Fluctuating environment may have driven human evolution

A series of rapid environmental changes in East Africa roughly 2 million years ago may be responsible for driving human evolution, according to researchers at Penn State and Rutgers University.



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Becoming an Il/legal Anthropologist

Perhaps some anthropologists have forgotten about their life before anthropology. I myself can’t really remember when I truly became an anthropologist. But it seems that illegality has always permeated both my personal and professional life. As I settled on the path of anthropology, my personal life on the margins of legality intertwined with my professional study of drug trafficking as a legal anthropologist. Did studying illicit activities make me illegal? Nope, actually I was illegal long before I even knew what anthropology was. But transitioning into the role of il/legal anthropologist came with newfound difficulties and complications, complications that were both alleviated and exacerbated by my legally ambivalent positionality in the borderlands of the academy and the nation.

Illegal Borderlander or Legal Anthropologist?

I grew up in a working poor, transnational community of mostly Mexican and Mexican Americans along the South Texas–Mexico border. My own personal history, as well as my family’s history, has been shaped by both the escalation of drug trafficking and the related practices of border policing and border militarization. In the 1980s, as the drug war escalated, I witnessed older members of my family became active participants in the drug trade. Great uncles, uncles and aunts became mafiosos. Some became successful drug entrepreneurs, while others became local dealers or lowly drug mules. Others became active drug users and struggled with drug dependence. Needless to say, my childhood was shaped by my close proximity to these illicit activities. But, the licit and illicit worlds overlapped in this borderlands community as drug traffickers and policing agents stood side by side as siblings or friends. Later, when I was a teenager, my cousins and friends became our generation’s mafiosos. Escaping the illegal life it seemed was unlikely. It appeared that I would forever be an unwilling co-conspirator, an accessory, to these illicit activities. The illegal life became a part of my everyday life, of the only existence I ever knew. The overlapping worlds of the legal and illegal, the borderlands of the law, became completely normalized.

My own research on drug trafficking did not develop until my cousin Jay was imprisoned on drug trafficking charges. It was the visits to a federal prison with Jay, and our weekly conversations that sparked my interest in studying drug trafficking. Until then, drug trafficking was just another unwelcome part of growing up along the border. However, Jay’s experience spurred in me the intellectual curiosity to investigate the social phenomena of drug trafficking, border policing and border militarization. In the process of becoming an anthropologist, I came to recognize the ethnographic value of my community’s stories. Growing up as a borderlander within kinship networks of both drug traffickers and drug-policing agents has provided me with insight into the nuances of both social worlds. It has also shown me where the lines of distinction between these two worlds blurs to form a borderlands of legality and illegality, of good guys and bad guys, of us and them, that has proven difficult for others to interpret and decipher. The personal experience of growing up within this social, cultural and legal borderlands existence has proved profound in shaping my professional practice as an anthropologist. However, my personal illegality did not result in a fluid transition to professional legality (or il/legality). It became very clear that experiencing illegality and documenting illegality were not synonymous acts, and that transitioning from the former to the latter would be a difficult undertaking.

IRBs and Other Obstacles

Completing any ethnographic research project is without a doubt difficult, arduous and time-consuming. The complexities of drug trafficking in the borderlands require a critical social analysis that situates the experiences of borderlands communities within the larger networks of international drug distribution. Establishing rapport is a critical part of the ethnographic process. However, building rapport among native informants becomes even more difficult when researching clandestine, and especially illicit, activities. Ethnographic research on illicit activities creates added obstacles for “illicit” legal (or il/legal) anthropologists. In the case of research on drug trafficking, having to ask around town about what drug traffickers to talk to, or even questions about who is a drug trafficker, could pose a risk to the safety of the anthropologist. As a native anthropologist, conducting research on drug trafficking and policing in my own community, I have relied on life-long relationships as key resources for conducting my research. For myself, the ability to speak to informants about taboo subjects, and the ability to quickly identify important informants helped me to make the most of my fieldwork. Furthermore, employing auto/ethnography and intimate ethnography has been vital to my research endeavors.

My research, however, has also posed significant dilemmas for me both personally and professionally. Having embraced auto/ethnography and intimate ethnography, my research has occasionally been subject to criticisms of objectivity and bias. Moreover, I am cognizant of the fact that conducting research in my hometown and within my own kinship networks poses possible risks for my research informants. I constantly struggle with new research efforts and writing strategies to protect the identities of my research informants. Coincidently, the ethical dilemmas that I have faced throughout this research process have proven beneficial in shaping new refined methodological practices. For most current and future researchers, myself included, engaged study of border policing, border militarization, drug trafficking, undocumented migration, and criminal enterprise requires a sustained reflexivity that will continue to shape and refine research methods and ethics in our current and future research projects. But, growing up in this community proved to be the best ethnographic methods class in il/legal anthropology, as I learned from fellow illegal borderlanders how to maneuver through the restrictions of legality, of knowing when to listen, when to talk, and when to keep quiet.

The most difficult undertaking in transitioning from illegal borderlander to il/legal anthropologist, however, was clearing the hurdle of IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval. Before I could actually conduct my research, I had to receive approval from my IRB. I made every effort to follow human subjects protection. I designed a nuanced project that allowed for verbal consent, in order to protect the identities of my research informants who were involved in illicit activities. I developed a system to code my field notes for added protection. The IRB review process lasted approximately seven months, with interspersed consulting with my assigned IRB representative. In the end, the concerns that arose were focused on safeguarding the institution rather than protecting the research informants or the researcher. The ultimate irony, for me, was that the IRB’s concerns showed a minimal understanding of the complexities of doing illegal anthropology. In my case, I wasn’t able to cut off communications with my informants, since they were my family and friends. I wasn’t able to stay clear of the research site, since it was my home. Although I never ceased being an illegal borderlander, it was clear that my position as an il/legal anthropologist would be put on hold until I received a proper revision and the appropriate clearance.

Santiago Ivan Guerra is a visiting assistant professor of Southwest studies at Colorado College. His research focuses on the social construction of illegality, criminality and policing along the South Texas–Mexico border, specifically the historical and contemporary impact of drug trafficking and border policing on border communities.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/26/becoming-an-illegal-anthropologist/

Archaeologists date world's oldest timber constructions by (author unknown)

A research team has succeeded in precisely dating four water wells built by the first Central European agricultural civilization with the help of dendrochronology or growth ring dating. The wells were excavated at settlements in the Greater Leipzig region and are the oldest known timber constructions in the world. They were built by the Linear Pottery culture, which existed from roughly 5600 to 4900 BC.



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Fighting shaped human hands by (author unknown)

We're all used to the idea that humans evolved their distinctive hand proportions for enhanced dexterity, but now researchers have come up with an alternative theory: that human hands evolved for combat. The duo provide evidence that the long thumb that wraps across the fingers in a fist packs the curled digits tightly together to make a compact club for use in combat.



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Is tomorrow the end? by (author unknown)

End-of-the-world predictions are common in human history, but believers in the Mayan Doomsday claim don’t understand the Mayan calendar system, an anthropologist says.



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Maya expert weighs in on Dec. 21 apocalypse theories by (author unknown)

Rusty Barrett, an expert on Mayan culture, weighed in on how the Mayan calendar works, discussed his research with the Mayan population, and shared his observations of the Maya's reactions to the idea that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012.



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Our hands evolved for punching, not just dexterity by (author unknown)

Men whacked punching bags for a new study that suggests human hands evolved not only for the manual dexterity needed to use tools, play a violin or paint a work of art, but so men could make fists and fight.



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Crisis in Syria has Mesopotamian precedent, experts say by (author unknown)

New research has revealed intriguing parallels between modern day and Bronze-Age Syria as the Mesopotamian region underwent urban decline, government collapse, and drought.



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Scandals Under the Sun by douglas reeser

An aerial view of Punta Gorda Town in southern Belize, where the author is conducting research on health and health services. Photo by douglas c reeser.

McAfee, Indigenous Knowledge, and Corruption in Belize

Thanks in large part to the adventures of anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee, some of the world’s attention has recently been focused on the tiny nation of Belize. I won’t rehash the entire story here, but in short, McAfee has had some run-ins with various levels of the Belizean government, and is now wanted for questioning in the murder of his neighbor. Fearing a set-up, McAfee has gone underground and continues to elude authorities three weeks later. While on the run, McAfee has started a blog (the Hinterland) to get his side of the story out, which includes bringing attention to widespread corruption in Belize. The story has been picked up by major and minor news outlets around the world, and it’s fair to say the attention brought upon Belize is not the most positive.

My interest in this story has two aspects, both stemming from the fact that I have made Belize my home for the better part of the last year and a half while conducting fieldwork on health and health care. I never had the opportunity to meet Mr. McAfee, but our paths did indirectly cross in 2009. It was October, and I was with a colleague at the ruins of Tikal in neighboring Guatemala. We had accompanied a small group of Maya healers to the annual Maya Day Celebrations, a sort of anti-Columbus Day protest/solidarity gathering. My colleague, an ethnobotanist also working in Belize, had arranged to meet Dr. Allison Adonizio, an ethnobotanist that had just been hired by McAfee to start a lab in Belize to develop new plant-based anti-bacterial products.

