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2011 Review

Below is a quick look at the most-read posts in 2011. I’m listing some of the top ones with a brief summary, in case you’re interested. Thanks very much to everyone for visiting, and to the kind people who have shared these writings and commented on them.

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Lessons from the Christmas Truce of 1914. This is easily the most widely read thing on this site, with nothing else coming close. It looks at the truce negotiated by German, French, and Scottish officers on Christmas Eve of 1914 during WWI, and the lessons we can draw upon from this and similar events to facilitate cooperation. I’m grateful to John Rennie for linking to it on his site.

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Wonderful World

There’s not much that I need to add here. It’s just a beautiful video that Ed Yong kindly shared with his readers: 

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The Christmas Truce, Revisited

I wrote this piece on the Christmas Truce during WWI about a year ago now, and it is far and away the most visited post on this site. Some of that comes from people looking for information on trench warfare, but the post is really about some basic tools we have as a species that facilitate cooperation, even in times that are enormously challenging and emphasize aggression.

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The latest example of this comes from the Bronx and the uplifting NPR story of Julio Diaz, who confronted his mugger with compassion, and had inspirational results. Highly recommended.

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Something similar to the story of Mr. Diaz actually happened to me when I was a teenager. Each summer from the ages of 16 to 21, I worked six days a week on a ferry boat in order to save enough money for college. It was a great job at that age, but the 12-hour days were long and monotonous, and left little time for much else.

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Anthropology & the Art of War

“When the elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers.” 

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Last week, the American Anthropological Association held its annual meeting, this year in the beautiful city of Montreal (for a couple of summaries of the conference, see here and here). Rahul Oka, from the University of Notre Dame, asked if I would like to be one of two discussants for his session (co-chaired with Nerina Weiss) “Traces of Violence and Legacies of Conflict,” and I agreed. The session was full of very erudite presenters who spoke on a range of topics related to the anthropology of conflict and violence.

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But in preparation for the session, I have to admit to some trepidation because nearly all of the presenters were  ethnographers or archaeologists. And as a biological anthropologist, I felt out of my element.  The presentations were also quite diverse in geography, time period, theoretical perspective, and outcome variable, ranging from structural violence and undocumented border crossings from Mexico into the United States, to skeletal trauma in Neolithic Europe, to Kurdish survivors of torture. I found it hard to discuss the various papers with much sophistication and detail while also finding commonalities among them (and all in fifteen minutes, no less). I tried, but finally concluded that it probably wasn’t going to happen. Therefore, I decided to do a rather broad analysis of the papers, which I read ahead of time. But there was always the risk of zooming out too far, thereby making any analysis overly simplistic and virtually meaningless.

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Perseverance

For those expecting an in-depth anthropological analysis, or something about evolution or health disparities, or whatever, this post will probably be a let down. But it’s my blog, and I can write about whatever I want.

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Inequality, Health Disparities, & Obesity

An October poll of 1,000 likely voters found that Americans are increasingly concerned about income inequality. When asked: “How Big a Problem is Income Inequality in the US?,” the majority (74%) replied that it was either a big problem or somewhat of a problem. Predictably, there were differences in opinion by political ideology, but a majority of liberals (94%), moderates (81%), and conservatives (55%) answered that inequality was at least somewhat problematic. However, as is true of many polls, it was not specified exactly what people found unsettling about it. I suppose there are many reasons that people might find increasing inequality (and climbing rates of poverty) to be troubling, but I wanted to focus here on inequality and health, particularly on obesity.

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First, what do we mean by poverty? I remember watching an interview on PBS with the economist Jeffrey Sachs years ago (transcript here – thank you, Google), where he distinguished between two types of poverty. The first was an extreme form, which he called the type of “poverty that kills.” The other type was more of a poverty of inconvenience or jealousy. I don’t want to over-interpret Sachs’ meaning. It was a passing phrase in an interview from ten years ago, and his primary focus was on alleviating the extreme poverty faced by more than a billion people in the world living on $1 per day (see Sachs 2005). Elsewhere, Sachs has lamented that the media have ignored poverty in the United States at a time when “the U.S. has the greatest income inequality, highest per capita prison population and worst health conditions of all high-income countries.” His credentials in fighting poverty are unassailable. But I cite the old interview here because I think his descriptions (‘poverty that kills’ vs. ‘poverty of jealousy’) might resonate with many people today, and not necessarily in a good way.

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Extreme poverty: scavenging at a garbage dump in Phnom Penh (abcnews)

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Committee Work and Student Lives

Though many people may not realize it, faculty are usually required by their university to do more than teach. I’ve always enjoyed teaching, which to me is essentially taking ideas that excite me and sharing them with students. In addition to this, faculty usually must also conduct academic research and writing. This is often the activity most valued by the university, though to many people outside of academia this may seem like superfluous activity. The third arena is service, which is usually the least acknowledged of the three primary duties. Service activities can be directed toward one’s department, university, profession, the community, or some other larger population or organization. My university has written into its Mission and Values a commitment to the local urban community and the greater public good.

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Hmong Conference in Wisconsin

I’ve not posted anything on this blog in a while, as I’ve been tied up with teaching, writing, grading, and committee work, on top of balancing that with a home life.

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Yesterday, I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin for a small conference on Hmong studies. There are interesting people here, Hmong and non-Hmong scholars alike, from all different fields: sociology, anthropology, history, social work, Asian American studies, education, human development, psychology, etc.

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Though the conference officially begins today, most people arrived yesterday and began the conversation. The hope is that we can assist each other with our current work and make connections for potential future research. I’m optimistic that will be the case.

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By the way, my first impression is that Madison looks like a very pleasant place. The campus is also very attractive.

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Anthropology: Reflections on the Field

Several great pieces on the nature of anthropology appeared this weekend on the  Anthropologies Project website, reflecting on the purpose of anthropology, its strengths and weaknesses, and its future. I recommend the whole series of essays, but two in particular caught my eye early, in part because they are written by biological/biocultural anthropologists with whom I’ve had at least some interaction in the past.

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The Logic of War: Iraq, Afghanistan, & Pakistan

A team of researchers, co-directed by Brown University anthropologist Catherine Lutz, released a report this summer which sought to estimate the full scale of the direct and indirect costs of ten years of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The report concluded that the financial and human costs of the war have been vastly underestimated (the Executive Summary of the report can be found here).

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Among the study’s findings:

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