These days, states like to define their “values” — either, as in Europe or Australia, to limit immigration, or, as in Asia, to evade criticism of human rights violations. The “values” expressed in European or Australian citizenship tests are largely very similar: freedom of expression, respect for democratic institutions, equality of the sexes and of sexual minorities, non-coercive childrearing, reasoning instead of violence, and so on. Not bad, though who would have thought that the Christian Democratic Party in the conservative German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg would initiate citizenship tests that include questions like “In this country, it is accepted that people who are openly homosexual hold public office. Do you agree with this?”  The correct answer is “yes.” Considering Baden-Wuerttemberg’s sociodemographics, it is likely that a large proportion of current citizens would, however, answer “no,” and the question is simply an imagined way of ferreting out supposedly homophobic Muslims. That is perhaps part of the reason why conservative parties embraced these values, rather than, say, faith in God or the importance of family — an alternative set of “European values” espoused by the Vatican and its Eastern European allies, who are not worried about deeply religious immigrants. (Not just because there are few of those, but also because Eastern European politicians are less concerned about the niceties of keeping them out.)

In our recent book Maxikulti, Joana Breidenbach and talk about two Brussels politicians adamant about defending European values. Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister and author of a number of liberal “citizens’ manifestos” that defend openness, tolerance and individualism in the face of the xenophobic moral panic that has followed the rise of home-grown Islamist terrorism. For Maciej Giertych, a member of the European Parliament representing the League of Polish Families (whose presidential candidate he also was), European values are morality, faith in God and respect for parental authority.

Another Eastern European politician who publicly shares these values is Zoltan Balog, chairman of the Human Rights Committee (!) of the Hungarian Parliament and “spiritual adviser” to the opposition leader, Viktor Orban, who is expected to win the 2010 election. In a recent interview, he explained that “it is not right to accept uncritically everything that people want to sell us under the pretext of human rights.” For example, it is not right that “the mayor of Berlin can only win with a large majority by getting out in front of people and declaring that he is homosexual,” or that soccer players are not allowed to pray on the field because that is an imposition of their religion on others. Balog went on to explain that although the state must be distinguished from religion, it “cannot be separated… from it” because “although they are not the same, they belong together.”

It is obvious that Giertych’s or Balog’s “European values” are close to the “American values” of the U.S. religious right or to the “Asian values” of Mahathir Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew or the Chinese Communist Party than to the “European values” of the citizenship tests.  I wonder why this does not receive more public scrutiny — especially considering that Balog’s job is supposedly to ensure that those consensual European values of tolerance and respect for individual rights prevail in Hungary. In this capacity, he is presumably in constant touch with his Brussels counterparts. Yet these fundamental disagreements on the nature and limits of rights and tolerance within the EU’s mainstream institutions remain quite hidden.

This week I am giving a lecture on the changing meanings of citizenship, so I was struck by an article in The New York Times that reports on a controversial new measure on Missouri that requires people to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. This measure is aimed at preventing illegal immigrants from voting, but it is criticised for excluding from the vote poor Americans who cannot furnish proof of citizenship because they don’t have passports.

This is another reminder of three facts: (1) that though the United States is a young country, its political system, among those existing, is almost uniquely old; (2) that despite 9/11, despite Guantanamo, in some important ways civil liberties have been taken less; and that (3) despite America often being identified with globalization, its citizens are less internationally mobile than those of many other rich countries.

In Europe, the mere idea that an illegal immigrant would vote is absurd. In most countries, illegal immigrants don’t even dare to go into the streets, lest they be apprehended by the next police officer and sent into detention. In the US, despite the spread of immigration detention (the NYT recently ran a story on the death of a man in immigration detention), the idea that ordinary police should join immigration agents in ferreting out illegal migrants is still widely rejected. In Europe, it simply goes without saying. The idea that ordinary citizens may not possess proof of their citizenship is similarly bewildering; every state except Britain has long made internal identity cards compulsory, and Britain has recently joined.

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!

