Yemeni Poetry Slam

I came across an article by Harvard Professor Steven C. Caton entitled, "Peaks of Yemen I Summon": Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (1990). Caton was my first introduction to the anthropology of poetics however I’m very glad for that; Caton's research is fascinating. Poetry is always something I've loved as a writer and a reader. Poetry slams, popular in politically active cities like Seattle and among a certain socially conscious crowd, involve spoken word poetry done in a competitive style at various public venues, much like a music show would be carried out. These nights of powerfully themed rhetoric can serve as a arena for public debate. I've only been to a few; spoken word poetry in Seattle often has an angsty feel to it that is still dispassionate enough to be boring. I love poetry for the beauty it gives to language, but these slams are rarely 'about' the prosody or parallelism I've learned to swoon over but rather about protest and making a statement, a stance I have to work a little harder at adopting.

     Caton's work on Yemeni tribal members' use of poetry in political rhetoric, or indeed other commanding rhetoric as well, reminded me of those angst ridden Seattlites who used poetry as a means to 'slam' political movements (and other personalities) that went against ‘common’ good, capitalistic ventures that were overbearing or national and international events that people felt needed to be 'addressed' publicly and in opposition to some other individual. It was as much about competing against a peer as it was being politically involved. Positioning oneself, building honor, saving face, these all are accomplished in spoken word poetry from Yemen to Yessler and anything that expansive must have some potency. In these Yemeni tribes, being able to construct beautiful poetry and perform it with intensity is part of being a man, or building up to be one, and a powerful political orator. Responses to the opposition that are quick and quick-witted are golden, much like the poetry slammer that can 'one-up' his competition with a forceful verse. Caton suggests that spoken poetry is an extremely powerful mode of communication where Yemeni men can take stances on violence, warfare and injustice; they can 'do' things with these performances that they cannot do with a flat intonation. So powerful is this method of communication, indeed across the Arab world, there are TV shows that feature talented poets, which can include women and children as well (see below image from Million's Poet). They strut in, dressed to the nines, janbiya in tow and recite several minutes of verse. The audience claps at certain turns of phrases or dramatic pauses and they are judged by a panel, much like American Idol except these idols are really worth idolizing.

Million's Poet, Abu Dhabi TV, UAE

References

Caton, Steven C.
1990     "Peaks of Yemen I Summon": Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press.

on restoration

So, it has been a while since I've written anything for this blog. The last month or so, involving packing up and leaving Seattle, driving for three days to Arizona and then my pre-week of orientations and other trainings and finally, my first week of graduate school, really was (free) time consuming. Today I wanted to pause, reflect and 'fill my tanks', as an anthropologist is really no good unless his/her soul is rested and heart is open. I read another anthropology blog, Savage Minds, written by mostly graduate students, post-docs and younger professors. A recent post from Rex, a Savage Minds blogger on August 23, 2013 was about 'filling your tanks', intellectual tanks that is. What does this mean? More importantly, what does this mean to graduate students? While I resist the urge to spout volumes about my newly minted life and identity, and in defense I think the first week is just as important and mind-opening as the last, I will share what I know now, after just 2 orientations, 4 online training modules, 1 academic lunch, 1 meeting with my advisor, 1 TA session and just 2 actual graduate classes, because I will never be able to return to this naivety, to this land of freshly fallen snow.
     First, as my schedule depicts above, my classes are just a small portion of my actual responsibilities/endeavors. I knew this going in, of course, and I think most graduate students in a research-based academic field will agree with me here, it is the reason why I choose graduate school over any number of alternatives. Our tanks need filling specifically because of this structure of never ending 'things' to do that go above and beyond simply earning the degree, which was a big motivator for getting an undergraduate degree. Undergrad was very fulfilling; there is just something priceless about the beginning years of one's anthropological trajectory, a time of reading the classics and just getting ridiculously excited over them and learning of sub-disciplines and bodies of research that you would have never imagined existed (neo-liberalism in emotional pedagogy anyone?), as Rex points out. It is also a time of few resources and connections, not always being taken seriously and a pervasive and haunting sense that you are still at least a decade away from actually becoming what you now know you have to become unless you want to live an empty and meaningless life. So, when you finally do make it to graduate school, and for me that was exactly 6 years after first contact, 'filling the tanks' means not letting the enormity of a fully academic life swallow you whole. As Rex declared so refreshingly, simply reading a little outside of your sub-discipline can be enough to replenish and renew intellectual energy. There sometimes surfaces a great guilt from reading outside your sub-discipline of anthropology, partly because it is so broad a field of study that topics, theories and methodologies can sometimes separate two specializations dramatically and partly because sub-disciplines are ever-expanding and interdisciplinary work is applauded. For me, that reading right now is An Anthropologist at Work, edited by Margaret Mead about the life and writings of Ruth Benedict. While part auto-biography and part auto-ethnography, it doesn't represent a research interest but rather allows the reader a way to reflect upon their own life and writings. It's a big book and a little slow going but I picked it up to plod through when I learned Ruth Benedict was a poet as well. It has been a while since I've written any poetry but it could, perhaps, be my way of 'filling the tanks'. That and this blog, which I started to build up my writing skills specifically for the graduate school application process and will continue it to 'deal' with the consequences of being a successful applicant.


