Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Wild Capitalism: Environmental Activism And Postsocialist Political Ecology In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

"Wild Capitalism" examines environmental issues in the "New Europe" of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it looks at how the meanings of "civil society" and "environment" have changed as environmentalists encounter the political and ecological realities of life after state socialism. Although environmentalism is a global social movement, environmental politics is a grassroots process in which activists creatively translate environmental issues into cultural idioms and political processes.

Great Expectations? The Changing Role Of “Europe” In Romani Activism In Hungary, Krista Harper, Peter Vermeersch

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Contemporary political action for ethnic and national minorities in Europe appears to be increasingly directed towards supra- and transnational structures. This development seems indicative of the growth of a European space for minority activism – a public space that is less state-centered, that allows claims to be framed in terms of European standards and therefore facilitates the emergence of an active European citizenship. In theory, this “Europeanization” of minority politics may offer minority activists additional avenues for raising demands about cultural recognition and economic equalization. This article seeks to identify the possible implications of the Europeanization of minority politics by …

Dangerous Demographies: The Scientific Manufacture Of Fear, Elizabeth L. Krause

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

'Wild Capitalism’ And ‘Ecocolonialism’: A Tale Of Two Rivers, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

The development and pollution of two rivers, the Danube and Tisza, have been the site and subject of environmental protests and projects in Hungary since the late 1980s. Protests against the damming of the Danube rallied opposition to the state socialist government, drawing on discourses of national sovereignty and international environmentalism. The Tisza suffered a major environmental disaster in 2000, when a globally financed gold mine in Romania spilled thousands of tons of cyanide and other heavy metals into the river, sending a plume of pollution downriver into neighboring countries. In this article, I examine the symbolic ecologies that emerged …

The Genius Of The Nation Versus The Gene-Tech Of The Nation: Science, Identity, And Gmo Debates In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Introduction In the late 1990s, Hungarian politicians, environmentalists, and agricultural lobbyists weighed the pros and cons of allowing genetically modified (GM) food and seeds to enter the Hungarian market. Starting around 1994, a small group of Hungarian environmentalists began researching GM issues. Initially, they feared that as a post-socialist country seeking foreign investment, Hungary would become prey to multinational corporations seeking an ‘emerging market’ with a lax regulatory environment. The terms of the debate were reframed over time, notably following 1998, when a number of European Union member states banned the imports of GM foods and when Hungarian expatriate geneticist …

Judaic Studies And Me, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

At the time I carried out my researches in Alaska among the Eskimo, in Balkan villages and in Southeast Asia among the peoples of Laos I must admit that I usually perceived “Self” and ”Other” as distinct categories, and certainly not interactive ones. But, from a contemporary point of view, applying a reflexive approach, I now readily perceive interrelationships which, at that time, seemed remote from one another. This specifically applies to the ways in which Jews and the Jewish experience have not been separated from but really a part of my experiences in distant places.

International Environmental Justice: Building The Natural Assets Of The World’S Poor, Krista Harper, S. Ravi Rajan

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

In recent years, vibrant social movements have emerged across the world to fight for environmental justice –- for more equitable access to natural resources and environmental quality, including clean air and water. In seeking to build community rights to natural assets, these initiatives seek to advance simultaneously the goals of environmental protection and poverty reduction. This paper sketches the contours of struggles for environmental justice within and among countries, and illustrates with examples primarily drawn from countries of the global South and the former Soviet bloc.

This working paper is also accessible at the folllowing URL:

http://www.peri.umass.edu/236/hash/28d064d65f/publication/107/

A newer, revised …

Green Carnivores, Mad Cows And Gene Tech: The Politics Of Food In Hungarian Environmentalism, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Anthropologists and sociologists, from Levi-Strauss to Bourdieu, have observed that consuming food is a profoundly social act through which people express relationships and perform concepts of social order. Historically, food has provided a rich political symbol and rallying point, from the Boston Tea Party to the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 in colonial India, when Muslim and Hindu

troops rebelled against their British officers upon learning that their rifle cartridges were greased with suet and lard -- foods considered impure according to religious dietary taboos. Food features in Eastern Europe’s history of political

conflict; for example, the December 1980 Solidarity strikes …

Reflections On Jozef Obrebski’S Work In Macedonia From The Perspective Of American Anthropology, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

This article deals with the difficulties encountered by Jozef Obrebski when he immigrated from Poland after World War II. He went first to England where he gave a series of lectures at Oxford University. Then he went to Jamaica under a contract sponsored by the British Colonial Office. Subsequently he moved to New York City where he obtained a job working at the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations. He ended his career at C .W. Post College, a small undergraduate institution near New York City. This article documents how he failed to make a career in the United States. …

Risk Factors For Hysterectomy Among Mexican-American Women In The Us Southwest, Susan I. Hautaniemi, Lynnette Leidy Sievert

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

The purpose of this study was to assess risk factors associated with a history of hysterectomy among Mexican-American women living in the United States Southwest. Mexican-American women ages 20–74 at time of interview were defined as a subpopulation among adults in the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HHANES), 1982–1984. Language preference, reproductive history, level of education, poverty status, generation of immigration, marital status, and insurance coverage were examined in relation to risk of hysterectomy using weighted tabulation and logistic regression for data resulting from complex survey designs. Heretofore, language preference has not been a variable considered in relation to …

