erectile dysfunction drugs, cross-culturally

I’ve been silent on Culture Matters for way too long: first I was on a research trip to Egypt, and then I was recovering from a bug caught during said research trip to Egypt (Flagyl is my friend!). And speaking of pharmaceutical products, ever since coming back I’ve had a stack of drug boxes on the desk in my office that has elicited a lot of curiosity from visitors:

These are all the local brands of sildenafil that I found in a single pharmacy. There’s the Pfizer-licensed Viagra, but we also have Virecta, Erec, Kemagra, Vigorama, Vigoran, Phragra, and Vigorex. The Kemagra box features a tiger: Rrawr!

The global food crisis II

Following on from Nursel’s recent post, I’d like to draw readers to a recent New York Times article about the “global food crisis”. According to the article, rising commodities prices, especially fuel and food prices, are producing unprecedented stress and anger across the globe, resulting in unrest and even riots. The article includes disturbing descriptions of people in Haiti eating concoctions made in part from mud in order to still their hunger pains. It is worth being reminded that what is experienced as a bit of additional pain at the checkout for the world’s wealthy can be an issue of survival for the world’s poor.

The article states:

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

Significantly, the article also acknowledges the interconnectedness of the global economy in that rising prices have “pitted the globe’s poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations’ farm and environmental policies”. The production of biofuels putting upward pressure in prices is mentioned, though the competition between animals and humans for grains is not.

Given the likely future impact of rising fuel prices, climate change, the expansion of economies such as China and India on food production and prices, the fact that the situation appears already to be so bad is worrying indeed.

See also the NYT’s index of articles on food prices.

The Global Food Crisis

George Monbiot’s latest article ‘The Pleasures of the Flesh’ on 15 April 2008  is about the causes of the current global food crisis. Currently there are food crises in 37 countries. Monbiot says “the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%(1).” and according to the World Bank one hundred million people could become poorer by the high prices. Actually there is no scarcity of food; for example “at 2.1 bn tonnes, last year’s global grain harvest broke all records” and “it beat the previous year’s by almost 5%”.

A significant amount of food produced are used as biofuels; for instance according to the World Bank “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”. And according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), this year 2.13 bn tonnes is likely to be consumed, and only 1.01bn will feed people. Monbiot complains that now in the UK, all sellers of transport fuel have to mix fuel with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. He says: “In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate. “

Monbiot also discusses the other cause of the food crisis, which “is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer”. This year 100 m tonnes food will be used as biofuels, and a bigger amount, 760 m tonnes, will be used to feed animals. Since meat consumption in Asia and Latin America has been booming, and the UN estimates that the population will rise to 9bn by 2050, Monbiot tries to answer the question “What level of meat-eating would be sustainable?” and he says “ If you care about hunger, eat less meat”.

At the end of his article, George Monbiot says:

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food barely registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other.

Applying Anthropology in the Future: the future is now

I’m sure many of you have heard about Masdar, the ‘green city’ being built in Abu Dhabi.  For those of you that haven’t the city is touted as:

a world model of energy conservation with zero carbon emissions and zero waste. Compared to average urban levels, fossil fuel consumption will be reduced by 75%, water demand by 300% and waste production by 400%. Cycling and walking will be the most common means of travel.

Accoring to the city’s master plan, no one will be more than 200 meters from essential facilities, including shops selling locally grown produce. A fully automated, electric Personal Rapid Transit System will provide a flexible and comfortable alternative to private cars. A Light Railway Transport system will link the Masdar development to adjacent developments, the airport and in the future with the center of Abu Dhabi.

Through a micro-chip-like network of connections, developers plan to coalesce the expertise and resources to enable global technological breakthroughs in advanced energy technologies. There will be a university education and research center - the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (in partnership with MIT) - which will offer Masters and PhD programs in science and engineering disciplines focused on advanced energy and sustainability. Its research and educational institutions and partnerships will search for solutions to mankind’s most pressing problems: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development.

For the full story see –

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.feature/id/1497

While I applaud the effort to build more sustainable cities I recently came across an article which asks a provocative question; what impact will cities like Masdar have on cultural diversity?

If successful, Masdar City could act as a model for environmentally friendly urban planning and sustainable development. “Green cities,” such as Masdar, could become a future trend around the world. But are there unforeseen consequences for such initiatives? While the environmental advantages of promoting and constructing green cities are clear, such planning may also accelerate the homogenization of, and even destruction of, cultures around the world. Cultural diversity is currently in decline. Globalization and the dominance of Western (especially U.S.) economic and cultural practices have influenced and altered almost all regions of the world. Languages and cultural traditions are becoming extinct at greater rates than ever before.

