Chap 18 EE

Raymond Hames Author

11/19/2017 Added

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Narrated Power Point Chap 18 Ember and Ember Cultural Anthropology

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[00:00:00.720]Okay, you've made it to the end nearly.
[00:00:03.233]Chapter 18, the last chapter in the text,
[00:00:05.626]Global Problems and we have a reading
[00:00:08.705]entitled, An Ancient Cure For Alzheimer's?,
[00:00:11.651]in
[00:00:12.601]question marks,
[00:00:13.874]and that is a read I'm gonna ask you to do that describes
[00:00:17.918]the research by Medical Anthropologist Ben Trumble,
[00:00:22.594]and it gives you an idea of the relevance
[00:00:25.473]of anthropological research on small scale societies
[00:00:28.895]and how they might help us understand
[00:00:31.382]and overcome problems we're facing today,
[00:00:34.211]namely Alzheimer's.
[00:00:35.801]So we're gonna be looking at natural events
[00:00:39.068]and disasters and famine, inadequate housing
[00:00:42.052]and homelessness, family violence and abuse
[00:00:44.792]and I've added something on neglect as well,
[00:00:48.370]crime, war, terrorism, and then finally
[00:00:50.893]making the world a better place.
[00:00:52.985]So these are the sorts of things that we're gonna cover,
[00:00:56.975]that are covered in this chapter.
[00:01:00.149]Natural disasters can have greater
[00:01:01.945]or lesser effects on human life
[00:01:03.442]depending on the social conditions.
[00:01:05.910]Take the recent hurricane that struck
[00:01:08.589]Houston and much of the Gulf Coast area.
[00:01:11.702]The problem there was that while it was a major hurricane
[00:01:15.729]of
[00:01:16.702]nearly unprecedented proportions,
[00:01:20.766]city planners didn't do a good job in dealing
[00:01:23.204]with the effects of runoff.
[00:01:26.233]They knew historically that these things occur,
[00:01:28.814]these hurricanes, and what they didn't do
[00:01:32.044]is regulate building and the associated drainage
[00:01:36.738]infrastructure to
[00:01:38.757]essentially take into consideration
[00:01:41.967]the enormous demands that would be made on the system,
[00:01:45.057]and as a consequence of
[00:01:47.166]inadequate planning an preparation,
[00:01:50.010]the impact on the residents of Houston
[00:01:53.512]and outlying areas was much greater
[00:01:55.488]than it otherwise could have been.
[00:01:59.409]Disasters are also social problems that have social causes
[00:02:03.175]and possible solutions.
[00:02:04.503]That is do your zoning intelligently,
[00:02:08.029]and make sure that you have the ability to handle
[00:02:12.374]these terrible runoffs that occur
[00:02:14.985]after
[00:02:16.019]major downpours.
[00:02:17.934]Famines, or episodes of severe starvation and death,
[00:02:20.336]often appear to be triggered by physical events
[00:02:22.658]such as severe drought or hurricanes.
[00:02:26.066]And this is true,
[00:02:27.165]but there are other dimensions to famines, too.
[00:02:29.973]Famines rarely result from
[00:02:31.279]just one bad food production season.
[00:02:34.365]It's usually
[00:02:36.077]a series of bad
[00:02:38.257]years at least of famine,
[00:02:39.654]and this problem is going to increase in certain areas
[00:02:43.873]as a consequence of global warming.
[00:02:47.284]But one thing I wanna say too about
[00:02:51.684]famines is that a lot of it has to do with civil unrest.
[00:02:56.808]The wars in, for example, Sudan
[00:03:00.087]and Somalia that are occurring today essentially have
[00:03:04.253]displaced people, they've taken, they've cutdown
[00:03:07.313]the
[00:03:09.181]roads for
[00:03:10.621]trade, and as a consequence people essentially
[00:03:15.906]are starving because
[00:03:18.048]their fields have been damaged by military forces.
[00:03:22.244]They can't
[00:03:24.224]get food in from relief agencies
[00:03:26.891]because of the warfare that's going on.
[00:03:30.023]And so many of the source of famines we see today
[00:03:33.000]have political causes that are directly related
[00:03:35.550]to wars and rebellions.
[00:03:38.891]In most nations, the poor usually live
[00:03:40.600]in inadequate housing.