Reflection Of Jozef Obrebski’S Work In Macedonia From The Perspective Of American Anthropology, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Jozef Obrebski (1905-1967) had a moderately long, interesting, and, in some respects, tragic life. The consequences of the Second World War and the subsequent Communist domination of Eastern Europe altered his life profoundly. While he and his immediate family escaped relatively unscathed and even his relatively voluminous scholarly documents were preserved he was never able to successfully readapt to the life he chose first in the lands of the then British Empire and finally in America. It would indeed be a limited approach to judge a person's life simply by their public record, in this case by a published output. …

Photographs: Bosnia 1954-1996, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

The images which appear here are, unless otherwise indicated, are copyright Joel M. Halpern and taken from the catalog of an exhibition entitled The Thin Veneer; the Peoples of Bosnia and their Disappearing Cultural Heritage (Copyright 1997, University of Massachusetts Amherst and used by permission). Copies of the catalog are available for $ 6.00 including postage, from: Betsy Siersma, Director, University Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01002. Part of this presentation is also available online at http://www.h-net.org/~sae/halpern/photos.html.

Environment As Master Narrative: Discourse And Identity In Environmental Conflicts (Special Issue Introduction), Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Although postmodern philosophers proclaimed the death of the master narrative of enlightenment (Lyotard 1984), the environment has become a quintessentially global narrative. Throughout the world, people are imagining the environment as an object threatened by human action. Environmentalism proposes to organize and mobilize human action in order to protect the endangered environment (Milton 1995). Sociologist Klaus Eder posits that ecology has become a “masterframe,” transforming the field of political debate (Eder 1996). The articles assembled in this special issue investigate the rise of the environment as a master narrative organizing political practices.

Chernobyl Stories And Anthropological Shock In Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

The Budapest Chernobyl Day commemoration generated a creative outpouring of stories about parental responsibilities, scientific knowledge, environmental risks, and public participation. I examine the stories and performances elicited by the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1996. In these “Chernobyl stories,” activists criticized scientific and state paternalism while engaging in alternative practices of citizenship. The decade between the catastrophic explosion and its commemoration coincides with the development of the Hungarian environmental movement and the transformation from state socialism. Chernobyl Day 1996 consequently became an opportunity for activists to reflect upon how the meaning of citizenship and public …

American Multiculturalism - The Position Of Jewish Americans, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

This brief essay is written at the time of the end of the American election of November 2000. From the perspective of the history Jews in the United States one of the significant aspects of this election has been that for the first time in history there has been a Jewish candidate on the ballot. Joseph Lieberman, the Senator from Connecticut, has been the candidate of the Democratic Party for Vice-President. Not only is Joseph Lieberman of Jewish background but also, more remarkably, he is a practicing Orthodox Jew. At the same time, in this very close and contested election, …

Menopause As A Measure Of Population Health: An Overview, Lynnette Leidy Sievert

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Marital Status And Age At Natural Menopause: Considering Pheromonal Influence, Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Diane Waddle, Kristophor Canali

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Married women generally report a later mean age at menopause. The results reported here, from a study carried out in Greene County, New York, are no exception. Married and widowed women report a later mean age at natural menopause compared to single and divorced women (P < 0.05). To better understand the relationship between marital status and age at menopause, possible mechanistic and confounding variables are examined, in particular parity, sexual activity, smoking habits, level of education, and income. Parity and income 10 years prior to interview are significant factors, along with marital status, that explain part of the variation in age at natural menopause. An alternative explanation is the pheromonal influence of a male in the household. This would explain the consistency of results across populations. This pilot study supports further biochemical investigation.

Effects Of Age, Ethnicity And Menopause On Ambulatory Blood Pressure: Japanese-American And Caucasian School Teachers In Hawaii, Daniel E. Brown, Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Sue L. Aki, Phoebe S. Mills, Michaelyn B. Etrata, Rena N. K. Paopao, Gary D. James

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Ambulatory blood pressure (BP) measurements of 120 female teachers of Japanese-American or Caucasian ethnicity working in public schools located in Hilo, Hawaii, were recorded. BP was measured at 15-min intervals during waking hours and 30-min intervals during sleep over a 24-hr period that included a full work day. These measurements were averaged during three daily settings: at work, at home while awake (“home”), and during sleep. ANCOVAs using ethnicity as a predictor variable of BP, with age and the body mass index (BMI) as covariates, show a significant interaction effect between age and ethnicity in some daily settings. Among Japanese-Americans …

The Ecological Transformation Of A Resettled Area, Pig Herders To Settled Farmers In Central Serbia (Sumadija, Yugoslavia) During The 19th And 20th Centuries, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

A vegetarian has a difficult time finding a suitable restaurant in Serbia — the featured dishes are meat, potatoes with varieties of pork a favorite as in the grilled skewer of meat known as raznjici, the pork equivalent of shiskebab. Some of the folk restaurants now feature corn bread, proja, formerly a basic of the peasant diet and now a romantic speciality. These dietary patterns represent a cycling of time, a link to past patterns of livestock raising — of the herding of pigs in forests. A tourist travelling

