Back in January we blogged about a competition for documentaries focusing on the multicultural city.  Right now the same organisation is calling for papers for a second festival.  One film I recently came across would certainly fit this framework.  Called, “Hear Every voice: NYC and the National Park Service”, this film is a collaborative effort between filmmaker Stephen Ogumah, the National Parks Service, and sociologists Professors Jerry Krase and Jennifer Adams of Brooklyn College, along with a number of their students.  The central question the film asks is how New York’s national parks can contribute to the experience of urban living, especially for the city’s highly diverse migrant population.

The film brings together the themes migration, multiculturalism, and the uses of urban space, particularly common space.  For example, it considers how shared spaces may be implicated in generating interactions in an ethnically diverse population through practices such as shared gardening, festivals such as carnivals, or even cricket.  Social research methodologies are also featured, as Brooklyn College students work as interns with the National Parks association to research knowledge of, and attitudes towards national parks in NYC.  Overall I found this interesting to watch, mainly because it brought together a themes that I wouldn’t normally associate with each other, namely the possible relationship(s) between migration and national parks.  It’s well worth a watch, and could possibly be a good resource in teaching courses on urban anthropology and/or migration.

more about “Hear Every Voice: NYC and the Nationa…“, posted with vodpod

Posted in Education, Film, Media, Migration, Multiculturalism, Urban Anthropology Tagged: National parks, New York City ]]> http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/nyc-national-parks-migration-and-visual-sociology/feed/ 0 Jovan http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/anthropology-ma-thesis-makes-tabloid-headline-in-holland/ http://culturematters.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/anthropology-ma-thesis-makes-tabloid-headline-in-holland/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:00:25 +0000 Third Tone Devil http://culturematters.wordpress.com/?p=928 ]]>

I blogged earlier about the visibility of anthropologists in the Dutch public. Well, get this: a just-graduated masters student in my department at the VU made the front-page of the free (!) tabloid Spits (described by my colleagues as “right-wing”) today. The article, entitled “Chinese feels [sic] discriminated” describes “research by anthropologist Lilly Witte (23)” about Dutch-raised ethnic Chinese, which concludes that they feel that mainstream Dutch society does not quite accept them as Dutch, on account of their look.

Although some of my colleagues feel that there might be some trick here (this newspaper is seen as having a generally anti-immigrant slant, so this might be a way of compensating?), and the usual laments about simplification apply, it is fantastic to see anthropology masters students’ research influencing the widest possible arena of public debate. Congratulations, Lilly.

The Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Initiative (SEED) at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa has just put out a call for video and photo presentations on the theme of the ‘multicultural city’.  Sounds like an exciting venture.  Here are the details:

Diversity in Place: Making Documentaries on the Multicultural City April 24th, 2009
http://diversityinplace.wordpress.com/

More than half of the population in the world now lives in cities, and the urban share of the globe will continue to increase dramatically to reach 70 percent by 2050. Migration, both from within and among societies, is a major source of urbanization, with multicultural cities on the rise everywhere.

Call for Documentary Film/Video Entries

In an innovative way toward mutual learning, we invite the submission of video and photo documentaries whose emphasis is on exploring multicultural cities and processes of place-making. Scholars, teachers, students and practitioners alike are searching for alternative methods to conventional data analysis and academic writing to be able to capture ethnic diversity and multicultural interactions in real world settings. The use of documentaries to show the daily practices of multiculturalism in the city can make several key contributions to research, teaching and action.

Videos not in excess of 15 minutes are requested for submission to screenings which will be held at the conference venue at the University of Hawai’i Manoa Campus on April 24th, 2009. Selections of videos to be included in the seminar will be made by a committee of students and faculty who are organizing the event. Artists, video- and filmmakers, researchers, writers and others interested in the relation between people and places and the making of multicultural cities are invited to join the project, participate to the seminar to discuss their ideas and work.

Questions, themes, topics and issues to be addressed in the documentaries can include, but are not limited to:

* How documentaries by recoding the presence of people of different origins over time can reveal ‘invisible’ minority cultures in a way that no other media can.
* The efforts at historic preservation of elements of the city that might otherwise have been overlooked but are of high cultural value to members of a community.
* How multiculturalism can work well in practice and thus contribute to a more positive attitude about and pride in the multicultural city, and thereby assist in fostering mutual accommodation and tolerance.
* In an age of global migration in which significant segments of multicultural cities do not have citizenship or are otherwise marginalized in the city, how documentaries can help identify issues of social justice.
* How multiculturalism inscribes itself into the city by everyday uses of urban space and lead us to a greater appreciation of the many different identities that make up the multicultural Cosmopolis of contemporary times.