Dr. Adonizio was a friendly face, and was interested in meeting some of the healers that we work with in southern Belize. She explained her work and connection to McAfee, and while it sounded like an interesting project, I had my concerns. The history of pharmaceutical companies profiting off of the plant knowledge of indigenous peoples is well known, and can be categorized as outright exploitation. Little to no recognition has been afforded to the holders and developers of traditional plant knowledge, and even less of the profit has found its way back to them. I was worried something similar could happen here – and involve people that I know personally. I fall on the side of favoring Open Access and Fair Use in this new digital age, but there are different issues at stake when traditional and indigenous knowledge comes into play.

McAfee and Adonizio’s project never made it too far, and as far as I know, they did not capitalize on Maya traditional knowledge. However, my connection to McAfee doesn’t exactly stop there. His claims of widespread and deep-seated corruption throughout all levels of the Belizean government also ring true. McAfee’s wealth likely showed a different side of the corruption from what I was privy to, but I witnessed it nonetheless. For example, I have become close friends with a local family with one family-member who was a police officer. He was involved with the closing of the highway so that a small airplane carrying drugs could safely land at night to unload its cargo. He lost his job, but his actions did not appear to carry much stigma among family and neighbors. Cash is scarce in southern Belize, and any opportunities to make a little extra money are tempting. This is not to say that anyone would work for drug-money (most would not), but there is a general acknowledgement that sometimes people have to do what they have to do.

Corruption in Belize has also played a small part in my research. I have struggled to figure out how to frame these experiences, but I do believe it falls into the category of corruption. One example can illustrate my experience: a piece of my research is based on the diversity of ethnic groups in Belize. Most groups have a local “council” of community leaders that act in the interest of their given ethnic group – there are Maya councils, and East Indian, Kriol, and Garifuna councils. I approached the leaders of each of these councils to introduce myself and seek support and recommendations for my research. These introductions were one way that word of what I was doing in town was spread among the community, and in most cases these meetings led to a variety of good contacts and interviews.

In one case, however, my meeting with a council head did not go very far. This particular person was also a public official and had a relatively high profile in the community. We met a few times, and he even granted me a lengthy interview. He showed enthusiasm for my research, and offered to connect me to some of the more private aspects of the traditional health practices of his particular ethnic group. I would be able to witness private healing ceremonies and have wide access to speak with healers and those they work with. I would even be able to participate in some sacred ceremonies. The catch – all of this would come at a cost, starting with about $1500 up front to get us started.

Once it became clear that I didn’t have the money to spend, our conversations basically ceased. He would greet me around town if we ran into each other, but that was the extent of our interaction. I’m left wondering about the ethics of such a proposition. In this case, I didn’t have a choice because I didn’t have the money. But had I received a large grant, I would have been forced to consider taking this man up on his offer. It has become common practice among researchers to give small payments (in cash or kind) to research participants, but this would have taken things to a slightly different level. I don’t think it’s very clear where I would have stood on ethical ground if I made the pay-off and got access to this privileged information. I wonder where others of us stand?

In the end, I’ve been surprised to see the McAfee story plastered around the internet, and have tried to keep up with all of its developments. Perhaps most fascinating, however, are the connections and the ideas such a story forces us to confront: from a millionaire software pioneer to indigenous knowledge, political corruption, and research ethics.

douglas carl reeser is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida, and is a contributing editor at Recycled Minds. He is currently working on his dissertation research in southern Belize, examining the intersection of State-provided health care with a number of ethnic-based traditional medicines. He also loves food.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/17/scandals-under-the-sun/

Secularism in Nepal by eguevara

Against the Normative Grain?

In 2006 Nepal turned away from its distinguished position as the world’s only Hindu kingdom and declared itself a secular republic. Article Four of the 2007 Interim Constitution states Nepal is dharma nirapeksha (autonomous from/indifferent to religion). But what does this mean and how do Nepalese citizens understand it? The way secularism is playing out in practice is ambiguous partly because the principle behind the constitutional statute is ambiguous. The constitutional language does not cement an absolute separation of church and state opposite from the prior Hindu kingdom’s dharma-oriented (dharma sāpeksha) standing, nor does it set parameters for religious pluralism in the legal code. Furthermore, secularism has become more tenuous since the May 27, 2012 dismissal of the Constituent Assembly (CA) body, which was drafting a new constitution. The CA dismissal occurred because the Supreme Court had refused to postpone its mandate for a fifth time. Despite lacking definitive constitutional direction, some sectors of the population are instituting it through practice, either by using the legal mandate to realize the spirit of the 2006 People’s Movement, or by at least navigating secularism to avoid the tensions that led to the uprising.

Stakes of Secularism

Panchkhal Valley. Photo courtesy Krish Dulal at Nepali Wikipedia

Varying motivations have influenced the shift toward secularism. Secularism was one of 40 demands the Maoist party put forth to parliament in 1996, citing Hindu state dominance as the cause of societal inequality. Parliament ignored their demands, which led to a ten-year civil war. In 2001 the king dismissed the democratically elected parliament after peace talks with the Maoists failed. These political parties unsuccessfully protested against the king for four years before unifying with the Maoists. Their deal involved a secular republic, which they declared after successfully ousting the king in the 2006 People’s Movement. For many democratic activists, secularism meant removal of the monarchy but not necessarily separation of state and religion (specifically, Hinduism). Ethnic, Buddhist and Muslim activists have been fighting for a secularism that encapsulates their sentiment of inclusion: hamro basha, dharma, sanskriti (our language, religion, culture). They do not view secularism as relegating religion to the private sphere; they had enough of that during the repressive Panchayat era (1960–90) when alternative beliefs were persecuted. Since the 1990 establishment of multi-party democracy, minorities have been instead rallying for inclusion, the opening of public space where their cultural and religious traditions receive equal recognition and accommodation from the state. Hindu fundamentalists are most vocal against secularism because it diminishes Hinduism to the status of one religion amongst many, rather than the original dharma (sanatana dharma) from which all other religions stem. Many observant Hindus argue that secularism is not necessary, because Hinduism encompasses other religions in its tenet of religious tolerance (Chiara Letizia, “Shaping Secularism in Nepal” in European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 39). At first glance religious tolerance may resonate with minority demands for inclusion. However, Hindu fundamentalists’ version of religious tolerance is one of incorporation into a hierarchy, while minorities want inclusion based on equality.

Student Activists’ Perspective

Observing the varying expectations of secularism, I turned to the foot soldiers of the 2002–06 political movements, student activists affiliated with political parties. When I asked student activists about secularism’s potential future, many were unclear. For some, establishing a secular republic meant decoupling the state from the king in both law and politics. They, however, received resistance from constituents as they attempted to remove Hindu practice and symbols from politics. I observed this during the Constituent Assembly election campaigns in 2007, when a student leader asked a crowd what “new Nepal” should look like. Did it include practices of wearing traditional high-caste garb, giving blessings (tika), or sponsoring the king to go to Pashupati temple? Should this be their politics or did it reinforce a different project? He then asked, “How can we make politics serve all our citizens?” After the speech, people asked why he was anti-Hindu. He admitted to me that he did not know how to address secularism without threatening people’s religion.

Other student activists used the term dharma nispaksha (non-biasness of religion) rather than the constitutional terminology. For them, dharma nispaksha highlighted another important agenda of their 2006 political movement: samabesh (inclusion). They viewed secularism as one avenue toward inclusion, incorporating other religious practices, symbols, and holidays into their political performance. This may not seem radical, but rather reminiscent of the Panchayat state showcasing cultural diversity to assimilate and order it within the Hindu kingdom. The students, however, viewed it differently. One student told me, “It’s what we can do now to show our student body we acknowledge all of them.” This was not token diversity to him, but part of their agenda to institute the five elements of inclusion: equal participation, representation, opportunity, role and decision-making power. He said there would be nationwide inclusion within one generation if they successfully instituted it in student politics. The students understood that their parties’ future relevance hinged on how they institute inclusion and their attempts at dharma nispaksha reflect this sentiment.

Secularism in Law

The students’ various interpretations of secularism foreshadowed how it is being handled in the legal realm. Chiara Letizia’s study of legal cases regarding secularism demonstrates that judges, lawyers, police, and activists are negotiating these multitudinous views on secularism. One high profile case made a classic secular ruling of separation of church and state to protect Hinduism from the state: the 2009 case that protected the oldest Hindu institution, Pashupatinath Area Development Trust, from oversight of the Maoist secular government (Letizia 2012: 88–90). Another demonstrated the court’s liberal consciousness: in the 2008 Kumari case the court claimed jurisdiction to prohibit tradition that endangered fundamental rights, and religion must yield to social reform. The court, however, chose not to ban the Kumari tradition but encouraged the Newar community to reform oral, cultural practices around the tradition in order to protect the rights of appointed goddesses (ibid: 90–95). Both of these cases involved religious institutions that were enmeshed with the Hindu state. The courts were negotiating the state’s role, while trying to protect these institutions that have shaped national identity.

