Category Archives: topical issues

03/22/13

SfAA 2013 – Zero Waste, Household Gardening, & the 100 Mile Diet: Idiosyncratic Individualism or the Ultimate Act of Anti-Capitalism?

The 2013 Society for Applied Anthropology meeting was held in Denver, Colorado March 19-23. March 20, 2013.  Along with a group of UBC researchers (former and current) I was part of a panel on alternative and anti-capitalist food production systems.  Two of the papers focused on Gitxaała marine issues, one paper on Bella Coola Valley household gardening, and another on Food Not Bombs as an example of direct action food procurement and distribution.  My own paper focused on the underlying ideas of green action and whether or not green movements that focus on household and individual change can make a real difference or not.  What follows are my relatively unedited speaking notes.

Go-green as an anti-capitalist tactic.  Green activists are more focused on environmental issues as a primary threat and typically locate the central concern as one that puts human survival in global terms at the core of their problematic.

Contemporary green solutions, from waste reduction to healthy foods choice, to climate change, are typically focused on changing individual behaviours.

Three common models to provoke individual change can be identified.

1)    Educate:  a liberal approach with a long pedigree in which one provides good information, explains the situation, and the good folks follow by acting in accord with this good information.

2)    Convince: a more activist intervention, a variation of the educate model, but here the green is actually trying to convince and provoke a change in behaviour.  Here the information provided is designed to create change and is followed by direct encouragement and recruitment type tactics.

3)    Compel: this model shifts from the more neutral approaches to focusing strongly upon the moral and ethical responsibility of the individual.  Not only does the ‘data’ say it is true, but there is a more culpability involved if one does not actually change.

Each of these tactical models is based in a theory of social change that sees the individual as lying at the core of the problem and the solution.  Not surprisingly, these are the self-same cultural values and ideologies that are instrumental within a capitalist economy.

This paper is an auto-ethnographic account of green practices.  The information that I draw from is based upon observations and interactions within my household and my residential community.  Currently my partner and I live with our two adult college-age sons in a multifamily housing complex.  Our home is located adjacent to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and is part of the university’s own long term fiscal strategy of economic sustainability.  That is, use surplus land to build market housing to generate an endowment for the university. Over the course of living in this community for nearly two decades now I have seen a variety of changes and institutionalized ‘green’ programs come and go.  I shall comment on a number of them today.

In this paper I ask the question whether individual choice –in isolation- is a real alternative from which one might challenge the dominant order.  That is, is it simply an idiosyncratic act of an individual or can it be a viable anti-capitalist strategy?  More prosaically, is it possible that individual choices made freely in the marketplaces of lifestyle and opinion will bring us into a new environmental eden? I am not convinced that this is so unless we confront the fundamental contradiction of our society and deal with the real limits of capitalist society at the same time as we attempt to solve the problems of environmental destruction.

But, that is jumping ahead to my conclusion.  Let us first consider three examples (of which I will focus primarily upon one).

1)    Zero waste challenge

2)    Urban household gardening/community gardens

3)    100 Mile Diet.

Each of these mini cases is based upon households making changes.  Each case study has optimistic boosters who ably articulate the virtues of making the personal and household changes required.  These optimistic boosters typically minimize the household costs involved, highlight societal benefit (helping to avoid a cataclysmic collapse), and emphasize the personal rewards (sense of satisfaction, wellbeing, etc) of making the sacrifices involved.

I will focus primarily upon the Zero Waste Challenge, but I will first provide a quick overview of the other two cases.

Urban household gardening and community gardening has been with us for some time (many of us, if old enough, will likely recall either parents or grandparents having a modest garden pre-the fast food era).  Recently, due to people like Alice Waters’ “The Edible Schoolyard Project,” community gardening has taken off. Who can argue against projects that “provides an environment which fosters self-confident students who are contributing citizens and life-long learners and to be a resource of excellence” or “enriches the education of our students by introducing them to gardening, composting, seed saving and the tasting of new vegetables and herbs.”  One would have to be quite the curmudgeon.

