CONVOCATORIA

REVISTA COLOMBIANA DE ANTROPOLOGÍA

INSTITUTO COLOMBIANO DE ANTROPOLOGÍA E HISTORIA, ICANH

Dossier: Tendencias actuales de la Bioantropología en Colombia

Editores Invitados:

Miguel E. Delgado B.

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). División Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Javier Rosique

Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia.

La Revista Colombiana de Antropología invita a estudiantes de postgrado, profesores universitarios, investigadores y académicos en antropología, arqueología y disciplinas afines a presentar artículos inéditos sobre diferentes temas y enfoques de la bioantropología en Colombia.

Recientemente la bioantropología en nuestro país ha tenido un notable desarrollo gracias a la preocupación de un variado grupo de investigadores, profesores universitarios, estudiantes de grado y postgrado en antropología y otras disciplinas. Prueba de ello son los tradicionales simposios en los congresos de antropología y arqueología que desde hace algunos años se vienen llevando acabo en el país con bastante éxito. Igualmente la idea de organizarse profesionalmente y la celebración del primer encuentro oficial de antropología biológica en Colombia en el marco del pasado 13er Congreso de Antropología en el año 2009 sugieren un creciente interés en la disciplina. En este contexto consideramos que es pertinente abrir una convocatoria de trabajos inéditos que den cuenta de las actuales tendencias de investigación de la bioantropología en nuestro país.

La presente convocatoria está abierta a artículos que aborden aspectos teóricos y metodológicos y que provengan de investigaciones enmarcadas en diferentes proyectos y líneas de investigación. El dossier está compuesto por tres ejes principales, el primero intenta abordar reflexiones teóricas sobre la práctica investigativa y la enseñanza de la bioantropología en nuestro país. Un segundo eje contempla contribuciones sobre diversos aspectos teórico-metodológicos de la investigación de los grupos humanos contemporáneos. Finalmente el tercer eje esta compuesto por artículos que presenten nuevos aportes al conocimiento de los grupos que habitaron el país en tiempos prehispánicos. Se espera que los autores puedan integrar de manera explícita, clara y sucinta aspectos de la teoría y método de la antropología al interior de sus contribuciones. Así mismo se recomienda a los autores incluir contribuciones con un alto estándar de calidad.

***

La RCA es una publicación semestral indexada nacional e internacionalmente, que se edita desde 1953. Los artículos son sometidos a evaluación anónima por pares especializados. Está incluida en las siguientes bases bibliográficas e índices internacionales de citación: Internacional Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), The London School of Economics and Political Science; Hispanic American Periodical Index (HAPI) de la Universidad de California, Los Ángeles; Anthropological Index Online del Royal Anthropological Institute de Inglaterra; Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CLASE), de la Universidad Autónoma de México; Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS), de la Biblioteca del Congreso de los Estados Unidos; Directorio de LATINDEX (Sistema regional de información en línea para revistas científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal); e IBN Publindex de Colciencias, Colombia.

Normas de presentación de artículos

Formato del texto: La RCA recomienda que los artículos sometidos a evaluación cuenten con introducción, metodología, conclusiones y bibliografía actualizada.

Esta convocatoria solicita artículos cortos de máximo 25 páginas (incluyendo citas, notas a pie de página, tablas, leyendas de figuras y referencias bibliográficas), y estar digitados en letra Times New Roman, 12 puntos, a doble espacio, en hoja tamaño carta, con márgenes izquierda y derecha de 2,5 cm y superior e inferior de 3 cm. En cuanto a la bibliografía y las referencias la revista utiliza el sistema APA Academic.

La primera página debe incluir: título del artículo, nombre del autor, correo electrónico, y una breve nota sobre los estudios realizados y la afiliación institucional del mismo -máximo tres líneas-. Es indispensable que incluya además el resumen (130 palabras) y palabras clave en español e inglés, así como un breve comentario acerca del origen del artículo (investigación, curso, revisión bibliográfica, reflexión personal, etc.)

