Just read Katha Pollitt's column, "Veil of Fears," in the June 14th issue of The Nation. About the ongoing controversy in Europe, in particular France and now Belgium, surrounding the proposed banning of face-veiling. In which she both writes against the ban and also admits:
I don't like face-veiling either. It negates the individual; it reduces women to sex objects who must be shrouded to avoid tempting men; it sends the message that men's "honor" resides in the bodies of "their" women. In a conflict between women and fundamentalists, including the fundamentalists in their own families, I would want to side with women, on dress as in other issues of personal freedom. Yet while the French Parliamentary Report on the Wearing of the Full Veil nodded frequently to "French values" and gender equality, it isn't obvious how criminalizing Muslim women's clothing makes them more equal - unless you believe that they are being forced to cover by male relatives or increasingly fundamentalist communities.
This takes seriously the idea that veiling allows conservative Muslim women both to follow the custom of (gendered) seclusion and enable them to work, learn, and even play in public. It unpacks what structures the apparent need for veiling. Which by the way is practiced in Judaism and Christianity.
It also points to the fact that at least some women are choosing to wear the veil. The Nation and The Economist, which also published a report in its May 15th issue, both note the relatively small numbers of women who cover their faces (much less wear the full-body burqa) in France and in Belgium. The Economist notes they include converts to Islam and in France, women from North Africa "where there is no face-covering tradition." They also are young.
So, what is going on? The motivations of Nicolas Sarkozy and other political leader seem clear, but what is less clear is why face-veiling, though in still relatively small numbers, is being adopted as, basically, a new tradition. I think that this is a significant point to bear in mind because there is a way in which face-veiling is depicted in American (and European) media as an ethnic and primeval custom of Islam, conflated with equally essentialist notions about jihad and terrorism and the Clash of Civilizations and so on.
When instead we might look a lot closer to home to find the conditions that make face-veiling seem appealing, attractive, even necessary to choose. Pollitt closes her column with a reference to a study at Stanford and the Sorbonne that suggests not "ethnic" (e.g., anti-Arab), but religious (e.g., anti-Muslim) discrimination in France: Identical resumes were created for three fictional women, whose names suggested an ethnic French, a Senegalese Christian, and a Senegalese Muslim woman. "Aurelie did only a little better than Marie, but she got three times the callbacks of Khadija."
I think most of my college students might suggest that Khadija should change her name to Aurelie or Marie. The imperative to assimilate is strong in the United States. Yet, I suggest that there are reasons also not to assimilate. For example, why bother? I might be an Aurelie on paper, but in person, I look like a Khadija.
More importantly, is face veiling a "religious" question alone? Esp. when religion is clearly also political and social and economic. It seems worth asking why these women (and men, for that matter, b/c they are implicated in the move toward veiling, whether they force their wives and daughters and sisters or not), and why now?
In the context of post 9/11 fear of and discrimination against an American / European construction of "Islam," face veiling might seem not to make a lot of sense, for example, to my college students. As a matter of fact, I have to think that Muslim women who choose to veil are not motivated by what our so-called terrorism experts today term jihadist sentiment.
Rather, I think it is worth the attempt to understand what are the concerns in the communities where face veiling is emerging? Keeping in mind that discrimination, whether ethnic or religious, had been experienced long before 9/11. It might be that for young Muslim women, veiling represents opportunities, not the curtailment of them. Including the status, financial security, emotional stability, protection that frankly, traditionalist (or so-called traditional) marriage could allow.
What is face veiling in France or Belgium (or the United States) really about?
I wish more people with a public forum would ask this question instead of feeding of false answers. At least we have Katha Pollitt.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Not dead yet
Here is a case for majoring in the liberal arts, from The Talk of the Town in the June 7th issue of The New Yorker:
I know, I know. This sounds so grandiose and so familiar. The sentiments that become trod and retrod around this time of year at commencement exercises across the country. I have to say, however, that I am tired of people not taking these ideas seriously.