For the full story see - http://www.wesleyanargus.com/article/5989

 

While there is arguably potential in the development of ‘green cities’ to accelerate cultural homogenization historically people have found an almost infinite number of ways to diversify and differentiate and I’m relatively confident this will  continue to be the case.  However, as planed cities ‘green cities’ offer anthropologists a unique opportunity/burden in influencing the future of culture and cultural diversity. 

It seems probable that governments and city planners will hire anthropological consultants to advise them on the design an implementation of ‘cultural spaces’ (for example) within ‘green cities’. So while anthropology has typically been directed at documenting, analysing and comparing culture, if we take on a role in helping to plan the cities of the future will we become instead the creators of culture? If so on model will we rely?  Will the ‘cultures’ anthropologists instil in these ‘green cities’ be based on notions of tradition, authenticity and existing diversity or on notions of progress and sustainability?  Ultimately will anthropologists ask what kind of cultures have there been or what kinds of cultures should/could there be?  And what are the potential benefits and risks associated with our choices now?

“Medical Adoptions”

The school year started today at Macquarie and I’m trying to juggle obsessively revising the reading list for the Honours Seminar I’m running this semester and obsessively revising the budget of my ARC application, so I really do have better things to do than write little ditties for this blog, because Obsessive Revising really ranks very high on my list of Important Things To Do. But I simply can’t resist with this one.

Let me back up to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, my brother-in-law wrote me from Toronto to tell me that he’d met an anthropology graduate student who was doing his research on organ trafficking.

AAA annual meeting: Inclusion, Collaboration & Engagement

The AAA have announced the theme of their 2008 conference: Inclusion, Collaboration & Engagement. The call for papers covers a lot of the themes that have been very central to this blog, including the public role of anthropology as an engaged, as well as applied, discipline.One of the framing statements reflects a sentiment that has been expressed on this blog a several times: “Anthropologists, scholars in other disciplines, and the general public have begun to recognize that anthropology has a great deal to contribute in this era of globalization. Still, our discipline remains a mystery to many and we are often not approached when social science information is needed”. Indeed, this would appear to be a direct response to the main concerns raised by Hylland Eriksen in Engaging Anthropology when he asks why a discipline which should have so much of relevance to say to the wider public about the world we live in remains relatively obscure to most people. I think it’s heartening that the AAA is willing to put this sort of question at the centre of its next annual meeting. It will be interesting to see what comes from it.

Here is the full text of the call for papers:

Inclusion, Collaboration & Engagement

The theme for the 2008 AAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco is “Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement.” This theme provides us the opportunity to critically examine anthropology’s relationships: across subfields, with other disciplines, with our many publics, and with contemporary social problems. The Executive Program Committee envisions healthy debate as we confront methodological, ethical, and epistemological concerns that unite and divide us; as well as discuss the challenges, risks, and opportunities for growth enabled by this dialog.

Inclusion, Collaboration, and Engagement are ideas that have been central to anthropology throughout the discipline’s history and they are particularly important today. Anthropologists, scholars in other disciplines, and the general public have begun to recognize that anthropology has a great deal to contribute in this era of globalization. Still, our discipline remains a mystery to many and we are often not approached when social science information is needed. Moreover, anthropologists are conflicted about whether and how to participate in important public debates. Although there are the myriad attempts to develop a public interest anthropology, we are also wary of activism and public engagement, particularly as we recall government influence on anthropology during times of war.

This theme deserves our scholarly exploration. Analysis of the processes that promote inclusion, collaboration and engagement for positive human outcomes is a common area of interest for both academic and applied/practicing anthropologists, as is clear communication of anthropological perspectives to the wider public.

Inclusion

Anthropology’s historic mission to study humanity through the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities by definition requires the inclusion of multiple disciplines. For example, paleoanthropology and archaeology depend on chemistry, zoology, botany, geology and other disciplines to date sites and interpret data. Similarly, linguistic and sociocultural anthropology regularly include perspectives from other disciplines, including history, philosophy, psychology, and political science. Moreover, there is much merit in an enhanced inclusive dialogue between the branches of anthropology. Cultural and biological anthropology, for example, have opportunities to work together in examining themes such as race, disease, and the environment. Many applied and practicing anthropologists have joint roots in anthropology and other professions such as public health, urban planning, education, business, international development or social work. Their work relies on and contributes to these other disciplines as well as anthropology.