Cases that have proved more challenging involve practices within local communities, namely cow slaughter and proselytization, which are still illegal. A petition was filed in 2007 requesting the removal of the cow slaughter ban. Protecting the cow as a holy animal is a relic from the Hindu state, which is now justified as protecting the national animal. The petitioner did not invoke secularism as a separation of church and state but as a statute protecting the rights of all religions. The court, however, dismissed the petition arguing that there is no legal basis to grant privilege to religious practice that defies secular law protecting the national animal (Letizia, “Ideas of Secularism in Contemporary Nepal,” paper presented at workshop, 2012).

Even though criminalization of cow slaughter and proselytization remain, there is ambivalence toward these laws in legal spheres. There has not been a proselytization prosecution case since 2002. Letizia documents that in Banke district court the state has not been pursuing effective prosecutions of cow slaughter because of unease amongst policemen, lawyers, and judges that these laws are inconsistent with a secular republic, and therefore unenforceable. Due to the stalled political process and pressure from the Hindu majority, this law won’t be repealed anytime soon. But the state is also under pressure to protect the rights of ethnic minorities. Thus, they take a laissez-faire approach to maintain social harmony (ibid: 13–15).

Taken as a whole, these various cases underscore Winnifred Sullivan’s observation regarding the disjuncture of legal discourse and secularism as a political doctrine; neither complete separation between church and state nor consistent neutrality toward all religions is possible (The Impossibility of Religious Freedom 2005). Without clear constitutional direction, Nepali courts are trying to balance the different stakeholders of the polis. Similar to the student politicians, they are attempting to negotiate inclusion through secularism. But rather doing it to ensure their political future, the courts are protecting citizens’ rights while avoiding communal tension.

Multidimensional Pluralism?

The students’ and the courts’ attempts to actualize secularism through practice are not being executed in isolation. Rather, they are just two strands of an emerging trend. The students’ perspective of dharma nispaksha (non-biasness) has publicly reverberated and Nepal is embracing its multi-religious reality. Walking through the streets of Kathmandu, one can see ethnic groups perform their various religious rituals in public spaces that were traditionally reserved for Hindu rituals. Academics are picking up on this, too. At an Oxford University workshop on religious discourses and practices in secular Nepal, anthropologists David Holmberg and Martin Gaenszle documented the revival of ethnic minorities’ traditional losar and Kiranti celebrations, and Gérard Toffin presented on new religious movements. One participant declared with relief, “religion is not dead in secular Nepal.” Rather, secularism has become an issue of recognition and acceptance, and for religions to be accepted they must be publicly recognized. Secularism is, indeed, taking an uncertain path in Nepal. This path, however, may provide an alternative to the limited form taken here in the West. Instead, it may be moving closer to the deep, multidimensional pluralism that William Connolly has offered as a post-secular solution, which reaches “into the spiritualities and creeds of participants, rather than trying to quarantine them” (“Some Thesis on Secularism,” Cultural Anthropology 26[4]: 2011).

Amanda Snellinger is a ESRC postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, where she is jointly researching unemployment amongst educated youth in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. She researches and writes on politics, law, activism, youth, revolution and social movements in Nepal.

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Scientists 'surprised' to discover very early ancestors survived on tropical plants, new study suggests by (author unknown)

Between three million and 3.5 million years ago, the diet of our very early ancestors in central Africa is likely to have consisted mainly of tropical grasses and sedges, new research suggests.



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Michael E Harkin by eguevara

Michael E Harkin is professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming, where he has taught since 1993. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1988. He has held visiting positions at Emory University, Montana State University, Shanghai University, and the University of Graz, where he held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies in 2011. He has published on Northwest Coast ethnology, ethnohistory, the Lost Colony, religious movements, ethnoecology, and the history of anthropological thought. He is editor-in-chief of Reviews in Anthropology and co-editor of Ethnohistory. He received the Wyoming Arts Council Creative Writing Fellowship in 2004, and has published poetry and creative nonfiction in a variety of venues.

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Election Night Thoughts by mharkin

The results of the recent election inevitably lead to speculation about the future of the two-party system in the United States. It is clear that the Republican Party remains a dominant regional force in the states of the Old Confederacy and the Plains and Rocky Mountains. However, the electoral map paints a very different picture: with few exceptions (South Carolina, Indiana, Alaska) states of the east, west, and north coasts are solidly Democratic or at least in play (North Carolina, Georgia by 2016). Only the southern coast remains Republican. In other words, there are very few scenarios under which a Republican candidate could win election to the White House. This appears to be a long-term trend rather than a short-term anomaly; as the U.S. becomes “majority minority,” more urban and socially liberal, the likelihood of an increasingly strident and nativistic Republican party finding national electoral success becomes remote.

The striking feature of the fall of the Republican Party is the degree to which the wounds were self-inflicted. George W. Bush and his allies, as well as the 2008 nominee John McCain, attempted to attract minority voters, especially Hispanics, and women. The election of Barack Obama seems to have unleashed the Republican id, nostalgic for an America of the 1950s, or perhaps the 1890s (and on some issues, a Europe of the Middle Ages). Virulent and open racism, in defiance of the consensus developed in the previous four decades by politicians of both parties, flourished and became a central aspect of the face of the Republican Party. Despite entertaining an African-American candidate for President, and featuring a few other African-American and Hispanic members of Congress, by the eve of the 2012 election polls showed 1-2% of blacks favoring the GOP. (One poll actually had that number at 0). A return to the dog-whistle messages about “welfare queens” and nonsense over Obama’s citizenship from the leadership, in tandem with spontaneous actions from the rank-and-file, such as the notorious peanut throwing incident at the RNC (the irony of peanuts as a cheap and nutritious snack food being the invention of a prominent African American being lost on the perpetrators) finally and thoroughly alienated African Americans from the “party of Lincoln.” Similarly, the vicious attacks on Hispanics, native or immigrant, with or without documents, especially in the Border States, pushed them from a party that may have held some appeal on the basis of “values” issues. The main reason that Hispanics did not abandon the GOP as fully and finally as blacks is the traditional affiliation of Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans with the Republican Party. But even that is changing in the younger generations. Finally, the alienation of women by Republican candidates such as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who possess a pre-scientific understanding of reproductive issues and an agenda that would have disempowered women in the most personal arenas, including contraception and rape, completed the dissociation of the Republican Party from the broader American society, which is urban, secular, diverse, and tolerant, and becoming more so.

While the “values” issues are the most obvious sense in which the GOP has lurched to the right, this has been a sideshow to the political economic agenda. After all, outside some isolated parts of the South, “personhood” provisions (obviously unconstitutional and subject to being overturned) will never be enacted. However, marginal tax rates as low as 0% (as Paul Ryan suggested for capital gains) could be enacted if the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. Indeed, tax rates are lower than they have ever been already, which explains not only the increasing inequality of American society, but the economic crises of the past decade. Much of GOP politics since 1994 has been bait-and-switch. As Thomas Frank argued in What’s the Matter with Kansas? they campaign on abortion but legislate on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and deregulation, all of which have undermined the white working class who supported them.

Democrats are not innocent in this either. In fact, if it were not for the spectacular Republican transformation into an ultra-rightist party, the changes in the Democratic Party would be among the most dramatic in American history. Since 1988, every Democratic President or nominee has been to the right of his Democratic predecessor in terms of political-economic policy and to the left of him in terms of cultural issues. Obama embraced the Republican version of health care reform, developed in opposition to Hillary Clinton’s in the early 1990s; he also voided “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and declared his support for gay marriage. While the Democratic shifts have tended to track trends in public opinion (the so-called “libertarian consensus” deriving ultimately from cultural roots in the 1960s and 1970s), they have in fact left the nation without a viable leftist party.

In an era in which capital has finally been unleashed from the constraints of government regulation and even the inconvenience of national borders (see: Romney, Mitt), the deck is stacked against not only the working class but those traditionally higher up the food chain: information workers, managers, “content providers” (writers, artists, and teachers, I suppose). Under these circumstances, having only a socially liberal center-right party and a reactionary party (I avoid the term “fascist” not because it is incendiary but because European fascist parties have always been in some way concerned with the social welfare of their favored groups) represents a national failure to address the effects of Thomas Friedman’s Flatland. This leads us to consider what the American political landscape will look like in another decade or two. Will the Republicans be extinct except as a regional identity party in the South? (Oh, great ghost of John Brown!); or will it have been replaced by a non-racist, non-science-denying alternative? (possibly still called the Republican Party but fundamentally different); or will a third party have evolved (maybe on the model of Germany’s Green Party and, more recently, Pirate Party)? Stay tuned.

Michael E Harkin is a cultural anthropologist and ethnohistorian at the University of Wyoming. He is editor of the journal Reviews in Anthropology and co-editor of Ethnohistory.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/14/election-night-thoughts/

Tracing humanity's African ancestry may mean rewriting 'out of Africa' dates by (author unknown)

New research may lead to a rethinking of how, when and from where our ancestors left Africa. Explorations in the Iringa region of southern Tanzania yielded fossils and other evidence that records the beginnings of our own species, Homo sapiens. New research may be key to answering questions about early human occupation and the migration out of Africa about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, which led to modern humans colonizing the globe.



