Greeting Nerds!
The members of the anthropology program are busy this summer conducting various research projects all over the place. Dr. Giblin is currently in Hungary, and Dr. Ullinger will be back shortly from her time working on collections in the Midwest of the USA. My work this summer has been mostly at home, conducted at my kitchen table in Fairfield, CT. I took a short break from my table to bring three wonderful students with me to Morocco (see Lauren and Emily's posts for details of the trip), but I've spent most of my time thinking about the way anthropological theory and practice can be used to end human suffering. My particular focus here is on the suffering women experience at the hands of others—either by loved ones, strangers, or even institutions. Since violence against women is a problem of epidemic proportions, there are numerous projects to work on this summer. One project came from my dear friend Annabel Taylor in Christchurch. We are currently working together as part of a larger team on a project to identify best practices in the field of violence prevention. Lucy Freeman, one of our AN students, has been helping me dig up the relevant literature so we can provide the best evidence for what works in helping victims move away from violence, and if there is evidence for ending violence full stop.
Another project came about due to evidence collected by a team of biological anthropologists who identified high rates of sexual harassment and sexual assault against women (and some men) in fieldsite settings [you can read the study here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102172 ] Since the majority of the respondents to the study were anthropologists, the American Anthropological Association decided it was time to find out what was going on amongst the membership, and take stock of the scope and scale of sexual violence and sexual harassment (sv/sh) experienced by AAA members, both in the field, as the aforementioned study identified, and in labs, classrooms, and other settings. I was lucky enough to be included on the research team for the AAA project. Our current goal is to determine how extensive the problems of sv/sh are for members, and then, based on the findings, decide what educational module would be most beneficial for the membership. Both projects are exciting for me because they are explicitly applied, meaning the goal is to use the findings from both studies to make the world safer for women.
One of the main reasons anthropologists are now being incorporated into projects addressing some of the world’s most pressing issues (violence, economic inequality, environmental sustainability, etc.) is because for too long policy and programmatic responses to an issue assumed that the way “Westerners” did things was the best, yet to ill effect. After three-quarters of a century of hiccups and outright project failures across the world, major NGOs and development entities are starting to realize what anthropologists have known all along—you have to listen and learn from others, and to discover what local solutions are available to solve local problems. Sometimes people can be impatient, or arrogant, and don’t want to listen; other times projects are operating on inadequate budgets in order to allow the project team the time they need to learn what the perspectives are in the local context, and what obstacles and opportunities might arise; lastly, and detrimentally, there is often no money available to hire and train local experts themselves, so that local people can address local problems. Thus there are still many barriers in place that make it so projects cannot do the deep learning that leads to thick description of a place and its people, but at the very least project directors and organizational leaders are starting to realize that the anthropological worldview can be a positive way forward.
This is not to claim that anthropologists are going to solve the global problem of violence against women alone. However, bringing our perspectives and our methodological toolkit to bear on the problem, in collaboration with other scholars and activists might present the challenge before us in a new light, and offer new solutions that were hidden from view previously.
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