Inclusive anthropology implies more than a holistic or interdisciplinary approach. It suggests research problems and relationships that explicitly address the knowledges and concerns of those who have been relegated to peripheral zones of analysis and theory because of preconceptions about the seemingly static division of intellectual labor. Bringing diverse voices and epistemic perspectives onto the discipline’s center stage—and enlarging that space according to a less hierarchical logic—is consistent with anthropology’s historic principle of inclusion.

Collaboration

Working together toward a common goal is a central characteristic of anthropology, where collaboration may describe work done by teams of anthropologists from diverse subfields or research done by a single anthropologist working together with a subject. For example, heterogeneous research teams in physical anthropology and archeology assemble to address complex intellectual problems. Additionally, the relationship between anthropologists and many Native American tribes might now be best described as collaborative. Native American tribes often require that all anthropological work conducted on reservations directly and actively involve tribal members in the design, implementation, and dissemination of research that addresses problems with contemporary relevance to their tribes. This reconceptualization of the researcher-subject relationship both suggests new challenges and reveals exciting opportunities to improve research and ensure it engages community needs.

Anthropologists who use participatory action methods engage in a knowledge production process that converts “informants” into research consultants and collaborators. These methods can empower local people to have a voice in government and corporate decision-making. Beyond invoking notions of partnership and the sharing of ethnographic authority rhetorically, many anthropologists work to build concrete collaborative relationships in community settings. The benefits, challenges, and contradictory outcomes of collaboration are worthy of examination and constructive self-criticism.

Engagement

Engaged anthropology has many dimensions. Engagement is becoming a key value in college and university settings where anthropologists recognize that relationships with local publics and community organizations are essential to higher education. From both within and outside of academia, engaged anthropologists have examined public policy issues related to welfare reform, immigration, and protection of indigenous knowledge and rights, and have joined with local participants to instigate and sustain government and community change.

In this area anthropology has much to offer, but the discipline has not yet decisively stepped forward. This year’s theme provides an opportunity for academic and applied/practicing anthropologists to engage in dialogue to set a new agenda for making anthropology increasingly relevant to key issues in the twenty-first century, including social identity, economic growth, cultural preservation, peace-making, and environmental and social justice.

‘Exploitation’ of foreign students

In a recent post I mentioned an article by a psychiatrist about the often poor levels of mental health found among international students in Australia.  Now The Australian has just published a piece in which it is claimed that many foreign students in Australia are being exploited.  A study done by researchers at Monash and Melbourne Universities is highly critical of an ‘industry’ that treats foreign students as ‘cash cows’.

Particularly striking for me was the revelation that a recent study by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee on student welfare did not include overseas students in its scope.  This kind of exclusion accords with other structural impediments for overseas students, for example the fact that they do not qualify for student concessions.  In essence, international students are on their own — expected to be self-sufficient and not needing to avail themselves to the support of the state.  Dare I say that they are highly ‘neoliberalised’ subjects, existing in a much purer version of the ‘free market’ than domestic students would be expected to endure.

The full text of the article follows:

CONTRARY to their image as cashed-up BMW drivers, many overseas students cannot afford to eat, are paid well below the minimum wage and are among those most vulnerable to exploitation in this country, new research says.

More than one-third of overseas students struggle financially and about 60 per cent are paid less than the legal minimum wage, according to the research.

The alarming findings come as education overtakes tourism as the nation’s biggest services export, increasing by a huge 21 per cent in 2007 to $12.5 billion. The number of international student enrolments rose 18 per cent on the previous year to more than 450,000, the latest figures show.

The authors of the joint Monash University and University of Melbourne studies slammed universities for treating foreign students like “cash cows”, and criticised the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (now known as Universities Australia) for failing to include overseas students in a recent student welfare study.

They wrote that “many internationals are disadvantaged by their relative deficit of language and cultural skills, they are crowded into a narrower range of jobs than is available to their domestic peers, and they commonly offset these disadvantages by working for less than the legal (minimum)”.

The two papers, one on international students in the workforce and the other on the financial difficulties faced by overseas students, were based on interviews with 200 students at nine universities across Australia.

The researchers found that almost 60 per cent of students earned below the minimum wage and 37per cent had experienced financial hardship, including not having enough money to travel to university or even eat.

“I had a very hard time finding a job. (For the) first two months I was unemployed,” one 36-year-old Indian student told researchers. “My rent is very high - it’s $120 a week - and other than that you have travelling, eating, everything.