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Chemical analysis reveals first cheese-making in Northern Europe in the 6th millennium BC by (author unknown)

Archeologists have the first unequivocal evidence that humans in prehistoric Northern Europe made cheese more than 7,000 years ago.



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Ancient Australian fossils were on land, not at sea, geologist proposes by (author unknown)

Ancient multicellular fossils long thought to be ancestors of early marine life are remnants of land-dwelling lichen or other microbial colonies, says a University of Oregon scientist who has been studying fossil soils of South Australia.



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Algal ancestor is key to how deadly pathogens proliferate, researchers find by (author unknown)

Long ago, when life on our planet was in its infancy, a group of small single-celled algae floating in the vast prehistoric ocean swam freely by beating whip-like tails, called flagella. The organisms are called Apicomplexa, but are better known as the parasites that cause malaria and toxoplasmosis. Now, researchers have discovered how an important structure inside these parasitic cells, which evolved from the algal ancestor millions of years ago, allows the cells to replicate and spread inside their hosts. Their research may lead to new therapies to halt these deadly pathogens before they cause disease.



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Roman settlement and possible prehistoric site uncovered in northern Italy by (author unknown)

Using archaeological expertise and modern technology, archeologists recently discovered a Roman settlement and possible prehistoric site in northern Italy.



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Angel Jackson-White by eguevara

Staff Transitions

Angel Jackson-White

Angel Jackson-White has a new position at AAA in the Publications Department as the AnthroGuide and Publications Coordinator.

Angel coordinates the production of the AAA AnthroGuide and E-AnthroGuide, which provide information about anthropologists, anthropology programs and organizations that employ anthropologists and provides staff support the annual Minority Dissertation Fellowship Program. Her new role as Guide and Publications Coordinator provides the added responsibility of facilitating online outreach and online initiatives of the publishing committee. She also assists Director of Publishing Oona Schmid in supporting the Committee on the Future of Print and Electronic Publishing (CFPEP), and continues to be the staff liaison for the Committee on Minority Issues in Anthropology.

Angel joined the AAA in January 2011 as the program coordinator for Academic Relations and Practicing and Applied Programs. She brings experience in working with non-profit organizations as a former employee of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA). As the meetings coordinator there, she gained knowledge and skills in customer service and database management.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/angel-jackson-white/

Emilia Mercedes Guevara by eguevara

Staff Transitions

Emilia Guevara

Emilia M Guevara recently transitioned from her role as the assistant to the director of publishing to the new position of AN digital editorial assistant. She’s been working closely with the AN opinion columnists on a limited basis since August 2011. This role is expanding to provide more extensive support for anthropology-news.org, including helping all regular contributors better utilize the site, uploading new contributions for online publication, developing the calendar, and helping answer AN–related questions. In her non-AN time, she’ll continue to support the AAA journals during editorial transitions and with annual deadlines. She also fields questions about permission requests.

Emilia began working at AAA in April 2010. She has an MA in cultural anthropology and her interests lie in the emergence of rituals and beliefs in Mesoamerica. Her thesis, entitled “Cultural Performance, Meaning and the Day of the Dead,” is based on fieldwork in Mexico City. She plans on pursing a PhD in sociocultural anthropology. Raised in Arlington, VA, she has also spent a considerable amount of time living and traveling in her parents’ home countries of Mexico and Venezuela and enjoys cooking their native cuisines. She is currently obsessed with recreating her grandmother’s hallaca, a type of savory tamale and a staple eaten during Venezuelan Christmas celebrations.

Emilia lives in Alexandria with her husband Kyle and their Jack Russell Terrier-Bichon Frise named Abby.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/emilia-mercedes-guevara/

Chelsea Horton by eguevara

Welcome New Staff

Chelsea Horton

Chelsea Horton joined AAA in September as a part-time assistant in the publishing department. She supports the director of publishing to help maintain the publishing webpages, update the organizational history of the publishing program, and ensure the publication archives of the association remain current. She began working at AAA in July 2012 on a contractual basis to provide support for a September workshop as well as launch the brand new Registry of Anthropological Data Wiki.

An Orlando, FL native, Chelsea completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Central Florida where she majored in anthropology with a minor in history and Asian studies. During her undergraduate work, she studied in both England and Japan in addition to working as a research assistant within the university. Upon graduation, she moved to Alexandria, VA where she completed a master’s degree in cultural anthropology at George Mason University. Her graduate thesis explored linguistic conventions in Japanese popular culture and sought to further expand understanding of the Japanese language beyond the traditional notion of politeness.

Though she is a recent graduate, Chelsea is considering doctoral programs in anthropology to study Southeast Asia. Her non-AAA time is occupied working another part-time job, playing video games, writing short snippets of fiction, struggling to learn how to sew, and reading anything she can get her hands on.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/chelsea-horton/

From fish to man: Research reveals how fins became legs by (author unknown)

Vertebrates' transition to living on land, instead of only in water, represented a major event in the history of life. Now, researchers provide new evidence that the development of hands and feet occurred through the gain of new DNA elements that activate particular genes.



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Tracking gene flow in marine plant evolution by (author unknown)

A new method that could give a deeper insight into evolutionary biology. Biologists identified the segregation of genes that a marine plant underwent during its evolution. They found that the exchange of genes, or gene flow, between populations of a marine plant went westward from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.



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Doing Anthropology on the Margins of the Law by eguevara

Where is the line between law and crime located? How is it experienced by those who tread it? And how can anthropologists conduct their fieldwork in this murky legal terrain?

Cameraman working on an investigation regarding illegal child adoptions in Iguazú. Photo courtesy Ieva Jusionyte

In 2010 I arrived in Puerto Iguazú, an Argentine town in the Misiones Province, bordering Brazil and Paraguay; I was there to study local journalists who cover news about violence. Mass media generally portray this border region as a haven for organized crime, such as contraband, drugs and human trafficking. Yet, journalists who live in the area reject such negative representations. Perplexed by this apparent paradox I aimed to explore how the legality of certain practices is created and negotiated through complex social processes, including the reproduction of legal categories in the media. Drawing on my previous background in journalism, and in collaboration with a local cameraman and video editor, I started a weekly investigative television program. Of all the issues the program addressed, child trafficking and illegal adoptions were the most challenging: our journalistic investigation stepped on the formally defined but locally lived boundary between the legal and the illegal.

Between Organized Crime and Informal Fosterage

Previous media coverage of child adoptions left scars on the local community. An editorial of a popular nationwide daily claimed that there existed “an industry of births,” for the sale of children, which connected couples from metropolitan areas to villages “on the verge of total destitution,” and one that was mediated by legal professionals. The press published stories of women confessing of selling their newborns, thereby causing an avalanche of childless couples to come to Misiones in search for easily adoptable babies. One human rights activist explained how local practical thinking was conducive for child trafficking in the region: since people routinely move back and forth from one country to another while visiting relatives and going about their daily business, the presence of a woman with a baby in her arms crossing from Paraguay to Argentina does not elicit the attention of the authorities. The activist agreed that widespread poverty on both sides of the border provide the necessary conditions for the sale of children. The trade in babies has become a profitable business, which involves people specialized in localizar panzas [finding wombs] and psychologically pressuring poor women into giving up their children.

According to one of the best-known Iguazú lawyers, it is about supply and demand; “Everyday we see kids who do not have the possibility to grow or to have a decent life, and people who, for different reasons, have not been able to have children.” In front of our camera he explained that people confused the cultural and the legal, judicially sanctioned, aspects of adoption. Criadazgo, the pattern of informal fosterage, was common in Misiones. When women migrated in search for employment in urban centers, their extended family or even neighbors raised the children they left behind. The practice of criadazgo did not have legal stamps on it. But neither was it persecuted locally as a violation of the law. However, the situation became more complicated when couples from metropolitan areas started to come to Misiones specifically looking for babies to adopt. Since the ordinary legal process was very tedious and restrictive, “as the old saying goes, la espera desespera,” [waiting makes you desperate] quipped the lawyer.

Where Silence is Preferred Answer

Women waiting to receive social security benefits paid monthly for each child. Photo courtesy Ieva Jusionyte

Though many Iguazúenses have encountered or experienced such desperation, either when they were looking to adopt or when they were offered money for their own children, people were cautious about what they said and to whom as a result of the adoption scandals reported in the media. There is a very thin, ambiguous line between illegal and illegitimate, on the one hand, and illegal but socially legitimate practices, on the other, and they were afraid that in the public sphere this line could be misinterpreted. Particularly, since good-willing families, who unofficially raised children that were not theirs, could be implicated as child traffickers.

Stories about successful and failed, legal and illegal adoptions widely circulated off the record: from neighbors knocking on my windows at sunrise, to whispering conversations in bars, to interviews in rooms with blank white walls to disguise the location. Though she refused to speak in front of the camera, my neighbor told me of an incident when a couple from Buenos Aires asked to buy her son. “It is dangerous because the police would show up immediately and start to investigate. I don’t want to meddle in the murky process,” she said, justifying her silence. Another family who adopted a baby from a woman in Andresito, a nearby town steeped in poverty, where some very low-income women saw giving their offspring into adoption as the only solution to their economic situation, also declined to talk on the program.