[00:03:41.954]Throughout most of human history,
[00:03:43.587]this hasn't been a problem when people could
[00:03:46.067]make their own homes, but they end up in slums,
[00:03:49.901]in squatter settlements.
[00:03:51.422]Slums are just essentially areas of the city
[00:03:54.470]that are really settled, that begin to take on
[00:03:57.232]more and more people they really can't house.
[00:03:59.741]Squatter settlements essentially are illegal
[00:04:04.000]but accepted settlements that
[00:04:05.715]form around cities, on hillsides.
[00:04:07.616]I've seen these, for example, in my travels to Brazil,
[00:04:12.246]where they call them Favelas,
[00:04:14.135]or in
[00:04:16.033]Venezuela around Caracas.
[00:04:18.255]And so we have this kind of problem of inadequate housing.
[00:04:22.058]Most of this is triggered by a rural
[00:04:24.875]to urban migrations for a better futures.
[00:04:27.107]That is conditions are so poor in the rural sector
[00:04:31.203]for a variety of reasons,
[00:04:32.317]that people are moving to the city where they
[00:04:34.536]believe that they can have a better life for themselves,
[00:04:38.713]but since they are so poor,
[00:04:40.688]they don't have the kinds of skills needed to do well
[00:04:44.108]in an urban environment,
[00:04:45.341]and they end up in either squatter settlements
[00:04:48.269]or
[00:04:50.298]slums.
[00:04:51.292]And the health conditions in these areas
[00:04:54.916]are appalling because of pollution,
[00:04:58.791]inadequate infrastructure in terms of
[00:05:02.627]clean water and sewage and things of that nature.
[00:05:09.028]Because homelessness cannot occur
[00:05:10.820]if everyone can afford housing,
[00:05:12.537]some people would say that homelessness,
[00:05:14.483]to some degree, happens only in a society
[00:05:16.948]with great differences in income.
[00:05:18.786]And this is true, if you look at the Gini index,
[00:05:22.498]that we talked about earlier in the course,
[00:05:25.790]when there's a great disparity in incomes,
[00:05:28.411]we do have this problem of homelessness,
[00:05:30.979]and this problem of homelessness,
[00:05:32.764]we think of it as a US problem,
[00:05:34.548]but it's a problem that occurs worldwide.
[00:05:39.615]It tends to occur when
[00:05:42.999]social outreaches is inadequate
[00:05:46.221]and
[00:05:47.355]in the context of really high
[00:05:51.272]economic inequality.
[00:05:54.749]There's a section on refugees and immigrants,
[00:05:57.423]and the point here is that these people
[00:06:00.657]are driven out of their home nations
[00:06:02.382]because of war, economic problems, and disasters,
[00:06:06.370]and sometimes
[00:06:08.770]all of these three things are interrelated.
[00:06:11.871]This is creating an enormous problem
[00:06:14.342]by nations that take in
[00:06:16.802]refugees because they have a limited ability to do so.
[00:06:21.737]And then also to point out that Lincoln
[00:06:23.507]is a refugee resettlement site for Yazidis,
[00:06:27.756]who come from Iraq,
[00:06:29.729]these were a religious minority persecuted
[00:06:33.069]by
[00:06:33.985]Isis, and Somalis, and other people.
[00:06:40.438]Lincoln is an example of, and I would say
[00:06:43.592]a successful example, of a community
[00:06:46.090]that is taking in more fugitives.
[00:06:48.699]There's some federal assistance in this area,
[00:06:51.944]and these people are finding a better life
[00:06:56.575]in our local community.
[00:06:59.830]Family violence and abuse, again, a problem.
[00:07:03.495]We have violence against children,
[00:07:04.906]violence against wives, and also,
[00:07:06.989]and in the the text discusses these things,
[00:07:09.674]and in the next slide we'll see
[00:07:11.339]some possible solutions to this problem.
[00:07:14.507]But another thing is child neglect.
[00:07:16.731]This is typically poor people
[00:07:18.711]who can't afford, for example,
[00:07:20.636]to
[00:07:21.469]properly clothe,
[00:07:22.658]feed or medically treat their children.
[00:07:25.468]This is largely a consequence of poverty.
[00:07:28.706]The state is, you know, essentially doesn't
[00:07:31.512]offer up these services easily
[00:07:35.444]for these children.
