social sciences, even more so to the arts—in which I’ve found myself.  A few months back I was reminded of this issue while conducting a literature review on gender and forests.  I nearly set aside without reading the book, Unearthing Gender:  Folksongs of North India (S. T. Jassal, 2012, Durham, NC: Duke University), assuming it would be too ‘artsy’ for my needs.  It proved to be a powerhouse of useful information on gender attitudes and practices.  I remembered my enjoyment, further back in time, of Francis Putz and Michele Holbrook’s chapter, ‘Tropical Rainforest Images’ in Denslow and Padoch’s People of the Tropical Rainforest (1988, Berkeley: University of California Press/Smithsonian Institution).  They examine literary and film images of the forest (often called ‘the jungle’) as alternately evil, dangerous, full of adventure, and alluring.  I recalled my own short piece on ‘Tastes in Landscapes’ (in Impulse 2003), which compared the Javanese love of rows and order in the landscape to the Kenyah Dayak love for a luxuriant, chaotic ‘natural’ environment.  These images we carry have important effects on how landscapes evolve—and the powerful have far louder voices as related decisions are being made.

Such thoughts reminded me of the vastly different cultural notions about pigs.  I thought of ecologist, Doug Sheil’s work with the wild pigs of Borneo and his happy, partial self-classification as a ‘pig man’.  He worked with Dayaks in East Kalimantan, and surely was influenced by their love of pigs:  as a source of food and as part of their [oral] literary heritage.  I remember, somewhat vaguely now, the tales I learned in 1980 in Long Segar about the wondrous Dayak culture hero, Balan Tempau (after whom I named my own son!).  Balan Tempau was brave, handsome, and adventurous (and, incidentally, also of aristocratic lineage—a feature less compatible with my own American expectations about culture heroes).  His beautiful bride to be (with a face ‘as round and lovely as the moon’) sometimes turned into a big, impressive and intelligent pig—with lovely beads strung around her neck—as she implemented her clever trickery, some of which served to save Balan Tempau when he was in danger from spirits or romantic [commoner] competitors.

This led to images from 1971, when I lived briefly in a Qashqa’I village in southern Iran.  One day that summer I heard a great commotion; men’s voices were yelling loudly just outside the village.  When I asked what was happening, I was told—with the women’s faces expressing their horror and dread—that a man had found a wild pig.  He’d summoned the other men of the village and they were beating it to death, with what must have been wild abandon—judging by the angry sounds they were producing.  The women expressed their gratitude and relief that this lone intruder was being appropriately addressed. These Qashqa’i saw the pig as dangerous, both literally (with its sharp tusks) and figuratively, as a personification of the devil [I’m guessing, probably also as an agricultural pest].

The Dayaks were unlikely to meet with people so rabidly antagonistic to pigs as the Qashqa’i, but Islam definitely portrays pigs in unflattering ways.  The Javanese with whom I lived for three years in a Transmigration area in West Sumatra [‘transmigration’ of people, not souls] willingly, if somewhat sheepishly and clandestinely, ate pork from wild pigs when offered the opportunity.  They knew the religious prohibition against such consumption, but they had few opportunities to ingest meat of any kind.  The higher status Javanese likely to be found in policymaking positions in East Kalimantan were likely to hold more negative attitudes about pigs and their consumption, being both wealthier and more invested in the doctrines of Islam than were the poor Javanese transmigrants of Sumatra.  Such diametrically opposed attitudes—of the Dayaks and the Javanese—reinforce the mutual antagonisms that have led in West and Central Kalimantan to conflicts over land and forests, and in some cases to massacres or warfare.