Para ver las normas de presentación de artículos lo invitamos a visitar nuestra página web:

http://www.icanh.gov.co/index.php?idcategoria=1302

Los originales deben ser remitidos vía correo electrónico a:

los editores invitados: medelgado@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar, csrogrja@antares.udea.edu.co. Con copia al Editor de la Revista Colombiana de Antropología, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia – ICANH

rca.icanh@gmail.com

Fecha límite para la recepción de artículos: 1 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 2011

Revista A contratiempo 14

Ritos orales, cantometrics y otros pasos en dirección a una antropología de la voz

Elizabeth Travassos. Universidad Federal del Estado de Río de Janeiro/CNPq

La música y la danza en la cosmología Guaraní

Deise Lucy Oliveira Montardo. Universidad Federal de Amazonas

Investigación sobre músicas indígenas en Colombia. Segunda parte: Campos disciplinares, institucionalización e investigación aplicada

Carlos Miñana Blasco. Profesor Universidad Nacional de Colombia

La cultura de la “gente sin cultura”. Clasificación de los géneros musicales tradicionales: el caso de los romances en la cuenca del río Atrato (Colombia)

Alejandro Tobón Restrepo. Grupo de Investigación Valores Musicales Regionales, Universidad de Antioquia.

De cantaoras y cantantes: apropiaciones diferenciales del patrimonio sonoro de la nación

Beatriz Goubert Burgos. Docente investigadora del programa de antropología de la facultad de ciencias sociales y humanas de la Universidad Externado de Colombia, Bogotá.

“Si no está en juego la vida, sólo es cosa de folclor”. Las decimas de Mery Suescúm

Alejandra Quintana. Instituto para la Investigación Educativa y el Desarrollo (IDEP) / Ministerio de Cultura.

“Música colonial”: La invención sonora del barroco hispanoamericano

Carlos Páramo Bonilla. Universidad Externado de Colombia

Alvaro Ramírez Sierra, biografía y recuerdos

Héctor González. Universidad del Valle

Alrededor y acerca de “... pero sonora” de Daniel Leguizamón

Rodolfo Acosta. Compositor

Música en las sociedades indígenas de las tierras bajas de América del Sur: estado del arte

Rafael José de Menezes Bastos. Universidad Federal de Santa Catarina.

RIP Claude Levi Strauss qepd

Claude Levi-Strauss has died
Levi-Straus ha muerto

Conferences, Conferences, Conferences

One on "Materializing the Subject" from those material anthro folks.
The other on "The Complex," some kind of structure-agency thing. This one's up on the blog of a grad student at NYU's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis named Marisol Lebron. I don't know her, but I'm deep into her hip-hop academician blog, which in a random sampling takes on hip-hoppa Jim Jones' kinda queer video for "pop champagne", the racial politics of the "Arab/A-rab Money" song , and Beyoncé's blanqueamiento.

Anyhow, the conferences:

This conference entitled Materialising the Subject: phenomenological and post-ANT objects in the social sciences provides the opportunity for inter-disciplinary and trans-Atlantic debate about some of the most recent theoretical and methodological moves in sociology, anthropology, geography and philosophy. When considered together these moves reveal multiple approaches to a common theoretical concern - the dissolution of the subject/object distinction ? the corollary of which, across the social sciences, is the "turn to ontology" and the consequent effort to radically rework our understanding of what it is (for humans and non-humans) to constitute a world.

Moving beyond the actor-network as an analytical category, which usefully contests the assumption that humans and non-humans are separate entities and that reality is, therefore, objectively given and revealed by science; post-actor-network theory challenges the tendency to reify the form of the network/object as a stable relational configuration (Latour B. 2005, Law J. and Hassard J. 1999). The move now is to explain the emergence and experience of "things", such as diseases, as the fluid outcome of various, often contested, sets of material practices (Mol A. 2003). These practices are understood to be highly specific, spatially distributed assemblages or enactments (Law J. and Mol A. 2001) that gain their stability from perpetual performance. The analytical category, here, becomes "material practice" with distinct methodological implications and the notion of form shifts away from singularity and towards a multiple configuration of more fragile relational elements.

