As the attempted eviction of Travellers from Dale Farm seemed more likely, claims surfaced in the media that the Travellers themselves had left and that only “activists” were remaining at Dale Farm. Reporting for the Guardian from inside Dale Farm, John Bingham wrote “The girls are angered at suggestions in the media that there are no travellers inside, only activists. ‘We’re more than grateful, says one.’We’re all activists,’ adds another.”

This call for support was posted on the Dale Farm Travellers blog: “Today, we are witnessing the beginning of a new solidarity movement, with settled people standing up with Gypsies, Travellers and Roma to help fight for their rights.” The Travellers blog lists SMS alert system, a legal hotline, a twitter account, a link for donations and a “welcome pack” for activists available as a Microsoft Word Document, a PDF and the free and open source OpenDocument format. The welcome pack is a 16 page document covering the political and legal context, cultural sensitivity and other topics. The following background information is excerpted from the welcome pack:

“Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers have been held to be ‘ethnic’ groups for the purpose of the Race Relations Act (RRA) 1976. In CRE v Dutton,1 the Court of Appeal found that Romani Gypsies were a minority with a long, shared history, a common geographical origin and a cultural tradition of their own. In O’Leary v Allied Domecq,2 HHJ Goldstein reached a similar decision in respect of Irish Travellers. Although a county court judgment, it should be noted that, in Northern Ireland, Irish Travellers are explicitly protected from discrimination under Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 article 5…” (9)

“In 2004, Trevor Phillips, former Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and now Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), compared the situation of Gypsies and Travellers living in Great Britain to that of black people living in the American Deep South in the 1950s.” (9)

“Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers have been held to be ‘ethnic’ groups for the purpose of the Race Relations Act (RRA) 1976. In CRE v Dutton,1 the Court of Appeal found that Romani Gypsies were a minority with a long, shared history, a common geographical origin and a cultural tradition of their own. In O’Leary v Allied Domecq,2 HHJ Goldstein reached a similar decision in respect of Irish Travellers. Although a county court judgment, it should be noted that, in Northern Ireland, Irish Travellers are explicitly protected from discrimination under Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 article 5…” (9)

Comments on The Guardian’s Live Blog posted during coverage of the Eviction event on September 19, 2011 reveal a range of reactions to both the legal question of whether the Travellers have a right to live on or build on the land, but more importantly uncover the range of racial/ethnic and cultural prejudice against them.

A reader using the name “today12” wrote:

“I grew up in Crays Hill and attended the local school, which now has the 2nd worst attendance record in the UK and the worst sats results. Out of the 110 pupils, 107 of them are ‘travellers’. Many of them too are also abusive, antisocial, messy and once set a car on fire and pelted the firemen when they arrived. There has been a shooting murder on the site because of traveller rivalry. I do wish their supporters would consider the lives of the local residents. Many Crays Hill residents are afraid to speak out because of retribution; not because they support the travellers. Also there are many more sites they can live on in the Basildon area, it’s on the council’s website, but they are just ungrateful and what to cause trouble.”

A reader using the name “Essexfella” wrote:

“As a local I can tell you all that the opinion of the majority in the area is that they should not be there. Local people have been fighting for this for 10 years. Yes they own the land but it has no permission to build.

If you want land in Essex that can be built on, you pay more for it. Why should any part of our community buy cheap land and then flout the planning laws?”

On the Dale Farm Traveller’s blog, racist comments include:

Posted by “Craig Compton”:

“by by pikies, by by scum.

by by pikies, your time has finally come.”

Posted by “Jennifer Cooper”:

“it will be a good day tomorrow when the whole lot of you scrounging pikeys are evicted.”

“i would be very happy to call any of these filthy low life pikeys and a few others things to their faces. enjoy your last evening, the bailiffs are coming to move you the gypos tomorrow. wish i could come a watch. just think this time tomorrow you will be enjoying your next squat spoiling the countryside somewhere else.”

Posted by “Zoey”:

“Muppet. Blame the government because a bunch of scroungers try and pass themselves off as Roma? maybe we should sue you for all the money the scroungers have siphoned off the taxpayer. Eh? How bout that??