These school-based and community gardens sensibilise people to the possibility of gardening and self-provisioning.  They embed a potential for change – yet there is a false economy at play in such projects.  These projects are rarely described as cost recovery, in fact their value describe as residing in the act of engaging children and/or other community members in the act of gardening.  In my own community we have a community garden that I have participated in.  We also have access to garden plots for use by individual households and my family also has access to one of these plots.  The community garden sells produce to the community to the benefit of community youth (heavily subsidized by grants and donated labour).  Our individual plot provides more than enough fresh herbs, kale, and sweet peas to meet our own household desires. But none of this matches the 1 acres mini-farm that my maternal grandmother operated nor the active chicken house and berry patch maintained by paternal grandparents in the early part of the 20th century.

If we conceive of urban gardening as a subset of household self provisioning we quickly come to the realization that what is currently being done by most (clearly not all) urban gardeners is more affectation than effective.

The 100 Mile Diet has become an unofficial bible in the localvore movement – that is, eat local above all else.  Here the idea is that an individual household’s food consumption can play a role in shaping the global trade in food and ultimately lead to eating local foods over high carbon emission long distance foods.  Embedded in this approach is a quaint idea that in the pat all people ate local foods, were self-sufficient, and the world was a better place. This is not to say that having Argentina blueberries for breakfast, Chillan grapes at lunch or mangoes from Mexico is definitional a good thing.  In fact, there is much that is wrong with the global food chains.  But again, the model is one based upon the power of individual choice – the household consumer opts for local and the food industry will follow.  It would appear that what is more likely is that the branding will become more localized rather than the source of the food – but that is a subject for another day.

In our own household the closest we have really been to the ideals of the 100 mile diet is through the seafood that my family consumes.  I come from a north coast BC fishing family and maintain access to fresh and frozen fish. This is fish that I have either caught myself or has been given to me by family and friends back home on the north coast.  Fish for household consumption is linked to aboriginal coastal practices and the commercial fishery.  Regulations, based upon ecological principles rooted in the paradigm of the tragedy of the commons, have increasingly privatized fisheries resources and have made it harder and harder to feed a family or share fish beyond a very limited basis.

Zero Waste Challenge: The drive to find alternatives to disposing solid waste in land fill or by incinerators has led to the rise of a zero waste movement.  Partly supported by municipal authorities (as is the case in Metro Vancouver), partly supported by simple living activists, zero waste is oriented at an overall reduction of solid waste and shifting as much as possible of what’s left into recyclable and compostable waste streams.

Our household of four adults was part of a three month neighbourhood challenge. As mentioned earlier our community is a part of UBC’s residential development.  Local population is about 8,000 people.  All of us live in multi-family housing complexes – no single detached family homes.  Our challenge included ten households.

The objective of our challenge was to (1) establish our baseline waste production and then (2) reduce the overall waste and increase the proportion diverted to recycling and compost.  Our pilot project succeeded on both accounts.

However one needs put this success in context.

1) Comparative data:  Metro Vancouver 15% diversion rate; UBC Neighbourhood 45% diversion rate; Pilot Project baseline diversion rate 68%.

From the start our pilot project consisted of a group of households already significantly exceeding both our regional and local comparator groups.

2) Average waste(excluding recyclables and compostables)/person/week: Metro Vancouver 4kg; Pilot Project 1.5kg.  It is interesting to note that when the diverted waste is added to the figures, the weekly/person waste is roughly the same: 4.6kg for Metro Vancouver; 4.8kg for Pilot Project.  The big difference is our respective diversion rates.

3) By the end of the project our diversion rate had increased to 83%.  However, the overall waste/person/week had fallen to 0.63kg. (overall waste/person/week = 3.8kg.)  Each household had shaved off about 1kg/person/week of overall waste during the three month project.

