探花直播 of Cambridge - social anthropology

Vision in the field: Photography from social anthropology

fpjl2 — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 10:14:01 +0000

探花直播探花直播鈥檚聽Department of Social Anthropology聽studies how people live: what they make, do, think and the organisation of their relationships, societies and cultures.聽Photography聽is a core part of that research. For social anthropologists, this imagery is not just part of the story, but a聽source of insight聽into who people are.

Drowning in a paper sea: India鈥檚 welfare efforts failed by its peculiar bureaucracy

sjr81 — Wed, 20 Jul 2016 23:01:44 +0000

One of the world鈥檚 largest anti-poverty measures 鈥� a scheme designed to guarantee 100 days鈥� work to poor, rural households in India 鈥� has become bogged down in a bureaucratic quagmire, according to recently-published research.

探花直播Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MNREGA) is the subject of Paper Tiger by Cambridge anthropologist Nayanika Mathur. 探花直播Act covers all of India鈥檚 rural population (or about 70% of India鈥檚 1.3 billion people) and is supposed to guarantee work for unskilled labourers at the minimum wage.

Launched amid huge fanfare in February 2006, MNREGA鈥檚 performance continues to be the object of strenuous debate in India. 鈥淢NREGA was put forward as a radical, progressive move, enshrining the right to work,鈥� said Mathur. 鈥淭his was a sophisticated legislation that potentially has a lot of promise. But I wanted to see first hand how a law authored by elites in New Delhi, in English, gets put into practice in one of the poorest parts of India.鈥�

Mathur chose to study this welfarist statute through an innovative anthropological method: embedding herself within the development bureaucracy of the state in a remote and impoverished Himalayan district.

She spent a total of 18 months following the implementation of MNREGA through different levels of the Indian state. Almost a year was spent living in the town of Gopeshwar in Chamoli district, in the remote central Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. With its high levels of poverty, unemployment and distress out-migration, Mathur chose to base her research in the Himalaya to see how MNREGA was 鈥� or wasn鈥檛鈥� being put into practice at a local level.

鈥� 探花直播locals thought I was very odd,鈥� said Mathur. 鈥淭hey weren鈥檛 suspicious of me, but they couldn鈥檛 understand why I was there in the first place. 探花直播bureaucrats, in particular, didn鈥檛 think anything they do is of worth and feel very neglected and distant from the centre. It took months for the awkwardness to subside and for me to be accepted. But the surprise they felt at having someone take (what they consider) their dull, repetitive bureaucratic work seriously, never quite left them.鈥�

As Mathur followed the MNREGA around the high Himalaya she was surprised to hear it described as an 鈥渦nimplementable鈥� programme. Despite the desperate need for employment opportunities in rural Himalaya, the welfare scheme was conspicuous by its absence. Paper Tiger, as it meticulously traces the implementation of the MNREGA, presents some surprising findings.

探花直播book argues that MNREGA has largely failed, not because of corruption (as is commonly assumed), but because of its anti-corruption measures. In her role as a participant-observer in small, crumbling government offices in Himalayan India, Mathur found that the legal requirement for transparent functioning had led to an exponential increase in the paperwork demanded of the state bureaucracy. Along with its sheer laboriousness and complexity, this paperwork was intervening in the聽traditional system of operation of welfare leading to a complete paralysis in welfare.

探花直播extreme reliance on paper, documents, and files in the Indian bureaucracy has a complicated history in India and can be traced back to the operations of the British colonial state in India. Mathur argues that the seemingly-new drive to hold the contemporary Indian state accountable to its citizenry is, in fact, aggravating the documentary foundations of its bureaucracy.

鈥淚ronically, it is the requirements to render the Indian state transparent and accountable that introduced a crisis of implementation with MNREGA,鈥� notes Mathur.

探花直播drive for transparency at a national level also produced problems specific to the region where Mathur conducted her research. In order to stem corruption, a directive was issued asking for all wages to be paid through bank accounts. This created huge problems in the Himalayas where there are very few bank branches, and those that do exist were located miles away from most villages.

Most problematically, women were at risk of losing control over their own wages as they became dependent either on middlemen or male relatives to operate bank accounts for them. Unwittingly, the push for financial transparency had ended up creating an anti-women system.

Despite its evident problems, Mathur believes the Act is a clever, canny piece of legislation. In Paper Tiger, she uses the crisis in the implementation of MNREGA as a case study that helps make broader arguments about the nature of the state 鈥� and what it means when welfare schemes are found not to be working as they should.

Added Mathur: 鈥淢y study of the operations of the state in the Indian Himalaya, allows for an understanding of the failure of the developmental Indian state that is not predicated upon corruption, violence, incapacity, sloth, or simple dysfunction.鈥�

鈥淩ather, my attempt here is to make us understand what the welfare state in practice is. For it is only when we really get our heads round the very nature of the beast can we hope to ever reform it.鈥�

India鈥檚 sophisticated laws and progressive policies fail with startling regularity. A new study locates a possible reason as to why in the convoluted bureaucratic system of the Indian state and its obsession with paper

I wanted to see first hand how a law authored by elites in New Delhi, in English, gets put into practice in one of the poorest parts of India.