Fire up those bulldozers soon Constant and co.”

One anonymous commenter repeatedly posted excerpts from an article appearing in The Daily Mail on September 17th, 2011 titled “Travellers’ real homes are back in Ireland and they will NOT be ‘homeless nomads’ if they are evicted.” The article  describes homes in Ireland owned by some of the applicants named in the petitions to allow residents to remain on Dale Farm. The article uses “evidence” of home ownership and financial resources to refute the claim that the residents of Dale Farm would have nowhere to go were they evicted.  The homes mentioned are in Rathkeale, Ireland.

The Telegraph reports, in a photo caption “The unofficial portion of Dale Farm is exclusively occupied by members of the Irish Traveller community, whose cultural roots are in the town of Rathkeale, County Limerick, Ireland.”

Several commenters on the Travellers blog referred to the case earlier in the month of forced laborers rescued from another Traveller site. One commenter, responding to a question about why 90% of Gypsy and Traveller land use planning applications are rejected asked “Do you condone slavery then?” implying that supporting the rights of the Travellers at Dale Farm meant supporting slavery and forced labor Police claim to have found at another Traveller site. Another anonymous commenter challenged the authenticity of the Travellers’ identity and the use of the discourse of ethnic cleansing: “The people at Dale farm are not real gypsies or romani. How can you compare the eviction to Ethnic cleansing?”

According to reporting by Alexandra Topping, John Baron, MP for Basildon and Billericay, supported  the decision to evict, stating: “I believe we have the moral high ground; everybody has to obey the rules . . . People talk about human rights for minorities, but what we shouldn’t forget is that the majority have human rights too and we are putting that into practice.”

This post represents the beginning of some research I’m doing on the Irish Traveller community at Dale Farm. The working title is “When Nomads Fight To Stay: Land Zoning, Globalized Activism and Forceable Eviction at Dale Farm”

On July 4th, 2011, decades of legal battles came to a head with an eviction order for around seven acres of land in the Dale Farm community, in Essex county England, UK. After the courts ruled that they had settled there illegally, around 400 nomadic Irish Travellers were ordered to leave by August 31, 2011 or face demolition of their homes and property. The part of the settlement in question is described by local authorities as “unauthorized” in contrast to the neighboring and contiguous portion of the farm that is considered “authorized.” The land is classified or zoned as “green belt” and development has occurred without “planning permission.” However, all land in question was owned by Traveller, Romani and Gypsy families, however the seven acres in question, the county claims, were not zoned for residential construction.

Travellers, activists and supporters of the residents have deployed the discourse of “ethnic cleansing” to refer to the eviction. Activists and NGOs are asking not only for housing for the Travellers, but “culturally appropriate” housing. The local government (Basildon Council) is estimated to be prepared to spend 18 million pounds (about 30 million dollars) to evict and demolish the property. In September, 2011 Security forces constructed a compound outside Dale Farm from which to plan and coordinate the eviction.

“…modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system” (Agamben 2005:2)

What’s happening here at the intersection of racism, prejudice and land zoning? How are zoning restrictions being used to enact exclusion of these nomadic people? How does international law speak to these issues? Are the travelers de facto stateless people, or UK citizens who also live in a legal grey area due to their nomadic tradition, lifestyle and reaction to those facts?

The former owner of the land, Ray Bocking, a scrapyard dealer sold the land to the travellers in 2001. He is interviewed, the video is available on YouTube. Prior to the Traveller residence, the land was mostly concrete and was used as a scrapyard. However, the Basildon council argues that they the land is “greenbelt.” Constant & Co. have been hired as the bailiffs in this matter. The following text appears on the Constant & Co. web site under “Enforcement Services,” in the submenu “Travellers & Squatters”:

Travellers

Constant & Company are employed nationally on a daily basis to recover possession of land from unwanted trespassers. We believe we are the most experienced, professional and busiest company in this type of work.