Another less dramatic event, from some years ago at CIFOR (the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia), comes to mind.  One of my colleagues gave an interesting presentation to all CIFOR staff on her work in North Sumatra on benzoin (Styrax benzoin), a non timber forest product of many uses (in medicine, incense, perfume).  As an anthropologist, besides dealing with the conventional ecological concerns of our biophysical colleagues, she outlined the symbolic significance of these trees (which were being endangered by land use change).   She quoted from origin myths of a young, poor and beautiful girl who turned into a benzoin tree.  She told of the singing of ‘love songs to the tree when cleaning its bark, preparing it (by caressing and warming it) for a sexual act ( the tapping), which will “give birth” to resin, often described as [mother’s] milk.’ (quotation from Katz et al.’s chapter “Sumatra Benzoin” in Tapping the Green Market [edited by Guillen et al., 1988]).  In her oral presentation, however, there was considerable eye-rolling underway, as members of the audience dismissed her findings as irrelevant cultural trappings, unimportant for their own serious scientific endeavours.  Incensed at this reaction, I wrote a memo to the staff defending the importance of such cultural (and ‘artistic’) features—noting how such qualitative and value-laden elements give meaning to people’s lives.  Many powerful forces in forests are connected with cultural notions that are difficult to identify, explore, explain, or count.  I asked CIFOR’s researchers  to consider their own responses if, in like fashion, Christmas trees were suddenly illegal; or goats were no longer available to be sacrificed on Islamic feast days.  People tend to dismiss the importance of the cultural symbolism that others hold dear, while forgetting (or, rather, simply assuming the ubiquity of) their own symbolic systems!

But to return to the IGERT, with which I began this path down memory lane, Holly’s presentation reminded me of how little we have been able to facilitate the interdisciplinarity we sought.  We have made progress encouraging teamwork, among biophysical sciences and with economists.  But a crucial element of more effectively addressing conservation and development issues is understanding of, listening to, people in communities, including their ‘exotic’ cultural notions and values. To do that will require the involvement of social scientists who understand and know how to study values and  social systems—unlike economists, whose work tends to be solidly shaped within western assumptions and values.  The IGERT experience could have been far more powerful had we had a broader representation of the non-economic social sciences within each cohort.  Strong voices are needed—partly in  recognition of the prestige disadvantage in academia of qualitative and action-oriented social sciences vis-à-vis the biophysical sciences.  Instead, we had one PhD student from development sociology each time; and we failed to include any of those most critical of dominant economic paradigms (of which Cornell has many).

Even more difficult, yet also even more powerful, would have been the effective integration of the arts that Holly proposed.

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On Unintended Mentoring–From the Recipient’s Perspective

Posted on 27 January 2013 by Carol

Reading the book, At Seventy: a Journal, by May Sarton (NY, W. W. Norton & Co., 1984), put into my mind the notion of mentoring.  Although as a young person—the time we imagine we most need mentoring—I got very little of it, I have grown to value this function.  My teachers in college were almost all men.  As I reach back into that earlier era, I realize there was one female mentor in college:  Shirley Kennedy, an anthropologist who’d worked in India.  The men were perhaps nervous, fearing their attention might be misconstrued as sexual in nature (in graduate school, I did suffer that kind of ‘mentoring with an agenda’ from one committee member).  In any event, there was precious little in the way of useful personal or professional advice directed my way.  Later, as a young professional in Hawaii, Goro Uehara served as a genuine mentor.  He was a soil scientist, so although full of useful advice, connections, and ideas, his help was remote from my own field.  Still I remember his attention and help with gratitude.

Sarton’s book though inspired in me an appreciation for the passive mentoring I receive now—at a time when one imagines one would no longer need it.  The truth is, however, that life is a constant process of change, and we need models to guide us throughout our lives.  Sarton’s book, her journal, documents the year following her 70th birthday—something that particularly interested me, since that birthday looms for me in less than three years time; and several close friends have just passed that milestone.  The book was a delight to read, partly because it takes place nearby, with similar flowers and animals and seasons, providing a convenient conceptual link to my own life at this stage; but also because she shares many of my interests.  She delights in much that also delights me:  solitude, writing, friendships, reading, gardening, pets, travel, work, love, stimulation (intellectual, aesthetic).  Learning of her ways of meshing these multitudinous interests was instructive and encouraging, strengthening my own feeling that one can continue to grow and enjoy life while aging.

