Uncategorized

by

This Blog

I just found out that this site made a list of frequently read science-y blogs. It’s one of the smaller dots on the radar, but it’s flattering just to be mentioned.

Apparently, Paige Brown Jarreau conducted a survey of 600 science bloggers, asking them to name three science blogs, other than their own, that they read on a regular basis. So, thanks to those people who mentioned this site. 

The other interesting feature was that Jarreau mapped the blogs into nodes, where sites that were commonly mentioned by the same reader were tied together. It looks like this site has connections to a couple of other excellent bioanthro blogs: Katie Hinde’s Mammals Suck…Milk! and Kate Clancy’s Context and Variation, as well as Ed Yong’s Not Exactly Rocket Science (Ed Yong is connected to more people than Kevin Bacon). 

On a related note, this blog is approaching its fifth anniversary, and I’ve been thinking of making some changes. However, I’m torn. I originally named it for personal reasons, in memory of my brother Kevin. But I think that can be confusing to people, since it has no direct correlation with anthropology or other things I write about here. So I’m not sure which way to go. Any advice?

A family of science blogs. The yellow arrow points to this site. (Source)

A family of science blogs. The yellow arrow points to this tiny site. (Source)

by

2014 in Review

These were the ten most read posts of 2014, with #1 being the most read. As I look for patterns, I think they fall into three categories: War, cooperation & conflict; Evolution & plasticity; and Sex, love & relationships. You know, easy uncontroversial topics. 🙂

As always, nothing on this site would be read if not for you all. Thanks to everyone who visits here, particularly for the regular readers (you know who you are), and for your comments and sharing these posts. Happy New Year!  

10. The Kindness of Strangers (Nov 27)

An in-class academic exercise suggests that we are always somewhat dependent on the kindness of others, regardless of our own disposition as cooperators or defectors.

PD

9. Civilian Casualties Are a Feature, Not a Bug, of War (Jul 20)

Although we often think of war as a contest between competing militaries, data suggest that since the Second World War, 67% to 90% of casualties occur among non-combatants. I wrote this to help contextualize some of the conflicts occurring in the summer of 2014.

War deaths 2

Continue reading →

by

For My Daughter

For my daughter, who is just about a year old…

“Stifling human potential for women, or anyone, through oppression, intimidation, or harassment is a way of creating suffering, which begets more suffering. This isn’t rocket science, but I think my life would be better if it were surrounded by as many happy, fulfilled people as people as possible, not people who feel held back.”

Patrick Clarkin's avatarPatrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D.

Every so often, some occurrence comes along that throws life into a new orbit. My trajectory was recently shifted by such an event – I fell in love with a girl. She’s much younger than me: not even a week old, in fact. And she happens to have half of my chromosomes, as daughters tend to do. She is healthy, and both she and her mother are doing well. I find myself carrying her around the house, just staring at her face. When she’s awake and looks back at me, which is mostly late at night unfortunately, it’s magical.

Obviously, we knew this day was coming. We’re not ready to plan her entire life out for her just yet (not until she’s at least a month old). But for a while now I’ve been thinking about what it will be like to be a father to a baby girl…

View original post 1,294 more words

by

The Biology of Forced Displacement

“Seeking asylum is not illegal under international law and people have a right to be treated humanely and with dignity.”  – UNHCR

“We crossed the Mekong to get to Thailand at night, so no one would see us. We had always lived in the mountains (of northern Laos), so we did not know how to swim. When we came to the river, we used anything to help us float – bamboo, bicycle tubes. But at night, it is easy to get lost. Someone in our group said: ‘Remember, if you get lost when you’re going down the river (with the current), don’t panic. Thailand is on your right.’ ”

 

 

Every refugee has a story. The one above was told to me by a Hmong man I met in French Guiana in 2001. I went to learn about the experiences of the people there and how they had adjusted to being resettled half a world away, from Southeast Asia to a French ‘overseas department’ in Amazonia. They were actually doing quite well at the time, living as independent farmers who had been given land by the government years earlier.

Hmong men in French Guiana going hunting by bike.

Hmong men in French Guiana going hunting by bike.