Court proceedings involve delay that can be extremely expensive. An occupation over several weeks at a trading site or shopping mall can result in a disastrous loss of business, but there is a fast alternative course of action that we utilise regularly and very successfully for many high-profile clients. Our bailiffs take legal possession of an occupied site usually within 24 to 48 hours of being instructed. Police are informed and called upon as necessary. We arrange attendance of tow trucks and cleansing contractors if needed.

Maybe your property has recently been occupied and has now been vacated. You may be thinking about clean-up services, temporary site security and/or concrete barriers quickly to prevent it happening again? We are your ‘one-stop shop’ and can provide a tailored, cost effective solution through our carefully selected partners.

A telephone call will initiate the process.

On August 5, 2011, Raquel Rolnik, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing said “Evictions constitute a grave breach of human rights if not carried out with full respect for international standards…We urge the UK authorities to halt the evictions process and to pursue negotiations with the residents until an acceptable agreement for relocation is reached in full conformity with international human rights obligations.”

UN-HABITAT responded to inquiries from the press on September 14, 2011 stating: “ We do not promote nor advocate forced evictions. We recognise and promote the progressive and full realization of the right to adequate housing as articulated in international instruments and the Habitat Agenda. We understand that resettlement may at times be an inevitable part of urban development.” However, in “cases where resettlement is inevitable as a result of all other alternatives and options having been exhausted” the statement calls on parties to “follow due process.” According to the statement, due process means: “a. timely information and sufficient communication to the affected population; b. participation and involvement of those affected; c. adequate compensation; d. alternative adequate housing; e. follow-up post-resettlement to ensure livelihood and economic development.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has offered to enter the negotiations however the offer was rejected by the UK government. Expressing concern for further consequences of the forced eviction, Jan Jarab, the European representative for UNHCR said “It is actually very symbolic, this is the largest Irish Traveller site in the UK and it sends the message across the UK and also across the European Union that the Government is putting its weight behind an eviction based approach.”

September 19th, just before evictions were about to proceed, at 4:46pm, The Guardian reported (via the Press Association) that residents were granted a “last-gasp injunction restraining Basildon council from clearing structures from the site pending a further hearing at London’s high court on Friday.” The Telegraph reported that Justice Edwards-Stuart of London High Court “directed that Basildon should serve a schedule on the residents by noon tomorrow specifying what enforcement measures were proposed on a plot-by-plot basis” and that “residents were to take reasonable steps to permit council officials onsite to discuss arrangements with individuals, to discourage any further student protest, and to procure the dismantling of barricades”

In response the Dale Farm Travellers blog posted: Dale Farm resident, Kathleen McCarthy said, ‘We still need somewhere to go, if we have to leave here. Today is a great victory, but we still need Basildon Council to approve a legal site for us.’

Alexandra Topping for the Guardian wrote: Asked if the council would keep moving the Dale Farm Travellers on, he said they would not be allowed to settle elsewhere in the area: ‘We will keep on moving them until they find a proper site.’

Bibliography

Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of exception. University of Chicago Press.

There are two kinds of offworld anthropology: Near Distance and Long Distance. With typical Earth-centrism, the “distance” is measured in light years from the Blue Marble. Try explaining to a Gorgolian that he’s “Long Distance” when you’re on his doorstep.

At least Gorgolians won’t spit in your face when you try to interview them about the meaning of bio-zeppelin design in their culture.  Read more…

(via Savage Minds)

As I browse publisher’s web sites for forthcoming volumes on religion, anthropology, sociology and other topics relevant to my research, I’m struck by one of the categories frequently used: Indigenous Religions.  Listed with categories for books on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Comparative Religions, etc. this Indigenous genre stands out.

The other genres are, for the most part, what have been historically called “World Religions.”  This category sometimes refers to the many “religions of the world” as in Huston Smith’s “The World’s Religions” but usually it mean something more like “religions of the majority.”  Tomoko Masuzawa (University of Michigan, and currently a scholar at the IAS School of Social Science) problematizes the construction of this category in her book “The Invention of World Religions: Or How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism.”  The book has been waiting on my shelf for a careful reading but I’ve had a quick look at the introduction in which she notes “everybody, in effect, seems to know what ‘world religions’ means, more or less.”  Discussing the role of the phrase in the academy, she observes that the list of  world religions “almost invariably include Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism, and also typically count among their number Confucianism, Taoism, and Shinto . . less typically but still very frequently included are Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and Sikhism.”