I have also benefited from watching my mother age.  She has provided an inspiring example that I hope I can follow.  Although fairly well crippled by arthritis, she has managed, at nearly 89, to maintain her zest for life.   She copes with, and laughs at, adversity.  She accepts the deaths of her friends, the loss of her loved ones, with an amazing degree of equanimity.  I marvel at this, knowing the important roles these friends and loved ones have played in her life.  She remains engaged, and her life continues to be meaningful to her and to the many who love her, as she copes as sensibly as possible with devastating loss.

My cousin, one of those who just turned 70, has also served as a wonderful mentor.  Like my mother, her zest for life is undiminished.  She teaches me (and others) yoga, periodically tossing in bits of Buddhist philosophy, along with the guidance about specific yoga moves.  I have thought long and hard about one of these bits, which I paraphrase here:  that we are going to get old, sick, lose everything we care about, and die….and therefore we need to live in and appreciate the moment.  Her reminders of this, along with her interest in what she calls ‘mindfulness’, I have found inspiring and helpful in coping with my own losses during these recent years.

And then there is the example of my three pseudo-step-sisters.  They are all adults, the daughters of my mother’s long time partner.  Together we have coped, sadly, with their father’s mental and physical deterioration.  Working with them to address the many challenges that have emerged in his care (which for a couple of years was primarily in my mother’s hands, and until very recently in her home) has been a wonderful confirmation of the human ability to cooperate.  All of us have struggled with the loss, the anxiety, the extra work, the unexpected emergencies involved in his transition from home care to a home for Alzheimer’s patients.  The level of cooperative teamwork, trying to make the lives of both my mother and their father as good as possible under the circumstances, has been another source of inspiration.

The examples that have struck me are all women.  I am reminded that throughout much of my working life, I have been surrounded primarily by men.  Men can, of course, mentor women (I’ve learned a great deal, primarily of a professional nature, from my male colleagues).  But…I particularly appreciate the guidance and example (a kind of unintended mentoring) I’ve gotten recently from my women friends and relatives—many of whom are struggling as I am with eldercare issues.

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“Triple Shot, Grande, Nonfat Soy Milk, Peppermint Latté”

Posted on 27 November 2012 by Carol

We sit down on two of the tall stools at a Starbucks counter.  We’d stopped somewhere in Pennsylvania, for a break in the 9-hour drive from Lovingston, VA to Etna, NY, after an enjoyable Thanksgiving visit.  Starbucks is already decorated for the Christmas season, though Thanksgiving was only the day before.  A new batch of Starbucks mugs, some trimmed in gold, are lined up on attractive display cases, along with various options for colorful Starbucks ‘credit cards’ and coffee variety packs designed for Christmas gifts.  The ‘baristas’—a special Starbucks term, I guess—are all friendly.  Soft music is playing in the background; a new, mellow version of ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’—-perfect music to stimulate a nostalgic feeling among people my age and even older.   There’s plenty also to appeal to the young:  fancy coffee grinders and new-fangled brewing devices, CDs with various kinds of music, and…excellent coffee.

There are lots of customers waiting to give their orders, lots more waiting for their finished coffees.  The women behind the bar are busy and hard-working, calling out new orders as they process earlier ones.  I am again struck by both the efficiency and the complexity of what’s on offer.  One barista smiles at the man who comes forward in response to her high pitched announcement of ‘grande cappucino with no whip cream’.  Another turns to the first with a new order, delivered in staccato so fast I can barely make out the words:  ‘triple shot, grande, nonfat soy milk, peppermint latte’—just one of the multitudinous options available at any Starbucks.