By combining the reflections and findings emerging around the objectives of the conference, and understanding the inevitability of increasing diversity in urban places, this conference aims at drawing lessons and recommendations as to what makes the creation of ethnic spaces possible, and further what helps to form and shape livable cities with healthy intercultural relations, namely, cities as multicultural places where migrants’ place-making is understood and acknowledged as an inherent human right to the city.

This conference is sponsored by the Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Initiative (SEED), University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

Submission Deadline and Guidelines

The purpose of the call is a selection of a maximum of eight documentaries to be screened in a one-day conference on April 24th, 2009 at the University of Hawai’i.

Submission deadline: March 1st, 2009

Guidelines

Videos should be short — no longer than 15.00 minutes. International and Domestic submissions are encouraged.
The formats accepted are: DVD
Please include: Synopsis, Bio, CV and Contact Information. All submissions will be added to the Diversity in Place Video Library for possible inclusion in future projects. If included in other projects, artists will be contacted for permission.

Send submissions to:

Vera Zambonelli, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Saunders Hall, 2424 Maile Way, 96822 Honolulu HI

Travel and lodging aid:
Pending application, the Project will cover part of travel expenses and lodging in a Youth Hostel for participants residing outside of Honolulu. If traveling to Honolulu is not an option, we will arrange videoconferencing through skype.

For more information: diversityinplace@gmail.com
http://diversityinplace.wordpress.com/

The US National Association of Practicing Anthropologists has just released a call for papers on the subject of the global food crisis.  Here are the details:

Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists
Sponsor: NAPA Bulletin, National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA)
Contact Information:

David A. Himmelgreen
Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Ave, SOC 107
Tampa FL 33620
Email: dhimmelg [at] cas.usf.edu

Description

The NAPA Bulletin welcomes submissions for a thematic issue on “Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists,” to be tentatively published in Spring 2010. NAPA Bulletin is the official publication for the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA), a section of the American Anthropological Association. Recently, a convergence of events including environmental threats (e.g., floods, droughts, frosts) and cost of fuel in the United States and around the globe has resulted in skyrocketing food prices throughout the world, leading to a global food crisis not seen in decades. The ensuing threats of hunger and food insecurity have caused civil strife and political instability in dozens of developing countries. In the United States and other industrialized countries, rising food prices has further eroded the buying capacity of consumers and threatened the ability of families to access nutritious food in sufficient quantity. While the increase in food prices have been felt by most Americans regardless of socio-economic status, low income families have been the most drastically affected. The effect of this trend in rising prices on food security is clearly seen by increases in the use of soup kitchens in majority of the major U.S. cities. This proposed NAPA volume will bring contributions from both practicing and applied anthropologists to examine how rising food prices are affecting peoples’ food choices, to discuss the way international and domestic food and energy policies are exacerbating the problem of hunger and food insecurity in both developing and industrialized nations, and to provide recommendation for addressing the global food crisis in the coming years. This CFP invites practicing and applied anthropologists and other social scientists with expertise in aspects of agriculture and food, especially as they relate to global food policies, structural adjustment programs, and the development of food assistance initiatives either within or outside the United States to contribute full-length articles (approximately 7,500 wordsto this proposed volume.

Please submit a 250 word abstract and 150 word biographical sketch to David Himmelgreen , no later than November 1, 2008.

Urban anthropologist might find Michael Wolf’s photos interesting. He has amazing photographs of massive apartment buildings in Hong Kong, a very densely populated place. The photographs called ‘Architecture of Density’, give an idea about a-very- dense urban- lifestyle in Hong Kong. Wolf was born in Germany, grew up in the USA, and has lived in Hong Kong since 1994, and in these photographs he explores ‘the theme of the organic metropolis’. Here’s a quote from his website, a review by Rebecca Walker:

Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world and Wolf’s photographs seek out the human spirit in the urban jungle. The images in the book[he published the photos as a book] depict the highrises that shape the spatial experience of Hong Kong’s citizens. Since Wolf himself is one of those citizens (he has been a Hong Kong resident since 1994), his photographs have a distinctively personal essence.  