Residents did not want to have their local knowledge put on the record to be shared in the public sphere. Yet they were not the only ones opposed to finding such stories in the media; the legal corps did not welcome media investigations either.

Argentina does not have a national public information access law. I spent weeks writing official requests and patiently waiting in hallways in order to hear what representatives of the law had to say. But public defender and attorney of the family court both refused to talk, hiding behind the veil of authorizations. In a private conversation behind the close doors of his office, a judge acknowledged that adoptions fell into the grey zone of the law because of the right biological parents had to transfer care of their children to people of their own choosing. The position the judge took was reflected in his gestures: he demonstrated washing his hands.

Challenges and Promises of (Il)legal Anthropology

I struggled as a journalist. Living the local realities, where a morally thick but legally thin line separates the informal practice of criadazgo, which is regulated by and bounded within family and community, and a trade in babies, which uses poverty as the condition that supplies children to rich metropolitan areas, I found it difficult to narrate the complexity of the situation using existing legal coordinates. The forms that the suffering of the materially dispossessed take, whether we call it structural violence or violence of everyday life, rest on the tendency to blame the victim. Iguazúenses do not actively engage in child trafficking, nor do they encourage it, but they understand the circumstances that make the sale of children possible and even tolerable in the region. Therefore, unwilling to be wrongly accused they opt for silence. Though committed local human rights activists toil to help the victims and give the issue more media exposure, conditions for the sale of children and child trafficking are perpetuated in the interstices of strict adoption laws and deep poverty.

I also struggled with this issue as an anthropologist, though it was a productive endeavor. Aware of the complexity of everyday life, as anthropologists we take on the task to challenge the validity of neat binary classifications and construct new categories. We have shown that practices are never legal or illegal in and of themselves, but are created such through processes of cultural production and social negotiation. De-centering anthropology of law from its legal core and exploring those uncomfortable and shady margins between law, legitimacy and crime has brought us closer to understanding the nature of the law: who and what creates it, whom it privileges and disadvantages, and especially why in certain situations people prefer the unstable ground at its edge. At the intersection of the traditional criadazgo and bureaucratic legal requirements of formal adoption lies the grey area, where demand and supply mingle to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish between law and crime.

Ieva Jusionyte is an assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies and the anthropology department. Her teaching and research focuses on the media and the modes of law and governance in relation to organized crime and violence in Latin America.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/doing-anthropology-on-the-margins-of-the-law/

Crushing Ecological and Political Futures by eguevara

Puerto Rico’s New Penal Code Criminalizes Dissent

The concrete base and reinforced steel lattice needed to support one wind turbine. The hole itself is approximately 20 feet deep and 65 feet wide. Photo courtesy Melissa Rosario

A new amendment to Puerto Rico’s Penal Code (208a) that makes it a felony of the fourth degree to paralyze or otherwise obstruct construction projects is being tested in the courts. Under trial are six protestors who were arrested on December 15, 2011 while picketing the arrival of the first of 44 windmills to be installed as part of the Wind Farm of Santa Isabel, a small agricultural town in the southwest region of the island. The case has generated concern for environmental activists in Puerto Rico because it pits renewable energy projects against food security concerns. It is widely recognized that Amendment 208(a) aims to criminalize dissent, particularly those that question government approved projects like the Wind Farm by imposing hefty fees of restitution and jail sentences of up to three years.

Renewable Energy over Agricultural Production

The Wind Farm of Santa Isabel is the first commercial wind project in Puerto Rico. A venture of Pattern Energy, the 75 megawatt wind farm will impact 3,700 acres of Prime Farm Land as designated by the US Farm service, among the most fertile on the island. Although this terrain was originally protected as a reserve under Law 242, which established the Southern Agricultural Corridor, legislation passed by the current administration specifies that all agricultural reserve lands may be used for energy projects if they are compatible with agricultural needs. In this case, because wind turbines are renewable energy, it qualifies as a legitimate enterprise to be installed on agricultural terrain. Ironically, this legislation ignores the fact that given the massive holes dug up to install each individual wind turbine the topsoil needed for cultivation will be permanently destroyed through construction.

Puerto Rico has few remaining acres of arable land as a result of its relationship to the United States which promoted rapid industrialization and urbanization in order to “modernize” the island. Today, less than 4% of its economy is based on agricultural production and over 80% of food is imported from the United States. Given that the island has a relatively small land mass, it would be more appropriate to explore other options to develop renewable energy projects, particularly in the eastern mountain region where there are higher wind gusts and less fertile soil for agricultural projects. Governor Luis Fortuño’s political alliances partially explain why such a project would even be considered. His fervent support for full integration of the island into the United States as a state has made him eager to support US based businesses even at the expense of local industry. In so doing, he has applied a one size fits all environmental policy instead of working to develop initiatives that would improve the food security of the island.

The History of Amendment 208(a): Tito Kayak’s Law

Amendment 208(a) has been hotly contested since September 2010 when it appeared as a proposal in the Senate under the name Project 1505. It became popularly referred to as “Tito Kayak’s Law” in reference to activist Alberto de Jesus, known for his use of occupation as a way to draw attention to construction projects that are controversial. Indeed, in the original proposal presented by statehood party member, Antonio Soto Díaz explicitly referenced Paseo Caribe, a high-rise luxury apartment building whose construction was halted for almost six years as a result of public controversy that erupted after activists alleged the project was being built on public lands. Of the most spectacular manifestations of the protest was Tito Kayak’s week-long occupation of a crane at the site as well as an onsite encampment inhabited by activists for several months.

Soto Díaz’s justification for creating the amendment was to protect developers, and to secure the public good by protecting private property which he argued took precedent over limits placed on the right to free expression. Although Soto Díaz claimed that the measure did not target a particular kind of expression, it is clear that it does target citizens who openly question approved government projects. Under this statute, anyone who engages in civil disobedience will be treated as a criminal and not a citizen with rights to be protected.

The central concern of those who are opposed to the amendment is that the wording is too vague, particularly in its stipulation of intent. The amendment’s preamble sets forth that any person who intends to occupy or otherwise impede any aspect of the construction process will be subject to arrest. Using the Wind Farm case currently before the court as an example, the protestors that were arrested were simply picketing one of several entrances to the land, did not directly impede the workers from doing their job, or occupy the lands where the turbine was to be installed. Thus, this case could establish that intent to occupy is as simple as picketing outside a construction site. If found guilty, each protestor will face up to three years of jail time in addition to paying restitution to Pattern Energy, a hefty sum of $6 million.

Amendment 208 (a) is based on a premise that once a developer possesses government approval, its project is totally legitimate, irrespective of public sentiment. Amendment 208 (a) is one of a series of legislative efforts approved by Governor Fortuño, to repress free expression by limiting legal avenues for expressing dissent. These legal statues aim to intimidate people with hefty economic penalties and jail time so fewer participate in direct action. The idea that protesting in the streets represents a criminal act makes it impossible for the public to contest government corruption. By making the courts the only site of legitimate resistance, this legislation excludes the average citizen, forcing all dissenters to engage in a financially onerous and slow process. As Amaris Torres, an attorney representing the defendants explained to me, “this amendment represents a collapse of democracy.”

Melissa Rosario is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Cornell University. Her dissertation, “On Revolutionary Time: Social Movements as Liberation Experiments in Contemporary Puerto Rico,” examines the dis/continuities between historical and nascent logics of direct action in two resistance encampments. She can be contacted at mlr58@cornell.edu.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/crushing-ecological-and-political-futures/

Building the Anthropology of Policing by eguevara

Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork with Police Officers in Washington DC

When I began fieldwork in June 2008 to explore how neoliberal urban development processes in downtown Washington DC impacted interactions between police officers and homeless individuals, particularly over the use of public space, I had little understanding of what it meant for me, as an anthropologist, to study policing. Although my research engaged a multitude of individuals—including homeless individuals, homeless outreach workers, mental health professionals, judges, public defenders, and advocates—the questions that emerged from my work with police officers occupied a place of particular significance, and I began to consider the role of anthropology in the study of police and policing. Four years and much research later, the conclusions I have come to are this: an anthropology of policing is complex, at times contradictory, and most importantly, engaged with questions of power.

The Study of Policing

The study of policing and police officers in the United States has historically been situated within the fields of sociology, criminology and criminal justice. The disciplinary interests of researchers within these fields, particularly those of criminologists and criminal justice scholars, has led to the current prioritization of research for the police focused on crime prevention, rather than research of the police and policing practices (Manning 2010). The continuing growth of research for police has contributed to the dependence of police agencies on prediction and surveillance technologies and given rise to place-based policing strategies that target “hot spots” of crime and criminal activity.

Although anthropologists have also engaged with police and policing in their work, as Karpiak (2011) suggests, police are often cast as “the antiheroes” and “agents of urban anomie,” and limited complexity is afforded to their actions, practices and the organizational and occupation contexts in which they operate. What is missing—and what anthropologists can offer—are critical and nuanced explorations of policing. However, the ability to conduct ethnographic fieldwork with police officers has been and continues to be complicated by issues of access.