Nayanika Mathur

A full-page newspaper advert used to promote MNREGA

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Rivers beyond Regeneration

tdk25 — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 09:00:09 +0000

Thanks in no small part to the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker, which dramatized his work, William Halse Rivers is best known to history as the man who pioneered humane treatments for shell-shocked British officers during World War I, striking up a lifelong friendship with the poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Six years earlier, however, the Cambridge polymath had rewritten the script of an entirely different discipline. Working in the Solomon Islands alongside a fellow-researcher, Arthur Hocart, Rivers transformed the study of human society, helping to establish the modern field of social anthropology.

Yet despite its foundational importance, the work has remained little-studied or known 鈥� partly because subsequent academics wrote it out of history in the course of laying claim to similar ideas. Now, a new book about the 1908 Solomon Islands expedition is attempting to correct that, revisiting the anthropological work of Rivers in Island Melanesia, and examining the impact of these half-forgotten contributions by a man better remembered for his compassionate treatment of soldiers who had been traumatised on the Western Front.

It also reveals the fascinating possibility that, as he revisited this earlier research after the war, Rivers鈥� upsetting experiences working with soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder bled into his work in the Solomons. At the time of his death, in 1922, he may have believed that society itself could be affected by a type of 鈥渟hell-shock鈥�, and that this had devastated indigenous populations in the Pacific.

探花直播book, 探花直播Ethnographic Experiment: AM Hocart and WHR Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908, features contributions from current researchers who, following Rivers鈥� and Hocart鈥檚 lead, have since carried out their own fieldwork in Melanesia. It will be launched on November 4 at St John鈥檚 College, 探花直播 of Cambridge, where Rivers himself was a Fellow.

Tim Bayliss-Smith, Professor of Pacific Geography, and a contributor to the book said: 鈥淥ne of the reasons that Rivers was unusual was that he did so many things. He was a medic, psychologist, anthropologist, and famously served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. People have tended to look at those three careers from separate points of view, but it may not actually be possible to separate them completely.鈥�

鈥淢odern anthropology is often seen as having begun in the 1920s, when researchers pioneered an approach to studying societies that involved immersing themselves in the culture they were looking at, learning the language, participating and observing. But a lot of that was attempted, and to some extent achieved, by Rivers and Hocart in 1908, working with Solomon Islanders. What they recorded and did provided inspiration for a lot of anthropologists who have come since.鈥�

Born in 1864, William Rivers originally trained in medical science, but gradually he became interested in the emerging fields of neurology and psychology 鈥� especially sensory phenomena and mental states.

At the same time, he also began to take an interest in the study of human society and culture. It was this that took him to the Torres Straits islands in 1898 and then to Melanesia in 1908, where he and Hocart sought to examine what now seems an archaic idea 鈥� that human societies had 鈥渆volved鈥� through several stages of development and that the indigenous peoples of the British-controlled Solomon Islands, supposedly at an earlier stage, would display examples of the transition from a matrilineal to a patrilineal social organisation.

Although the expedition sprang from what is now an outdated hypothesis, the method the two used was, in the eyes of the new book鈥檚 authors, modern 鈥渁nthropology in the making鈥�.

Working on the small island of Simbo, the researchers pioneered what is now known as 鈥減articipant observation鈥�, living among the local people, and immersing themselves in their culture and everyday lives. Within the emerging social sciences this had not been done before, and it marked a turning point in the way in which Western thinkers attempted to understand societies their predecessors had considered exotic, remote, primitive and savage.

Because it was smaller and less well-documented than later, similar research, the six-month experiment was largely forgotten. Rivers and Hocart parted ways immediately after, and World War I found Rivers undertaking what became far more famous work at the military psychiatric hospital at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, where he treated British officers who were suffering from shell-shock.

Deviating from standard approaches such as electric shock treatment, Rivers instead pioneered what a 鈥渢alking cure鈥�, which relied on encouraging patients to discuss their experiences and emotions. His work with Sassoon later provided much of the inspiration for Pat Barker鈥檚 1991 novel, Regeneration.

探花直播new study suggests that some of this work may have stemmed from Rivers鈥� experiences in the Solomons, where he witnessed indigenous 鈥渉ealers鈥� curing traumatised people through discussion and suggestion in a similar way.

Perhaps more strikingly, however, Bayliss-Smith suggests that Rivers鈥� wartime psychiatric contribution may have subsequently blended with his thoughts about Melanesia. Returning to Cambridge after the war, he appears to have begun to form the view that societies could suffer the same sort of post-traumatic stress as he had witnessed in soldiers. When he suddenly died in 1922, Rivers may have been close to diagnosing this societal 鈥渟hell-shock鈥� in Melanesia.

探花直播basis for this appears to have been genealogical information, which Rivers had compiled in 1908, and which showed that the indigenous population of the Solomon Islands had declined because of low fertility rates after the coming of British colonial power. After the war, he seems to have begun to theorise that the British Empire鈥檚 arrival delivered a destabilising psychological blow to Melanesian society that equated, on a much larger scale, to that experienced by individual soldiers in the trenches, and left it unable to function normally.