In a parallel "relational" move in social anthropology, one which unsettles the Euro-American concept of the subject as individual, the material practice of exchange takes centre stage in a theory that explains how certain kinds of objects, like gifts, come to substantiate the specific form of sociality through which personhood is distributed (Strathern M. 1988 and 1991). Such an analysis makes possible comparisons and contrasts between different relational forms and notions of the person that objects come to substantiate among various human collectives (Viveiros de Castro 1998b, 2004). This includes a consideration of the effects of new forms of property arising from innovations in the production of socio-technical, subject/object hybrids such as genetically engineered human cells (Strathern M. 1996, J. Edwards 2005).

Having always done what sociologists of science and technology were just beginning to do in the West, anthropologists were praised by actor-network theorists (B. Latour 1993) for attending, in other parts of the world, to the subject/object hybrids that were constitutive of radically different understandings of human and non-human groupings, relations and capacities. Wishing to bring into existence an "anthropology of the modern world", one which treats the subject/object distinction as the foundational myth of modernity and which undermines, therefore, the objective premises of the asymmetry between "the West and the rest", Bruno Latour makes possible new terms of theoretical engagement for an anthropology which is increasingly "at home". At the same time, however, the link is clear and productive with a post-colonial anthropology coming to terms with the paradox engendered by modernity's loss of confidence and the modernising drive of post-colonial nation states.

Arguably, however, the "turn to ontology" relies, for its novelty, on a conceptualisation of epistemology that makes knowledge the outcome of processes of conscious abstraction, theorisation, formalisation, institutionalisation, representation and interpretation. This risks a reproduction of the dichotomies between "knowing" and "doing" and between "mind" and "body" that have already been challenged in phenomenological theories of embodiment and in models of situated learning in cognitive psychology. Indeed, despite the accusation, at the heart of actor network theory (Latour B. 1993, 1999c, 2005), that phenomenology is inadequate to the task of assembling a radical theory of object-centred-sociality, those of a phenomenological persuasion might argue that the insights of actor-network theory are not new to them (Ihde D. 2003); that the notions of 'intentionality, inter-subjectivity and life-world not only pre-empt the conclusions of the actor network theorists but do so in a way that makes the distinction between ontology and epistemology as untenable as the one between subjects and objects or "the social" and "the world".

Railing against the abstract concepts of the philosophers and seeking a new charter for method in the social sciences, sociologists (Law 2004), anthropologists (Henare A, Holbraad M & Wastell S. 2006) and geographers (Thrift 2007) find, in the ethnographic method what looks like common ground a material practice that is a philosophical one too. Clearly, there are lessons to be learned from conversations, across disciplines, about similar objects of analysis and how these objects are constituted and stabilised as "things", with all kinds of historically specific effects.

The objective of the conference is to provide an advanced forum for five in-conversation style debates between world renowned scholars and to make these live conversations accessible a) to a scholarly audience of 50 in the place where the conversations will happen in February 2009 - at the Manchester Museum ? b) to a wider public via an interactive website on which audio files of the conversations will be posted and c) to a wider scholarly audience via publication of the position papers and transcribed conversations.

Inspired by specific scholarly contributions to existing debate, the five conversations will encompass the following questions/themes for on-going discourse:

After Networks: spatio-temporal analytics.
Does it make any Sense to Say that Objects Have Agency?

Is Phenomenology Really an Albatross?
Skilled Practice: cognition as human-artefact-human orientation system.
Not Networks Per Se, but Distributed Enactments?

Click below for the programme

Continue reading "Materialising the Subject: phenomenological and post-ANT objects in the social sciences" »

I still think music has a lot to say to this whole object thing...