I am thinking that a "defense" of the liberal arts - btw, I am tired also of the liberal arts requiring defense, as though degrees in programs like accounting, business, or communication were self-evidently useful - is a lot like a case for craft, whether in our individualized pursuits or (as I have suggested previously) in the reinvention of work itself. As Rebecca Mead, the author of this particular Talk of the Town item, writes: "All these are habits of mind that are useful for an engaged citizenry, and from which a letter carrier, no less than a college professor, might derive a sense of self-worth."
That seems to get at the heart of the matter, I think: From what, or in what, do we find our self-worth? Clearly, in the United States today, it is connected largely with money. So, craft is important and meaningful as an alternative to, counter-discourse on, and metaphor for Money as Self-Worth. Craft is also an idea and a practice that parents can teach to their children - which opens a real possibility for meaningful change that leads us straight back to the conditions in which we work.
The skip-college advocates' contention - that, with the economic downturn, a college degree may not be the best investment - has its appeal. Given the high cost of attending college in the United States, the question of whether a student is getting his or her money's worth tends to loom large with whoever is paying the tuition fees and the meal-plan bills. Even so, one needn't necessarily be a liberal arts graduate to regard as distinctly and speciously utilitarian the idea that higher education is, above, a route to economic advancement. Unaddressed in that calculus is any question of what else an education might be for: to nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in them an ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently.
I know, I know. This sounds so grandiose and so familiar. The sentiments that become trod and retrod around this time of year at commencement exercises across the country. I have to say, however, that I am tired of people not taking these ideas seriously.
I am thinking that a "defense" of the liberal arts - btw, I am tired also of the liberal arts requiring defense, as though degrees in programs like accounting, business, or communication were self-evidently useful - is a lot like a case for craft, whether in our individualized pursuits or (as I have suggested previously) in the reinvention of work itself. As Rebecca Mead, the author of this particular Talk of the Town item, writes: "All these are habits of mind that are useful for an engaged citizenry, and from which a letter carrier, no less than a college professor, might derive a sense of self-worth."
That seems to get at the heart of the matter, I think: From what, or in what, do we find our self-worth? Clearly, in the United States today, it is connected largely with money. So, craft is important and meaningful as an alternative to, counter-discourse on, and metaphor for Money as Self-Worth. Craft is also an idea and a practice that parents can teach to their children - which opens a real possibility for meaningful change that leads us straight back to the conditions in which we work.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Peeved
This morning, I took Bubbie to his "swim" lesson. So called because it involves a swimming pool. (In fact, I like the lessons, and I credit them with helping Beanie develop swim-readiness.) Bubbie enjoys most of the activities, except those involving having to listen to the instructor and holding hands with the other kids.
Nevertheless.
As I am backing out of the driveway, I stop, of course, and check the street in both directions. At the far end of the block, I see a car just crossing the intersection, but as it is a full block away, and it is a residential street with a speech limit, and it is a slow Saturday morning (i.e., no students speeding to a class for which they likely are unprepared and in which they are unlikely to participate meaningfully...) I decide, I think reasonably, to back into the street. I was not conscious of making these calculations - I think this is what Malcolm Gladwell calls blink.
I digress.
I am just straightening out and pulling forward when I just barely see the other car whiz past on my right. There is a good chance that we could have sideswiped each other. I slam to a stop. Bubbie, strapped into his car seat, protests. I am livid.
I try to get over it, but then a couple of blocks later, I see the car come to a rolling stop, then whiz into the parking lot across the street from the Y (where I am headed) through the one-way exit. I pull into the spot across from the car as it happens to be the closest open spot. I admit I am somewhat surprised when the driver turns out to be a kind of elfish-looking middle-aged woman, but I roll down my window, and tell (admittedly, scream at) her, "That was an incredibly dangerous thing you did on Elm St. in front of my house while I was backing out."
She looks at me, half laughs in disbelief, then tells me, "Lady, I had the right of way, I saw a space, and I took it." I am not sure what part of this peeved me most: Lady? (Ever notice how this word went from being a compliment to a bit of a pejorative, uttered when somebody says something obnoxious? I cringe whenever I hear people use "lady" as a term of address or of reference, unless followed by something like "Camilla" or even "Gaga.") Right of way? (More below.) Space and took it? (Did she learn to drive playing Pole Position?)