In particular, he argued that it had left women reluctant to conceive, eager to secure abortions and neglectful of their children. 鈥� 探花直播people say to themselves, 鈥榃hy should we bring children into the world only to work for the white man?鈥欌€� Rivers wrote. 鈥淢easures which, before the coming of the European, were used chiefly to prevent illegitimacy have become the instrument of racial suicide.鈥�

Bayliss-Smith suggests that Rivers鈥� emerging ideas about colonialism as shell-shock were a work in progress, interrupted by his sudden death in 1922. 鈥淩ivers seems to have believed that the psychic equilibrium of Melanesians had become unbalanced,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n their own way, Simbo Islanders were victims of a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and their case was somewhat parallel to the British soldiers and airmen who survived the mass slaughter of the First World War, only to become victims of shell-shock.鈥�

鈥淗istorical demographers today place far more emphasis on the insidious impacts of introduced disease in the Pacific islands. It is ironic that Rivers, the medical doctor, almost completely overlooked disease, a reflection perhaps of his new mindset following the traumas of World War I.鈥�

探花直播Ethnographic Experiment: AM Hocart and WHR Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908 is published by Berghahn Books. 探花直播book will be launched at an event at St John鈥檚 College, Cambridge, on November 4.

Best-known for his treatment of shell-shock victims in World War I, a new study examines William Rivers鈥� crucial, but often overlooked contributions to the study of human culture 鈥� revealing how, late in his career, they led him to believe that society as a whole could suffer from 鈥渟hell-shock鈥�.

Rivers seems to have believed that the psychic equilibrium of Melanesians had become unbalanced. In their own way, they were victims of a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, somewhat parallel to the British soldiers who became victims of shell-shock.

Tim Bayliss-Smith

St John's College, Cambridge

Detail from a portrait of William Halse Rivers in his Royal Army Medical Corps uniform.

探花直播text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page. For image rights, please see the credits associated with each individual image.

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Looking for the good

amb206 — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 07:00:00 +0000

In the early 1990s, Professor Joel Robbins spent more than two years living with the Urapmin, a group of people in the far western highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG).聽 He was a graduate student in anthropology at the 探花直播 of Virginia and it was his first extended experience of a culture strikingly different to his own. He slept in a house made of local bush materials, ate taro and sweet potato for every meal, hunted marsupials (鈥渨ith notable lack of success鈥�) and learned to speak the Urap tongue, a language with only about 400 speakers. It was, he says, a profoundly stimulating experience.

His time living in the Urapmin community prompted Robbins to ask a series of questions that have guided his inquiries ever since. 探花直播experiences he had in PNG set him on a trajectory that has led him to propose new theoretical frameworks for anthropology that look beyond older ways of understanding cultural differences and making comparisons.聽 He first turned to the question of how to understand radical cultural change, and he has more recently worked to identify cross-cultural variation in deeply embedded moral and ethical codes. He calls this latter approach 'the anthropology of the good'.

Described in simple terms, anthropology is the study of humans, and the fascinatingly complex ways in which we live, both now and in the past. Robbins, who arrived in Cambridge last year to take up the Sigrid Rausing Chair of Social Anthropology, is a sociocultural anthropologist. He has become increasingly interested in the path that anthropology has taken over the past 20 years in its study of people and how its changing focus reflects shifts in our collective preoccupations.

Until the late 1980s, anthropologists typically studied 鈥榯he other,鈥� concentrating their attentions on people whose cultures appeared radically different from their own. Famously, the American anthropologist Margaret Mead returned from Samoa to report that adolescence was handled in ways that contrasted sharply with those observed in the West. Television documentaries focusing on聽encounters with聽remote communities perpetuate the image of the anthropologist as intrepid traveller, risking life and limb to document exotic tribal societies in action.

探花直播anthropological study of such 鈥渙thers鈥� was based on an assumption that culture is something deeply rooted in people and acts as enduring glue through generations 鈥� especially so in the remote and exotic parts of the world that acted for so long as magnets for anthropological fieldworkers.聽 What Robbins observed as a young anthropologist in PNG challenged these assumptions in a way that fired his curiosity and set him on course to study the tricky question of cultural change.

鈥� 探花直播Urapmin are a remote community - even by PNG standards. There鈥檚 no road connecting them to the nearest town or even to their closest neighbours. They have no electricity and they participate very little in the market economy. Because they are so hard to reach, and because so few people speak the Urap language, Western missionaries did not make attempts to convert them,鈥� said Robbins.

鈥淗owever, in the late 1970s the Urapmin joined a charismatic Christian revival movement that was sweeping through PNG. Within a year, the entire population had converted and since 1978 the Urapmin have seen themselves as a completely Christianised community in which their traditional religion has no role to play. Achieving salvation in Christian terms became one of their most important collective aspirations.

鈥滻n embracing Christianity, the Urapmin transformed many aspects of their culture. In the space of just a few months, they rejected their highly elaborate traditional religious system and abandoned the taboos that had for generations shaped most aspects of their daily lives. They tore down their cult houses, threw away the ancestral bones that had been at the centre of their ritual life, and began to pray. 探花直播Christian code they adopted was singularly strict, demanding a high level of emotional and moral self-regulation.

