Anthropology in Language

Alex Tabarrok over at Marginal Revolution has an interesting post about the use of ‘loan words’ – words borrowed from another language for a variety of reasons. 

My closest brush with linguistics in college was the ‘historically speaking’ interludes told by my Russian professor about reforms and reductions in the alphabet.  The Russian alphabet used to have even more letters than the 33 it currently has, and editing down that number is part of the reason why the words for peace and for world share the same word (MUP) – the vowel in one of them was done-away with (which, I can’t remember). 

I pretty much suck at learning languages, but I’ve always been fascinated by the stories they tell about the people and cultures that use them.  The adoption of certain words and phrases can signify a lack in the borrowing language, or even just trends in fashion.  I think the Russian incorporation of French words is an example of both – the need for more modern words, and also a fascination with the French court during the 1800s. 

Check out the post, and definitely read the comments.  MR’s readers are pretty smart to begin with, and there are some great insights as well as funny stories to be read. 

Anthropology in Affirmative Action

Really, I’m at a loss to explain this headline: “Low-caste tribe riots in Delhi for right to be ‘untouchable’“.

India’s centuries-old controversy over caste and discrimination brought parts of Delhi to a halt yesterday as thousands of members of an ethnic group demanded that their official status be lowered in order to provide them with better access to jobs and education.

I thought that being an untouchable was so horrid that someone would do anything to escape that designation (not that it was really possible).  But the status of ‘untouchable’ seems to imply a lack of humanity, and indeed, my understanding is that that’s how the higher classes treated the untouchables; as if they were lower than animals.  From what I know about human psychology (not much), people need to have a base level of dignity in order to have any chance of success.  This is sometimes cited by sociologists as the ‘culture of poverty’ – a theory to explain the perpetuation of poverty between generations.  I think some iterations of it can be a little patronizing, but that there is a core of truth, and I’d like to (but can’t, definitely) say that I’ve seen work on the psychology of refugees that makes a similar argument.

So, with all of that in mind, does this protest

1. Disprove the importance of dignity (and, you know, being recognized as a fellow human)
2. Demostrate that actual economic earnings is more important than social status? 

If no. 2 is true, is that because that’s how things always are (again, dignity isn’t that important) or are economic earnings more important BECAUSE social status is now less important; in part due to the Indian government’s promotion of all of the castes?  In other words, if the Indian government hadn’t promoted the untouchables, so that being a member of that caste means less in terms of earnings (and I’m sure, socially as well), would a group be so inclined as to become a member of that caste again? 

Or did I just fall down a big rabbit hole?

Anthropology in the Military

One of the central tenets of my thesis was that anthropology and ethnography are vital to the formulation of effective policy, particularly with regards to development, but to a lesser extent in all areas of foreign affairs. While I was in college, despite pursuing an IR degree, and taking both International Security and Religion and Warfare, I paid very little attention to defense, the military, terrorism, and all other security issues. So it was not until I read a New Yorker profile of David Kilcullen that I realized I was missing out on some interesting applications of anthropology.

Kilcullen is a pretty fascinating guy. His thesis “applied ethnographic fieldwork methods and involved extended residential fieldwork that focused on the political power-diffusion effects of successful and failed counter-insurgency operations on traditional societies in Indonesia and East Timor.” Basically, anthropology in the military. His reasoning is essentially the same as mine (or mine is the same as his; although independently derived, he is older): both development and counterinsurgency require detailed understanding of local geography, history, customs and norms. In Kilcullen’s words (he refers to 9/11) “It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate.”

I’ve tried to keep tabs on Kilcullen’s work (he writes occasionally for Small Wars Journal) since he’s the only one I knew writing about anthropology in the military. Interestingly enough, I mentioned all of this to a friend over dinner the other day. The next day, my friend was doing research on an unrelated topic, and stumbled across the work of a woman named Montgomery McFate. McFate seems to be in the same line of business as Kilcullen. Her bio states:

A cultural anthropologist by training, Montgomery McFate’s work emphasizes the importance of sociocultural knowledge in the formation of national security priorities.

My friend also forwarded me two links. The first is “Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship”. The other, The Cultural Knowledge Gap and Its Consequences for National Security, was an event at USIP where McFate was a fellow.

Both are fairly interesting, even if the second is only a brief summary. The thesis of the first is this sentence:

The curious and conspicuous lack of anthropology in the national-security arena since the Vietnam War has had grave consequences for countering the insurgency in Iraq, particularly because political policy and military operations based on partial and incomplete cultural knowledge are often worse than none at all.

So if the military can get this concept, then why can’t the rest of the international relations field?

Anthropology in Everything/Ethics in Everything

Two posts from Chris Blattman that caught my eye last week, and which will serve as a reintroduction of ‘Anthropology in Everything‘ since I still haven’t gotten to writing about my experience teaching my cousin’s Soc 101 class from an anthropological perspective. 

First, actually taken from a BBC thread, is his post on ‘African time‘, the cause of many a World Bank economist’s ulcer.  The most experienced seem to just accept it after a while, but the general view floating around the development community is that it’s holding the continent back.