Clearly the pilot project was a ‘success.’  It demonstrates that significant improvements can be made at the household level in terms of reducing overall waste and increasing the proportion diverted into recycling and composting. As researchers I am sure that we can all note a number of methodological problems with the pilot project.

For starters we were already an atypical group of households living in an atypical neighbourrhood in the Metro Vancouver region.  As a group the majority of us were already committed to the idea of recycling and waste reduction.  The project itself was really part of the ‘convince’ tactical model.  That is, the project was a public relations action organized to convince others that it is possible to make  a significant difference in our household waste production and diversion.

Though the project facilitator was interested in recording the ways individual households reduced their waste, it was mostly from the perspective of collecting tips and advice for others. One household transformed their shopping by gathering all of the various plastic bags they had accumulated up to the point of the challenge and then reuse them for the duration of the challenge for shopping trips.  Another family explained how they left food containers for their bulk purchases at the Costco outlet checkout rather than taking them home to recycle.  Another family found a recycling depot about 25 km distant that would accept hard to recycle plastic pieces and drove to the depot every couple of weeks.  Each of these solutions relied upon a hyper invested participant to take the extra effort to make their involvement in the project a success.

More fundamentally the project did not take into account (in my opinion) the overall production and transportation stream of the goods we consumed at the household level.  For example, in the manufacture of steel cookware waste is produced at each stage from extraction, smelting, refinement, processing, manufacture, delivery, purchase, and end use.  The bulk of the waste created by our downstream purchase is not taken into account.  Doing such an analysis from within the context of a zero waste challenge would still place the onus of action upon the individual household.

At the end of the day the fundamental driving force behind projects such as the zero waste challenge is to alter the behaviour of the end-of-chain user – the household consumer. Here we are seen as active agents in a consumptive act.  I have much sympathy for this perspective, yet I think it is important to note that this is not feasible for all households.  Ultimately, it transfers work and costs from the primary manufacturer and profit takers, into our homes.  This is a classic case of the externalization of the costs of production.

So, is this simply an idiosyncratic act that has no fundamental consequences?  Paradoxically the answer is yes and no.

To explain I need to outline very briefly two general ideas that will help us understand.

The pessimistic idea – the political economy of bulimia (with thanks to J. Guthman, “Weighing In”).

The optimistic idea – audience power (with thanks to the late D. Smythe).

Ending one:  Yes, these are idiosyncratic acts.  Julie Guthman, in her amazing book Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, picks up social geography David Harvey’s idea of the special fix as one of capitalism’s responses to the crisis of accumulating.  Briefly put, Guthman suggests that the era of neo-liberal capitalism has literally respatialized the externalities of production on to our very own bodies.  For Guthmen the issue of weight gain, personal health and well-being, and associated projects like community gardening and zero waste challenges are incorrectly formulated as individual matters of responsibility or morality.  These problems are best understood as the direct result of the current capitalist system.  Thus, to fix things we need to directly attack the source of the problem (not through individual choices): the ways in which corporations large and small have waged a decades long battle against living wages, healthcare, education, while constantly advocating market solutions as the only solution to every problem.  If you have not had the opportunity to read Guthmen’s work I would urge you to immediate get your hands on a copy.

Ending two:  No, these are not idiosyncratic act.  Over thirty years ago the communications theorist Dallas Smythe advanced the idea of audience power and the audience commodity: “Smythe believed that all non-sleeping time is work time. Work time is devoted to the production of commodities, producing and reproducing labour power. Time away from work, but not asleep is sold as a commodity to advertisers. This is the audience commodity, which perform marketing functions and work at the production and reproduction of labour power.”[1]  From this perspective the way in which we shop is actually a form of labour power that is being extracted from us.  As with all forms of labour power there is the capacity to withdraw it from the employer, though strikes will often have consequences.