References

Rex, “Fill the Tanks,” Savage Minds, August 23, 2013, http://backupminds.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/fill-the-tanks/.

Ruth Benedict, An Anthropologist at Work, trans. Margaret Mead, Cambridge, 1959.

the big (fat) ugly #truth

 When I first heard about evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller’s recent tweet; 

 ‘Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth.’, 

my first reaction to this was ‘how could an evo-psych (i.e. an academic, scientist, researcher) even say that?!’. But then a few ideas clicked together, as they always do in an anthropologists mind, and mixing in a little biological anthropology and basic social awareness,  plus what I know of our media’s obsession with the ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality (has anyone else had the chance to be entertained by American Ninja Warrior?), my reaction modified itself into, ‘oh, that is exactely something an evo-psych would say’. I am not sure whether this last thought was spoiled with contempt or simple amusement but it settled my ruffled feathers for a bit; even though I am neither overweight or working on my dissertation I pretend no omnipotence over cake and pie and no loft over writer's block. I am susceptible to natural human urges, as we all are,  and do not feel that this threatens my potential for academic greatness in any way although I do understand his conjecture here.

     Evolutionary psychology certainly is the discipline, of any, to point the finger at human behaviors but usually does so in an incredibly open-minded and productive way. However to suggest that a primal desire for high-energy foods can in any way forecast our motivation to get a Ph.D severs Miller’s tweet from the discipline and its Darwinian allegiance. True, social Darwinism posits that natural selection can, over time, occur due to social pressures like mating choices and kinship patterning. Obesity is not seen absolutely everywhere as a necessarily poor social determinate, however. If we understand obesity as simply a matter of will-power and personal choice alone then we, theoretically, cut out a huge portion of the U.S. as candidates for advanced degrees (doesn’t sound like a good plan, even in theory). This is fine for Miller and his work but really problematic for actual normal living beings who are, say, obese and applying to Ph.D programs. Personal choice, research is beginning to show, is not all that is involved in the global obesity pandemic. I read a great article, shared by the Neuroanthropology Interest Group on Facebook via Jeffrey Snodgrass over at Colorado State, on some plausible global and environmental forces in the obesity crisis, including SES, quality of food and even controlled temperatures (Berreby, 2013). Most strikingly, lab rats were found to have gained average weight over the last few decades despite ever-rigorous attempts at complete control over their environment, diet and exercise included. These rats had absolutely no will-power or personal choice to blame for their weight gain so Miller’s suggestion that will-power is what is crucial to both maintaining a healthy weight and defending a dissertation is encumbered a bit.
     Further into the article, I start to worry. Artificial light, allowing us to eat at night when our ancestors couldn’t, controlled temperatures in buildings, which don’t require your body to expend any energy (i.e. calories) in maintaining thermoregulation and BPAs (yikes!), that alter cells’ energy storage mechanisms all are offered as possible causes for the obesity crisis. This article is a little disconcerting in effect but it offers some refreshing resistance to the argument that will-power is directly linked to weight and that, ever so indirectly, weight is linked to an inability to earn a Ph.D. Needless to say, I suspect any applicants hoping to work under Miller and his colleagues, regardless of their weight, may question whether or not this theory is the kind of theory one wants to back up for the sake of their advisor as it takes such a radical position on what is a really a multitude of issues lumped into one. A Ph.D does takes will-power, this cannot be argued against, but it also takes open-mindedness and the ability to not jump on every passing bandwagon, making Miller’s statement, like his theory, seriously doubtable, if not laughable. Oh, and one more thing Miller; brains love carbs. #truth.

References:

Berreby, David

            2013   The Obesity Era: As the American people got fatter, so did marmosets, vervet monkeys and mice. The problem may be bigger than any of us, Aeon, published 6/19/13, accessed 8/5/13.

Miller, Geoffrey (@matingmind). "Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth." 6/2/13, 1:23pm. Tweet.