Masuzawa argues that the demarcation between “Eastern” and “Western” religions is “articulated from the point of view of the European West.”  An observation that while seeming initially quite obvious, has a profound consequence when you consider, say, a Buddhist in California talking about their practice in an “Eastern religion” from a geographic position in which Asia lies directly to their West.  Of course, they might practice in a line that considers itself rooted more in Colorado than India. But clearly “Eastern” means something else here. Masuzawa proposes this positioning is rooted in the nineteenth-century origins of early linguistic studies (philology), which identified the “Semitic”, “Aryan” and “Oriental” languages as matching up with contemporaneous ”racialized notions of ethnic difference.”  Amazingly, these divisions persist in religious studies departments (and publishing houses), without much attention to their  basis in colonial logic.

And so, returning to the “Indigenous” question: with this oddly positioned binary of religious categories in hand, the academy categorizes everything else – whatever doesn’t fit in East or West – into “Indigenous” or “Tribal” religion.  This includes the “animism,” shamanism,” and any other practice once called “primitive religion.”  What do we make of the essentialism and universalism of this category? Certainly it persists in part because of the continued centering of Mircea Eliade (and Émile Durkheim, and others) in religious studies curricula.

After all, Eliadean methodology attempts to locate “original,” “archaic,” and “primary” religion in historical or existent “primitive man” and extrapolate a broader understanding of all religious belief and practice from the resulting monolithic construction. Eliade names this monolith “archaic religion” and his dialectic places it in opposition to the “highly evolved” religions.  I’ve been working on a critique of the Eliadean Community of Practice from linguistic anthropology, especially considering Joseph Errington‘s notion of a “Colonial Linguistics.” Reviewing the literature, I’ve found a range of critiques of Eliade which I’ll include here.

Previous critiques of Eliadeʼs dialectic of binary oppositions include feminist (Christ 1991, King 2002), postcolonial (Kehoe 1996, Bilimoria 2000, Joy 2001), theories of religion (Smart 1978, Alles 1988, Segal and Wiebe 1989), postmodern (Olson 1999, King 2002), and methodological (Leach 1966, Strenski 1973, Allen 1978, Werblowsky 1989).

In a feminist critique, Christ points to Eliadeʼs practice of giving grandiose names to male gods but referring only to unspecified (and lower-case) “goddesses” (1991:84) and draws attention to Eliadeʼs valorization of the “Indo- European” conquest over “sedentary populations,” a conquest Eliade compares to “carnivores hunting” (1991:88). Christ uncovers gendered features of Eliadeʼs discourse, the particular (female) versus the universal (male), and Eliadeʼs claim that hierarchical relations of the sexes are an essential characteristic (1991:93). Christ (1991:93) and King (2002:373) both argue that Eliadeʼs history of religion is flawed by its dualism and universalization of male experience.

In a postcolonial critique, Kehoe accuses Eliade of cultural imperialism and labels his “new humanism” as a “very old primitivism” (1996:377). Kehoe takes issue with Eliadeʼs labeling of contemporary societies “archaic” and his misrepresentation of those peoples (1996:383,384). Eliadeʼs primitivism, in Kehoeʼs view, is a “yearning to shed bourgeois clothing and partake” of the “archaic ecstasy” (1996:388). In Kehoeʼs reading, Eliade may lead an “inauthentic [life] of spurious culture” (Sapir 1924) but by constructing the “primitive shaman” he can reassure himself that “archaic ecstasy” is still possible (1996:38). Bilimoria (2000:171,198) and Joy (2001:177) both critique Elaideʼs binaries (true/false, transcendental/totemic, belief/myth, sacred/profane).

In a theories of religion critique, Smart proposes a “grammar of religion” to replace Eliadeʼs sacred/profane polarity (1978:176). Alles sees Eliadeʼs dialectic as a totality, and calls on Saidʼs (et al.) critique that totality is “an instrument of Western colonial domination and cultural imperialism” (1988: 115,117). Segal and Wiebe critique Eliadeʼs claim to the sui generis character of religious phenomena (1989:600).

