Music and democracy in Burma

On February 3rd, the Student Anthropological Society and Undergraduate Archaeological Association hosted a presentation from Dr. Gavin Douglas from UNCG's College of Visual and Performing Arts. As an ethnomusicologist, Dr. Douglas explores music as a product of culture and how people make use of, and impart meaning onto, music. As he stated to us, this means that his interests are often more closely aligned with folks in an anthropology or sociology department than they are with those in a music department.

Dr. Douglas has conducted research in Myanmar, or Burma (there is an interesting, and complicated, history on the country's name) for nearly 20 years. I admit that I knew almost nothing about this country before the presentation, so I learned a ton. In the 20th century, the country was under colonial rule until 1948, when it secured independence from Great Britain under the leadership of General Aung San. A military coup in 1962 overthrew the government, and the country was ruled by a military dictatorship until 2011. While the country's single name suggests that it is a unified Burmese cultural entity, it is in fact home to ~135 ethnic minorities.

Map of Burma. From the Centers for Disease Control.

The thrust of Dr. Douglas's presentation revolved around the use of music in Myanmar as a way to both legitimize and undercut the military dictatorship. In the former case, the government threw funding (even though it was essentially bankrupt) into institutions that revived the court music of the kingdom that existed in the 18th and 19th centuries. This can be seen as a mechanism of national defense: the ruling regime built up its own legitimacy by supporting music (and other customs) that was disassociated with, and thus untarnished by, Western colonial oppression, The state-run media was quick to publicize the attendance of the government's military leaders at every event that showcased this music (essentially, they were proclaiming "look at us, we support 'real' Burmese culture!").

Music was also used to destabilize the regime. An underground movement of hip-hop artists, some of them smuggling tapes into Burma from Thailand, used music to protest and undercut the government's legitimacy.  One of these artists, Zayar Thaw, is now a member of the Burmese parliament. General Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was educated in the West, became the unofficial leader of a pro-democracy movement during her 15 years of house arrest (U2 was among her biggest supporters). Her instrument of choice, the western piano, also became a symbol of defiance and resistance.

The power of music... 

Bioarchaeological perspectives on societal "collapse"

On November 30th, 2016 (yes, I'm that far behind on my posts...), UNCG's Student Anthropological Society and University Archaeological Association sponsored a talk by Appalachian State University's Gwen Robbins Schug, a bioarchaeologist who, among other things, explores social change in first and second millennium BC South Asia.

The idea of societal collapse, and how past societies either fail or succeed has, thanks to popular works from scholars like Jared Diamond, entered the mainstream media in recent years. Gwen argued that these works (which are often written not by anthropologists who study human-environment interactions but by non-specialists) perpetuate misconceptions or even outright myths about the "collapse" of societies. One of the most pervasive is that the process of societal disintegration invariably results in competition and violence. Gwen also questioned the use of the word "collapse." If, by invoking this term, we mean the total collapse of a political structure, then history and archaeology tell us that true "collapses" are actually not that common at all. What is needed, Gwen went on to argue, is a shift from the idea of violent collapses to human resilience in the face of major socio-ecological change. What happens, in other words, to those people who remain, and how do they do it?

Gwen used her work with human skeletal material that dates to just after the "collapse" of the famous Indus Valley Civilization as an example of this approach. Just before 1000 BC, or about 1,000 years after the Indus "collapse," skeletons in the area showed statures (a proxy of overall health) comparable to historical populations with access to sophisticated health care. She then showed that while there were exoduses from major settlements after 1000 BC during times of environmental degradation, many people also remained. Life expectancy plummeted, skeletons showed signed of stunted growth, wasting, and more porous bones, and economies shifted from agriculture to hunting and gathering−but people survived.

The most interesting aspect of her presentation revolved around leprosy in the ancient city of Harappa. During the Early Urban period, the burials of people with leprosy differed little or not at all from the burials of unaffected individuals. However, during the later, Post-Urban period, people with leprosy were buried without their feet. Gwen suggested that those suffering from the disease during the Early Urban period were not seen as social outcasts, while during the Post-Urban period a process of "othering" emerged as people with the disease were recognized as different but, perhaps, not yet treated as unclean social outcasts. Much of these ideas are laid out more fully in a volume that Gwen recently co-edited.  