They also retained a good degree of cultural continuity. While most are fluent in French, the majority of the 2,000+ Hmong in the country lived in rural, semi-isolated, ethnically homogenous villages. This gave them a buffer of sorts, allowing them to acculturate on their own terms. As they often put it, they were “free to be their own boss,” free to be Hmong, and most said they were happy with life in French Guiana. This combination of traits – economically self-sufficient, culturally distinct, mostly content, living in a rural overseas department – is not the typical refugee story. In fact, because of that relative uniqueness, the French Guiana Hmong have drawn attention from media outlets such as the BBC and the NY Times.

Continue reading →

by

Evelyn’s Story

I was just reminiscing about Evelyn, who said to me over a year ago: “I was a walking skeleton for five years.”

Patrick Clarkin's avatarPatrick F. Clarkin, Ph.D.

Recently, we attended a going-away party for some friends who are moving to Europe. One of the guests arrived a bit late, along with her husband and daughter. She also brought her 83-year old mother, Evelyn [1], who was the chronological outlier among the crowd of 30 to 50 year-olds and their kids. As the children played and the younger adults socialized I made eye contact with Evelyn, who was standing alone. She smiled back in that kindly, typical grandmotherly way, so I introduced myself. We made small talk and she mentioned how she had recently sold the house that she had lived in for more than thirty years, and how much she loved her new apartment and her granddaughter, and other things grandmothers like to talk about.

From her slight accent, it was obvious that she was born elsewhere. Eventually she revealed that she grew up…

View original post 648 more words

by

“I Am Only Human:” Malinowski & Integration

 

Bronislaw Malinowski, circa 1920. Source.

Bronislaw Malinowski, circa 1920. Source

For fun, I’ve been reading bits and pieces about the life of Bronislaw Malinowski, often described as one of the most important anthropologists of the early twentieth century for his contributions to ethnography. I’m not an ethnographer or a cultural anthropologist, but I stumbled across an essay by Michael Young about Malinowski’s life, as revealed by his own diary, which then led me to Young’s larger, book-length work (2004).

It is admittedly voyeuristic to look into the private thoughts of another person through their diaries. But it’s also a reminder about how complex we all are (some more so than others). For all his flaws, I find Malinowski to be a sympathetic figure. Maybe it’s because of his flaws. Young described him as “moody, irritable, sentimental, and melancholic” who made enemies as easily as friends. “But he could also be gregarious, emotionally generous, deeply courteous and scintillatingly eloquent. He was a demonically hard worker whose zeal galvanized those around him” (p. xxv). Again, he was complex.

The recurrent theme was that Malinowski was preoccupied with introspection in order to reform and improve himself. This seems rather commonplace, but his unique motivation was the desire to ‘integrate’ himself, by which he meant creating a coherent whole: 

Continue reading →

by

Vientiane

“The Greek word for “return” is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.” 
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance 

by

2013 in Review

Below are some of the most viewed posts of 2013. Some popular themes this year: sex, love, kindness, conflict, Laos, and some personal stuff as well (including the birth of my daughter). 

This isn’t a large website that gets a lot of traffic. It’s just a place to help me organize and share some thoughts, and I really appreciate the fact that people visit and consider some of these things worth reading and even sharing with others.Thank you all for visiting. Happy New Year.

.

Continue reading →

by

Kant at 39

File:Immanuel Kant (painted portrait).jpg

Kant (wiki commons)

Today is birthday 39. Odd. I’m finding inspiration from Immanuel Kant:

He was of the rather curious conviction that a person did not have a firm direction in life until their thirty-ninth year; when this came and passed and he was just a minor metaphysician in a Prussian University a brief mid-life crisis ensued; perhaps it can be credited with some of his later direction.

We all take different paths and bloom at different times. 

by

Thought Experiment on Sex, Food, & Privacy

From Matt Ridley’s book “The Origins of Virtue”  (1997: 87-88):

Imagine if sex were an activity normally carried out communally and publicly, but eating was something done secretly and privately. There is no particular reason why the world could not be organized that way, so that it seemed positively odd to want to have sex alone and rather shameful to be caught eating in public. No reason except human nature. It is simply part of our make-up that food is communal and sex is private. It is so deeply ingrained in the human mind that the reverse is unthinkably weird. The bizarre notion, beloved of various historians, that sexual privacy was a cultural invention of medieval Christendom, has long been exploded. All over the world, whatever god people worship, and however many or few clothes they wear in public, sex is a secret act to be done quietly when everybody else is asleep or out in the fields in the daytime where nobody can see. It is a universal human characteristic. Eating food, on the other hand, is just as universally a communal activity.”

Continue reading →