And the other conference:

Call for Papers: "The Complex" - Princeton University American Studies Graduate Student Conference

The Complex
Princeton University
Program in American Studies Graduate Student Conference
May 2, 2009

The Idea is thus defined as a structure. A structure or an idea is a "complex theme," an internal multiplicity—in other words, a system of multiple, non-localisable connections between different elements which is incarnated in real relations and actual terms.
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

We got our thing, but it's just part of the big thing.
Zenobia, "Corner Boys," The Wire Season Four



What are the various "complexes" that inform American Studies, and how can American Studies help us understand the strategies and subjects of "the complex"? From entrenched systems of power to the vagaries of psychological fixation, this conference will foster a conversation on the structures, exchanges, and perceptions (or misperceptions) that continue to shape and reshape American Studies. It will also open a space in which the topics, methodologies, and preoccupations of American Studies can begin to interrogate the "complex" as a mode of cultural formation and connectivity (or the lack thereof). Taking interdisciplinarity itself as a topic for discussion, this conference will use the "complex" to explore the possibilities and limitations of both physical and conceptual boundaries.

Keynote Speaker: Asst. Prof. Mark Goble, English Department, University of California, Berkeley

Please submit a 500-word abstract and your c.v. to Lindsay Reckson and Nika Elder at AMSconference@gmail.com by January 15th, 2009. Papers will be due two weeks prior to the conference for circulation, and should be no longer than 15 minutes.

Possible iterations of the complex might include (but are not limited to):
Freudian and Jungian Complexes; the Military-Industrial Complex; the Panopticon; Markets & Circulation; Globalization; Infrastructure; Conspiracy Theory and Surveillance; Stage Sets and Crime Scenes; Publics and Counter-publics; the Academy, the Church, the Factory; Networking & Collaboration; Canons; Semiotics; Obscurantism; Discourse Networks; Circuits; Interfaces; Cyborgs; Media Theory; the Wire; Systems Theory; Grids; Maps and Blueprints; Collections

Any conference that includes a quote from The Wire in the call is OK by me.

Lo Mejor de los Antroblogs 2008 / The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008

De/From Neuranthropology:

The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008 has a submissions deadline set for this Monday, December 29th. Both people who blog about anthropology topics and readers of anthro blogs can submit entries. For more details, see the details in the language that suits you best.

Un número creciente de antropólogos está escribiendo sobre sus trabajos e ideas en línea, compartiendo antropología en todas sus formas y manifestando cuan pertinente es la antropología para el resto del mundo. Por este motivo, “Neuroanthropology” se propone crear una colección de los mejores artículos en los blogs (o bitácoras) dedicados a la antropología.

Favor seguir las siguientes instrucciones para proponer artículos:

Hay dos categorías de artículos – (1ª) los más populares (en términos de número de lectores) y (2ª) los que usted elige como el mejor ejemplo de su trabajo en línea en su blog.

Por favor, envíe un ejemplo de cada categoría (del más popular y del preferido), incluyendo el título del artículo, la dirección del artículo en línea y una o dos frases que expliquen porqué usted piensa que estos ejemplos han sido exitosos.

En el caso de blogs con más de un autor, pueden entregar dos ejemplos de sus artículos en la segunda categoría.

Por favor enviar los detalles a Daniel Lende vía dlende[@]nd[.]edu
(eliminando los paréntesis).

Esta información debe ser enviada a más tardar el 29 diciembre de 2008. “Lo mejor de…” será publicado en línea el 31 de diciembre.

Muchas gracias a ustedes nuestros colegas.

Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008: Call for Submissions
Melhor de blogging antropolgia 2008
Le meilleur de la blogosphère anthropologique francophone: appel aux candidatures
Anunciando La Primera Edición de “Lo Mejor de los Blogs Antropológicos”
Antro-blogoskape yang paling baik untuk tahun 2008: sejenis kompetisi
Annunciando la prima edizione di «I migliori dei blogs di antropologia»

We’ve already had a great number of submissions from a diverse range of blogs. I’ve posted the list of participating blogs below. If you don’t see yours on the list, please send me a submission!