Whether or not she had the "right of way" - and she was at the other intersection when I pulled into the street, which indicates to me that she was speeding - it seems to me that the driver still acted dangerously. Was she in a rescue car with lights and siren blaring? Was I driving a tractor or Amish buggy on a county road?
By the way, she had sped through the streets and pulled into the parking lot through the one-way exit on her way to a plant exchange at a local church. Gardening emergency!
I was thinking a lot about why this incident and my exchange with the driver so shook me. Because when she told me she had the "right of way," I tried to tell her: I could not see you passing me on the right. There could have been an accident. (Which, btw, there already had been this morning, with a college student slamming into a parked car while she was changing the CD she was listening to - she was not hurt, but the other car was totaled.) This is not just a matter of what your "right" is, but what the right thing to do is, with people being considerate of each other. Even when that means slowing down for the car that you see, from a block away, has pulled into the street. Or at least honk to let me know you are passing me on the right.
This got me thinking about why people post signs in front of their houses that read "Thank you for not speeding." Which I used to find a bit silly (not sure that they actually changed anyone's behavior) and also a bit snarky (because they clearly were not about thanking anyone, in the same way that someone who calls you "lady" often means something else).
I have been thinking that the signs are a way (the only way?) that people feel like they can assert their concerns and frustrations. (Our apparent impotence as neighbors and citizens is a topic I think about, too. Another time.) I think it is a comment not on whose right of way and the law, but how you behave around people's homes. The street in front of my house is public, but it is part of the immediate environment that I call my home. So, I do not like high school students breaking beer bottles, college students drunkenly shouting, or middle-aged gardeners speeding in front of where I live.
Perhaps it is a sign of the good neighborliness that many people around here really do exhibit. I have come to take that right way of behaving (not just a right of way way of behaving) as what we all ought to do. Not necessarily in the borrow-a-cup-of-sugar and chat-on-the-porch kind of way that (I think) is so romanticized, but at least a more fundamental patience with each other. Because we live with each other. Because we need to get along.
Nevertheless.
As I am backing out of the driveway, I stop, of course, and check the street in both directions. At the far end of the block, I see a car just crossing the intersection, but as it is a full block away, and it is a residential street with a speech limit, and it is a slow Saturday morning (i.e., no students speeding to a class for which they likely are unprepared and in which they are unlikely to participate meaningfully...) I decide, I think reasonably, to back into the street. I was not conscious of making these calculations - I think this is what Malcolm Gladwell calls blink.
I digress.
I am just straightening out and pulling forward when I just barely see the other car whiz past on my right. There is a good chance that we could have sideswiped each other. I slam to a stop. Bubbie, strapped into his car seat, protests. I am livid.
I try to get over it, but then a couple of blocks later, I see the car come to a rolling stop, then whiz into the parking lot across the street from the Y (where I am headed) through the one-way exit. I pull into the spot across from the car as it happens to be the closest open spot. I admit I am somewhat surprised when the driver turns out to be a kind of elfish-looking middle-aged woman, but I roll down my window, and tell (admittedly, scream at) her, "That was an incredibly dangerous thing you did on Elm St. in front of my house while I was backing out."
She looks at me, half laughs in disbelief, then tells me, "Lady, I had the right of way, I saw a space, and I took it." I am not sure what part of this peeved me most: Lady? (Ever notice how this word went from being a compliment to a bit of a pejorative, uttered when somebody says something obnoxious? I cringe whenever I hear people use "lady" as a term of address or of reference, unless followed by something like "Camilla" or even "Gaga.") Right of way? (More below.) Space and took it? (Did she learn to drive playing Pole Position?)
Whether or not she had the "right of way" - and she was at the other intersection when I pulled into the street, which indicates to me that she was speeding - it seems to me that the driver still acted dangerously. Was she in a rescue car with lights and siren blaring? Was I driving a tractor or Amish buggy on a county road?
By the way, she had sped through the streets and pulled into the parking lot through the one-way exit on her way to a plant exchange at a local church. Gardening emergency!
I was thinking a lot about why this incident and my exchange with the driver so shook me. Because when she told me she had the "right of way," I tried to tell her: I could not see you passing me on the right. There could have been an accident. (Which, btw, there already had been this morning, with a college student slamming into a parked car while she was changing the CD she was listening to - she was not hurt, but the other car was totaled.) This is not just a matter of what your "right" is, but what the right thing to do is, with people being considerate of each other. Even when that means slowing down for the car that you see, from a block away, has pulled into the street. Or at least honk to let me know you are passing me on the right.