Why the stack of drugs? That’s between me and my doctor. No, seriously, I picked them up as part of a research project on several new reproductive health technologies in Egypt, including erectile dysfunction drugs. I’m looking at religious debates about the moral implications of new technologies, representations in popular culture, and the way RHTs are taught in Egyptian medical schools. Also interesting to consider is elisions between biomedical technologies and indigenous health beliefs. Take, for example, this restaurant’s “Viagra Sandwich” (would you like your Viagra grilled or fried?):

This takes traditional notions of the virility-enhancing power of seafood and rebrands it with the notoriety of a global pharmaceutical product. By the way, it seemed that every other restaurant in Cairo has some “Viagra” dish. At the annual date market, one variety of dates usually gets called “Viagra” for the same reason.

The office interactions I have with colleagues about the stack of drugs on my desk have given me new insight into the different cultural meanings attributed to erectile dysfunction drugs. You see, every male colleague that comes in has a laugh at the boxes, and then typically I say, “You’re welcome to a box after I finish photographing them.” This usually leads to louder laughter and a protest, as he backs away from my desk: “No thanks, I don’t need it!” The implication seems to be that by accepting the drug, one is admitting to some sort of sexual failure. Perhaps this seems natural — it certainly reminds me of all the ribbing former presidential candidate Bob Dole endured when he agreed to be the first spokesman for the product in the U.S.

But in Egypt, this logic just doesn’t work. There, men often give the pills to each other as gifts. According to my Egyptian colleague who is researching the phenomenon, they are sometimes given by an employer to his employees as a kind of reward or incentive. Instead of connoting a lack, it seems to imply the cheerful anticipation of an excess of virility. It may also speak to the history of the drug’s availability in Egypt: before the market was opened up to all the cheap generic brands, Viagra was expensive and in limited supply. Thus the enthusiasm for trading it around was part of the wider intersection between gift economies and the black market economy.

Perhaps my Australian colleagues simply disapproved of the idea that I should be offering them drugs for which they didn’t have a prescription. Of course I should clarify that my offers were all in jest: I know that it is illegal for someone who is not a medical professional to give someone else a prescription drug. No, boys, these drugs are MINE, ALL MINE!!

–L.L. Wynn

Readers of CM might be interested to know that the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie is advertising for a new tenured lecturing position. The official job ad follows.

The Department is seeking to appoint an anthropologist to a teaching and research position in the Department where exciting new synergies are developing after a series of appointments. The appointee will teach at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and will supervise PhD theses and Masters degrees in Applied Anthropology and in Development Studies and Cultural Change. The appointee will also contribute to a large first year course in introductory anthropology.

Essential Selection Criteria: PhD in Anthropology or related discipline; experience of and commitment to, ongoing ethnographic field work; demonstrated commitment to research-inspired, and student-centred learning and teaching; demonstrated record of research activity and excellence, relative to opportunity, as evidenced by peer-reviewed publications; demonstrated capacity to contribute to teaching and supervision, based on ongoing research, in the anthropology of religion; the ability to draw expertise on the classic strengths of anthropology of religion – the interpretation of symbolic and ritual practices – and to address areas of more recent focus in the field of religion, in relation to the law, the state and global social processes.

Desirable Selection Criteria: Specialisation in one or more of the following fields; Visual Anthropology with special reference to film and media, and expertise in training students in ethnographic film making; Anthropology of Law; experience in innovative teaching.

The position is available on a full-time (continuing) basis from 2009 and may be subject to probationary conditions. Selection criteria must be addressed in the application.

Enquiries: Dr Kalpana Ram, Head of Department, on +61-2-9850-8016 or e-mail kalpana.ram@mq.edu.au

Package: From $81,682 pa, including base salary (Level B) $69,022 to $81,847 pa, annual leave loading and 17% employer’s superannuation.

Information about the Department of Anthropology is available from www.anth.mq.edu.au

Closing Date: 31 July 2008

Please note that only those applications submitted via the Macquarie University Online Recruitment System will be accepted.

The Macquarie online job application system can be accessed here.

The devastation wrought on Burma by Cyclone Nargis is becoming all the more apparent by the day.  There are also serious concerns about the Burmese junta’s approach to the disaster, which may be responsible for thousands of more deaths through neglect.  Under these circumstances, it is particularly difficult to know how to make donations that might be at all effective at reaching their target.  Personally, I donated via avaaz.org, which is supporting an organisation of Buddhist monks in Burma.