And if you did send me a submission but don’t see your blog, send me a reminder note. With Christmas, over-aggressive spam filters and the like, I want to be sure everyone gets included! Just one note - if it’s a blog in Portuguese, Greg is handling those submissions. So I haven’t included any of those in the list below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Human Terrain Systems Handbook Leaked

Anthropologist David Price describes the training Handbook of the embedded anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here

The recently leaked (unclassified) Human Terrain Team Handbook (September 2008) reflects Human Terrain’s vision that by aiding in the more sensitive occupation of populations, Human Terrain Teams are reducing violence. The Handbook states that, “the end-state of Human Terrain Team support is to provide the unit the reasons why the population is doing what it is doing and thereby providing non-lethal options to the commander and his staff.” This statement expresses the Handbook’s internal logic that: anthropologically based non-lethal subjugation = good; lethal subjugation = bad. The Handbook ignores more traditional political and ethical considerations of anthropologists’ responsibilities following a logic more aligned with notions that subjugation of other cultures = bad. Such traditional anthropological considerations are outside the logical scope of the Handbook; it takes anthropologically aided subjugation as an acceptable goal from the outset.

American Anthropology Association goes open access

So AAA has announced that American Anthropology and Anthropology News will now be open access. Kinda. Sorta. The poop is that it is just a first step, and it's only articles before 1974.

Philosophers doing ethnography?

"Apparently, making broad claims about “what a person would naturally think” have finally become so insupportable that even philosophers have started exploring the possibility of actually talking to people." (Hence the burning armchair).

Link

Digital Divide

This from the "Culture Matters" anthro blog (hey ethnos, how come we don't have something like this?):

Wired magazine has a recent story about Dawn Nafus, a Cambridge PhD in anthropology working for Intel: Intel Anthropologists Find Keys to Tech Adoption. The map of which countries are rapid adopters is great; there’s some interesting surprises. For example, Nafus found that Estonia and South Korea were early adopters of technology in relation to income:

…her team found that they both have agile governments, strong offline social networks, and major upheavals in living memory (the transition out of Communism and the Korean War). That raised the counterintuitive question: could turmoil actually be good for preparing people for disruptive technologies?

I won’t review the whole article, but there’s some great examples of anthropological research producing counter-intuitive results. For example, ‘One other surprise in the Intel data: foreign direct investment, or how much money foreign firms pour into a country’s economy, can actually constrain how fast technology is adopted.’ Worth checking out.

Racism in Bogotá / Racismo en Bogotá

Esto de una amiga antropóloga afronorteamericana, Fatimah Williams Castro quien está trabajando con negritudes en Colombia:
This is from a anthropologost friend, a black North American, Fatimah Williams Castro, who's working on blackness in Colombia:

Here's an article from El Tiempo, the only newspaper with daily national circulation in Colombia, on a group of seven of my friends and I being denied entry into a few 'high end' discotecas in Bogota one night in April. The journalist did not quote me correctly. Being cheeky as always, I said, "Colombian claims to be a classist but not racist society, so to be exempt from racial discrimination I would have to tape my blue passport to my forehead so the first thing people see would be my "status" and not my race/color. The bottom line is that all people deserve respect, period." Also, I'm an anthropologist, not a sociologist. Lastly, the journalist failed to mention that none of us were rude or disrespectful to the bouncers. We have it on tape to prove it.

My friends and I are working with an local lawyers group in Bogota to make a formal demanda/accion de tutela (or court case) against the clubs and this type of discriminatory treatment. The case should go before a judge in early June. Anyone who'd like to be updated just let me know.