Gaining Access

How does one become an insider with police? The limited transparency of police organizations and strong ties of occupational solidarity between police officers has made gaining access to police difficult. At the institutional level, the chief and upper-level management act as institutional gatekeepers, determining the value and worth of research relationships and granting or denying institutional access. And even if a researcher opts to “study up” into the police organization, without a formal research partnership, informal gatekeepers still exist; police officers, their families and friends, as well as colleagues outside the department will make similar determinations about the value and worth of the proposed research and the extent to which they can vouch for a researcher before offering access.

It was my position as the partner of a police officer that initially enabled my access to an internal policing network. Through introductions facilitated by my partner, I arranged ride-alongs and interviews with officers whose primary motivation for working with me was their personal relationship with my partner. This period of initial fieldwork was an important entry into the world of policing in an urban metropolitan area. It was marked, more often than not, by experiences focused on understanding the practice and activities of policing rather than data gathering guided by my research questions.

After orienting myself within the field for several months, I sought access to police officers through randomly assigned ride-alongs granted by the police department. At the onset of each ride-along, I carefully explained my research, making sure to then identify myself as the partner of a police officer; at that time, my legitimacy as a researcher was still attached to my relationship, based upon, as one officer put it, being “part of the family.” The data I collected through these ride-alongs and interviews focused on my research questions, yet, the officers I worked with did not have a personal or professional interest in the relationship between homelessness, policing and public space.

After six months of fieldwork, I was introduced to several police officers by homeless outreach workers with whom I had cultivated relationships while navigating the field. These officers, unlike others I had worked with previously, were invested in working with homeless individuals in the downtown and had created informal partnerships with homeless outreach workers as a workaround to the lack of departmental resources and training for working with homeless individuals. As a result, a different form of engagement with my research emerged in my relationship with these officers. They placed greater value and interest on my research questions because of their experience with homeless individuals, and my relationships with them still exist.

Moving forward with an anthropology of policing, the most critical challenge will be gaining access as researchers to police officers and police departments. The key insight from my own research is the importance of personal relationships to gaining access to police officers. However, as an anthropology of policing grows, anthropologists working with police officers will be able to mentor and guide others into the field.

Complex Considerations

After 18 months of fieldwork, I sat down to write my dissertation and was struck by the contradictions that ran throughout my research with police officers. I now offer some of these as considerations in building an anthropology of policing.

In conducting ethnographic fieldwork with police officers, I found I was studying not just power, but powerlessness and multiple configurations of the two. Police officers uniquely possess the ability to use coercive power against individuals, which has led to well-documented abuses of power. Yet, they are also often powerless within the hierarchy of bureaucratic, paramilitary police organizations. In my fieldwork, I found that officers who worked in the downtown felt intense pressure from businesses, residents and their department to move along homeless individuals from public space. There were officers who resisted such pressure, but the possibility of sanctioning existed for resisting both departmental and community directives. Power moved along many lines, and for the police officers I worked with, the use of power was experienced alongside feelings of powerlessness.

By obtaining access to police officers through my partner, randomly assigned ride-alongs and homeless outreach workers, I pursued multiple means of direct ethnographic data. As an anthropologist, I navigated these modes of access with attention to the limitations and complications each brought. The complex data yielded by these different methodologies revealed policing to be a complicated set of relationships, practices and configurations of power, and police officers as complex individuals enmeshed within multiple contexts. Police officers, then, are more than their various representations as heros or anti-heros; they may be one, the other, both or in-between. An anthropology of policing would embrace this complexity.

Valuing complexity in studying police officers as powerful and yet, often, powerless individuals means that an anthropology of policing studies not only up, but down. It means navigating multiple methods of access and positions within the field, and understanding each. Seeking nuance when researching policing and working with police officers means challenging generalized conceptions and narratives of police officers and police work.

An Anthropology of Policing

An anthropology of policing is poised to offer a critical alternative to the promotion of policing practices in the name of crime prevention and policy that dominates the study of policing. Ethnographic studies of police officers and policing can move anthropology and other disciplines beyond one-dimensional characterizations of police and policing practices. It can also identify ways in which policing intersects with other areas of anthropological interest. In my research, understanding gentrification processes, the emergence of business community districts as community stakeholders, homelessness, and mental health policy were critical areas to engage. In this way, an anthropology of policing can revolutionize the current state of police research.

Jennie Simpson recently received her PhD in cultural anthropology at American University. In her current position with a justice policy organization, she provides technical assistance to police agencies implementing a police based intervention to people with mental illnesses. Her academic interests include democratic policing, police occupational cultures, and police organizations.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/building-the-anthropology-of-policing/

Lost in a Legal Process by eguevara

Alienating the Public from an International Convention

The Old Gorin Catholic Church in Goto was one of the first Catholic churches in Nagasaki registered as a national heritage property of Japan in 1999. Photo courtesy Toru Yamada

In January 2007, the Japanese national government announced the prospective sites that would be considered for their new World Cultural Heritage national nomination process. The announcement contained a line implying that the new process met with UNESCO’s guidelines on World Heritage nomination (ACA 2007), specifically the guideline encouraging State parties “to prepare their Tentative Lists with the participation of a wide variety of stakeholders” (UNESCO 2005). Local governments and local communities were listed as such stakeholders. Half a year after the national announcement, I started my fieldwork in one of the prospective World Heritage areas from the national announcement: Nagasaki’s Goto Archipelago. While some local municipal officials in Goto were familiar with the developments concerning their nomination project, local residents did not seem to be receiving much up-to-date information. The new nomination process was a legal product of the Japanese government’s vernacularization of UNESCO’s World Heritage guidelines. On paper, it looked as if the process had ensured stakeholders’ participation, but the lived experience of local stakeholders bore out a narrative of uneven access to relevant information.

The ongoing World Heritage nomination projects of Japanese towns represent how the process of putting an international convention into a legal vernacular can create a gap between realities: the reality presented in legal documents vis-à-vis the lived reality on the ground. When government officials prioritize document preparation for a procedurally successful nomination, they can also trap themselves in a legal discourse which alienates those without legal training. In other words, even though officials can smoothly translate UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention to satisfy legal requirements, they may fail to translate the legal language to that of the everyday discourse of local residents.

At a National Periphery

Nagasaki’s Goto Archipelago is located at the western end of Japan, and is approximately 110 miles east of South Korea’s Jeju Island. It is often referred to as Japan’s geographic periphery. Goto’s local residents often reiterate the periphery discourse with reference to economic recession and a half century of depopulation. At the same time, such periphery discourse can also be interpreted and transformed into a positive factor of regional development. By emphasizing the differences of the periphery in contrast to the standard images of Japaneseness and concurrently articulating a consonance with the national standard, the local planners try to turn the negatives into positives.

In Nagasaki, it was the Catholic Church buildings that the national and the prefectural administration regarded as unique. At the same time, the architecture was hailed for its Japanese characteristics. With a history going back to the time of the arrival of the early Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century, the Catholics in Nagasaki consider themselves to be at the center of the denomination in Japan’s national boundary. While Christianity consists of merely one percent of Japan’s entire national population, Nagasaki’s Catholic churches are located in physical centers of towns and villages around the prefecture, leading many visitors to think that the area is largely Catholic. While the national and prefectural government officials refer to Catholic history and its legacy in terms of a uniqueness on par with something foreign, they also present it as Japanese because the Catholic Church buildings (up for consideration for World Heritage status) boast Japanese architectural styles. In September 2006, after some discussions and debates over the national characteristics of Catholicism in Nagasaki, the prefectural government decided to take the step of officially nominating the churches as tentative World Heritage properties.

Legal Translation

Administratively, the World Heritage nomination process involves legally translating the World Heritage Convention and its related guidelines into a nation’s legal system. It is a translation process in the sense that officials have to legally articulate the World Heritage Convention with corresponding domestic statutes, and implement them to “legally secure” the condition of the heritage properties. Concurrently, the officials have to provide documentation convincing enough to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee that they have followed appropriate procedures throughout their nomination process. In Nagasaki’s case, when the national government announced the new procedure in September 2006, the prefectural officials from one administrative division discussed and reviewed both the legal implementation process and the document preparation process.. The new nomination process was meant to offer an opportunity for prefectural and municipal administrators to voluntarily nominate prospective World Heritage properties to the national selection committee instead of the national government unilaterally deciding on prospective properties. The national government implied that this new nomination process was forged to meet with a guideline of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention—to accommodate more community participation by providing an opportunity for the prefectural and municipal governments to be involved in proposing sites.

Although this new nomination process seemed administratively sound, it raised new problems. The process was primarily based on the national selection committee’s document review. Therefore, it allowed Nagasaki’s core prefectural government officials to mainly focus on offering documented proof of community participation rather than on fostering understanding of the World Heritage nomination among local residents. In Goto Archipelago, the prefectural officials hosted meetings and workshops on World Heritage for the island residents. Those meetings and workshops were recorded in governmental reports as evidence that prefectural officials provided venues to encourage community participation. These reports were furnished to national evaluators. The dates and the locations of the meetings and symposiums bolstered the governmental record in terms of looking convincing to the national evaluators.