Olsonʼs postmodern critique draws from Foucault (1967:189) to dispute Eliadeʼs assertion that history is a “body of facts” arguing that there is no untainted “primal” historical material (Olson 1999:360). Olson contrasts Eliadeʼs linear, hierarchical hermeneutics with Deleuze and Guattariʼs de-centered rhizomatics (Olson 1999:366,383). King is critical of Eliadeʼs “transcendental pretense of modernity” which she says universalizes thinking and attempts to impose that system on others (2002:371).

Leachʼs critique of Eliadeʼs methodology points out the use of “exotic ethnography” in order to construct Eliadeʼs notion of “archaic religion” (1966:279). Strenski criticizes Eliade for searching for “higher,” “trans-historical,” “primary,” “original” “prehistoric” meanings (1973:303-306). Strenski argues that Eliadean methodology makes religion “independent of culture” (1973:310). Allen argues that Eliade seeks an “invariant core,” an “essential meaning” of symbols (1978:273). Werblowsky critiques Eliade for finding commonality disparate non- western, non-modern experiences (a “paleolithic hunter and the Buddhist monk” for example) (1989:297).

All references can be found in my Critical Reading of Eliade bibliography.

Oversoul, Alex Gray, 1997

In the Fall 2010 issue of Anthropology of Consciousness, Marc Blainey looks at the “discord in the West between viewing psychoactive substances as either ‘hallucinogens’ or ‘entheogens’,” and makes the case for renewed interest in ethnometaphysics. His article has me thinking more about anthropologists produced by a (mostly) entheophobic culture looking at practices and people who are more entheophilic and the ways in which those biases against certain states of consciousness affect the ethnography.

Synchronistically, I recently wrestled with this issue in my review of  Lee Gilmore’s new ethnography, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. While Gilmore’s book is a beautifully written portrait of her experiences as an insider at the festival, she elected to exclude entheogens from the volume.  In this section of the review, I address one of the reasons Gilmore chose to exclude entheogens, namely that she does not engage in the practice herself:

Gilmore explores areas of inquiry in this ethnography that once fell outside her personal experience, but does not explain why she was unwilling to become a participant observer in the area of ritual entheogen use as she did in other experience-far arenas. In the introduction to this volume, she cites James Clifford in support of her reflexive ethnographic strategy (p. 12). Clifford critiques the authoritative voice of the ethnographer in his analysis of experience as an “effective guarantee of ethnographic authority” (The Predicament of Culture, 1988 & Writing Culture, 1986) and cautions against smoothing over informants’ many voices with the ethnographers own “monophonic authority” as narrator and interpreter. Through much of the ethnography, Gilmore is careful to avoid this problem by regularly quoting festival participants. However, we do not hear from participants on the question of entheogen use, and are instead left only with Gilmore’s voice assuring us that the practice is not relevant. (Oman-Reagan, 2010)

Reading Blainey’s article, I wonder if her choice to exclude entheogens might arise partly from her ethnometaphysical positioning. Perhaps this kind of exclusion of certain practices (almost taboo practices for some in ‘this’ culture) marks the work as closer to the entheophobic side of our culture that perceives psychedelic use as hallucinatory rather than revelatory or entheogenic.  Here’s a relevant section from Blainey:

As an example of the utility of ethnometaphysical analysis, I point to the question of why the earnest ritual ingestion of entheogens (psychoactive plant and chemical substances used as spiritual sacraments [Forte 1997]) is so widespread amongst ideologies that have been categorized (albeit problematically) as “shamanistic”? Following R. Gordon Wasson’s (1980: xv; Winkelman 2000:3) partition of cultures according to their keenness for or aversion to mushrooms (mycophiles and mycophobes respectively), I will term cultures with a dedication to entheogens as entheophilic, while those (like our own) that largely disdain the effects, calling them “hallucinogens,” are classified as entheophobic.