I remember my first visit to one of these establishments a decade or so ago, after another decade or two without a Starbucks visit.  I walked into the Starbucks that is perched on the NW corner of the central square in Portland, Oregon.  Like the Pennsylvania Starbucks, it was full. I waited in a long line, which continued to grow behind me, expecting simply to ask for a cup of coffee.  In my innocence, I had assumed that was a simple request, that I might be asked perhaps if I’d like sugar or cream.  But I was totally unprepared for the stream of instantaneous decisions I was called on to make.  Which cup did I want [the smallest was called, oddly, ‘tall’]? How many shots [shots? of coffee?]?    Did I want added flavoring?  Did I want non-fat or soy milk? Did I want whipping cream?  How about sprinkles of chocolate or cinnamon?  I think there were even more questions!  It was a totally discombobulating experience.  I didn’t know the answers in the immediate manner that was quite obviously expected of me; and I could clearly see the irritation on the faces of both the barista and the customers behind me, as I struggled to figure out what I did want.  I’m much more experienced now, and know how to avoid all these questions.  The right answer is “tall mocha with whip cream”.

I’ve had to adjust my feelings about Starbucks over the years.  I went to Graduate School at the University of Washington, in Seattle.  At that time, Starbucks was a small, family operation downtown, and its coffee was already well-known and loved by my fellow graduate students.   Not a coffee aficionado myself (I’ll drink anything brown), I still enjoyed going there.  We would watch the owners (or workers?) roasting and grinding coffee in what looked like rather primitive contraptions (image of that era available on Wikipedia!).  I remember watching the coffee beans swirling down a big open metal funnel.  It might have been the first time I’d ever seen coffee beans, I’m not sure.  Anyway, it all involved an element of exoticism—compared to buying a can of Folgers at the grocery store.  We were anthropology grad students, after all—in love with anything exotic.  My feelings for Starbucks were quite homey and warm:  anthropology’s exoticism linked with America’s love of small business.  What more could one ask!?

As time has gone on, and Starbucks has expanded across the globe, in some places littering every block, I’ve had to re-examine these warm, fuzzy feelings.  Starbucks is now a part of what we used to call ‘the military industrial complex’—something potentially to be feared.  I visited Ethiopia a few years back, and found the coffee producers (in the original home of coffee, the real home, where it first grew) involved in a dispute with Starbucks over the prices they were receiving.  It was settled, apparently amicably, and I don’t really know the ins and outs of the dispute, but it did make me wonder.  Given the funds Starbucks has at its disposal to tout its social justice concerns, how do we casually learn about the justice or injustice of any given dispute, without spending an inordinate amount of time and energy?  [answer:  we don’t] 

Now I live and am involved with people at Cornell University, in Ithaca, NY.  Here, the intrusion of Starbucks near the Ithaca Commons (downtown) was fought tooth and nail.  Concerns about ‘big business’ and its displacement of local and family operations rightfully concern the populace.  On the other hand, many of us truly enjoy Starbucks coffee—even my very discriminating husband.  My son in law, who recently came to visit from the Seattle area, was so addicted to Starbucks coffee that he would drive the 10 miles or so from our house downtown to get a cup every morning! 

My family has been quietly (and in my case, a bit guiltily) happy to have one nearby.  The ‘warm fuzzies’ linger…

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Thinking about Marx and Women

Posted on 28 October 2012 by Carol

I’m reading a wonderful book called Caliban and the Witch, by Silvia Federici.  Its central point is a link she makes between the definition of women’s roles as domestic/private and capitalism.  It’s a point I don’t 100% ‘buy’; but she marshals a considerable array of information to bolster her claim.  Beginning in Europe (which of course is part of the problem with the argument—there was already oppression of women before capitalism arrived in other parts of the world), she traces the growth of capitalism, and linked changes in the roles of both men and women, in a thorough and fairly equitable manner.  She shows how ‘the common man’ became oppressed by the wage labour system; and then how women’s roles evolved toward domesticity and societal reproduction—to women’s distinct disadvantage—as well.  I’m just getting to the chapter on witches, which is foreshadowed as a crucial part of her argument.  The book is very fully referenced, with wood block prints and other arts of the various times graphically demonstrating her points.  It’s a fascinating read.

