inaugurate this!

If you were a student in my social theory class, you would have received an assignment to write a 6-8 page paper on one of three topics related to Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, in which he examines totemism to find the basic precepts that inhere in all religious thought. Since this is no ordinary day, however, the third topic read as follows:

One of the most easily recognized elements of the Obama campaign has been the slogan, “Yes We Can.” Some critics have pointed to the emptiness of the utterance, inasmuch as fails to indicate the object of ‘our’ action, i.e., “Yes, we can do what, exactly?” If this is true, we could contemplate the idea that the slogan’s significance lies elsewhere than its content. Write an essay examining the slogan “Yes We Can” as a totem from Durkheim’s perspective. What are its characteristics? What effects does it have on collectivities and individuals? How does it have these effects? What is the relationship between these effects and society?

I can't wait to see the results...

witchy

Well, I'm back in America, where sane adults are willing and prepared to hold funerary services over something the size of a pencil dot.

Contemporary American genetic determinism: it's fuckin' witchcraft, man.

welcome to the profession

A. J. Wolf, the "84-year-old emeritus rabbi of KAM Isaiah Israel Synagogue" who, according to the New York Times, lives across the street from Barak Obama, said the following about Bill Ayers (co-founder of the Weathermen, now professor of education at University of Illinois at Chicago):

He [Wolf] said he had known Mr. Ayers for decades but added, “Bill’s mad at me because I told a reporter he’s a toothless ex-radical.”

“It was kind of a nasty shot,” Mr. Wolf said. “But it’s true. For God’s sake, he’s a professor.”

Ouch.

But has he indeed lost his teeth? This, courtesy of Mr. Ayers, is one of the funnier comments on the bail-out I've seen.

foreboding

Wall St. in Worst Loss Since ’01, Despite Reassurances From Washington.

Now that is the kind of headline that makes me want to go back to the US... Sheesh. I know I can't blame a hurricane on politics; I can only evaluate the reaction to it. But between Wall Street and all the election crap, I'm not sure how I feel about you, America: "Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?"

Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.

Zombie feminists of the RNC

"How did Sarah Palin become a symbol of women's empowerment? And how did I, a die-hard feminist, end up terrified at the idea of a woman in the White House?" asks Rebecca Traister at Salon.com.

I swear, I found myself voicing some of this at lunch, before I even read the article.

hyperventilation

I sat next to royalty today.

Yes, it's a small country. Even so, I almost hyperventilated.

I was at a meeting of the community advisory board of one of the institutions I study. It was the first time I attended a meeting of this group. As I was reading over the minutes of the previous meeting, I noted a particular person's name. A moment later, that person walked into the room and sat down next to me.

These things happen in Botswana.

I was careful to address him correctly. (I've heard stories of people being corrected when they fail to address certain people in the proper manner.) He was quite lovely to me. But when was the last time you sat next to someone who could, by some serious argument, be addressed as "King"?

I can't help it, it's in the air these days.

o solo mio

I have been singing with a group called the Gaborone Music Society since this past March. I was semi-Shanghai-ed in by a doctor-friend of mine, who burst into the fifth movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony in the hallway of one of the clinics -- yes, auf deutsch -- and assured me the group needed some soprano power.

This weekend, we are performing something called the President's Concert on Friday and Saturday evening. Tickets don't appear to be on sale, and I don't know quite what the deal is. But I'm told the President will actually be there on Friday.

The point is that, as of last night, I appear to have been assigned the solo for the Sanctus from the Misse Solonelle Sainte Cecilia by Goudnod that we are singing. When else in my life will I have the chance to sing a solo for the President of any country whatsoever? This is hilarious, on the one hand, and terrifying, on the other. I have the next three days to prepare. Yikes. Hiccup.

This other hilarious aspect of this is that I don't think anyone I really know is coming, so it'll be the soprano equivalent of a tree falling in the forest.

anthropologist as counterinsurgency weapon

Oh, bloody freaking hell. I've just returned from a conference on 'public anthropology', which raised good and, for me, incredibly relevant and timely questions, such as, What are the potential roles for anthropology vis-a-vis public policy? How might we dialogue with other institutions (e.g., public policy) without relinquishing our critical stance towards them them or towards ourselves? How do we use anthropology's historically-informed self-criticism for good (whatever that means), not evil? We are the original handmaidens of colonialism, people. We helped make indirect rule 'work'. We know what's at stake in working for the man.

Then I get this. The NYT is really doing a number on my blood pressure this week.

It's nice to know that I'm spending eight years of my life working (you'll pardon me and my nod to Norman Rush) my tits to nubs so that I can explain "subtle points of tribal relations" to some guy holding an automatic weapon. From my point of view, this looks like a biopolitical gesture toward making the world safe for American capitalism.

I know, I know -- let he among you cast the first, etc., and I'm not even on the job market. But my god... So much for sociology as a martial art. This is anthropology as martial tool.

constantly gardening

I've been on holiday this month, but it's not like there's been nothing going on in Botswana. But the weird thing about doing this project -- and particularly doing this project with an internet connection, at least for the time being -- is the strange and parallel events going on thousands of kilometres away that remind me that this project is worth doing, even if it sometimes feels like I'm picking up grains of rice one by one and trying to imagine what the paddy looks like. By way of example, I give you this.

a new kind of drug war

This is so not my project, but I find it fascinating: Abbott Pharmaceuticals are suing ACT-UP Paris for a 'netstrike' they organised at the end of April. (ACT-UP and its affiliates have been the heavies of AIDS activism for more than twenty years now. ACT-UP, for example, took over the FDA in 1988.) Anyway, ACT-UP Paris organised the 'netstrike' (or what the Chicago Tribune calls a 'cyber-attack') in response to Abbott's policy towards Thailand. Oh, god, this is hard to boil down... Forgive me if I get a bit catechismic, stylistically.

OK, so Thailand can, under the amendments to the TRIPS (trade-related aspects of international property rights) laws, issue compulsory licenses. In response to the Thai government having done so, Abbott announced that it would not register a new heat-stable formulation of one of its antiretroviral drugs in Thailand. This provoked a lot of outcry, a lot of very public positioning by Abbott, the Thai government, the US government (including the office of the US Trade Representative, which is responsible for assembling a 'watch list' for countries not abiding by the principles of TRIPS, for example and therefore susceptible to some kind of trade sanctions, etc.).

Here's what ACT-UP Paris says about it, en anglais et en français. Read about it in the Tribune.

But that a legal suit is coming down to a whole lot of people having visited Abbott's website on the same day is fodder for the media and social movement scholars out there. But: wow... just...wow.