Perhaps the most fruitful classificatory venture with respect to the ethnometaphysical distinctions underlying entheophilic and entheophobic worldviews is the neurophenomenological model, which designates Euroamerican culture as monophasic while recognizing most other cultures as polyphasic (see Laughlin et al. 1992; Winkelman 2000:3). Winkelman (2000:25) identifies the neurophenomenological approach as a “structural monist perspective,” accounting for both physical (matter) and spiritual (mind) extremes, as well as pondering the interaction between them. In identifying the deeply ingrained disinclination of the standard Western enculturation process to esteem atypical forms of consciousness, monophasic logic arguably stems from a foundational view of the observer as merely a passive window looking out unidirectionally on an external materiality. This echoes Charles D. Laughlin’s (1999) characterization of Euroamerican culture as “materialist,” in that it is “primarily concerned with tracking external events while in the waking state.” Such a portrayal is quite similar to Benjamin Whorf’s (1941) model of the Standard Average European (SAE) worldview where the reification of externality relegates internal consciousness to the epiphenomenal domain of the “imaginary.” Regardless of the label used, one need simply consider the legal and religious norms of Western society where the only sanctioned psychoactive substances are coffee, nicotine, alcohol, and painkillers (aimed at lessening both physical and mental discomfort without prompting deep existential reflection). For the average Euroamerican, any suggestion that the external world’s integrity is to some extent reliant on the observer’s observing of it (such as with some esoteric corollaries of quantum mechanics or as is commonly experienced in altered states of consciousness) presents a grave threat to ideological norms. Hence, the popular disapproval of entheogenic experiences as “hallucinatory” invokes accustomed ethnometaphysical beliefs that routinely become defensive whenever the primacy of external reality is questioned in our culture. (Blainey, 2010)

The ethnometaphysical approach, Blainey writes, “avoids partialities towards any one ontological system.”  This strikes me as an approach that can be readily applied productively to ideas of being and consciousness within “our own” culture.  For example, in rave and dance music culture, entheogenic spirituality movements, ayahuasca centered  neo-shamanism and so on.  The ethnometaphysical approach can help to address the bias of the entheophobic culture that Blainey describes so perfectly:

In contrast to the dominance of dualism and physicalist monism in the West, I suggest that what we are dealing with when we consider the various accounts of both Westerners and non-Westerners who claim to have had beneficial experiences with entheogenic intoxication is a fondness for a metaphysics of mystical monism. For instance, the traditional stance of Western science with regard to entheogens has been to identify them as “hallucinogens” and their effects as “hallucinations,”—characterizations that disclose the dualist/physicalist inclinations of Western thought in general. This is furthered by the “objective” portrayals found in pharmacological volumes where the ingestion of “hallucinogenic” mushrooms containing the active compound psilocybin are said to cause “disturbances in thinking, illusions… and impaired ego functioning” (Julien 2005:612 emphasis added). (Blainey, 2010)

References

Blainey, M., 2010, Special Section: The Future of a Discipline: Considering the Ontological/Methodological Future of the Anthropology of Consciousness, Part II. Anthropology of Consciousness, 21: 113–138.

Oman-Reagan, M.P., 2010, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man. Lee Gilmore. Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, Volume 1, Number 2, November 2010 , pp. 176-180

A post in the NYT photo blog asks if Japanese acceptance of robotics has origins in Shinto belief. (via Elizabeth Housley)  Surprisingly they don’t mention Masahiro Mori.

Will we see humanoid robots taking more active roles in hospitals, constructions sites and other work places outside Japan?  And will robots like the Paro therapy seal showing up more often in homes?  How far away is a robotic pet trade? The Pleo is a pretty astonishing toy and an example of what the future may hold in this regard:

This video does suggest an eagerness by these elderly Japanese Paro owners to accept their robotic companion, and even see it as superior to human and non-human animal companions.

(Note: This post was originally published on an blog about Apple technology, based on a few requests I’m making it available here. -MOR)

Apple has been hard at work the last few years building their reputation as a ‘socially responsible’ company.  Like other greenwashing corporations (Whole Foods for example), this reputation is 9/10ths marketing and 1/10th wishful thinking from the cult of Mac.  Yes, Apple did change components in their products to reduce toxicity and increase ease of recycling, and they do ‘check out’ the factories where their products are manufactured, and wasn’t Kermit the Frog in  one of their ad campaigns along with Gandhi and the Dalai Lama?  But does coming out with a ‘new and better’ product every few months and holding back features to encourage upgrade purchases really help reduce waste?  And what are the standards they use to ‘check out’ those factories? Standards you would accept if you worked there?