But it brings to mind my discomfort with Marxist analyses (and I should acknowledge right away that I have never read Das Kapital, though I’ve read abundant writings that purport to build on Marx’s analyses).  One issue that troubles me is that capitalism as the big bad wolf is kind of inaccessible as we try to think of ways to solve problems, to address particular issues in particular places now. I remember an exciting and eye-opening class I took in 1970, after my general doctoral orals. I was sick and tired of studying anthropology and took a class advertised as ‘literature’. It turned out to be a class in Marxism, in revolution. Now I grew up in a period when Communism was a serious bugaboo (in the same category, socially and politically in the US, as capitalism is/was for Marxists or…better yet…terrorism today). I had really never been exposed to any serious attention to Marx’s ideas or those of his adherents. So I genuinely learned more in that class, probably than in any other class I’ve ever taken. I learned to imagine a completely different way of looking at the world. But I have never fully gotten over my dissatisfaction with it as the explanation for everything—though many Marxist insights are more appealing, more explanatory than the conventional western economic interpretations with their own equally (or more) fatal flaws (‘information equally available to all’, people seen only as ‘rational actors’, the market as ‘the great equalizer’, money as the be-all and end-all of people’s needs/wants).

Another troubling feature of Marxist analysis though is that it seems to reduce the points of entry, the possible ways to stimulate some kind of benign change. Although I see the rationale, the cohesiveness of much work labeled as Marxist—certainly many Marxist authors put forth arguments that make a lot of sense—I’m still uncomfortable with the monolithic nature of the proposed explanations.  I have difficulty seeing capitalism as the kind of bête noire, responsible for all the world’s evils, that many adherents seem to accept so easily.  I also see that the human condition has improved over time in many places (even with capitalism).  In my own work, I’ve tried re-analyzing material that I’ve described in terms of cultural difference, in terms of class.  It’s quite possible to do it, but I come away feeling that my interpretations based on different perceptions of reality, different values, and related different goals in life are much richer, more useful and reflective of what I’ve seen than my attempts to squeeze the data into a Marxist framework.  There is too much of value in local cultural variation that gets lost in the Marxist view.  And such anthropological interpretations offer entrees for beneficial change—though I do recall that such change is seen by at least some Marxists as palliative, simply prolonging this miserable period before what is seen as truly needed:  the revolution.

But to return to Federici, what I truly appreciate about her analysis is its emphasis on how women came to be defined as responsible for performing all things domestic.  Whether or not one accepts her interpretations, she brings needed attention to an under-studied issue. And her historical perspective provides much of value.  So much of our emphasis (including my own) has been on women’s understudied and under-recognized productive roles.  I’m realizing (as are others) that we need to pay some attention to those essential domestic duties so widely defined as women’s—and to figuring out how to share the reproduction of society more equitably.  Women’s recognized and remunerated involvement in productive labour—for which we’ve long strived—cannot be equitably accomplished until we acknowledge the constraints currently represented by women’s greater domestic responsibilities.  Such acknowledgement of course also requires doing something about it.  There’s the rub.

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Men in Pink: American Football, From a Woman’s (Semi-Anthropological) Perspective

Posted on 22 October 2012 by Carol

Although I watch a fair amount of American football—bonding with my husband, remembering my father, thinking of my brother—I do find that there are some oddities on the football field (always, but perhaps a bit more so this year).  The football players—icons of American masculinity—are wearing pink (the color that, for Americans, symbolizes femininity).  The color pink clashes with at least one of most normal ‘team colors’—typically saturated and vibrant reds, blues, maroons, golds, greens, an occasional purple (Never pink!).  The players are wearing pink to support efforts to conquer breast cancer.  I approve.  It’s just a little incongruous to see a 350 pound gargantuan with pink stickers on his helmet tackling an opponent sporting one pink knee sock, a wide receiver flying by with a pink armband fluttering in the wind, a quarterback lifting his knee—and his pink running shoe—as he signals his readiness to receive the ball.