I also learned that night that Gwen was promoted to Full Professor. Well done and well deserved!

Disasters and social change

Under the guidance of our Department Head, Bob Anemone, the Department of Anthropology at UNCG initiated a brown bag lecture series entitled "How I spent my 'summer vacation'," with summer vacation in quotations because we (the anthropology faculty) are active researchers who conduct much of our field work and data collection during the summer months.

On April 1, our colleague Art Murphy presented on his work in Mexico on human responses to disasters. For the last few years, he has been working on the ABC Day Care Center Fire, a tragic event that eventually resulted in the death of 49 children. He is currently on a Fulbright in Mexico and, while there, he was asked to work on a more recent disaster, the chemical spill at the Buena Vista del Cobre mine. There is a lot going on in both cases, not the least of which is politics, but there is one point that Art made that resonated with me. It is often assumed that disasters−take Hurricane Katrina or the Haiti Earthquake−highlight social inequalities and are thus movers of social change. While the former is true, Art pointed out that the latter is typically not: as things calm down, people try to recreate and preserve the system of inequality that existed before the disaster. 

Ashby Dialogue, Part 3

Our third Ashby meeting was held this past Monday (March 24). The theme for this meeting was disasters, in particular the adaptations of contemporary humans populations to disasters, and was mediated by UNCG's Eric Jones and Art Murphy from Anthropology and Steve Kroll-Smith from Sociology. Another interesting discussion with great student participation. We started off with a veiwing of Trouble the Water, a documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Some of the more salient points that arose:

• Steve argued that the term "natural disaster" is actually a misnomer: including the word "natural," he said, actually furnishes nature with far too much agency and, in doing so, makes culture and human organization less culpable. In other words, and to quote Anthony Oliver-Smith (1994: 74):

...that is, disasters [are] interpreted less as the result of geophysical extremes such as storms, earthquakes, avalanches, droughts, etc., and much more as functions of an ongoing social order, the structure of human environment relations, and the larger framework of historical processes that shaped these phenomena.

Disasters are seen to be far more characteristic of societies than they are of simple physical environments.

• Disasters can also provide an incisive window into capitalist relationships. While it is of course important to make sure that relief makes it to people after a crisis, it is interesting to see which organizations are awarded contracts to do so; oftentimes they have ties to important government personnel or their close friends. 
• Eric Jones made the important point that, in terms of human social adaptation, there is a big difference between expecting a disaster and being prepared for one. One criticism that is often floated around after a disaster is "well, why didn't these people leave the area?" As Eric pointed out, there are several reasons, including (1) a lack of family or friends outside of the area that would facilitate a move; (2) a lack of transportation (public or personal); and, even if the former two are present, (3) fear of theft in peoples' absence. This highlights the fact that an important component of human adaptation to disaster is rooted in social relationships, or, as Eric's research refers to it, social networks.
• In a similar vein, Art made the distinction between preparedness and recovery, arguing further that race and class effects seem to be much stronger in the latter. The structure of social organization (i.e., how we determine the haves versus the have-nots) determines how recovery proceeds. This in turn tends to put certain types of people (usually poorer folks) into more susceptible positions.
• One of our best students, Jessica Haynes, brought up the issue of indigenous knowledge and how it is often ignored at our own peril. Art mentioned that drought conditions in California may eventually cause growers to move their operations to states with climates more conducive to particular crops. Jessica saw this as a case in point−why not grow indigenous plants that are adapted to their respective environments?

This was, overall, another really successful get-together, and we're looking forward to our last session, which will look at human adaptation from the perspective of interior architecture...

References:

Oliver-Smith, A (1995).Peru's five-hundred-year earthquake: vulnerability in historical context. In (Varley, A Ed) Disaster, Development and Environment, pp. 74-88.

Bookmarks Festival

Last Saturday (11/7) my wife, Noell, our son Simon, and I went to this year's Bookmarks Festival in Winston-Salem. It's really a wonderful event that brings authors from around the country together to interact with readers. Simon is at the age (just over 3 months) were he is unfortunately too young to enjoy the made-for-kids events like story time but, fortunately, also too young (and immobile) to get overly bored with the adult presentations.