So, we need to be asking Apple why workers at the Foxconn plant in China where they’ve been making the new iPhones, are committing suicide.  Or we could just ask the workers:

continue reading "Cyberactivism, iPhone 4 and The Courage to Be"

Markus Davidsen at Aarhus University is writing a fascinating dissertation on “Fictional Religions: The Morphology and Reception of Invented Religions embedded in Works of Fiction.”

He describes his project as:

“about two types of religions, fictional religions and fiction based religions. By ‘fictional religions’ I understand religions, spiritualities and magic systems which are embedded in works of fiction, be that literature, films or TV series. Such fictional religions are transformed into ‘fiction based religions’ when certain fans form religious groups based on the concepts and rituals of the fictional religions. Examples of fiction based religions include Jediism which is based on the Jedi religion in George Lucas’ Star Wars movies, Church of All Worlds which is based on the church of the same name in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction classic Stranger in a Strange Land and the Church of Satan and Chaos Magickians inventing rituals invoking the monstrous gods from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Fiction based religions range from divinity directed religion to self-spirituality and from stern belief over playful experimenting to sarcastic anti-religiousity. Some religious groups base themselves almost solely on a fictional model, others blend impulses from fiction with influences from more conventional forms of religion and spirituality.”

I wonder if the worldviews in Dune are influencing any practices today?  I would expect to find references to Dune in neopaganism, just as we find frequent references to much of the science fiction/fantasy canon.  Also it’s hard to ignore Scientology which was founded by a science fiction writer.  I have yet to read James Lewis’s volume on Scientology, and wonder if he addresses this.  It would also be interesting to look at the effect of William Gibson’s writing on belief in cyberculture.

“The forms of knowledge that technologies mediate is integral to both a society’s cultural information pool, and to the extramental reality in which they live. Technology itself constitutes an alteration of that relationship — especially as it intervenes in the experiential aspects of that relationship . . . Technologies are in a sense ‘artifacts of knowledge’ (Laughlin 1988b) — they are alterations in material reality that, accompanied by meaning in peoples’ minds, facilitate intentional acts. As such technologies become part of the extramental reality in which we are embedded and to which we must adapt.” (p. 158)

“We would suggest that a society’s technical knowledge is precisely that aspect of their information pool that facilitates an alteration of the relationship between experience and extramental reality through the mediation of techniques and artifacts. In other words, technologies combine information from the culture pool (as meaning) with material and energy in extramental reality that have been purposefully altered in order to afford novel intentional acts.” (p. 159)

The McDonald’s “Talking Filet-O-Fish” commercial opens with a wide shot of a garage. A heavy, bearded man sits with a McDonald’s bag and drink on the table in front of him. He seems comfortable, content, and average as he holds a sandwich in his hand. When he takes a bite of the sandwich the shot cuts to a close up of a taxidermy fish mounted on a wooden plaque on the wall. The fish bends in half, making an hyperbolic mechanical sound, and looks right at the camera as it begins to sing:

“Gimme back that Filet-O-Fish.
Gimme that fish!”

As the fish continues, the camera cuts to back to the man who is shown bobbing his head with the tune and chewing on the sandwich. He is sitting on a weight lifting bench next to a motorcycle. The fish continues singing:

“Gimme back that Filet-O-Fish.
Gimme me that fish!”

Another man walks into the garage carrying a drill – perhaps returning it to his friend. He stops and looks with astonishment at the fish and then at his friend sitting on the bench eating the sandwich. The fish continues to sing:

“What if it were you hanging up on this wall?
If it were you in that sandwich,
you wouldn’t be laughing at all!”