[00:07:36.913]So we get this problem of neglect
[00:07:39.036]that goes on
[00:07:40.198]as well as
[00:07:41.783]abuse.
[00:07:44.152]Some ideas about reducing family violence and abuse,
[00:07:47.370]promoting the equality of men and women
[00:07:49.737]the sharing of childrearing responsibilities
[00:07:52.769]may reduce
[00:07:54.527]family violence
[00:07:56.478]and neglect.
[00:07:57.500]Whether that works
[00:07:58.915]or whether
[00:08:00.531]that's really the solution
[00:08:02.956]compared to as a consequence for a healthy family
[00:08:05.858]as you have less violence, et cetera, et cetera,
[00:08:09.163]is unclear at this point.
[00:08:12.091]But we'll also talk, and then,
[00:08:15.894]the authors turn to crime.
[00:08:18.032]What is crime in one society
[00:08:20.243]is not necessarily a crime in another.
[00:08:22.985]An easy example of this is the marijuana laws in the US.
[00:08:27.205]If you go to Colorado you can freely purchase
[00:08:30.702]recreational marijuana.
[00:08:32.348]If you bring that stuff across the border
[00:08:33.897]in Nebraska, you can be put in jail,
[00:08:36.071]and you can be put in jail for a good long time.
[00:08:39.894]And another issue, and so this occurs as a worldwide issue.
[00:08:44.852]There's some variation
[00:08:46.749]in terms of what is crime from Holland, for example,
[00:08:50.741]prostitution is highly regulated, it's not a crime
[00:08:53.988]if it's done quote, in the right part of the city,
[00:08:56.686]and so this is a kind of sliding sort of scale that we have
[00:09:00.655]for what's legal and illegal depending on where you are,
[00:09:04.454]and also
[00:09:05.589]a variation in punishment for various crimes.
[00:09:09.288]In the United States, for example,
[00:09:11.814]drug crimes are really harshly
[00:09:15.069]punished, and in other nations
[00:09:16.402]they're not punished very harshly,
[00:09:18.779]but also they have social services available
[00:09:21.500]to get people off drugs as a kind of long term strategy
[00:09:25.194]to reduce this sort of problem
[00:09:28.650]in drug abuse.
[00:09:30.179]A lot of crime does appear to be associated
[00:09:31.884]with one economic characteristic.
[00:09:33.654]Homicide is usually highest in nations
[00:09:36.363]with high income inequality.
[00:09:38.610]We've talked a little bit about this before
[00:09:41.056]in a previous chapter,
[00:09:42.501]and take a look at this slide,
[00:09:44.675]it's from Daly and Wilson's research
[00:09:46.400]and it looks at the
[00:09:48.272]Gini
[00:09:49.105]index,
[00:09:50.489]and the higher the index like .47,
[00:09:53.766]the higher the degree of inequality.
[00:09:56.564]And if we look at states in the United States,
[00:09:59.077]the
[00:10:00.009]hollow circles,
[00:10:01.193]we see that there's a powerful correlation
[00:10:04.109]between
[00:10:06.651]income inequality,
[00:10:07.901]and the higher it goes from .35 to .47
[00:10:12.021]the higher the homicide rate is.
[00:10:13.309]And it's also the same pattern you can see in Canada,
[00:10:17.799]Canadian Provinces, with the solid circles,
[00:10:21.232]and again, there's this positive correlation
[00:10:24.336]between the Gini Index and homicides per Annum,
[00:10:27.987]so the more inequality there is,
[00:10:29.775]the more
[00:10:32.242]homicide there is.
[00:10:33.226]Why this is the case is unclear.
[00:10:36.027]There's lots of really interesting ideas,
[00:10:38.581]but it does show, that for example, income inequality
[00:10:42.012]does play a role in homicides.
[00:10:48.245]One suggestion to reduce rates of violent crime
[00:10:52.134]is to reduce socialization and training for aggression.
[00:10:56.726]Perhaps, I don't know, but you know,
[00:10:59.505]one has to essentially
[00:11:03.189]understand what
[00:11:05.385]goes on in families that socialize their aggression.
[00:11:08.921]Is it a consequence of the realities of living
[00:11:11.708]in a poor neighborhood, bad neighborhood.