I wanted to go because the eminent Civil War historian James McPherson was talking about his new book War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865, which examines an under-appreciated aspect of the conflict. Actually, Professor McPherson gave a talk at UNCG the day before, but I was unable to attend.

McPherson framed his discussion around the issue of foreign intervention: the American Civil War was, he pointed out, a rare example of an internal conflict that did not require official intervention by foreign powers (the recent hostilities in Syria, on the other hand, reflect the more common pattern). The Union and Confederate navies played key roles in determining how nations such as France and Britain decided to deal with the belligerents. Three events were particularly important:

• The Trent Affair. In November of 1861 the Union navy intercepted the British mail ship Trent and, with it, two Confederate envoys whose aim was to secure British and French recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign nation. Without permission from Washington, the Trent was boarded and the two envoys arrested. Although the ship was allowed to continue on its journey, Britain protested that the boarding violated her neutrality and demanded a formal apology and the release of the prisoners. Wanting to avoid an armed conflict, the Lincoln Administration eventually freed the captives. While Britain was focused on maintaining her neutrality throughout the affair, a Union bungling of the situation could certainly have significantly worsened its relationship with Britain (the latter, in fact, had ordered additional troops to Canada and ships to the Atlantic).
• The Union blockade. Almost as soon as hostilities broke out, Lincoln ordered a naval blockade of the entire Confederate coast. This was, of course, a nearly impossible task given that the cordon would need to extend from the Texas border with Mexico all the way to northern Virginia−a distance of around 2,500 miles. According to international law, the legitimacy of a blockade rested partly on its successful implementation; that is, a legitimate blockade is one that can successfully prevent outgoing ships from leaving and in-going ships from entering. The Confederacy pointed to the numerous ships that were able to run the blockade, while the Union maintained its legitimacy. Eventually, foreign powers recognized the blockade. Professor McPherson pointed out that Britain likely took this stance in part because blockading was an important tool for the Royal Navy itself and a failure to acknowledge the Union blockade would have set a potentially damaging precedent.   
• Construction of Confederate ships in foreign ports. Several ships, disguised as merchant vessels, were built in British yards and eventually served as Confederate commerce raiders. Protests from the American government convinced both Britain and France to seize other ships intended for Confederate service.     

My wife and I took a couple of photos during the talk, and you can see Professor McPherson's BookTV on War on the Waters here.

Professor McPherson giving his book talk. Photo by Noell Egeland.

My wife also pointed out that Adrian Miller would be speaking at the festival, reminding me that we had heard him on NPR a while ago discussing his research on Soul Food. So, we decided to stick around and listen to him, and I'm glad we did. Most importantly, he's a fellow Denverite, something I learned when he came around before his talk and introduced himself to the audience to thank them for coming. He spoke about his book Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. The most fascinating point that Miller made was that "Soul" or "Southern" food, while partly a modification of African cuisines brought to the New World by slaves, actually partitioned itself by socio-economic status, and not race. That is, both whites and blacks used the same ingredients to make very similar dishes. His point was borne out by how the audience−black and white−nodded in agreement when he would list off classic southern ingredients.

References:

McPherson, J (2012). War on the waters: the Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Miller, A (2013). Soul Food: the surprising story of an American cuisine, one plate at a time. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Cultural misunderstandings: a case study from the British settlement of North America

I'm in the middle of reading Bernard Bailyn's latest book, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations 1600-1675, and I came across a very interesting example of two cultures talking past one another. A little background: the colony at Jamestown was founded in 1607, and over the next few years, colonists, including the now famous John Smith, undertook expeditions to map the area and to collect (or steal) provisions from the Indians (the colonists were in bad shape almost constantly during the first decades). As might be expected, both cultures were feeling each other out in order to maximize their respective advantages. On the one hand, while the Indians were interested in European trade goods, they wanted to constrain the colonists within small, coastal settlements focused on trade (rather than permanent homesteads). The Europeans were also looking to trade but, for myriad reasons, many where also looking to stay and settle permanently on land occupied by various tribes. Ok, I'll have Bailyn (2012: 57-58) pick it up at the point where he describes a cultural misunderstanding relating to power relationships (note the olde English spelling in the quotes):