Synthesis: from a pragmatic point of view it would seem that Guthman’s analysis of the source of the problem is a central place to start from.  It suggests that the target of action should be focused on social justice not individual culpability.  To blame those least able to make the choice to micro manage their garbage or find the time to run for hours each day, or who are able to pay the extra price for organic or local foods, is to reinforce the current order and is ultimately fated to fail.

When I reflect upon my own household’s experiments with going green I note several things that makes it easier for us than for others. Our household has sufficient economic resources to opt for higher quality foods.  My family connections provide access to harvested wild foods.  My work schedule, though it involves more hours then I feel I have, is sufficiently flexible to allow me the time in the day to run and be an activist.  And, in an echo of the Russian economist Chayanov’s domestic mode of production, now that my sons are adults I have more time to focus on matters beyond their immediate care.  Of course, if we had a society that valued and appreciated children and our fellow humans and other animals all of us would have the time to be like that figure in some as yet still future society describe by Karl Marx in the German Ideology: “where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

At the end of the day we must strike against the capitalist food industry by removing our audience power and organizing collectively through a social justice agenda to bring real equity, equality, and power to our communities.  This means we have to fight against the further expansion of free market principles everywhere and all the time! We must throw out the pretense that corporations have any right to exist; we must reject the notion that free choice allows capitalist enterprise the right to place the burden of their profits onto our own bodies.

 

 


[1] Smythe, D. W. (1994). “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism”. In T. Guback (Ed.). Counterclockwise: Perspectives on communication. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. pp. 263–291. From Wikipedia entry on D.Smythe.

04/11/12

THE CHALLENGE OF FIRST NATIONS HISTORY IN A COLONIAL WORLD

Originally published in: Canadian Issues (Fall 2006): 44-46.

As a university-based Indigenous scholar I have come to the position that teaching First Nations subjects to non-Indigenous students and with non-Indigenous colleagues is necessarily an act of anti-racist pedagogy. Hired to conduct research with and teach courses on northwest coast societies at UBC in 1996 I have found that the simple act of providing good, effective, and rigorous scholarship is not a sufficient pedagogical approach in the context of a colonial society.

My teaching and research practice has necessarily become a transformative practice: that is, the process of learning/teaching needs to involve real change, challenge, discomfort, and ultimately transformative experiences. To teach First Nations history and anthropology one must start from the position of an anti-racist anti-colonial pedagogy that aims to disrupt the dominant colonial narratives and practices.

This perspective emerges out of the complexities and contradictions of my life and work. I grew up the son of a fisherman in a world in which my aboriginal-eurocanadian ancestry was a social fact that shaped what and how I learned about the world around me. As an Indigenous academic I am acutely aware of the politics of race and ethnicity. I am also aware of the damaging legacy of colonialism1 for First Nations people today – one very real aspect of it being the ways in which public education is provided and taught.2

In what follows I document a series of ‘stories’ told in the context of my work on commercial fishing boats in my home town of Prince Rupert. My goal here is to highlight and pull into the light of day the background narratives that pose a significant challenge to the teaching of First Nations history and anthropology.

A small gathering of men were relaxing in the quiet time between the end of work and heading up town or home for the night. Ed3, a crewmember from an adjacent boat, joined our circle and began to talk about his exploits of the previous evening. He had spent most of his shore – time participating in a 20th year High School Reunion – by all accounts it had been a smashing success.

Ed is a respected member of the local fishing community, an accomplished storyteller and an effective public speaker (the public here being a group of predominantly Euro-Canadian fishermen). I had begun to tune out -I’d heard this story before – at least versions of it – drink, party and drink…. I had almost decided to leave when Ed’s story took an unexpected turn away from the typical masculinist narrative line of drunken abandon.

“Jim had all this paint up at his place so we loaded it into my car and drove back downtown. Parked off third, took a look for the cops and then went to it.”

“Doing what,” I asked.

“Hey? What do you think we were doing?”

“Painting the town red,” somebody said to a chorus of laughs.