Among the more routine oddities of American football, especially the professional variety, is the combination of hugely powerful (and heavy!) men with quite noticeable pot bellies (those who tackle) playing alongside speedy, lithe receivers (those who catch passes) with shapely bums and nicely turned muscles.  The games are truly spectacles in the full sense of the word—-with uniformed players running out as a team onto the field accompanied by fireworks, rousing band music, scantily clad (and beautiful) cheerleaders, and crowds (as many as 80 or 100,000) often all bedecked in the home team’s colors.  The team’s mascot—often a ferocious critter, a tiger or a wolf, but sometimes something harmless like a duck (!)—will be paraded before the assembled multitudes.

The game is an interesting reflection of American culture, with our continual concern with the rules.   We are quite fond of ‘playing by the rules’—I heard that reaffirmed last night in the final 2012 US Presidential debate—and football wonderfully mirrors that obsession.  The game stops, over and over again, as referees decide on questionable team actions.  Is the ball on or off the playing field?  Did one player interfere with another’s attempt to catch the ball?  Was the football beyond the goal line or not when the player went out of bounds?  Was a player using excessive force?  And on and on.  Many of the referees’ calls are subject to ‘instant replays’ that can  in some cases confirm or overturn their calls.

Football also has its own arcane jargon.  I jotted down a few phrases the other day in a few short moments, phrases that would surely confuse a foreigner (and some of which confuse me):  ‘sacked for a safety’, ‘two point conversion’, ‘he’s almost picked’, ‘run the clock down’, ‘send the Niners to a four and two start’, ‘in the pocket’, ‘second down and nine’.  These phrases are not normal English!

Our love of quantification is also reflected in football: the most amazing statistics on players, plays, and games are available, and discussed (ad nauseum) before, during and after the games by commentators.  We hear how heavy each player is, how many passes he’s thrown or caught, how many times he’s tackled the quarterback (or been ‘sacked’ if he is the quarterback).  We learn his ranking in the periodic selection processes, how many months he’s been out due to injury, how many times he’s started the game, and much much more.

The quality of the photography is really quite astounding.  Somehow the photographers obtain pictures of the players’ grimacing faces as they pile on top of each other trying to gain possession of the ball. We can see the disgust of the coaches when a play is botched, the disappointment on the face of a player who’s missed a pass, the elation when a team gets a touchdown.  Some even have special ‘touchdown dances’ that they do in the end zone.  We can even hear loud ‘thunks’ as they run into each other on the field.

I’ve recently been repeatedly exposed, in my professional reading, to the notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’—a kind of summary phrase for expectations that men will be strong, powerful, dominant, and in control.  A football game is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate such idealized masculine traits.  Strength, courage, speed, and complex tactics are all on full display.  Players show their delight in successful plays by testosterone-laden, prideful gestures (a fist forcefully punched into the air) and joyful sensuous ‘dances’ of glee.  It’s a pleasure, even for me, to see their delight.

The advertisements, abundant as teams take time outs and referees stop play to discuss calls, are also directed at men.  Car and beer ads are particularly common.  Some explicitly emphasize women’s exclusion from consideration: the beer is for ‘real men’; the cars or trucks are ‘tough’, manly, characterized in one instance by ‘blood, guts, and glory’ (spoken in a particularly deep, masculine voice).  Another ad shows a man supposedly pulling the steel parts of his vehicle into a bigger, more powerful shape, by hand.  In yet another, the ‘hero’ turns his small car into a bigger one with his bare hands. 

I wonder, is the pink paraphernalia a harbinger of changes to come, or is it just an interesting aberration?  I enjoy watching football, I really do.  But I also recognize it’s oddity….and its oh, so iconic masculinity! 

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Obama vs. Romney, Biden vs. Ryan

Posted on 10 October 2012 by Carol

This time I’m more than perplexed. I’m worried.  And I don’t understand the thinking of a large percentage of the American electorate. 