In three days of elaborate ceremony and elusive conversation, fending off Powhatan's [a local chief] question of the colonists' purpose in settling, [John] Smith was urged, on behalf of his people, to acknowledge Powhatan 'as their lord' and to accept for himself the role of a subordinate chief. This, of course, to the extent that he understood the proposal, he ignored, but in the end, symbolically at least, he had no choice. After being feasted 'in their best barbarous manner' and treated like a defeated enemy about to be slain, he was brought to what appeared to be an execution block, surrounded by warriors 'ready with clubs to beate out his braines.' Then at the final moment he was suddenly released, adopted as a subordinate werowance, and by extension his people were symbolically enclosed within the constraints of Powhatan's regime. Never, of course, experiencing these events as acts of subordination, and declining the benefits offered, Smith recorded the story of his captivity at first briefly and with little drama (he 'procured his owne liberty'), then elaborated it in retelling, finally embellished it as an elaborate ceremony on the tale of how Pocahontas 'the King's dearest daughter' (who was eleven at the time) 'got his head in her armes, and laid her own upon his to save him from death.'

The parallel effort to subordinate and control barbarous and threatening people, at least symbolically, was played out reciprocally by the English the next year. Smith and Newport [describe him], on order from London, led a troop of musketeers to present Powhatan with a plethora of gifts, inlcuding copper objects, a bedstead and bedclothes  a red coat, and a copper crown, the last a gift heavily freighted with symbolism from the great King James. When with difficulty they managed to place the crown on Powhatan's forcibly bowed head, the ceremonial reduction of the chief of chiefs to the status of a vassal or local lord of King James was complete, symbolically confined within England's sovereign power.

In other words, both cultures carried out elaborate ceremonies that, while meant to subordinate each other, were perceived as meaningless rites because neither culture recognized them for what they were intended to be. The same thing happens all the time with modern cultures; sometimes these interactions can be humorous, but many times they can have serious, even tragic, consequences. For those who say that understanding other cultures is a waste of time, proceed at your own peril...

UPDATE 4.28.13

I've just finished the book, and it was a fascinating read. What struck me most was how heterogeneous the colonizing populations from Europe really were. Recent histories of colonial America have stressed, and correctly so, that Native Americans were not a single, monolithic unit but rather a diverse collection of rich cultures. So too for the incoming Europeans, whose various nationalities, religious views, and socio-economic circumstances determined to a great extent how they interacted with both native cultures and each other.

My Human Biological Variation class was recently engaged in a discussion about the biological reality of race among modern humans and, and it often does, the point that the concept's definition differs from place to place was raised. One student, originally from England, was surprised at how obsessed Americans seemed to be with their origins: people identify as African-American, German, Irish, Native American, and so on, while it is very rare for an English citizen to identify as, say, German-English or African-English. I bring this up because I came across a passage in the book that was particularly salient within this context. In his description of the complex socio-ethnic conditions of a Manhattan recently conquered by the English, Bailyn (2012: 516) outlines the response of the newly incorporated citizenry:

In the late 1660s and 1670s the new English province of New York was far different from its neighboring New England  It was a world in flux, its people caught up in complex ethnic tensions, its economy growing but shifting in organization  it government newly established and weakly related to the society it ruled. The great majority of New Yorkers in Manhattan (an estimated 76 percent of a significant sample) were Dutch, as were the settlers sin what were now called Albany and Schenectady, and they expected to remain Dutch under the English regime. In fact, their "Dutchness" was becoming more prominent  as a process of what Joyce Goodfriend has called the "crystallization" of ethnic groups set in. The various groups, she explains, now in a more open society became more self-aware and felt the need to define themselves in institutional form and to preserve their distinctive characteristics  So the Dutch, despite the differences among them, began to "coalesce"-to consciously value their distinct common ground  in the language, religion, customs  and values. So too other groups sought their own places in this province of tolerated diversity.

I'm not sure how "tolerated" all that diversity really was, but this "crystallization" really does seem to be a common response among peoples within multi-ethnic communities, and it may may go some way in explaining the desire of Americans to be so self-aware of their ancestry.

References:

Bailyn, B (2012). The barbarous years: The peopling of British North America: the conflict of civilizations 1600-1675. Alfred E. Knopf, New York.

Goodfriend, JD (1992). Before the melting pot: society and culture in colonial New York City, 1664-1730. Princeton University Press, Princeton.