“No,” said Ed. “We were painting the town white. Yeah, we painted a bloody white cross-walk from the Belmont right into the Empress. Help all those drunken Indians make it across the street.”

“But why is it so jagged? It’s crooked.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” said Ed.

“It’s designed just right. Your Indian stumbles out of the bar, into the street. ‘Hey look,’ he says, ‘a cross walk.’ And he’s right over into the other bar. First class.”

The tragic irony of Ed’s own drunkenness seemed to have escaped him in the recounting of his previous night’s escapades. He plays up popular explanations of the so-called “Indian Problem.” Yet his story is only one example in a multitude of narratives of colonialism in which the disparate threads of racial superiority and intolerance are wound. Ed’s story is part of the day-to-day experience of social inequality felt by people of aboriginal descent.

Once, while working on the same boat as Ed he confronted me in a more direct and personal way. A couple decades my senior, Ed wanted to set me straight on the issue of First Nations land claims.

“So they say we took all their land away from them,” Ed said. He was standing, feet planted firmly on the deck blocking my way past him off the deck. We’d been on deck for several hours and I wanted to have a cup of tea before our brief break from fishing ended.

Ed had other thoughts.

We had been talking about the new aboriginal fisheries strategy and the so-called disappearance of sockeye from the Fraser River in 1992. Ed wasn’t willing to concede that First Nations’ rights either existed or, if they did, should be respected. I was tired, we’d already been out six days and the trip did not look like it would be over soon. Standing there, clad in my heavy fishing gear, soaked through with sweat and salt spray, I wasn’t particularly in the mood to argue the point.

“Okay, so the land was lost. But not the rights,” I said. “Now it’s time to make it right. Let’s go in and get a cup of tea.”

Fighting to keep our balance as the deck rolled and bucked under our feet, Ed continued on.

“Okay, let’s say we took their land, hey? Just say we did. Okay add it up, how much did they loose? Tell me a number, any number. I’ll double it. Put it here,” he said putting his hand up level with his shoulder.

“Now,” he says. “How much have we given them, hey?”

I knew what he was going to say. I had heard him tell this story several times before and as I waited for him to finish I looked around the work deck of the 60 foot fishboat and realized that with the exception of the skipper, the entire crew was listening and watching Ed’s performance.

“I’ll tell ya,” he said.

“We gave ’em welfare and they don’t got’ta pay taxes. We give’m free education. They don’t got’ta buy a license, the government gives it to them free; no questions asked. Just keep on adden. I’ll tell you when to stop. We pay for their houses, build their boats. They don’t got’ta do a thing. Okay so you put it all there.” He pointed to a spot next to his first imaginary pile.

“So they want to take the fish; they want a land claim. We’ll give it to them. You know what? -they’re gonna come up owing us hey. I’ll tell ya this Charlie, they ain’t gonna like it. But too fucken bad. They don’t like it? I’ll get out my gun and blow their effing heads off.”

Ed’s story came to an abrupt end: it was time to start working. The skipper had come down from his wheelhouse as Ed was finishing his story.

In the transition from the private to the public, these narratives are cleansed of their more offensive and violent rhetoric. Public representatives speak in carefully measured tones constantly reminding their audience that they are not racist, that they are not self-interested. But rather, they are proponents of the greater good, of democratic interests, and of individual rights.

We can see this in the public opposition that emerged in response to the Nisga’a Agreement in Principle (AIP). Writing in the Prince Rupert Daily News then Reform Party Member of Parliament for Skeena, Mike Scott, argued that the Nisga’a AIP (and by extension treaty settlement in general) is a “recipe for disaster [because], inherent in the AIP is the notion that communism can be successfully reinvented.” Scott praised the Nisga’a for not engaging “in acts of obstruction, civil disobedience and even violence.” He elided discussion of the content of the AIP (except to incorrectly label it as communist) and targeted the process instead. According to Scott:

The Nisga’a AIP is anti-democratic to its very core. It ignores the basic principle of equality before the law, entrenching inequality as a major feature. It is the product of a grand vision held by social engineers who want to do good by righting historic wrongs without regard to history’s lessons.