> Mayo 17 de 2008 -
> Investigación universitaria muestra latente racismo en algunas
> discotecas de Bogotá
> Los dueños de éstas se defienden: 'Porque devolvemos una vez en un año
> a cuatro negros hay una denuncia'. Las autoridades invitan a que la
> gente no calle estos hechos.
>
>
> Conscientes que el color de piel podía ser un factor a la hora de
> entrar a una discoteca, cinco estudiantes de Derecho de la Universidad
> de Los Andes realizaron un trabajo de campo para comprobarlo.
>
> Junto a siete afrodescendientes (entre ellos dos mujeres
> estadounidense y el periodista de RCN, Jefferson Asprilla), visitaron
> el pasado 19 de abril dos reconocidos establecimientos de la Zona Rosa
> y del Parque de la 93 -Gavanna y Genoveva-.
>
> Con audios y fotografías documentaron el rechazo del que fueron víctimas.
>
> Una de las participantes recuerda que la velocidad con la que se movía
> la fila de entrada se frenó cuando llegó el grupo afro.
>
> 'Después de la última persona mestiza, el bouncer -persona encargada
> de regular el ingreso- interpuso el cordón de la entrada, habló con
> alguien a través del intercomunicador y nos dijo que no podíamos
> ingresar porque había una fiesta privada y necesitábamos un carné para
> ingresar'. Al manifestar que podían adquirir el documento, les dijeron
> que al interior se festejaban las bodas de plata de una pareja, y que
> esa era la razón para no dejarlos entrar.
>
> Luego Fatimah Williams, una de las norteamericanas, comenzó a hablar
> en inglés con su amiga y asegura ahí sí les permitieron ingresar.
>
> 'Decían que buscaban clase en la clientela, y aquí tener clase es
> tener el pasaporte azul en la frente', afirma esta socióloga, que
> adelanta su investigación doctoral en políticas públicas para
> negritudes.
>
> En Genoveva, cuentan los afectados, les querían cobrar un cover de 30
> mil pesos bajo la excusa que el lugar estaba alquilado para una fiesta
> privada, pero dos investigadoras 'blancas' entraron y descubrieron que
> el sitio estaba casi vacío.
>
> Dueños se defienden
>
> Antonio Turbay, socio de Gavanna y Genoveva, dice que 'el bar es
> abierto a todo tipo de personas' y que el incidente ocurrió porque los
> bouncers no tienen autorización para permitir el ingreso de personas
> sin la aprobación del filtro o de los socios, que en ese momento no se
> encontraban.
>
> El público que asiste al lugar es, según algunos de sus
> copropietarios, el de personas 'chéveres', 'relajadas' y parejas.
> Objetan a 'traquetos', mujeres que consideren 'prepago' -usualmente
> acompañadas de extranjeros- o grupos de hombres solos. Turbay asegura
> que ni él ni su bar son racistas, que tiene amigos negros y que se
> crió con muchos de ellos en su casa de las Islas del Rosario.
>
> Cuestiona, además, la actitud del grupo, a quien finalmente se les
> permitió la entrada, y reconoce que cumplían con el filtro. 'Si no
> hubieran sido agresivos habrían ingresado sin problema. Ellos tienen
> su moda y le habrían dado cierto tinte tropical al bar', dice.
>
> Juancho Méndez, otro de los socios, también niega que su bar sea
> racista. Asegura que sí había una fiesta de los papás de uno de los
> socios y cree que el incidente está inflado. '¿Por qué no hay
> denuncias de los blancos que no dejamos entrar, que sí son muchos?
> Porque devolvemos una vez en un año a cuatro negros hay una denuncia'.
>
> Denunciar, la clave
>
> Olga B. Gutiérrez, directora del Instituto de la Participación y
> Acción Comunal, dice que es importante denunciar los abusos. 'Si no,
> no habrá una cultura jurídica que haga punibles esas prácticas'.
>
> Una sentencia de la Corte Constitucional sobre un sonado caso de
> racismo contra un par de hermanas en discotecas de Cartagena en 2004,
> estableció que ni la raza, el estatus o el nivel socioeconómico pueden
> justificar el rechazo.
>
> Fuentes de la Personería aseguran que las denuncias sobre actos
> discriminatorios son mínimas. La última fue hace dos años y fue
> interpuesta por un estadounidense contra el bar Atmósfera.
>
> Sin embargo, uno de los datos más alarmantes del trabajo de campo es
> el de la responsabilidad de los ciudadanos dentro de los procesos de
> discriminación. 'Ellos la ejercen de manera pasiva, pues nunca
> protestan porque se presentan estos hechos', finaliza otro de los
> estudiantes.
>
> Los afro no aceptan que los discriminan
>
> En el caso de Bogotá el racismo no se manifiesta usualmente de maneras
> violentas, sino dentro de prácticas más sutiles. El Observatorio de
> Discriminación Racial de Los Andes, dirigido por César Rodríguez, ha
> recopilado información sobre rechazo de hojas de vida de personas
> afrodescendientes, persecución de éstas en almacenes y tiendas
> mientras compran e insultos y discriminación a la hora de acceder al
> transporte público.
>
> Una de las prácticas más preocupante es la de las trabas a la hora de
> buscar casa. Según algunos de los 10 denunciantes, les suben el precio
> del inmueble respecto al publicado, les hacen preguntas adicionales en
> los formularios o les dicen que los apartamentos ya han sido
> arrendados y los letreros de oferta continúan puestos. 'Esto permanece
> en el silencio'.
>
> La gente tiende a asimilar esas situaciones como normales en lugar de
> denunciarlas', afirma Rodríguez.
>
> CAMILO SIXTO BAQUERO M.
> REDACTOR EL TIEMPO
> cambaq@eltiempo.com.co
>