The post reproduced below was circulated on a Southeast Asia-focused mailing list that I subscribe to.  It provides an argument for the most effective forms of assistance and recommendations about the best aid agencies to approach.  This might provide some assistance to those considering the best way to help. I do not make any personal endorsement of the organisations listed.

From Mary Callahan:

A number of friends and colleagues have asked how to help the people of Burma in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. The malevolence of the Burmese government toward their people is incomprehensible. The junta is making it very difficult for foreign relief agencies to get desperately need medical assistance and other supplies to the hundreds of thousands (more likely millions) of victims of the cyclone. International media report that foreign relief workers are not being granted visas. Even if aid personnel can get into the country, existing government regulations are likely to make it difficult for expatriate relief workers to travel very far outside Rangoon.

There are, however, dozens of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Burma that have worked there for years. There are also several hundred local NGOs, which include faith-based organizations (Christian churches and monasteries) and other social service organizations. And finally, UN agencies such as UNICEF and the UN Development Program have staff throughout the country. Most of these organizations have years of experience carrying out disaster relief during both the annual monsoon and fire seasons. Until yesterday, US economic sanctions against Burma made it quite difficult to donate money to non-governmental operations inside the country. As of last night, the Treasury Department has loosened some of those restrictions at least in regard to international organizations.

The international and local NGOs and the UN agencies already on the ground employ thousands of Burmese professionals and support staff, who - unlike the foreign/expatriate staff - can travel to affected areas. Already, the NGO community has assembled assessment teams (including medical personnel) to go to the Irrawaddy Delta, where upwards of 20,000 are already confirmed dead.

Realistically, in the early stages of this relief operation, it will be the Burmese staff of INGOs, local NGOs and UN agencies who will carry the lion’s share of the burden. They have worked in this aid-hostile environment; have intimate knowledge of how to carry out aid without putting beneficiaries at risk; and are well-placed to identify community needs. When foreign relief operations do finally get access to Burma, it is of the utmost importance that they coordinate with and support these locally-based nongovernmental organizations and UN agencies that understand the complexity of working in Burma.

Both the Burmese government restrictions and US economic sanctions make it very difficult to give money to local NGOs directly, but it is possible to support their work by donating to the international groups that have longstanding partnerships with local NGOs and community-based organizations (including churches and monasteries). The following international organizations are already in the Delta and have launched fundraising campaigns to support broader efforts. All of them have proven track records in Burma, and especially in the Delta.

ADRA International
Myanmar Cyclone Fund
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904
(800) 424-ADRA ext. 2372
http://www.adra.org

CARE
151 Ellis Street N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303
(800) 521-2273
http://www.care.org

Project HOPE
255 Carter Hall Lane
Millwood, VA 22646
(800) 544-4673
http://www.projecthope.org

Save the Children
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
(800) 728-3843
https://secure.ga4.org/01/cyclone_nargis

U.S. Fund for UNICEF
125 Maiden Lane, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10038
(800) 4UNICEF
http://www.unicefusa.org

World Concern
19303 Fremont Ave. North
Seattle, WA 98133
(800) 755-5022, ext.7706
http://www.worldconcern.org

World Vision
P.O. Box 9716
Federal Way, WA 98063
(88 56-CHILD
http://www.worldvision.org

Here is a post from Anthrodesign:

Jovan’s latest article on the censorship of online research on ‘abortion’ in the US reminded me of philosopher Peter Singer’s article ‘Devaluing Life’ , which was published on the website http://www.project-syndicate.org on February 2006. Although Singer’s article is not on the controversy of abortion, he reflects on a similar issue, which is the controversy about the stem-cell research that requires the destruction of  human embryos. George W.Bush denied government funding for stem-cell research since it encourages the destruction of human-embryos and as a result devalues human life.

Peter Singer challenges this argument by George W.Bush and people with a similar worldview in the US who on the one hand value and respect the life of human embryos, and on the other hand who encourage wars in other countries and cause the killing of millions of people.

Peter Singer’s article is food for thought; and also I suggest that American anthropologists should study the ‘exotic cosmology-worldview’ of these people which is full of contradictions. Singer’s article is below:

Devaluing Life

February 2006

In August 2001, President George W. Bush told Americans that he worried about “a culture that devalues life,” and that he believed that, as President of the United States, he has “an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world.”