[00:11:16.120]The reduction, again, of inequalities in wealth
[00:11:18.210]may also help reduce crime
[00:11:19.746]as we saw with the Gini index.
[00:11:22.462]War is an unfortunate fact of life
[00:11:24.338]in most societies known to anthropology.
[00:11:27.753]They point out that people seem to be
[00:11:29.877]more likely to go to war when they fear
[00:11:31.830]unpredictable disasters that destroy their food supplies.
[00:11:36.216]And
[00:11:37.219]this was explored earlier in the chapter on politics,
[00:11:42.031]but one thing we should point out, too,
[00:11:43.664]that much of the war is intra-state.
[00:11:45.885]If you look at places like Yemen, Sudan,
[00:11:48.878]Somalia, we can even add Iraq.
[00:11:51.941]Ethnic differences
[00:11:54.911]lead to rebellion.
[00:11:56.682]Sometimes religious differences also lead to
[00:12:00.564]a war, and so a lot of war we see today
[00:12:03.219]is what we call intra-state war.
[00:12:05.287]That is war that occurs within a particular nation
[00:12:08.723]and not between nations.
[00:12:13.837]Terrorism is a problem in the news,
[00:12:17.463]for good reasons.
[00:12:18.893]It involves the threat or use of violence
[00:12:20.413]to create terror in others,
[00:12:22.350]usually for political purposes.
[00:12:25.846]Terrorism has cost the world lots and lots of money.
[00:12:31.368]Think of the, all sorts of airport security
[00:12:34.431]that you had to go through.
[00:12:36.465]Have to go through now that you
[00:12:37.544]didn't have to go through in the past.
[00:12:39.714]All the kinds of screening and all these other things
[00:12:43.096]that go on to
[00:12:45.442]make
[00:12:47.717]life more expensive for us.
[00:12:49.491]I can remember when I used to work
[00:12:51.166]at the National Science Foundation in downtown DC.
[00:12:54.671]I was about two blocks away from the White House,
[00:12:58.037]and you could walk along Pennsylvania Ave.
[00:13:01.486]to the White House, and there would be kind of like
[00:13:03.933]a bit of a gate and a kiosk
[00:13:06.274]where there would be security there.
[00:13:09.062]And it was right across from Lafayette Park,
[00:13:11.908]and today you can't even get close to the White House
[00:13:15.070]if you walk on Pennsylvania Avenue.
[00:13:16.721]There's all sorts of barriers.
[00:13:18.604]It's just an example of what goes on
[00:13:22.685]in terms of the economic cost that terrorism
[00:13:26.293]is inflicting,
[00:13:28.557]not to ignore the human cost,
[00:13:30.938]but it's had a huge economic impact all over the world.
[00:13:36.790]Here's an example of
[00:13:39.793]the
[00:13:40.707]Boston Marathon
[00:13:42.620]explosion
[00:13:44.197]that killed many, many people.
[00:13:46.738]I have kind of personal connection with this.
[00:13:49.633]My daughter's
[00:13:51.421]mother-in-law
[00:13:52.716]had
[00:13:53.783]finished her part of the Boston Marathon
[00:13:57.130]about three minutes after the explosion occurred.
[00:13:59.884]She crossed the line after three minutes,
[00:14:02.982]and she couldn't have been one of the people
[00:14:05.353]who were killed in this act of
[00:14:09.077]terrorism.
[00:14:11.581]So, pointing out making the world better.
[00:14:13.751]Social problems are mostly of human making
[00:14:16.480]and are therefore susceptible to human unmaking.
[00:14:20.733]And so the argument here is that
[00:14:23.038]we have the means to make the world better,
[00:14:27.057]but do we have the will, and are some of us
[00:14:30.743]willing to undergo the cost to make the world
[00:14:34.852]a better place overall.
[00:14:38.005]Here I wanna turn to the reading
[00:14:40.695]An ancient cure for Alzheimer's?
[00:14:43.248]Focuses on Medical Anthropologist Ben Trumble.
[00:14:46.215]And one of the things that
[00:14:50.090]is talked about here
[00:14:51.587]is this issue of WEIRD people and mismatch.
[00:14:54.515]WEIRD stands for
[00:14:56.028]Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Developed People.
[00:14:59.621]And these are us, modern day people.