鈥淥ne of the questions I began to ask myself was: what can we learn about the nature of both culture and cultural changes by studying in detail such processes of dramatic transformation,鈥� said Robbins. 鈥淭his led me to engage deeply with anthropological theory, questioning long-standing assumptions about the enduring nature of traditions.鈥�

On his return from PNG, Robbins wrote a number of works that argued that although newly converted, the Urapmin were deeply engaged with Christian ideas and ways of living.聽聽 He went on to help make a name for the anthropological study of Christianity, a religion that the field had largely ignored because, familiar to most Western researchers, it lacked the difference factor anthropologists looked for.聽

Pursuing his interest both in Christianity and in cultural change, Robbins began carrying out comparative, literature based research on Pentecostal communities in South America and Africa. Along with Asia and the Pacific Islands, both these regions have seen a rapid growth of Pentecostalism which is fostering everywhere the kinds of dramatic cultural changes it brought about in Urapmin.聽

Given the moral strictness of Pentecostal churches, and of Urapmin Christianity in particular, Robbins has also had a long-standing interest in the anthropology of ethics, a major strength of Cambridge anthropology.聽聽 This has formed the basis of his most recent theoretical work.

探花直播late 1980s saw a shift take place away from the older anthropology focused on 'the other' or 'the exotic鈥� 鈥� away from an anthropology focused on striking cultural differences.聽 In its place has arisen an approach that Robbins describes as the 鈥榓nthropology of the suffering鈥� in which researchers focus their inquiries on people who are in some sense victims 鈥� the poor and dispossessed, refugees and migrants, oppressed and marginalised communities 鈥� and whose plight and pain connects them to anthropologists and their readers in ways that are understood as a universal part of the human condition.聽

Robbins has recently argued that this anthropology of suffering needs to be complemented with an anthropology of the good that returns to questions of cultural difference, though this time focused on differences in the ways people define and try to accomplish what they see as valuable.

It鈥檚 significant that Robbins has chosen to concentrate on the good 鈥� a concept that鈥檚 notoriously elusive. 鈥淚f you ask people to define what is bad, most will agree that certain actions 鈥� with murder and torture and a few others at the top of the list 鈥� are the opposite of good.聽 Consensus about what constitutes good, and how we separate this from bad, is harder to pin down,鈥� he said.

鈥淲hat I have seen emerging in recent anthropology is a focus on such topics as value and morality, well-being and empathy as well as hope, time and change.聽 Research in these areas helps us to understand the wide cross-cultural diversity in understandings of the good. 探花直播shift to studying such topics has coincided with worldwide concern about human rights and with an explosion in NGOs seeking to foster their own versions of the good in various places.鈥�

Researchers in the arts, humanities and social sciences are increasingly asked to demonstrate the value of their work to society. What does anthropology offer that benefits the world? 鈥淯ntil recently anthropology was a discipline that saw its critical mission as demonstrating that people lived differently in different places. It used those differences to unsettle people鈥檚 assumptions that their own ways of life were the only natural and valuable ones 鈥� it sought to broaden our worldview,鈥� said Robbins.

鈥淣ow we are beginning to see the emergence of new ways of thinking about cultures and I am working to develop an approach to anthropology that encourages a comparative study of how different societies conceive the good. NGOs, for example, have sets of values which they seek to apply in societies which may have moral codes to their own. In attempting to identify these differences, anthropology can make a valuable contribution to global discussions of what should count as pressing social problems and about how to find practical solutions to them.鈥澛�

To illustrate his point about the benefits of understanding the values that lie beneath cultural practices, Robbins returns to his study of the Urapmin. 鈥淲hen someone dies in Urapmin, the people who lived with the deceased go to a great deal of trouble to present relatives who have been living elsewhere with a major gift of bows, arrows, hand-woven string bags, cash and local shell money. 探花直播recipients do not take everything that鈥檚 offered to them but choose only those items for which they can quickly supply a precisely matching return gift. Then a week later, they invite the original givers to a feast and present them with equivalent gifts,鈥� he said.

鈥淭his is only one example of the occasions when the Urapmin make a major effort to give each other the same things with little or no delay. Savvy now about the market economy, Urapmin are quick to point out that these exchanges make no 鈥榩rofit鈥�.聽 Asked why they invest so much time and energy in reciprocation of matching items, their explanation involves the notion that these kinds of exchanges develop and deepen relationships, particularly in the face of events like death or dispute that threaten to destroy them.鈥澛�

We might say, Robbins suggests, that creating new relationships and strengthening existing ones is one of the primary ways in which the Urapmin seek to foster what they define as the good.

鈥� 探花直播challenge is how to expand our own notions of the good so that they can encompass such possibilities as the emphasis the Urapmin put on the value of relationships.聽探花直播anthropology of good is in its nascent stages. It can be supported by many kinds of anthropological research already being undertaken from a range of other theoretical perspectives,鈥� he said.聽

鈥淲ere it to realise its promise, the hope is that anthropology might not only broaden our understandings of the diverse kinds of lives people live in different places, but that it might also help to expand our ways of thinking about such topics as development and justice that do so much to organise contemporary approaches to the wider world.鈥�

探花直播image accompanying this story is taken from Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society by Joel Robbins, published by Berkeley: 探花直播 of California Press (2004).

聽

Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the 鈥榦ther鈥� and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the 鈥榮uffering鈥�. In identifying ways that anthropology can contribute to solutions for world problems, Professor Joel Robbins proposes an approach he calls the 鈥榓nthropology of the good鈥�.

If you ask people to define what is bad, most will agree that certain actions 鈥� with murder and torture at the top of the list 鈥� are the opposite of good. Consensus about what constitutes good, and how we separate this from bad, is harder to pin down.