That belief lay behind Bush’s denial of federal government funds for stem-cell research that could encourage the destruction of human embryos. Although the Bush administration acknowledged that some scientists believe stem cell research could offer new ways of treating diseases that affect 128 million Americans, this prospect evidently did not, in Bush’s view, justify destroying human embryos.

Last month, the military forces that this same president commands aimed a missile at a house in Damadola, a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border. Eighteen people were killed, among them five children. The target of the attack, Al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was not among the dead, although lesser figures in the terrorist organization reportedly were.

Bush did not apologize for the attack, nor did he reprimand those who ordered it. Apparently, he believes that the chance of killing an important terrorist leader is sufficient justification for firing a missile that will almost certainly kill innocent human beings.

Other American politicians took the same stance. Senator Trent Lott, a conservative Republican – and a prominent opponent of abortion – said of the attack: “Absolutely, we should do it.” Senator John McCain, another leading Republican, though one often ready to disagree with Bush, expressed regret for the civilian deaths, but added, “I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same thing again.”

Indeed, it would be hard for the current administration to say that it wouldn’t do the same thing again, because it has done it many times before. On November 1, 2001, American planes bombed Ishaq Suleiman, a group of mud huts, because a Taliban truck had been parked in one of the streets. The truck left before the bomb hit, but 12 local villagers were killed and 14 were injured. There are many more such stories of innocent lives being lost in the war in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, too, American attacks have taken the lives of many civilians. Again, one of many examples will suffice. On April 5, 2003, a civilian neighborhood in Basra was bombed. The target was General Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” because of his use of chemical weapons against Iraqis. One bomb hit the home of the Hamoodi family, a respected, educated family, none of whose members belonged to the ruling Baath Party. Of the extended family of 14, ten were killed, including an infant, a two-year-old baby, a 10-year-old boy, and a 12-year-old girl. Four months later, Majid was captured alive; the bombs had missed their intended target.

This consistent pattern of readiness to inflict civilian casualties – often when striking targets that are not of vital military significance – suggests that Bush and other pro-life American leaders have less concern for the lives of innocent human beings in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, than they have for human embryos. This is a bizarre set of priorities. No parents grieve for a lost embryo in the way that they would grieve over the death of a child. No embryos are capable of suffering, or have hopes or desires for the future that are abruptly cut off by their death.

It might be possible to justify the loss of innocent human life in Damadola by a utilitarian calculation that killing Al Qaeda’s leaders will, in the long run, save a larger number of innocent human beings. After all, if they remain at large, they may succeed in carrying out further terrorist attacks that take hundreds or even thousands of innocent lives. Bush, however, cannot rely on that argument, for it is precisely the kind of justification that he rejects when it comes to destroying embryos in order to save, in the long run, those dying from diseases for which we currently have no cure.

Other moralists will say that the difference between destroying embryos for research purposes and killing civilians in military attacks is that the former is deliberate killing, whereas the latter deaths are “collateral damage” – unintended, if foreseeable, side-effects of a justifiable act of war.

We can grant that it was not the primary intention of those who planned and authorized the attack on Damadola to kill innocent people. We can also accept that al-Zawahiri is undoubtedly a dangerous foe, still active in a terrorist movement, and that he is a legitimate military target. Perhaps this particular attack can be justified on those grounds.

Nevertheless, the doctrine that it is acceptable to take actions that will foreseeably kill innocent people can have the effect of leading us to treat more lightly than we should the deaths of those killed. That, it seems, is what has happened somewhere in the American chain of command. The presence of a Taliban truck does not justify bombing a village in which civilians are going about their daily lives. Killing innocent people in order to bring a kind of rough justice to “Chemical Ali” – a particularly nasty member of Saddam’s military elite, but one who at the time of the raid was no longer in command of military forces – is wrong.

A culture that allows – and even endorses – such tactics is not one that is genuinely committed to encouraging respect for life. We can be quite sure that American forces would not have acted in the same way if the civilians nearby had been other Americans.

Recently, BoingBoing posted about change to a government-funded public health search engine, Popline, so that queries including the search term “abortion” turn up no results. According to the article, the owners of the engine Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, have made the modification because they believed it was a condition of their federal funding.