AAA Opposes U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System Project

The American Anthropological Association’s Executive Board recently passed a Statement regarding ethical aspects of the U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project. The project, which has received widespread national and international media coverage, embeds anthropologists and other social scientists in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ethical and procedural concerns regarding anthropologists working with U.S. Military and Intelligence agencies have been under investigation by an ad hoc commission of the AAA. The Commission will submit their final report on this subject—which extends beyond the particulars of the HTS project—during the AAA’s Annual Meeting in Washington DC.

To facilitate discussion on this subject, the AAA has created a blog as a forum for members to post comments regarding the Executive Board Statement and related issues.

For more information, see the links below

• AAA Executive Board Statement on HTS
  
• AAA Blog on HTS
  
• AAA Code of Ethics
  
• Info about the Ad Hoc Commission
  
• Media Coverage on the Issue
  

Anthropologists boycott Coke/Antropólogos boicotean a Coca-Cola

In 2006, the American Anthropological Association endorsed the
Colombian union SINALTRAINAL’s call for a boycott against the Coca-Cola Company
and its products.
Association members are urged to support the boycott at the upcoming
AAA meetings in Washington, D.C. and to make their beverage choices
accordingly. The conference hotels and restaurants in the D.C. area have a
range of contracts with soft drink providers. Please be aware that one
of the official conference hotels--the Omni Sheraton--has an exclusive
contract with the Coca-Cola Company and thus only serves Coca-Cola
products. The Marriott Wardman Park hotel, however, does not contract with
the Coca-Cola Company.

The AAA boycott arose from concerns that the Coca-Cola Company has not
done enough to protect workers and their families from intimidation and
violence, has not respected workers’ internationally recognized right
to organize unions, and has not disclosed information that independent
sources can easily verify. Coca-Cola products include Sprite, Fanta,
and Coca-Cola as well as Dasani water and Minutemaid juices.

Please consult the following web page for a complete list of Coca-Cola
products:
http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/brands/brandlist.html.