Joel Robbins

An exchange taking place between the Urapmin people, Papua New Guinea

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Reporting from Zimbabwe: a visit to Harare鈥檚 biggest township

amb206 — Sat, 17 Aug 2013 08:00:00 +0000

My first day in Harare is a blur of opulence and finery at the city鈥檚 only five star hotel, Meikles, which sits proudly on its own private road defended by armed guards. This is the kind of lifestyle that the ruling elite enjoy, and it seems miles away from the Zimbabwe that I have become familiar with.

I鈥檓 here to attend a conference as part of my research, but as the meeting draws to a close I鈥檓 somewhat relieved to escape the rows of crisp white tables, lunch buffets, and circular chitchat to see the city as it 鈥榬eally鈥� is. I leave, dashing out into the roaring traffic to meet a friend of my grandfather鈥檚, who is sitting in his shiny development agency pick-up truck.

Andreas has been living and working here for 30 years. He responds rather wearily to my initial question: 鈥淲hen did you first come to Zimbabwe?鈥� 鈥淚 came here in 1982, just after Independence. But it鈥檚 my home now. I have lived here longer than I did in Europe. I鈥檓 part of the country.鈥�

He introduces me to his secretary, Mosie, who is smiling broadly from the back seat. She cackles with laughter at most of what is said between us, and she鈥檚 particularly amused when Andreas jumps a red light. No-one else on the road seems to notice his transgression.

As our first few minutes of conversation lurch about, Mosie keeps bursting out the word 鈥楳bare鈥� from the back seat. At first I鈥檓 not sure what her interjections mean. 鈥楳bare. Please, Mbare!鈥� Andreas turns to face her and says: 鈥淵ou want to take her to Mbare? I鈥檓 not sure if she will want to go.鈥� He faces me. 鈥淗ow do you feel about visiting Mbare? It鈥檚 our biggest township.鈥�

I agree, curious to see the city鈥檚 other side. Mosie鈥檚 enthusiasm is palpable. As we approach the township, Andreas explains that it鈥檚 famous for its vast market. 鈥淵ou can buy anything there, including the parts they stole from your car the night before!鈥�

We jump out, and quickly we鈥檙e immersed in the chaos of the market. Andreas is right 鈥� everything is here, often in the most bizarre combinations. Someone sells workman鈥檚 overalls alongside net curtains, another stall displays barbed wire alongside laundry powder - and a third proffers tomatoes along with mobile phone cases.

In the market, it鈥檚 not so evident that this country faced such acute economic crisis only a few years ago. In fact, its bustling nature is probably testament to the slump in the formal economy. Back then supermarkets were completely empty, and street-traders met the demand for goods, seizing the chance to develop the black market. By late 2008, the so-called 鈥榠nformal economy鈥� was the dominant means of exchange for most people, and Mbare has flourished ever since.

As we wind through the endless corridors created by the tight-knit shacks of market-sellers, I notice lots of people wearing lime green t-shirts with the words, 鈥業ndigenize, Empower, Develop, Employ鈥�, across the back. A single word is emblazoned on the front: 鈥楻evive鈥�. At first this puzzles me, but I realise later that it鈥檚 a Zanu-PF slogan. Mugabe is often quoted saying exactly these words.

Listening to Mugabe鈥檚 speeches is a bewildering experience. They鈥檙e full of the rhetoric of 鈥榠ndigenization,鈥� the process that seeks to make black Zimbabweans the dominant economic stakeholders in the country. He鈥檚 been repeating these statements for at least 15 years. This policy led to the expulsion of most foreign investors from the country and was used to justify the 鈥榠nvasions鈥� of white-owned farms that began around 2000.

Mugabe continues to blame (not entirely without reason) economic sanctions and the 鈥榠mperialist鈥� policies of Western governments, primarily those based in London and Washington, for the country鈥檚 financial plight.

To the outsider, it seems that a multitude of other factors initiated the country鈥檚 downward spiral: the government鈥檚 expensive involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the late 1990s; the unbudgeted and continuing handouts to war veterans; the annihilation of the commercial farming sector caused by farm invasions; and the government鈥檚 reckless printing of more and more and more currency to cover its mushrooming costs.

These factors never appear in any of Zanu-PF鈥檚 official statements; it continues to blame the scheming West for attempting to destroy the defiant nationalist government. In Mugabe鈥檚 first post-election broadcast on Monday, he exclaimed: 鈥淲e are delivering democracy on a platter. We say take it or leave it.鈥�

There鈥檚 a madness and mania to this kind of language that somehow seems to work. If you don鈥檛 buy it, this rhetoric simply goes straight over your head; to you and me, Mugabe鈥檚 speeches appear to have the hallmarks of insanity. But the crucial part is that if you relate to this language, every utterance is deeply meaningful and painfully truthful.

As we come to the edge of the market, Mosie invites me to her family home. We are approaching what seem to be large, post-war housing blocks, the kind not unfamiliar in the UK.

But as we enter the first corridor, the stench of rotting food and human waste is almost overwhelming. 探花直播floors are covered in puddles of stagnant water that reflect the long, unlit walkway. We climb up to the fifth floor; I notice that the roof the floor above, which is the top storey, has mostly fallen in.