But what are history’s lessons? Scott was certainly not responding to the history of colonialism in which aboriginal ownership and control over their territories and resources was gradually eroded and placed under the control of a colonial state. Scott’s commentary is in fact part of a larger history of denial presented in the polished language of public discourse. Buried beneath his apparent concern with democracy, inequality and disaster are all the private conversations of men like Ed, the men who put Scott and others like him in positions of power.

Even though Scott does not explicitly use racist language and is careful to point out his own perceived persecution, his remarks need to be understood in the context of the stories told by Ed which form quiet, semi-private backdrop to Scott’s particular view of Canada.

Ed’s narrative is a European fantasy of the Indian: drunken, out of control, and need of the firm hand of the white man to demarcate, to paint the boundary lines of the Indian’s life. Scott’s column is also a fantasy of ( replacement. By invoking the quasi progressive language of individual rights, Scott denies the collective presence of the Nisga’a as a people. Rather, they are simply a group of displaced individual property owners who should be paid off. Together, these stories are part of a continued attempt to, as Ed says, “paint the town white.”

An important part of my writing details the semi-private stories of Euro-Canadian men and the role their storytelling plays in the maintenance of colonial structures4. These are emotionally wrenching stories. They form the terrain around which and through any discussion of teaching First Nations education must pass.

It may seem that these stories are exceptions; even exaggeration. Sadly, they are not. I hear variations of these stories everyday. Students and colleagues speak of indigenous peoples as objects to be held up and examined. Well meaning teachers extol the virtues of ecological Indians to my children. All around misconceptions and half-truths abound.

The challenge for teaching First Nations history and anthropology is that it must challenge these colonial half-truths with an anti-racist pedagogy combined with effective scholarship. Simply relying upon a liberal ideology that ‘good information will undermine poorly conceived ideas or misconceptions’ does nothing to address the underlying racism of contemporary society. Effective teaching of First Nations history and anthropology must necessarily challenge the private and semi-private narratives of men and women like Ed who, even in the face of fact and logic, are unable to relinquish their privileged membership in a colonial society.

Footnote

Endnotes

1 Menzies, 2004: “First Nations, Inequality, and the Legacy of Colonialism.” In James Curtis, Edward Grabb, and Neil Guppy (eds). Social Inequality in Canada (4th Edition). Toronto: Prentice-Hall, pp. 295-303.

2 See, Paul Orlowski 2004: “What’s Ideology got to do with it? Race and Class Discourses in Social Studies Education. Unpublished dissertation, UBC. Orlowski makes a strong case for a progressive social studies curriculum that is fully aware of the legacy of the racialized and class-based structures of BC society. Among other things, Orlowski points to the colour-blindness of contemporary social studies teachers who seem unable to appreciate the injuries of race or class in their students (pp. 191-193).

3 With the exception of public figures, such as politicians, all names are psyudenoms to protect the anonymity of those quoted in this paper.

4 See for example: Menzies, 1994 “Stories from Home: First Nations, Land Claims, and Euro-Canadians” American Ethnologist Vol. 21(4):776-791, and; Menzies, 1997 “Indian or White? Racial Identities in the British Columbian Fishing Industry” in Anthony Marcus (ed) Anthropology for a Small Planet: Culture and Community in a Global Environment St. lames, New York: Brandywine Press, pp: 110-123.

12/23/11

Chanting, Rituals, Midwives and the Anthroplogical Method

Alleging c-sections go down if midwives chant is silly. Hank Campbell

Hank Campbell, author of the Science 2.0 blog picked up and ran with a story about midwives published in the December edition of the Medical Anthropology Quarterly.  In the article anthropologist Melissa Cheyney argues that the rituals used by midwives leads to better birthing outcomes – that is, fewer caesarian section deliveries. Cheyney, herself a practicing midwife, argues strongly that the chanting and related rituals are about invoking a “mind-body connection” which, according to Cheyney leads to a “better health outcomes” then in hospital.