Just as the fish sings, “If it were you in that sandwich,” the camera cuts to the man chewing.
continue reading "Teaching Speciesism: The McDonald’s Talking Fish schools Consumers on Complicit Complacency"

I came across “Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies” today. It’s difficult to look at any neo pagan online community without finding frequent references to Joss Whedon’s television series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” One of the most often used quotes about wicca, for example, is this exchange between the characters Willow and Buffy after Willow has attended a meeting of her college wiccan group:

Buffy: So not stellar, huh?
Willow: Talk. All talk. Blah Blah Gaia. Blah Blah Moon…menstrual life force power thingy. You know, after a coupla sessions I was hoping we could get into something real but . . .
Buffy: No actual witches in your witch group?
Willow: No. Bunch of wanna-blessed-bes. You know, nowadays every girl with a henna tattoo and a spice rack thinks she’s a sister of the Dark Ones.

The effect of films like “The Craft,” “Practical Magic,” and the television series “Charmed” and “Buffy…” is far reaching. Social networks, retail suppliers and bloggers adopt a posture either in favor of or opposed to these depictions and construct identities in line with or opposed to them. There seems to be very little terrain online that hasn’t been touched by “slayage.”

The religious traditions of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were born on the banks of rivers. How did this alluvial geography contribute to their notions of death and the afterlife? In what ways did the rivers, cycle of the sun and other environmental phenomena help construct these ancient cultures view of the journey into the next world? To begin exploring this topic, I will examine a few texts from both cultures regarding rivers, water and boat journeys and attempt to understand the ways in which these bodies of water became a metaphor for the journey into the afterlife. We start with Egypt.

continue reading "Crossing The River: The Journey of Death in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia"

Doug Padgett writes on the “General Characteristics of Contemporary Anthropology of Religion.” here.

1. Contemporary anthropology of religion sympathizes with the “practicalities” (William James’s word) of religious experience: religion on the ground, in the populace, and the tensions felt there between official, institutional notions and the polytheistic, even inclusive atmosphere of majority religious life. This is partially a result of anthropology’s historical emphasis on “non-literate,” “primitive” religious life, i.e., religion that does not resemble Western European Christianity and/or Judaism in any apparent way. Anthropology of religion thus tends to emphasize the local particularities of religious life–spirit worship, saint cults, possession–as opposed to the idealizations of religious specialists, world renunciants, or sophisticated religious ethics and scholasticism

2. Contemporary anthropology of religion is methodologically and theoretically diverse. Because anthropological subdisciplines share common intellectual roots, there are as many ways of doing anthropology of religion as there are of doing any other sort. Followers of Durkheim, Weber, Marxists, Freudians, structuralists, structural-functionalists, and those influenced by more recent theorists, have found–and still find–their own ways of interpreting religion.

3. Contemporary anthropology of religion attempts to overcome the prejudicial, Western-biased understandings of religion found in flawed but still valuable works such as those by Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski, Tylor, and Levi-Strauss. In the sixties, their concrete and totalizing definitions of religion began to be replaced by more fluid, contingent working definitions. Clifford Geertz, for example, understand religion to be a system of symbols that are uniquely realistic to practitioners in various ways. Melford Spiro, on the other hand, as an answer to Durkheim specifically, convincingly reduced religion to those acts and experiences that involve dealings with the superhuman. Both of these have been under fire for some years, though both maintain their utility

4. Finally, and most anthropologically, I believe, contemporary anthropology of religion emphasizes place. Place is what, in fact, sets anthropology of religion apart from “religious studies” and is also, perhaps, the greatest contribution of the anthropology of religion to contemporary religious studies. Anthropologists of religion in anthropology and in religious studies have consistently articulated a deep knowledge of place as an antidote to the sometimes facile, superficial approach of “comparative religion.”

In “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” Geertz argues that it is not “ignorance as to how cognition works” that prevents understanding of another culture but rather “lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which their acts are signs.”

Practicing the comprehension of alternative imaginative universes is, therefore, the ultimate preparation for cultural anthropology. Enter speculative fiction, mythology, fantasy and role play.

It’s worth noting something about Geertz’s idea of religion:

“A system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

(Kunin, Seth D. “Religion; the modern theories” University of Edinburgh 2003)