This got me thinking about why people post signs in front of their houses that read "Thank you for not speeding." Which I used to find a bit silly (not sure that they actually changed anyone's behavior) and also a bit snarky (because they clearly were not about thanking anyone, in the same way that someone who calls you "lady" often means something else).
I have been thinking that the signs are a way (the only way?) that people feel like they can assert their concerns and frustrations. (Our apparent impotence as neighbors and citizens is a topic I think about, too. Another time.) I think it is a comment not on whose right of way and the law, but how you behave around people's homes. The street in front of my house is public, but it is part of the immediate environment that I call my home. So, I do not like high school students breaking beer bottles, college students drunkenly shouting, or middle-aged gardeners speeding in front of where I live.
Perhaps it is a sign of the good neighborliness that many people around here really do exhibit. I have come to take that right way of behaving (not just a right of way way of behaving) as what we all ought to do. Not necessarily in the borrow-a-cup-of-sugar and chat-on-the-porch kind of way that (I think) is so romanticized, but at least a more fundamental patience with each other. Because we live with each other. Because we need to get along.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Finding the divine in the bovine
This posting on Savage Minds commented on the state of ritual theory in anthropology in response to this posting on Open Anthropology about the ritual slaughter of a cow at the World Cup in South Africa:
Animal slaughter is a ritual among local tribal groups to call on ancestors to bless an occasion. Some 2,000 people attended Tuesday’s ceremony, many wearing traditional animal skins.
Maseko said the ceremony was meant to cover all the World Cup’s 10 stadiums, including Johannesburg’s second stadium Ellis Park, where 43 fans died in a stampede at a local derby in 2001, the country’s worst soccer disaster.
“The spirits of those people are hanging over all of the stadiums. We need to cleanse those spirits,” she said.
I confess that I am just too untheoretical to follow precisely what the comments on Open Anthropology were all about. I think not only that ritual is significant in our lives (as I am certain that the Open Anthropology bloggers would agree), but also that anthropological analysis of ritual is insightful and inspiring (as the Savage Mind blogger suggests):
Arnold Van Gennep originally published The Rites of Passage in 1903. He was not the first, or last, anthropologist to note the importance and meaning of ritual (or of particular rituals in particular cultures and societies), but his work brought attention to the structure of rituals, which he claimed could be observed across contexts.
Victor Turner later elaborated upon what he called the ritual process, which begins with "separation" from an individual's former status in a group, "liminality" (which he described as the state of being "betwixt and between"), and "incorporation" into an individual's new status in a group.
For example, in what we call a traditional church wedding, when a bride is walked down the aisle by her father and she is "given" in marriage at the altar, this ritual marks her separation from her unmarried status (and from her father as representative of her natal family and so on). The liminal individuals (bride and groom) exchanges rings and vows. In the end, they are invited to kiss (sealing the deal), then introduced as wife and husband, which marks their incorporation (or reincorporation) into the community. The wedding illustrates completely the ritual process, or rites of passage.
Think baptism, First Communion, weddings, funerals, even pledging in a fraternity or sorority. Or pregnancy and childbirth, for that matter. A structure or process is what Van Gennep and Turner suggested that they all have in common. It is, in fact, what makes rituals "work" for us.
Van Gennep himself suggested that rites of separation, of transition (liminality), and of incorporation will not be "developed to the same extent by all people or in every ceremonial pattern" (11). Also, not all rituals are rites of passage. Exhibiting a late 19th / early 20th century thinker's mania for taxonomies, Van Gennep describes rites of passage as a category, with rites of protection, divination, initiation, and propitiation being others.
Anthropological analysis of ritual offers a tool for understanding activities such as the ritual slaughter of a cow as not senseless. (I leave aside concern about animal rights. My particular ax to grind here is animal rites. Ha ha.) In fact, it turns out that the ritual is overladen with meaning - for example, to mark the start of the World Cup games, to recognize the tragedies of the past and even "separate" them from the present (i.e., to "appease" the spirits, to lay them to rest), to create community, to express a wish for connection, and so on.