It’s not clear that Cheyney has examined the underlying risk factors that influence which birthing situation an expectant mother chooses.   High risk pregnancies will be more likely to have health complications.  Lower risk pregnancies will have few irrespective of the birth rituals or practices.  If the sample of midwifery births Cheyney observed were in fact lower risk than those for the hospital birth data she compares them to then there is a problem with the study’s assertions.

Here’s an education parallel. French Immersion public schools in Vancouver, BC, typically score higher on standardized tests administered by the government than do their neighbourhood mainstream neighbourhood schools.  Schools in wealthier areas also score higher, overall, then schools in poorer areas.  For certain commentators the testing data ‘proved’ that the higher scoring schools had better teaching.  Yet, detailed examination of a wider range of factors shows us that the higher testing results is an artifact of something totally independent of the teaching.

The french immersion schools included a self-selecting pool of parents who actively engaged with the school. This parental involvement combines with an internal process of quietly advising parents to remove children from the program when they weren’t doing well.  End result, by the time the testing hits the school there is a population of high achieving, relatively problem free children who will do better in spite of how they are taught.

A series of studies by UBC education faculty (and other studies from across North America) have shown that educational attainment is strongly influenced by parental education and socioeconomic status.  Thus, one finds a gradient of school outcomes that varies in direct relation to these sociological factors.  This is not to say that individual teaching factors don’t make a difference.  It is, however, to point out that the underlying factors related to school success are social class based.  But, any study that only focused upon teaching practices in the classroom (or midwifery practices in the birthing room) would not be able to tell us the full story nor would it be able to make conclusions about causal factors of education outcomes.

There’s a lot of anthropology that goes forward these days that has made the swing toward the emic view so hard as to take a leap from reality. It is not unusual these days to hear a conference presentation comprised almost entirely of quotes from people the anthropologist interviewed with little or no commentary or analysis – the words speak for themselves. But that’s rarely the case.  In his wonderfully titled book, They Lie, We Lie,  Peter Metcalf pulls apart the ways in which research is in some sense a struggle over partial truths and half truths  and writing about it is also an engagement in the construction of meaning itself.  While Metcalf is influenced by the post-modernist nihilism of our times he is clear that words don’t just speak for themselves.  In the same sense, simply finding better health outcomes for middle-class white americans who employed a midwife doesn’t prove that chants and rituals connecting mind and body lead to healthier births.

The article in MAQ has become another touchstone in the large-scale social cynicism that everything establishment and ‘scientific’ is wrong.  Or, at least no more right then, say, middle class white amercian belief’s about home birthing or vaccinations. Since being picked up by Hank Campbell’s Science 2.0 webpage a minor twitter and blogosphere flurry has emerged.  The usual sorts have chimed in with either pro or anti commentary.

Leaving aside the question about what makes for safer childbirth, the original comment by Campbell and article by Cheyney raises a critical methodological issue – what can anthropologists claim about their reserach?  Can a method that, in the MAQ case, is primarily oriented toward eliciting the construction of meaning for participants actually say anything about medical practices?  It would make sense that such an approach can tell us much about the sentiments and beliefs of both midwifes and their clients; but whether or not it can tell us anything about the efficacy of their methods and ‘rituals’ in terms of safer childbirth I have serious doubts.

Anthropologists need to be clear about their methods and the scope of their potential findings and conclusions.  We need to know the details about how and what was studied, what limitations are there, on what basis is an author making their claims.  Evan-Pritchard’s comments about Azande witchcraft or Bronislaw Malinowksi’s comments on Trobiraind garden sorcery are worth revisiting when one examines contemporary American midwifery rituals.  Emic explanations are important, but rarely do the words of interviewees speak for themselves.