Mosie鈥檚 family house is just one room, like every other residence in this building. A curtain divides the room in half, separating the living space from the sleeping area. A sofa and two well-worn armchairs occupy most of the space. Six people sit on these; all of them live here. 探花直播opposite wall is piled almost to the ceiling with cooking equipment, food, brooms and various other indicators of human life. It鈥檚 hot, and it smells bad. 探花直播air is heavy and humid.

A space is made for me on the sofa, and I鈥檓 offered a biscuit, which I gratefully accept. Everyone speaks a smattering of English, and conversation is initiated with the rather direct: 鈥淒o you believe in God?鈥� I answer in the affirmative, which is the only real option if I am to stay here any longer, and I notice the Christian pop music playing in the background. 探花直播chorus repeats: 鈥淛esus is my candle and salvation.鈥�

There are numerous Christian denominations in Zimbabwe, many of them unknown to most people in the UK. When people ask me what denomination I am, and I answer Anglican, they always want to know what type of Anglican. I explain that there are fewer types of churches in the UK, and that I attend my parish church. Mosie鈥檚 older brother replies: 鈥淎h yes. In Zimbabwe we have many, many churches!鈥�

I鈥檓 curious about this, so ask him why he thinks there are so many. He answers as if it is obvious: 鈥淏ecause God uses poverty as a weapon to get people to church.鈥� I look down at my hands, suddenly uncomfortable and aware of my comparative wealth. I hear Mosie鈥檚 mother say the word 鈥渄ollar鈥�, which Mosie snaps back at, but I know she wants to ask me for money.

When I leave half an hour later, uncertain about what鈥檚 the right thing to do, I produce $10 from my purse. 探花直播adult family members beam at me, and take it in turns to shake my hand. Mosie鈥檚 mother even starts to cry, but Mosie is quick to tell her off. Their response is overwhelming and conflicting. I know my $10 will do nothing to alleviate their poverty 鈥� by next week it will be gone. Even more so, it will do nothing change the fact that Mbare exists. I feel sad, confused and out of place.

As we leave, Mosie鈥檚 father leads me down the stairs. Mugabe鈥檚 face grins from the back of his shirt, a reminder of the 2008 presidential election. I hear later Zanu-PF have just won the Mbare constituency. This place seems riddled with contradiction and uncertainty. I don鈥檛 know if I can tie together all the threads that hang loose around Mbare, Harare, and Zimbabwe. There doesn鈥檛 seem to be any easy way to fit together all the pieces that I鈥檝e seen of the puzzle.

探花直播elections that took place two weeks ago were somehow rigged; that much is clear. International consensus is now that they were 鈥榝ree but not fair鈥� (whatever that really means). One hears a lot about 鈥榠rregularities鈥� and 鈥榓ssisted voting鈥� in the papers, but no-one is entirely clear on how the election was won.

It is crucial to understand, however, that not every vote for Mugabe was achieved by beating people senseless or stuffing the ballot boxes. He has, amazingly, retained (and even regained) a firm support base, and there are many who delight in his frenzied monologues. Although we are now over 30 years from independence, race still plays a crucial dynamic in Zimbabwean politics, and it is this that Mugabe continues to seize upon with so much success.

Mbare residents have many reasons to abhor him: their neighbourhood has suffered particularly brutal onslaughts. June 2005 saw the infamous government 鈥極peration Murambatsvina鈥� that literally bulldozed small enterprises, like the homemade stalls of Mbare township, and crushed most of the places where these sellers had operated. It was an attempt to control by destroying even the smallest industry that had clung on through the years of degeneration. It鈥檚 generally thought that Zanu-PF was paranoid that the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was winning support here. 鈥極peration Murambatsvina鈥�, which translates as 鈥榦peration to drive out rubbish鈥�, was an attempt to crush support for MDC by destroying people's livelihoods.

Despite this, the only election posters I see here are for Zanu-PF. Many people wear t-shirts emblazoned with Mugabe鈥檚 image, just like Mosie鈥檚 father. This is not somewhere I would readily bring up politics, but it鈥檚 clear that there is support. It seems likely that Mugabe retains people鈥檚 support on the basis of his racial and anti-colonial rhetoric, which evidently retains a deep and powerful appeal for many.

探花直播鈥榠ndigenization鈥� programme has garnered a lot of support from the poorest Zimbabweans. 探花直播world, viewed from another angle, makes sense that way. 探花直播painful irony for me is that Mugabe now occupies the same position of privilege and 鈥榦ppressor鈥� as those he has spent his entire life condemning.

That evening as Andreas and I drive back to his house, it occurs to me that Zimbabwe is once again a one-party state. Having gone through a tentative few years of the Government of National Unity, in which MDC shared power with Zanu-PF, the dominant party has now regained control. Morgan Tsvangari has lost (or rather, failed to win) three consecutive elections 鈥� and his political career is effectively over.

MDC鈥檚 inclusion in government gave Zanu-PF another scapegoat 鈥� Tsvangari. MDC continues to be accused of being a puppet of the West. 探花直播problems of the last five years were simply deflected by Zanu-PF onto their rivals. This is what Mugabe meant when he said on Monday: 鈥淲e found we were dining with and sharing our bed with thieves. We will never give thieves the power to rule.鈥�

There has been much talk of a 鈥榮econd liberation鈥� for the people of Zimbabwe, now that MDC has been defeated. This may sound like the hyperbole of a madman, but there are thousands, if not millions, who remain loyal to a man that his put his country through so much. Understanding that Mugabe still has support, even from those who have clearly suffered under his rule, is critical to understanding Zimbabwe. Loyalty to him is still widespread, especially so among the poorest. For 30 years he has successfully cast himself as the revolutionary war hero who liberated his country from oppression, and it seems to still be working.