Mitt Romney expresses his view of the world as a contest in which competition reigns, with inevitable winners and losers.  He seems to imagine a dog-eat-dog world in which we are all out for ourselves (and should be left to carry this process out to its logical conclusion: the rich getting ever richer, ‘damn the poor’).   He has shown his willingness to let the ends (his winning) justify the means.    Such a cynical and manipulative world view has all sorts of worrying ramifications.

I don’t doubt that Barack Obama has some significant competitive spirit—one would have to, to strive and succeed at becoming US President—and a modicum of competition can surely have positive effects.  But the world view that Obama emphasizes in his speeches and in his actions portrays a much stronger force aspiring toward human cooperation.  He has shown his interest in protecting the US populace at home (in health care, in economic affairs) and in working toward cooperative international relations.  He has made huge repairs in our relations with the rest of the world after the debacle of George W. Bush’s reign.

We human beings, to a large degree, make the world that we live in.  The world becomes a competitive place to the degree that we all see it that way and act within a ‘take-no-hostages’, competitive framework—this is doubly true for the world views of powerful people.  The world itself has become incredibly interconnected.  The need to cooperate among nations, and within our own nation, have become crucially important.  Romney’s emphasis on ‘America as No. 1’ is not what is needed right now.  Such a world view plays into the hands of, encourages, those who consider violence to be the best answer to conflicting perspectives, interests, traditions.

Another source of worry:  An elected leader should be trustworthy.  When I hear Obama speak, by and large, I believe him.  His sincerity comes through in his body language, his words, his actions; and it is reinforced by the words of his close associates.  Romney, on the other hand, changes his story at every shift of the political winds.  For months we’ve been hearing, for instance, about his anti-abortion stance, his commitment to the ‘right to life’ [a weird perversion of this phrase, in my view—focused only on pre-life, often at the expense of other, functioning, breathing life].    Now, after falling disastrously in the polls, he’s saying that he will not fiddle with the current legalities of abortion. While explicitly advocating governmental interference in a woman’s decisions about her own body, he has called for ‘freedom’ from such intervention in business.   On the economic front, for months, he has urged, over and over again, minimizing regulations on business [Can’t people see that the lack of regulation was a central element in the financial disaster of 2009?].  Last week, in the first debate between the presidential candidates, Romney changed his story.  ‘Of course we need regulations.”  

In that debate, Romney changed his stance on issue after issue (and told lie after lie).  I have no faith in anything he says; we have no idea how he will actually behave as president (if we are unlucky enough to see that outcome of the election).  And his competitive, ‘America first’ ideals would put us (and others!) in grave danger of additional US military involvement.

The debate brought out a difficult philosophical dilemma:  Believing in cooperation, Obama tried to have a civilized debate, based on genuine positions and substance.  I believe that he entered the fray—perhaps a little naively—hoping for honest exchange with his opponent.  Instead, Romney launched attack after attack, with much of it based on figures pulled out of his hat, new policies apparently invented on the spot.  When a cooperative spirit meets a cynical and competitive world view, the cooperative partner can be put in a bind.  To respond in kind, with attacks, goes against the cooperative world Obama is trying to create; but in the debate, when he followed his principles and did not counter-attack, his response was perceived as weak.  He was seen to ‘lose the debate’.  Although I’ve seen Obama convey a more commanding presence than he did in this first debate, he still far outshone Romney, in my book.

It was a pleasure to witness the Biden-Ryan debate.  Biden managed to provide facts, counter accusations, very effectively.  His good humour came through, even as he provided blistering rebuttals.  What some commentators called ‘smirks’, I saw as heart-felt laughter coming from Biden’s incredulity that anyone could lie and/or alter positions in the bald-faced manner Ryan, like Romney before him, was adopting.

Another stand-off rolls around in a few days’ time…I have a feeling that Obama will be taking taking off his gloves (no matter how reluctantly).

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