I think it might be an important "intervention" of anthropology to introduce the framework of ritual, hopefully enabling us all to recognize the importance and meaning and even necessity of ritual in our lives.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
What is she?
Just a quick follow-up to my post about the RAP apps now available at the iTunes store. This is a photograph taken of Beanie two years ago: What is she? StraightMan and I used to call her "baby of the world." Which she seems to be. We took a trip to Puerto Rico when Beanie was about a year old, where everybody claimed that she looked Puerto Rican. At other times, people who see her have remarked that she looks "Mediterranean" or "Middle Eastern" or Persian or Indian. StraightMan found a picture of a Sudanese Muslim girl who strongly resembled Beanie (which speaks also to the history and diversity of what "African" is and looks like). We sometimes describe her as our "silk road" child, or someone who looks like she comes from one of the stan's (Uzbekistan or Tajikistan). Which is an apt metaphor for her lineage. Our friends all claim that she looks exactly like StraightMan. I think she looks like StraightMan as a little Asian girl.
So, talking to Beanie about race is something I consider rather important because when people know that StraightMan and I are her parents, that seems to answer the question of "what is she." I want, of course, for Beanie to question whether or not "what is she" matters at all, but I want her also to be able to say more than "I am a person / a girl / a human Bean / etc." Because if we are serious about wanting race really not to matter - that is, to influence our expectations and experiences of ourselves and each other - then we need to start with a real education about race.
Teaching (and learning) about race is a lot harder than just telling children that race "does not" matter. Which, by the way, even children can observe does not reflect their reality. I still remember, during the 2008 presidential campaign, Beanie coming home from preschool and asking me, "Why is it so important about Barack Obama?" Meaning not that he was running for president, but that he was running for president. "He is the first African-American (or black) president" is an answer, but it is not an explanation. Which is what she persisted in asking.
I am finding that talking about race with my kids means talking about history. Not as the story of how things keep getting better and better (and they lived happily ever after in the New World or industrialization or free-market capitalism or so on), but as the choices that people make without always understanding or being able to know their effects or sometimes even thinking or caring about what happens next. So, we learn more from history than just "history." We learn about the complexity of human thought and action: We can talk about kindness and courage and meanness.
Which has the added virtue of making for a better story.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
RAP app
So, an anthropologist whom StraightMan and I know and call friend has been developing new ways of communicating with people about race - apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. One is a kind of quiz for teens and adults, the other is a game for kids ages 3 and up to play with their grown-ups. The apps are part of The Race Awareness Project (RAP).
I esp. think the game is a terrific concept. Teaching kids about race - and in particular, modeling for kids how to talk (and listen) about race - is an important and meaningful responsibility. It seems to me, however, that Americans are much more open talking about sex with their kids than about race - or class, for that matter.
Reading about the apps makes me wish I had an iPhone or iPod touch.
I esp. think the game is a terrific concept. Teaching kids about race - and in particular, modeling for kids how to talk (and listen) about race - is an important and meaningful responsibility. It seems to me, however, that Americans are much more open talking about sex with their kids than about race - or class, for that matter.
Reading about the apps makes me wish I had an iPhone or iPod touch.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Soap box
At some point every night for the last few weeks, I have turned to StraightMan and said: "I just don't get it."
I believe that I am not entirely hyperbolizing when I say that I live if not in fear of, then at least in anxiety about messing up. For example, just the other week, I was making lists of my students' grades in each class, checking them twice, the whole Santa Claus and naughty-and-nice maneuver. I do not like messing up for a range of reasons. Like, I do not relish receiving rude e-mail from irritated or irate students, but also, I figure assigning grades to students in a clear, consistent, and fair manner is just part of my job, and I like to be good at what I do. So, call it not fear or anxiety, but conscientiousness.
Which brings me to that I just don't get it that anyone, esp. anyone as extravagantly paid as the executives at BP, is allowed to make mistakes at all, much less at the colossal level that we are witnessing today.