To protect the identity of the family in this report, Rowan Jones is a pseudonym. Other names have also been changed.

For more information about this story, contact Alex Buxton, Office of Communications, 探花直播 of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673

All images credit: Rowan Jones
聽

In the township of Mbare, anthropology student Rowan Jones finds a complex picture of poverty and propaganda - plus a baffling level of support for Mugabe. In her second report from this troubled nation, she digs into recent political history to make sense of what she encounters.聽

鈥淲e are delivering democracy on a platter. We say take it or leave it.鈥�

Mugabe gives his first post-election broadcast

Rowan Jones

探花直播communal area between Mbare housing blocks. Inside the one-roomed homes there are no toilets or sanitation facilities, so washing and laundry happen in communal areas. Many families prefer to cook on open fires, which occupy empty ground between block

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Shooting in the field: capturing life as it鈥檚 lived

fpjl2 — Wed, 14 Aug 2013 09:58:45 +0000

A woman holds her two children standing in front of their house, reduced to rubble after an earthquake. They wear no coats, one child has no shoes and there is snow on the ground. Residents in the block of flats behind - where the woman鈥檚 husband works as housekeeper - have just moved back into renovated apartments, while the family in the picture have yet to receive any state help.

Taken by Marlene Sch盲fers in the city of Van in eastern Turkey, this photograph is just one example of how social anthropologists often return from their fieldwork with compelling and deeply moving glimpses of life in very different parts of the world. Following a competition in the Division of Social anthropology, this image - along with dozens of others like it - is now being shared online for the first time.

探花直播aim is to celebrate the diverse range of research carried out by students. Current PhD candidates are conducting research in Russia, Bengal, Bhutan, Vietnam, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as in the UK.

探花直播very nature of research carried out by Social Anthropologists lends itself to visually stunning results. In order to study how people live 鈥� what they make, do, think and the organisation of their social relationships, societies and cultures 鈥� it is necessary to record this in a visual as well as written or audio form.

As a result we see an ethnographic picture of lives lived in places many of us will never experience for ourselves. While tales of people and cultures involved in the students鈥� research are both fascinating and poignant, photographs can complete the story and bring it alive for the reader.

For the competition, PhD students were asked to submit three photographs, along with a short narrative on their research. 探花直播judging panel, comprising of senior faculty members from the department, felt the overall standard of the competition was 鈥渋mpressive鈥� with almost all of the images being of 鈥渆xhibition quality鈥�. However, because of the high standard the judges felt that 鈥渢wo entries of equal merit stood out above the others鈥� and were therefore awarded joint first prize.

探花直播first of these is Jonathan Taee. His research takes place in Bhutan where, since the 1960鈥檚, the government has attempted to emerge as a modern nation state. As part of this process, it has encouraged development of the Ministry of Health to provide a range of institutionalised health services to the Bhutanese population.

In efforts to merge modern development whilst maintaining and preserving cultural identity, patients are offered two diagnostic and treatment paths.聽 Firstly, biomedical hospitals, providing standard 鈥榳estern鈥� medicine, and secondly the National Traditional Medicine Hospital that offers Sowa-Rigpa, a practice based on the medical texts commonly attributed to the Buddha.

As well as both these forms of medicine being offered nationwide, patients may also seek out alternative options - such as ritual healers, shamans and bone-setters - and commonly use a combination of state and alternative healthcare providers, resulting in a complex healing process.

Jonathan鈥檚 photographs span the cultural and social aspects of his research. We see a woman receiving modern medical assistance following an incident of domestic violence, but also a man hunting for Cordyceps 鈥� a fungus of enormous value in traditional Chinese medicine 鈥� and a gloriously colourful display of Mongar Dzong Tshechu, a historical folk dance performed at a festival in Eastern Bhutan.

鈥淚 spent a year living in Thimphu, Mongar and other locations conducting ethnographic research with patients, practitioners and their families to explore health-seeking narratives, examining how, when, where and why patients are using the available assortment of practices, and what effects this medical pluralism may have on their experiences of sickness and amelioration,鈥� said Jonathan.

" 探花直播photographs captured a few of my most memorable moments in the field that are deeply connected to my ethnographic work. I am very appreciative that I can share these moments with a wider audience.鈥�

Also in joint first place was John Fahy, whose fieldwork has taken place in the Nadia district of West Bengal, close to the Bangladesh border.

探花直播spiritual headquarters of 探花直播International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in Mayapur, 130km north of Kolkata, is home to the Vaishnavas, a diverse spectrum of members of a religious tradition from all over the world. 探花直播Vaishnavas are unified by the shared purpose of worshipping and serving the Hindu god Krishna. They also share a deep reverence for the 16th century saint, Sri Chaitanya Mahaphrabu who they consider to be a full incarnation of Lord Krishna, but disagree on some essential doctrinal and practical issues.

探花直播focus of John鈥檚 research is to seek understanding of the channels through which conviction and belief are forged in a temple environment where people鈥檚 views differ considerably. 鈥淚 aim to investigate the various 鈥榳ays of knowing鈥� in the temple, as are negotiated between the social and the self through everyday interactions in Mayapur,鈥� he said.