Lisa Wynn, our resident expert on reproductive technologies, is not able to post about it herself as she’s off doing research in Egypt, but she did send me these comments on the story:

1) what’s interesting to note is the self-censorship. We’ve all known for years that the US administration under Bush has had a chilling effect on research and provision of reproductive health services internationally (the so-called “global gag rule”), but the idea that people in a university would voluntarily self-censor their database based on the interventions at an unofficial and extra-legal level from individuals at a federal funding agency is bizarre and troubling;

2) and secondly, on a whole different level, the restriction would have excluded a large body of medical literature that has nothing to do with “abortion” as it is popularly used, since the medical community uses the term “abortion” to also include miscarriages (”spontaneous abortion”) as well as intended abortions (”induced abortion”).

Johns Hopkins Public Health has a statement by their Dean, Michael Klag, on their website stating that the restriction of the search term was only intended as a temporary measure while certain articles deemed to be “abortion advocacy” were removed from the Popline database. Klag also states that the block on “abortion” was immediately removed once he learned of it. He also kindly includes details of the references removed from the database.

While this paints a slightly better picture of the affair, I’m concerned that materials regarded as advocacy should be excluded from searches. People interested in public health research might have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to read advocacy materials. What if some anti-abortion scholar is researching a paper on pro-abortion advocacy and is unable to find materials? It would also seem to imply that there is a clear line between advocacy and other scholarly writing on a topic. Isn’t it possible for writing to be both? And does this mean that all research and writing aimed at promoting social change of some form, or engaging in a debate, should also be excluded on the same grounds? And who is to be the judge of such questions, deciding what is advocacy and what is not? The over-reaction of the administrators to this issue would suggest that many making these decisions will err on the side of caution, and the self-censorship will continue.

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.

There was an article about Stolen Generations on the Sydney Morning Herald the other day. According to the article Stolen Generation Kids ‘Used for Tests’ (SMH, 15 April 2005), the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee’s inquiry into a Stolen Generation Compensation Bill 2008 was told that some Aboriginal children removed from their families and placed into institutions were used to test medical treatments. Below is from the article:

On the first day of hearings in Darwin today, Kathleen Mills from the Stolen Generations Alliance said the public did not know the full extent of what happened to some children.

And efforts to obtain records that support the claims, such as that children were injected with serums to gauge their reaction to the medication, had been hampered, she said.

“These are the things that have not been spoken about,” Ms Mills told the inquiry.

“As well as being taken away, they were used … there are a lot of things that Australia does not know about.”

Outside the inquiry, Ms Mills said her uncle had been a medical orderly at the Kahlin Compound in Darwin.

She said he told her that children were used as “guinea pigs” for leprosy treatments.

“He said it made our people very, very ill … the treatment almost killed them,” she said.

“It was a common experience and a common practice …

“People are very inhibited to speak about their experience and it is not a nice subject … I don’t want them to be shamed.”

Senator Brown said it was important to get to the bottom of the claims, which he called “very, very serious”.

“It may be right, it may not,” he said.

“It needs investigation. If within the indigenous community there is a feeling that children may have been experimented upon for a treatment for leprosy or anything else, the air needs to be cleared.”

Ms Mills said information to do with the testing would be in health department archives and she called on the government to assist “opening Pandora’s box”.

She also said it was important to work with indigenous groups to ascertain who is eligible for compensation.

“It has to happen … but there’s this reluctance to do it,” she said.

“We don’t have the necessary information … it’s probably tucked away in some archive but we don’t have the resources to research, we don’t have the people who are qualified.”

Senator Brown said there was a national responsibility to help Aboriginal people to get to all the records, including those being held by church institutions.

“This is about their identity, this about their sense of being, their history,” he said.

The compensation bill aims to pay money to victims of the stolen generations, including living descendants, out of a Stolen Generations Fund.

Ex gratia payments would be set at $20,000 as a common experience payment with an additional $3,000 for each year of institutionalisation.

Rodney Dillon, from the National Sorry Day Committee, said that while the government debated action more Aboriginal elders entitled to some form of compensation were dying.

“We are going to lose a lot of people between now and the next time this bill is put on the table,” he said.

“Although it does not have all the things in it we would like, I think we should push ahead.”

Zita Wallace, chairperson of the Stolen Generations Alliance, said it was time to act “with urgency”.

“Because I know we are dying and all of us elders from the first generation we will be all gone … maybe the government would wish that would happen, then they would not have to pay compensation.”