“So I starved.”

The researchers discovered 70 per cent of international students worked at some stage during their studies in Australia and a number admitted to working more than the maximum 20 hours allowed by their study visas.

“Of the students who reported their hourly rate, 58 per cent earned between $7 and $15 per hour at a time when the legal minimum for a casual waiter was $16.08 an hour and the rate for a casual shop assistant was $17.97 per hour,” the study states.

Conducted by Simon Marginson, Chris Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir, Gaby Ramia and Helen Forbes-Mewett, the research also found foreign students were more likely to be exploited because of their lack of English skills and ignorance of workplace rights. The researchers called for urgent action by governments and universities.

They urged better education for international students about their workplace rights and better investigations by workplace authorities to expose the injustices experienced by working overseas students.

Professor Nyland and his colleagues wrote that the decision by UA not to include overseas students in its finances study “sadly lends credence to the much repeated claim that Australian university managers view international students primarily as customers who exist to be milked”.

But UA chief executive Glenn Withers rejected the claim that tertiary institutions treated international students like cash cows and don’t care about their welfare.

He defended the decision not to include international students in their student finances survey, saying that that survey was targeted at the federal government to try to improve income support for domestic students.

Dr Withers said universities were helping overseas students where they could by providing support services and going into public-private partnerships to construct accommodation for students close to campuses.

“The biggest problems are the exchange rate - and universities cannot control that - and expensive housing, and universities cannot control that either,” he said.

See also: International study, mental health, and migration in Australia

More Yum Cha exhibition

More Yum Cha, an exhibition featuring several Chinese artists, is currently showing at the Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney. As this image shows, at least some of the exhibition involves an engagement with China’s relationship to globalisation.

The exhibition is running till 16 February.

International study, mental health, and migration in Australia

I’ve been very quiet of late as I’ve been on holidays after submitting my thesis in December.  I decided to give myself a break from all thinking for that period, which has been blissful.  I’m now back in the department and will start posting to CM again.  First off, an article in the Herald I noticed today which provides a commentary on the experience of many international students who come to Australia to feed its $11.3 billion “export industry”, the country’s fourth largest.  Although the view from the USA and elsewhere in “the West” might be that study in Australia provides a “beaches and beer” holiday, many poor students from Bangladesh, India and China are intent on gaining permanent residency.  The article’s author Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist, writes about one of the less obvious dimensions of this “industry” the consequences the mental health of students who are often betting their family’s wealth on gaining PR:

Some universities have been the target of allegations that their degrees are little more than extended migration schemes, with the qualifications useful for only the points on the residency application but almost worthless in the employment marketplace.

But what is less commented upon is that overseas students are fast becoming one of the most vulnerable groups in our society. Working in mental health, I see more and more each month and their situations are often horrendous. Suicide attempts, self harm or drug overdoses are the most common way they present, usually in relation to financial and study pressures. It is complicated further by language and cultural difficulties and lack of adequate health insurance.

A 2004 study by the University of Queensland found their international students were three times more likely to suffer depression than local students through the course of their study.

Only this month a house fire in suburban Melbourne killed three Indian students. It emerged that they were sharing the one room in bunk beds and would sleep in shifts while the others were working part time jobs. Overcrowding and difficult living conditions may have contributed to the accident.

Overseas students are the new refugees, living on the edges of Australian society under the weight of visa difficulties, imminent deportation and reduced access to social services. They inhabit that ill defined landscape of unbelonging.

A psychiatrist’s perspective is welcome here.  I have also thought that the “international student experience” is something worthy of ethnographic study.  For an enormous “industry” the social dimension of international studentdom in Australia is poorly understood.  It’s perhaps not surprising that universities aren’t all that interested in knowing too much about this subject as it might raise uncomfortable questions about the largely financial, rather than academic, motivations which are driving ever increasing international student numbers.  In my opinion, it is also something of an open secret in the university “industry” that migration, rather than education, is the primary reason for many international students coming to Australia.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/no-spin-needed-on-desperation-for-residency/2008/01/24/1201157558750.html?page=fullpage

Council to protect Rastafarian intellectual property established

The Jamaica Gleaner reports that the “global Rastafarian community” — as part of a global trend towards the institutionalisation and legal protection of indigenous “cultural property” announced the establishment of a council to protect Rasta intellectual property from unauthorized appropriation by non-Rastas (notably gangstas). See the article here.