Taken from the town of Mayapur and from further afield Kolkata, John鈥檚 pictures record the social activities of people who live according to Gaudiya Vaishnava teachings. Local Mayapur women take oxen to bathe in the Ganges; a crowded ferry boat travels from Mayapur to Nabadwip; and in a Kolkata market, a man sells vegetables with his family in tow.

Photography is becoming increasingly central to how academia tells the world about research. For social anthropologists, these images are not just part of the story they want to tell, but a possible clue to the behaviour of that most complex and unpredictable of species - us.

A student photography competition showcases some of the stunning visuals that result from modern Social Anthropology research

探花直播photographs captured a few of my most memorable moments in the field that are deeply connected to my ethnographic work

Jonathan Taee

Hunting Cordyceps in Bhutan

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Rainforest remedy could spell end of dental pain

sjr81 — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:40:18 +0000

探花直播remedy, made from an Amazonian plant species from varieties of Acmella Oleracea and turned into a gel for medical use, has proved hugely successful during the first two phases of clinical trials and may hasten the end of current reliance on local anaesthetics in dental use and Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs) in specific applications.

Cambridge 探花直播 anthropologist Dr Fran莽oise Barbira Freedman, the first westerner to be invited to live with the Keshwa Lamas in Amazonian Peru, is leading efforts to bring this wholly natural painkiller to the global marketplace as an organic alternative to synthetic painkillers.

In doing so, the company she founded, Ampika Ltd (a spin-out from Cambridge Enterprise, the 探花直播鈥檚 commercialisation arm) will be run according to strict ethical guidelines, and will be able to channel a percentage of any future profits back to the Keshwa Lamas community who agreed to share their expertise with her.

With no known side-effects during the past five years of Phase I and II trials, Dr Freedman, who has continued to visit and live among the Keshwa Lamas over the past 30 years, is confident the stringent Phase III trials (multi-location trials across a diverse population mix) will be the final hurdle to clear. If successful, Ampika鈥檚 plan is to bring the product to market in 2014/15.

She said: 鈥� 探花直播story began in 1975 when I first went to live among the indigenous people of Peru. We were trekking through the rainforest and I was having terrible trouble with my wisdom teeth. One of the men with me noticed and prepared a little wad of plants to bite onto. 探花直播pain went away. When it came back a few hours later, he had foreseen the need and kept plant material in his hunters鈥� bag for me.

鈥淚 forgot all about the wisdom teeth problem for many years until Cambridge-based neuroscientist Dr Mark Treherne asked me to bring some medicinal plant samples back in order to test them for neurological research. Almost as an afterthought I remembered to include the one I鈥檇 used on my teeth. It was added to the bottom of the list, but somehow the list got reversed and it was the first one tested back in the UK. It was immediately successful and we鈥檝e never looked back.

鈥淒uring the time I have spent with the Keshwa Lamas I鈥檝e learnt all about the different plants and leaves they use for everyday illnesses and ailments. I first went to Peru as a young researcher hoping to learn more about what was a secretive community who were experts in shamanism. Along the way I鈥檝e learnt a great deal about natural medicines and remedies; everything from toothache to childbirth.鈥�

鈥淭his treatment for toothache means we could be looking at the end of some injections in the dentist鈥檚 surgery. We鈥檝e had really clear result from the tests so far, particularly for peridodontological procedures such as root scaling and planing, and there are many other potential applications. 探花直播native forest people described to me exactly how the medicine could and should work and they were absolutely right. There are a range of mucous tissue applications it could benefit, and may even help bowel complaints such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).鈥�

探花直播Keshwa Lamas remedy represents the first clinical trial of a natural product in Peru using the International Convention of Clinical Trials, of which Peru is a signatory, the gold-standard for clinical trials that is recognised across the Pacific and Atlantic regions.

Dr Freedman, who will visit the Peruvian community again in the coming weeks, has already been able to channel some early funding to the Keshwa Lama to help in the creation of a medicinal plant garden to conserve plants and plant knowledge related to women鈥檚 health and maternity care 鈥� with the express aim of preserving wisdom for future generations.

She added: 鈥淲e think the remedy is better than current treatments because NSAID drugs are systemic and have long-term effects; the plant product is not systemic and does not have any known side-effects. We think people prefer to use natural products and this is particularly the case for baby teething 鈥� for which, to my knowledge, there is no clinically tested natural alternative.鈥�

探花直播dentists who carried out the Phase 2 trial reported a high level of satisfaction among their patients who disliked injections and did not need to use painkillers after the periodontological procedures.

There was also a higher rate of patient return for further appointments than average for the group with which the plant gel was used. 探花直播gel works by blocking nerve endings (sodium channel pathways).

Ampika has a portfolio of plant-based drug development, particularly related to women鈥檚 health conditions and Type 2 diabetes, which it hopes to develop in the coming years.

An ancient Incan toothache remedy 鈥� for centuries handed down among an indigenous people in the rainforests of Peru 鈥� could be on the cusp of revolutionising worldwide dental practice.

During the time I have spent with the Keshwa Lamas I鈥檝e learnt all about the different plants and leaves they use for everyday illnesses and ailments.

Dr Fran莽oise Barbira Freedman

探花直播plant used in the rainforest remedy

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