Residents’ Take on Things

Legal anthropologists have extensively analyzed procedural orientations of legal communication (eg, Arno 2009, Conley and O’Barr 1990, 1998, Philips 1998). Legal experts create a shared interpretation of law and due process and practice their interpretation in the professional sphere. In the case of Goto, residents often sensed the procedural-oriented approach of officials and became cautious about even attending World Heritage-related meetings. The prefectural officials organized meetings and workshops, but local residents often did not find the settings of those events conducive to asking questions or expressing their opinions. Some of the events were scheduled during times or dates when many residents could not attend due to work and social constraints (eg, dinner preparation time for local hotel owners, low-tide fishing hours, or busy tourism seasons). The events were often held in a large auditorium which made individuals feel reluctant to state their opinions. Also, the residents often found it was difficult to ask about their concerns because the events were often rigidly scheduled and did not factor in sufficient time for Q&A. The residents believed that officials were merely intent on satisfying the letter of the law in adding to their administrative records and showing how many occasions they provided for residents to discuss the project. Ironically, the more the officials legally tried to translate the World Heritage Convention, the more they alienated the residents from it.

After the Attempted Manipulation

Prefectural government officials’ initial legal translation attempts could be construed as a sociolegal manipulation of sorts. Officials tried primarily to prepare documentation attesting to community participation, but could not adequately secure locals’ support for the nomination project. As the prefectural officials unwittingly alienated the local residents from the nomination process, they found it more difficult to accomplish other governmental projects requiring community collaboration as well. Following the initial missteps, the concern of government officials from all administrative layers—from the municipal to the national—has been related to the reintegration of legal translation to residents’ lived reality. Even as their World Heritage nomination process has made progress, their concern on managing the existing gap between law and lived reality has not been eased as of 2012.

Toru Yamada is a visiting academic researcher at Hosei University in Japan and a lecturer at the University of Hawai‘i.

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/lost-in-a-legal-process/

Future Publics, Current Engagements by eguevara

Chicago, Then and Now

The Chicago teachers’ strike in September 2012 is an important piece of a long history of struggle that defines the city of Chicago. From its earliest days as, in the words of historian William Cronon, in his 1992 book Nature’s Metropolis “a polyglot world of Indian, French, British, and American cultures,” Chicago has been characterized by various struggles over space, power, dignity, justice and equality. In the spring of 1886, for example, Chicago was the heart of a national movement demanding shorter workdays for laborers, as tens of thousands of skilled and unskilled workers walked off the job and marched between May 1 and May 4. The Haymarket riots tragically ended in the deaths of many, but they also inspired the establishment of May 1 as the internationally recognized workers’ day. In May 1894, Pullman rail workers protested paternalistic company policies, wage cuts, and cost of living increases by striking and severely curtailing national railroad traffic through early July. The Pullman strike is significant not only because of the broad national support workers received from organizations like the American Railway Union and its charismatic president Eugene Debs, but also because it reinvigorated calls for increased government regulation and underscored the need for vibrant labor unions to protect workers’ rights. Both then and now, Chicago was fertile terrain for the development of powerful social movements grappling with rapid technological change, the effects of an economic crisis, and critical conversations about the role of government in an increasingly diverse and stratified social context.

In Richard Wright’s introduction to Drake and Cayton’s landmark study of African American urban life, Black Metropolis, (1945), he reflects, “there is an open and raw beauty about [Chicago] that seems either to kill or endow one with the spirit of life. I felt those extremes of possibility, death and hope, while I lived half hungry and afraid in a city to which I had fled with the dumb yearning to write, to tell my story.” Much of twentieth century Chicago is characterized by people fleeing to the city with hope for a better life. By 1900 Chicago was the second largest city in the United States as a result of high levels of immigration as well as internal migration. Eastern and Southern European immigrants arrived to work in the growing industrial economy and meat packing industries, dramatically transforming Chicago into the ethnic city it remains today. And the Great Migration of from the US South from 1910–1960s contributed to the rapid expansion of the city’s African American population that constituted 2%of the population prior to the Great Migration and reached 33% by 1970 (Nicholas Lemann, “Great Migration,” The Encyclopedia of Chicago, 2004). Anti-black racism and anti-immigrant sentiment helped to create rigid spatial boundaries within the city, with a color line that shifted, but was viciously enforced by violence, racial covenants and legal barriers. Referring to Chicago as the “city of neighborhoods,” certainly captures the diversity of twentieth-century Chicago, but it can also mask racial and ethnic tensions and inequality that marginalized the city’s African American, Latino and Asian residents. As in the previous century, Chicago communities strategized, organized, protested and were part of the powerful civil rights movements of the mid-twentieth century aimed at dismantling racial segregation, job discrimination, unequal housing, and demanding full citizenship rights and inclusion in city and national government. These vibrant social movements were rooted in the hope and spirit of life Richard Wright referred to and were precisely the spaces that nurtured some of the most radical and original thinkers, organizers, and artists in twentieth century America.

Nineteenth and twentieth century struggles for justice and equity continue into the new millennium with some of the largest, most vibrant social movements taking place in Chicago. The immigrant rights marches of 2006 not only galvanized broader national mobilizations to bring attention to one of the most important issues facing the nation, they inspired, supported and advanced a broader vision and dialogue about citizenship, belonging and the future of the nation. Given this history, I cannot imagine a city better suited to host the 2013 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association and provide a space to contemplate our future publics, current engagements in a historically informed way.

Gina Perez is Eric and Jane Nord associate professor and chair of Comparative American Studies at Oberlin College.

Alaka Wali and Dana-Ain Davis are the program chairs for the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting. They may be contacted at 2013aaaprogramchairs@gmail.com

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/future-publics-current-engagements-2/

General Rules for Participation by eguevara

112th Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association

Meeting Dates

The scholarly program of the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting will begin in Chicago at 12:00 pm on Wednesday, November 20, and continue through noon on Sunday, November 24.

Online Submission and Deadlines

Please check the AAA website (www.aaanet.org) in January for online submission procedures. Be sure to read the helpful hints posted with the online AAA Annual Meeting call for papers. There are three different deadlines:

(a) Executive Sessions deadline is February 6.

(b) Invited Sessions and Public Policy Forum proposals are due March 15.

(c) All other sessions are due by 5:00 pm EST (10:00 pm GMT) April 15.

Types of Sessions and Events

There are eight types of sessions and events: (1) Executive Sessions submitted to and evaluated by the Executive Program Committee; (2) Invited Sessions organized by AAA sections; (3) Volunteered Sessions; (4) sessions constructed from individually volunteered papers or posters; (5) Public Policy Forums; (6) Media sessions organized by the Society for Visual Anthropology (submitted separately); (7) Special Events; and (8) Inno-vents. All sessions on the scholarly program are to be submitted as a single (1.75 hours) session or as a double (3.75 hours) session.

Executive Sessions

Proposals Due February 6

The 2013 AAA Executive Program Committee, in association with AAA President Leith Mullings, will select a small number of executive sessions that speak directly to the conference theme and serve to engage the broad constituency of anthropologists and our interlocutors. We particularly encourage proposals that draw out anthropology’s shifting place in the world in the widest sense: conceptual, political, social, economic. Such sessions can be traditional panels with papers, but we also encourage these to take different formats. The Executive Session proposals (and these proposals only) should be submitted online in the abstract system by February 6.

Section Invited Sessions

Proposals Due March 15

Each AAA Section is responsible for the organization of one or more innovative, synthesizing sessions intended to reflect the state-of-the-art and the thematic concerns in the major subfields. Members should work closely with the section program editors when planning invited sessions. The Invited Session proposal deadline is March 15. To submit a proposal for an invited session, go to www.aaanet.org and follow the links to the call for papers. A session abstract of up to 500 words is required. Sessions designated as invited sessions will not be subject to further review, but participants are bound by the rules of the meeting and must submit final abstracts, meeting registration forms and fees via www.aaanet.org by April 15.

Volunteered Sessions

Proposals Due April 15

All sessions must be submitted online at www.aaanet.org. The organizer must select one appropriate section for review. If accepted, the volunteered session will be listed as part of the reviewing section’s program. The program committee strongly urges members to contact and work closely with section program editors and to follow the guidelines:

The organizer is responsible for articulating the session theme and relevance in the session abstract. Each paper should reflect the session’s concept. Poorly integrated groupings are subject to revision or distribution of papers to other sessions.

Session presentations, discussion periods and breaks must be included in the proposal at the time of submission. A maximum of 15 minutes will be allotted for any single paper presentation, discussant, break or discussion period.

Papers within a proposed session will be evaluated individually. Organizers should be prepared for the possibility that some proposed papers may be rejected and others substituted or added.

LCD projectors will be provided for each scholarly session on the AAA program. Audiovisual equipment must be operated by the participant. No changes to the original audiovisual order submitted online may be made after April 15.