You can check out the photographs on  

http://www.photomichaelwolf.com/hongkongarchitecture/

I’ve often caught trains through Bangkok and wondered at the level of activity going on on both sides of the railway.  I had never seen the scene from quite this angle though.  The clip below shows the level of adaptation to the urban environment and pragmatism of some of Bangkok’s poorest inhabitants.  One of the stereotypes about Thais is that they “bend with the breeze”.  This clip would seem to support that generalisation.

Jovan Maud

The Jammed, an “independent thriller” about the trafficking of women into sex work in Australia, is having unexpected box-office success. It opened this week in Sydney’s Palace Cinemas. The film’s success highlights a curious phenomenon: combatting “human trafficking,” dubbed the world’s largest business, is an issue that everyone from left-wing feminists to the Christian Right agrees on. Yet is it really as organised an evil as it is described to be?

Research by Sverre Molland at Macquarie University’s anthropology on Lao sex workers in Thailand suggests that while there is undoubtedly coercion and deceit in the migration of sex workers, much of the migration is voluntary, many “traffickers” are sex workers who recruit their friends, and the business is very rarely connected to “transnational organised crime.” My own previous research on illegal Chinese migrants to Europe has suggested that migration brokers work more like the airline industry – everyone specializing in a particular service and in loose touch with those at other stages of the migration process – than as a crime syndicate. I suspect that the hype about “human trafficking” is connected to the general criminalization of migration in today’s “securitized” world.

Sverre found an interesting comment on the film’s website:

I’m a sex worker in Kings Cross, close friends with thai sex workers
happily on contract (ie “trafficked”). I am insulted by the ridiculous
mythologies so easily believed by those who want to paint us all as
victims. Margaret and David, you’ve dealt a cruel blow to asian sex
workers in Australia by getting sucked into this discriminatory and
racist narrative. The “help the trafficked” sector is an industry in
itself, and is much more harmful and dangerous to sex workers than sex
work itself. They only want to hear stories of woe, and to make money
by stereotyping us.

See the rest of the comments here.

BoingBoing reports on a Wired photo essay on factories in China.  It provides some interesting, if none-too-surprising, images of factory life and the urban landscape produced by China’s capitalist boom.

One of my favourite blogs is BoingBoing, not the least because a lot of the posts tickle my anthropological funnybone. A good example is a recent post on new architectural trends in China, where the emergent middle-class is being tempted to live in simulacra of historical Western cityscapes.

In Nanjing, there are Balinese retreats and Italian villas. In the southeastern city of Hangzhou, there are Venice and Zurich. In downtown Beijing, everything is about Manhattan, with Soho, Central Park and Park Avenue.

Seems that there is quite a bit of interest in producing replica of iconic structures from a usually Western “elsewhere”. Another BoingBoing article reports about the Shijingshan Amusement Park in Beijing, described as “basically a weird, Chinese clone of Disneyland”.

Perhaps more interesting than the phenomenon itself is why stories like this are so ticklish for people like me. What should “we Westerners” have a monopoly on consuming the exotic other? Various kinds of exotica have long been decorating Western homes, both inside and out, for a long time now. An example that springs to mind is the not uncommon practice of a few decades hence of placing concrete Aborigines, like indigenous garden gnomes, in front gardens. Can’t do that anymore though; the consumption of exotica these days must be done with requisite postmodern irony. And maybe that’s what’s so strange about these Chinese consumption patterns: they’re just dripping with pomo simulation, but without the ironic self-parodic attitude you’d expect in the West. Or maybe it’s the strange thrill of seeing changing power relations at work. Maybe it’s not so much the weirdness of the copying, but the fact that it’s being done to “us”. “We Westerners”, not the least anthropologists, have been accustomed to representing the other. So its strange to find “our” forms as exotic consumer items.

I’m just guessing here, of course. Good ethnographic work would provide some sense of why the Chinese middle class seem to be enjoying these kinds of consumption. Perhaps our resident China expert, Third Tone Devil, has something to say about this?

The story ‘How Walt Disney Changed Everything: The Theme-Parking, Megachurching, Franchising, Exurbing, McMansioning of America’ on the March issue of National Geographic  http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0703/feature4/ might be of interest to urban anthropologists. It is the story of Orlando city in Florida, which has transformed ‘from swamp and sinkhole to 21^st century metropolis’ with the decision of Walt Disney in 1963 to turn this agricultural region of
Florida into a tourism theme-park.