[00:15:02.787]These people, we, are really WEIRD
[00:15:05.542]because we are really different from the kind
[00:15:08.898]of people that have
[00:15:12.006]existed for
[00:15:13.840]most of human history.
[00:15:15.598]Throughout most of human history,
[00:15:16.956]humans have had really high parasite loads,
[00:15:21.234]and there seems to be an interaction
[00:15:23.828]in that
[00:15:25.551]people with high parasite loads
[00:15:28.476]are able to essentially reduce the probability
[00:15:31.857]of
[00:15:32.690]getting Alzheimer's.
[00:15:34.406]Of course the idea here is not to get a parasite
[00:15:37.681]to protect yourself against Alzheimer's.
[00:15:40.354]That's a pretty rough cure
[00:15:42.153]that could lead to other problems.
[00:15:44.373]But the center of it is on the ApoE4
[00:15:48.040]gene
[00:15:49.360]that
[00:15:51.175]can
[00:15:52.096]lead to
[00:15:53.198]Alzheimer's, but it appears that
[00:15:56.577]the nature of the parasite load and the immune responses,
[00:16:01.386]you have parasites that can actually make this gene
[00:16:05.524]helpful to you in terms of brain function.
[00:16:08.950]So anyway, take a look at that discussion.
[00:16:10.940]What they wanna point out for example,
[00:16:12.739]if you really wanna understand high parasite load.
[00:16:15.908]Here's a publication that I did with Jennifer Kuzara.
[00:16:19.852]Looks at the Yanomamo number of parasites per person.
[00:16:24.199]The figures are Orinoquito and Parima B
[00:16:26.695]are just two different sampling areas,
[00:16:28.898]and if you look
[00:16:31.231]at any point in time,
[00:16:32.772]a Yanomamo has four to six
[00:16:35.197]parasite species
[00:16:37.023]of (mumbles)
[00:16:38.323]from round worms like Ascaris,
[00:16:41.144]or Malaria
[00:16:42.433]or
[00:16:43.893]other kinds of illnesses
[00:16:45.866]that are really prevalent in the tropics,
[00:16:48.451]and so this gives you an idea of
[00:16:52.205]the kinds of parasite loads people will have.
[00:16:54.828]And in the Trumble article on Alzheimer's
[00:16:57.665]he worked with a group called the Tsimane,
[00:16:59.608]T-S-I-M-A-N-E, and this just shows you
[00:17:02.916]what a kind of mismatch we have,
[00:17:05.848]we live in a really sterile environment.
[00:17:08.097]That's a mismatch from the kind of environment
[00:17:10.069]that we lived in the past, and as a consequence,
[00:17:13.197]we have diseases that essentially
[00:17:15.143]are unheard of like Alzheimer's in really
[00:17:20.312]simple, small scale societies.
[00:17:22.978]So here are the issues to kind of
[00:17:24.882]keep your eyes on for the exam.
[00:17:26.774]Social origins of natural disasters,
[00:17:30.089]household violence,
[00:17:31.206]inadequate housing and homelessness.
[00:17:33.039]You know these are worldwide problems.
[00:17:35.230]Crime,
[00:17:36.577]how crime varies in terms of intensity,
[00:17:39.947]and what is a crime from place to place?
[00:17:42.441]War is a key issue in understanding
[00:17:46.044]the issues of immigrants
[00:17:48.481]and refugees,
[00:17:49.658]and to some extent,
[00:17:51.657]how war has an effect on natural disasters.
[00:17:54.571]If there's, times are tough and a wars going on
[00:17:58.057]and crops aren't as plentiful,
[00:18:00.289]the normal response is for people to move around
[00:18:02.866]to get food by trade through relief agencies.
[00:18:06.849]Wars make that impossible,
[00:18:09.132]and kind of exacerbates the situation,
[00:18:11.566]so a natural disaster is essentially compounded
[00:18:14.393]by a social problem called war.
[00:18:16.076]Terrorism, and then finally WEIRD people.
[00:18:19.176]What are WEIRD people,
[00:18:20.941]and because we're kind of mismatched with the kind of people
[00:18:24.575]that have represented humans for
[00:18:28.616]most of human history.
[00:18:30.322]In this case we're talking about
[00:18:31.449]a really high parasite load.
[00:18:32.952]So, these are the issues that you should focus on.

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Chap 18 EE

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