Every participant included in the proposal, including paper presenters, roundtable presenters, chairs, discussants and organizers must be registered to attend the Annual Meeting by April 15 to appear in the program.

Organizers must limit proposals to one session, with a total scheduled time of either 1.75 hours or 3.75 hours. There are no exceptions to this rule.

All paper or poster presentation proposals must be submitted via the AAA website.

To submit a session, go to www.aaanet.org and follow the links to the call for papers. A session abstract of up to 500 words is required. Meeting registration forms and fees must be submitted for each participant. Submission deadline is 5:00 pm EST (10:00 pm GMT) April 15.

Individually Volunteered Papers and Posters

Proposals Due April 15

The program committee welcomes the submission of individual papers and posters independent from organized sessions. For evaluation purposes, the author of each individually volunteered paper and poster must select one appropriate section for the review process.

To submit an individually volunteered paper or poster, go to www.aaanet.org and follow the links to the call for papers. A paper or poster abstract of up to 250 words is required. Proposals must be accompanied by the meeting registration fee. Deadline is 5:00 pm EST (10:00 pm GMT) April 15. Accepted volunteered papers and posters will be grouped by the program committee into sessions around a common topic or theme. A maximum of 15 minutes will be allotted for each paper presentation.

Public Policy Forums

Proposals Due March 15

AAA’s public policy forums provide a place to discuss critical social issues affecting anthropology, public policy issues of interest to anthropologists, and public policy issues that could benefit from anthropological knowledge or expertise. They engage panelists (who may or may not be anthropologists) and audience members in a discussion of public policy issues to enhance the application of anthropological knowledge in society at large. Recognizing that there are diverse perspectives on panel topics, public policy forums seek to present balanced views to promote dialogue among participants. Ideally, at least one policymaker will be included in each forum.

No papers are presented in public policy forums. The ideal format includes a moderator and no more than seven panelists. Following introductions, the moderator proceeds to pose questions to panelists as a group or individually. Adequate time should be set aside at the end of each forum for audience participation. Generally, each public policy forum is scheduled for 105 minutes. Since the dual purpose of the forum is to maximize discussion of policy issues among the panelists and the audience, it is recommended the forum be structured as follows: introduction (15 minutes); moderator-posed questions and answers (60 minutes); and audience questions and comments (30 minutes).

To submit a public policy forum, go to www.aaanet.org and follow the links to the call for papers. In the submission area, select “public policy forum” under the session option. Refer your proposal to the AAA Committee on Public Policy for review, not a section. When you complete the Session Structure Form, identify the moderator and potential panelists and note that your time allotment is 1.75 hours. Submit an abstract of 500 words describing the public policy issue to be discussed. The deadline for forum submissions is 5:00 pm EST (10:00 pm GMT) March 15.

Media Submissions

Proposals Due April 15

The 2013 SVA/AAA Film, Video and Interactive Media Festival will take place during the 112th AAA Annual Meeting. As in the past, the Society for Visual Anthropology will select a jury of anthropologists and film scholars to decide which submissions to include in the festival and which among those will receive awards. SVA continues to welcome interactive media work and also encourages short work that is under 15 minutes. DVD formats are acceptable. Submitted materials will not be returned. Please check the SVA website in early February for submission details, including additional information on preferred formats. Submission deadline is April 15.

Award winners will be notified in the summer and clips of award-winning films may be placed on SVA’s website. For more information see the Society for Visual Anthropology’s website at www.societyforvisualanthropology.org.

Special Event Proposals

Proposals Due April 15

Special Events are business meetings, committee and board meetings, workshops, food and beverage functions, which will be scheduled as part of the special events program and are the responsibility of the executive office.

To avoid conflicts with scientific sessions, most special events are limited to 1.25 hours and are scheduled during the times 12:15–1:30 pm and after 6:00 pm. To submit a special event proposal, go to the AAA homepage. Follow the links to the call for papers. Workshop proposals must be submitted online by April 15. First priority in the assignment of time and space will be given to AAA and Section business, board and committee meetings. Other special events will be accommodated to the degree possible.

For events sponsored by organizations other than AAA Sections, there is an administrative fee of $500 to cover costs of arrangements and inclusion in the program. The Special Events Program will not accommodate panels, papers or professional presentations that belong on the scientific program. To be listed in the meeting program, special event proposals must be accompanied by administrative fees at the time of submission.

Inno-vent Proposals

Proposals Due April 15

Inno-vents are aimed at exploring anthropological knowledge outside the more familiar arenas and bringing together people, activities, materials and ideas that might not normally coincide. Unlike most other events, Inno-vents can occur outside the main conference venue in San Francisco and can have a variety of different characteristics. They are aimed at stretching the contexts in which anthropological knowledge is both generated and practiced. Because of the unique and innovative nature of these events, each may require additional time to work out logistics. If you have an idea that might require some organizational creativity or logistical advice, please contact us as soon as possible at aaameetings@aaanet.org. Participation in an Inno-vent is treated as a primary role such as papers and roundtables.

Review Procedures

The AAA follows a policy of peer review and merit consideration for acceptance and inclusion in the program. Proposals for Executive Sessions should be submitted in the abstract system by February 6. The Executive Program Committee will review all proposed executive sessions and deliver decisions by March 1. Organizers of sessions not given this status can still submit their information to any of the 38 AAA sections for review for either invited or volunteered status.

The deadline to propose a session for Invited Session status will be March 15. Those seeking invited session status will submit their applications online, in the same way as applying for volunteered sessions. Sections will email results by April 4 to all those who submit proposals for invited sessions, so session organizers not receiving this status will automatically be moved into general review as a volunteered session.

Volunteered Sessions and Individually Volunteered Papers and Posters are reviewed by program editors and committees established by each AAA Section and are due by April 15. Public Policy Forum proposals are reviewed by the Executive Program Committee and the Committee on Public Policy. Deadline for online submission is March 15. Special Event proposals are reviewed and organized by the executive office. Inno-vent proposals are reviewed by the Executive Program Committee, in collaboration with section program editors where appropriate.

Regardless of status, all session proposals must be submitted through www.aaanet.org by April 15, 2013.Organizers and presenters are required to select one review section when submitting proposals online. Secondary review sections may be selected in the event the primary section editor wants to transfer the submission. The decision should be made on the basis of content and intended audience; membership in a section has no bearing on the review process. The recommendations of sections are forwarded to the Executive Program Chair, who assumes final responsibility for the acceptance or rejection of proposals. The Executive Program Committee prepares the final program schedule according to the rankings submitted by each Section. All final program notifications about acceptance and scheduling will be mailed by the Executive Program Chair. There is no appeal process.

Presentation Policy

Participants may only: (1) present one paper, or serve as a participant on roundtable or Inno-vent and (2) accept no more than one secondary role other than a paper presentation, such as discussant or chair. The policy of one major presentation plus one other secondary role will be strictly enforced. The program committee will remove any name that appears more than twice on the scholarly program and urges individuals to refrain from accepting more than one commitment of any kind in the scholarly program. A participant may be credited with co-authorship of one or more additional papers when co-authorship is understood to include participation on a research project. Presenters’ names must appear first.

Eligibility

No proposals for participation in the scholarly program of the meeting can be considered unless formally submitted online through the AAA website. Participation is a benefit of AAA membership and limited to current members. To update your membership or join, contact AAA at (+1)703/528-1902, ext 1178 or visit www.aaanet.org. The membership requirement may be waived for scholars from other disciplines or for anthropologists from countries other than the United States or Canada. Details regarding this policy can be found online at www.aaanet.org. Registration fees will not be waived. All persons who expect to be listed as participants on the scholarly and special events program must register by 5:00 pm EST (10:00 p.m. GMT) April 15. Registration fees will not be refunded to participants who cancel their participation after the submission deadline.

Refund Policy

Refunds are not available to participants who cancel after April 15. Exceptions are made only if a proposal is not accepted for inclusion in the 2013 Annual Meeting Program. Instructions for receiving a refund in the instance of a rejected proposal will be sent with the notifications in summer 2013.

Inquiries

If you have questions regarding participation guidelines, please contact the AAA Meetings Department (aaameetings@aaanet.org).

2013 Dates to Remember

January 15

Online abstract submission system opens for executive sessions only

February 6

Deadline for executive session proposals online at www.aaanet.org

February 15

Online abstract submission system opens

March 1

Decisions on executive sessions announced

March 15

Proposal deadline for section invited sessions and public policy forums via www.aaanet.org

April 4

Results of section invited session proposals announced

April 15

Proposal deadline for volunteered sessions, individual paper and poster presentations, media submissions and special events via www.aaanet.org. To be included in the 2013 AAA Annual Meeting program, participants must be registered by this date.

April 16–May 31

Section program editors review and rank proposals

June 1–15

AAA Executive Program Committee schedules program

July 1–15

• Program decisions emailed to applicants

• Annual Meeting Program, registration and hotel information are posted online

November 20–24

2013 AAA Annual Meeting in Chicago

via Anthropology-News http://www.anthropology-news.org/index.php/2012/12/10/general-rules-for-participation-2/