Being the thoughtful anthropologist that he is, StraightMan suggests two readings of the situation, one generous and one that could be described as either cynical or realistic:
The generous reading. The executives and engineers and everyone down the line actually are conscientious about their jobs, but being human, they will commit errors. Making mistakes, in and of itself, is to be expected - which, to mix my metaphors, is why there are multiple links in the chain that check and balance each other.
So, the BP disaster is an example of how a series of relatively minor "ordinary" mistakes, made during the day-to-day on the job, can accumulate catastrophically. Also, it is an example of what modernity means - the speed and scale at which we produce, distribute, and consume being ever faster and greater, so that the ripple effects of our errors are felt that much faster and greater.
Not to mention taking and managing risk is what BP does as part of the day-to-day on the job. Risk being what puts us in the way of ordinary and extraordinary fortune and misfortune. Everyone benefits, or potentially benefits, from risk taking. I mean, it was no doubt a risk to leave the trees and go bipedal. In the day-to-day on the job, financial institutions take calculated risks, in part that they will not be called on their deals. The Meltdown of 2007 illustrates what happens when the takers and managers of risk make a mistake. The spillover affects everyone.
So, I wish the pundits would stop calling the BP disaster Obama's Katrina. This is more like his Lehman Brothers or his AIG. Which, by the way, he also presided over containing.
The cynical / realistic reading. Wherever you happen to stand on the political spectrum, I think it is generally the understanding that an important and necessary role of government is to protect and defend the interests of We the People. Now, We as the People might disagree about how exactly this happens and what it means to protect and defend and even which people, but I think this is an underlying principle of the good that government can do and be. In 2007 and again today, We the People see what happens when government's ability (and arguable, even will) to defend and protect Us has been itself so devastated.
How could this happen? I just don't get it, but We the People need to understand and to know.
I believe that I am not entirely hyperbolizing when I say that I live if not in fear of, then at least in anxiety about messing up. For example, just the other week, I was making lists of my students' grades in each class, checking them twice, the whole Santa Claus and naughty-and-nice maneuver. I do not like messing up for a range of reasons. Like, I do not relish receiving rude e-mail from irritated or irate students, but also, I figure assigning grades to students in a clear, consistent, and fair manner is just part of my job, and I like to be good at what I do. So, call it not fear or anxiety, but conscientiousness.
Which brings me to that I just don't get it that anyone, esp. anyone as extravagantly paid as the executives at BP, is allowed to make mistakes at all, much less at the colossal level that we are witnessing today.
Being the thoughtful anthropologist that he is, StraightMan suggests two readings of the situation, one generous and one that could be described as either cynical or realistic:
The generous reading. The executives and engineers and everyone down the line actually are conscientious about their jobs, but being human, they will commit errors. Making mistakes, in and of itself, is to be expected - which, to mix my metaphors, is why there are multiple links in the chain that check and balance each other.
So, the BP disaster is an example of how a series of relatively minor "ordinary" mistakes, made during the day-to-day on the job, can accumulate catastrophically. Also, it is an example of what modernity means - the speed and scale at which we produce, distribute, and consume being ever faster and greater, so that the ripple effects of our errors are felt that much faster and greater.
Not to mention taking and managing risk is what BP does as part of the day-to-day on the job. Risk being what puts us in the way of ordinary and extraordinary fortune and misfortune. Everyone benefits, or potentially benefits, from risk taking. I mean, it was no doubt a risk to leave the trees and go bipedal. In the day-to-day on the job, financial institutions take calculated risks, in part that they will not be called on their deals. The Meltdown of 2007 illustrates what happens when the takers and managers of risk make a mistake. The spillover affects everyone.
So, I wish the pundits would stop calling the BP disaster Obama's Katrina. This is more like his Lehman Brothers or his AIG. Which, by the way, he also presided over containing.
The cynical / realistic reading. Wherever you happen to stand on the political spectrum, I think it is generally the understanding that an important and necessary role of government is to protect and defend the interests of We the People. Now, We as the People might disagree about how exactly this happens and what it means to protect and defend and even which people, but I think this is an underlying principle of the good that government can do and be. In 2007 and again today, We the People see what happens when government's ability (and arguable, even will) to defend and protect Us has been itself so devastated.
How could this happen? I just don't get it, but We the People need to understand and to know.
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