Citizens Or Consumers?: Environmentalism And The Public Sphere In Postsocialist Hungary, Krista Harper

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Much of the most vital activism of the post-1989 environmental movement in Hungary addresses the development of consumer culture and the expansion of transnational corporations in East-Central Europe. In actions against McDonald's conquest of the urban landscape and the ubiquitous presence of advertisements for transnational corporations, activists contrast cherished notions of decentralization and local control with the emergence of an imperialistic, global consumer culture. These issues came to the forefront of environmental debates while I was living in Hungary from 1995 to 1997, conducting ethnographic research on environmental groups. This paper will present several cases of Hungarian

activism against well-known …

Conrad Maynadier Arensberg (1910-1997), Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Conrad Maynadier Atensberg died on February 10, 1997. Connie, as he was known to his legions of students, colleagues and friends, was 86. Connie's work was key to the development of anthropology as a natural science in a hierarchy with the other natural sciences, each with its own specific unit of observation-that of anthropology being human interaction.

Anthropology And Conflict: Reflections On The Bosnian War Part 2, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

It clearly takes a certain period to reflect on a singular experience in one's life. In the May 1996 issue of AnthroWatch I reported on my winter visit to Sarajevo and Mostar, the two principle towns in Bosnia. I want to begin to approach an evaluation of this situation through a personal lens. Perhaps for some anthropologists their field experiences have been distanced from war and conflict. But this has not been my experience. Rather my anthropological journeys have been contextualized by major conflicts. I first went to the Balkans in 1953, and researched, principally in Serbia, for my Columbia …

Some Anthropological Observations On A War - The Conflict In Bosnia, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Since I recently (in January and February) had a chance to spend something less than a month in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo and the Hercegovinianmain town of Mostar, I thought I might briefly share some of my observations with readers of Anthrowatch. My mini series will consist of this initial section focusing on description and the second part will involve an attempt to put these comments in some analytical perspective. Since my Columbia dissertation dealt with this area I have thus been involved with researching this area over some five decades , from the …

"The Bead Of Raw Sweat In A Field Of Dainty Perspirers": Nationalism, Whiteness And The Olympic-Class Ordeal Of Tonya Harding, Elizabeth L. Krause

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

This paper examines the interrelations of whiteness, gender, class and nationalism as represented in popular media discourses surrounding the coverage of the assault on Olympic ice skater Nancy Kerrigan and the investigation of her rival, Tonya Harding. As with other recent works that have refocused the issue of "race" on whiteness, this essay seeks to unveil the exclusionary social processes in which boundaries are set and marked within the" difference" of whiteness. The concepts of habitus and historicity are used to understand how Tonya Harding became marked as "white trash," and the implications of her "flawed" qualifications are explored. Furthermore, …

Connections On Death, Destruction And The Future - An American Perspect1ve On The Former Yugoslavia, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

In making connections to explain and evaluate the causes and consequences of violence in the former Yugoslavia it seems useful to explore varying temporal perceptions and the relative uses of power. These alternate perspectives range from the highly political linear time bound year frame of American intervention as presented to the U. S. Congress by the Clinton Administration to the unbounded liminal temporal categories of the combatants linked to medieval battles and ancestral graves. In proceeding to evaluate these categories and examine their impact on current historical process I feel it is first necessary to examine our points of departure.

Laos: Beyond The Revolution, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

This issue presents American and West European anthropological perspectives on recent events prior to the outbreak of war in former Yugoslavia. Included are articles by anthropologists from Croatia and Serbia which deal directly with the war and its impact on their respective societies. The first group of essays should be understood as background to armed struggle involving violent death, destruction, and bereavement and those tragedies still in the making. The horrors associated with these events in this Balkan setting are unparalleled in Europe since World War Two. They do not have precise parallels elsewhere but bring to mind the sufferings …

Professional And Personal Perspectives On Long Term Research, Joel Halpern, Barbara Kerewsky-Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

On the leveI of personal relationships, there is, perhaps, no need to pose the question that is the title of this paper. The long and ongoing research experience has been tremendously enriching for the investigators and our now adult children, who first arrived in the viIlage as toddlers and infant. From what our vilIage friends convey, satisfactions with this enduring relationship have been a two-way process. But beyond personal affect, what is the intellectual value of long-term study of a single community?

Over thirty years ago the opportunity to document European village Life, in this case a village in Serbia, …

Refugees As Immigrants: Cambodians, Laotians And Vietnamese In America.; The Boat People And Achievement In America: A Study Of Family Life, Hard Work, And Cultural Values, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Rituals Of Transformation, Establishing Time Boundaries For The End Of Socialism: The Case Of Bulgaria, Joel Halpern

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

How does one era end and another begin? How do people publicly express themselves in a crisis of transition? Improvised drama is one alternative. What follows are some recent personal observations in the form of an essay rather than a research article. The objective of this essay is to give a view of current sociopolitical transformations in Bulgaria. The passage through this period of transition is still incomplete at the time of this writing.