Anthropology in action

American Anthropological Association Opposes California Law for Stigmatizing Same-Sex Relationships
http://www.aaanet.org/pdf/MA_092807.pdf

American Anthropological Association Supported UN Indigenous Rights Declaration
http://www.aaanet.org/press/PR20070620.htm

Militraizing anthropology or anthropologizing the military?

Anthropology and the US military in Afghanistan
Link

simposio: conocimientos de lo musical. sociedad, cultura y política

Este simposio se va a hacer en el Congreso Nacional de Antropología Colombiana, el 10-14 de
Octubre. Ahí nos vemos!
Enlace

Peter Wade Interview on Música Costeña

Afropop.org has discovered Colombian music - it's been a long time coming but there seems to be a critical mass building around Colombian music in New York, so they went and sought out the expert - English anthropologist Peter Wade. The interview can be found at
http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/114/

The Voice of the Leopard: Abakuá in Cuba and Africa

This very interesting interview by Ned Sublette with Dr. Ivor Miller discusses the political importance of the Abakuá secret societies in the political structure of the Calabar region in Africa and in the formation of Cuban culture. Miller has worked to reconnect African and Cuban adherents of the religion and exposes some of the deep resonances of abakuá in Cuban son. Deep stuff!
Link

The Political Economy of Music, Technology, and Intellectual Property

The link between political economy, technology, intellectual property and music is as old as Edison. We still feel the impact of that today - much of our access to our own musical history (a concept, like Art and Culture, from which the market is supposed to be purged) is totally wrapped up in the market. (link, and another one). So is the actual format and formal logic of music, apparently.

Gilberto Gil wants to get over it all by just letting it all flow, but will that work? Aside from the digital divide problems that, Bill Gates or no Bill Gates, this "free" flow of digital used-to-be-commodities implies, and although ignoring intellectual property is great for creative mash-ups, alternate distribution systems (which have less decommoditized music than informalized its economy), and education, the idea of indigenous and small-scale societies' intellectual property rights often gets overlooked in all the techno-optimism. Projects like the MuDoc digital archive of ethnographic recordings are great, but somewhat lax on intellectual property, or more accurately, assume the person who has the recordings rather than the people featured on the recordings (this is US copyright law) has the right to sign off on their free distribution. This might be the de facto way of things when "cultural groups" (an anthropological chesnut of a notion) are into promoting themselves politically and in terms of cultural tourism through their music and therefore willing to let it flow, but what if they actually want to sell it? After all, even the most backwoods groups are part of the global cash economy, but in order to make money and keep doing things the way they want to (or "preserve their culture" as this is frequently called), the only thing they have to sell is their culture, and assuming that they're happy just to be on YouTube is not always true.

I say all of this not to advocate for draconian intellectual property regimes, but merely to suggest that things like the mp3 are not a frictionless evanescence that simply circulates without engaging ethical, economic, and cultural (see Sterne) issues that a simplistic "let it flow" policy cannot address...

Organ Trade Symposium

Why should an ethnomusicologist care about the organ trade in South Asia? Exchange, exchange, exchange, baby. Political economy, the trajectory of commodities, the social life of things, social networks, 
etc. This is all stuff that we have not looked at when dealing with music recording and distribution. So...

The NYU Critical Perspectives on South Asia Series, the Department of
Anthropology, and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
present:

Lawrence Cohen
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley

"Two Reflections on Operable Life:
Anthropological Surgery and Bodily Commitment"

Thursday, April 12th
5:00-6:30 pm

Room 300 Silver Center
100 Washington Square East


Since 1997 Lawrence Cohen has studied and written about the global
market
in transplant organs, with a focus on understanding emergent practices
of
rendering specific populations "bioavailable" to others. In this talk,
Cohen takes his work on operability in two new directions. He begins to
attempt a genealogy of surgical reason over the twentieth century.
Second,
Cohen turns to the frequently offered linkage in his south Indian
fieldwork (or the refusal of a linkage) between selling a kidney and
"prostitution," to ask how different kinds of givings over the body
come
to be articulated in relation to one another.