the move

Moving across the country is tough. It is overwhelming to move ones entire life, including two cats, from Point A to Point B using just a small SUV and a moving crate. My husband and I have lived in our current apartment for 5 years nearly to the day. The amount of stuff we've accumulated is absurd and I am secretly a little disgusted with how much of it isn't in daily use. I've always favored simplicity of environment but there are things one needs to have safety and security and to be equipped for a moderately active adult life in the PNW meaning our modest apartment has been packed to the gills. As we are moving from over-cast and waterlogged Seattle to high and dry Flagstaff, a major reassessment is taking place of what we need, what we may need and what will just be silly in the high country of Northern Arizona. Three umbrellas? Probably unnecessary.  Tsunami survival kit? Absolutely not. 15 assorted coffee mugs? Two slow-cookers? Envelopes and crafts from our wedding invitations (circa 2010)? Multiple china sets from the grandparents? All too much. I grew up in a household of some excess and, unfortunately, some waste. Things came and went with such a frequency that I have a slight revulsion towards the consumerism that so drives our country and characterized my childhood. All these remnants of a consumer culture, duplicates and multiples of kitchen appliances that perform the same task, an army of half full bottles of household chemicals, obscure wedding gifts we never appreciated, board games bought and used once, have significance but I'm not sure that meaning will transfer to our new life in Flagstaff. Not only are we moving to a different geographical region, both our life roles will be shifting from worker bees to full-time students, a change that will bring about unique needs, long since forgotten, and render obsolete whole facets of our lifestyle. I have the closed-minded habit, as my husband so well-meaningly points out, of declaring myself 'above' culture sometimes. Once something is 'figured out', anthropologically speaking, I sometimes lose interest and struggle to locate purpose. I feel this way towards things like social media and technology, for example. I appreciate the fact that these are two very 'constructed' divisions of our lives and this makes me a little more independent from them than the next person. I am not advocating this is the right way to live, as I sorely miss out on many benefits of both, but it does allow a degree of freedom from social constructions and this freedom allows for meaningful contemplation. I crave this freedom from other things as well, gifts for example, and can theoretically argue against holding on to a useless gift by a sort of 'caveman' logic of only the crudest repertoire of 'things' being necessary. Contradictory to this so-called logic (for it really is not all that logical, I admit) is my admiration for Marcel Mauss's The Gift, which I read in my very first anthropology class ever. Mauss teaches that a gift is so much more than utility and prospect. It is a social act, as is its receipt. And so, here I sit, with a great number of gifts and other social accumulations that I can both argue for and against keeping. As if intellectually I wasn't in enough of a bind, pragmatics are pushing me against severe spacial limitations. What cannot fit in our moving crate should be considered to go in our car with us. If not, it is considered to stay with our parents, whom I'm sure are anxious about these considerations themselves. In sum, moving ones life, neigh, a life built together with another life over 7 years, in addition to two mini-lives that require their own unique outfit (cat food, litter box, treats, harnesses, beds, toys) is a practical challenge as much as an intellectual one. In reducing our lives to what can be reasonably shipped across the country we articulate values, morals and beliefs that truly speak to who we are. For fear of this, packing our apartment is a somber exploration of what life has made out of us, be it rich and meaningful or excessive and silly.

Family Life

I'm leaving my job in a few weeks, a job I've been at for over 3 years now. I've only touched on a few issues worth exploring in my blogs, of the many many hundreds possible, but perhaps that is how research in social science goes; water water everywhere with too many drops to drink. Lately I've been digesting situations I encounter at work more from a researcher's perspective and less from a worker's perspective. Critical distancing from work issues has not been something I've been able to exercise as much as I'd like because of myriad ethical boundaries that must be respected. A lesson learned; the 'nosey' anthropologist's work will sometimes be viewed as suspect. Now that my days left are numbered, interesting people, relationships and norms are seeming to surface through from the aqueous warp of desk jockey drudgery. Ethically, I haven't been able to fully engage this field as a researcher while I remain committed to a professional bias. I always thought law was boring, and I'll admit I still do find it boring but gosh darn if boringness doesn't produce its own rich meaning eventually (and with enough analysis). Thankfully, I work in family law, which isn't terribly boring, and I assist attorneys on cases of child custody, divorce, separation, child support orders and modifications and parenting plans, all involving their fair share of drama. One accumulates a lot of peripheral knowledge about american family life working in this field and I really feel the urgency to make use of that information what I can. Law pays well and is very emotionally involving and intellectually satisfying so there proves little incentive for legal professionals to leave the field to apply their knowledge elsewhere and they have precious little time outside of practice to work with that knowledge in fresh ways. I feel there are many latent anthropologists among us, family law layers in this case, that could contribute greatly to our body of research if they used their experience to educate others on not the law but the social effects of the law. I secretly wish more professionals,  like attorneys, would step out of practice and into social science research but for now I happily carry that burden with me to grad school.
     Now, I have never been particularly interested in family life, my first real job out of college just happened to be in the family law field and I was drawn to it for no particular urge to learn more about american families. In fact, my perception of family law matters prior to my job was that of messiness, so-called broken homes and a lot of import placed on child rearing, which I feel varies so widely cross-culturally that the law should have little say in how 'good parenting' is interpreted. The law has a big say in it, however, because whenever two adults come together to raise a child, conflict is bred, no matter the compatibility or resources. Indeed, parenting plan disputes rage regardless of how much money one or the other is willing to part with or how much time either parent wants to devote to the child. There are simply too many variables in raising a child to warrant any predictability or simplicity in parenting plans. One of the things I identified early on in my job as something to look further in to is the involvement of health issues in family law cases. Health can come into play in any number of ways but I am continually surprised at just how much health is used in rulings. There exists extreme prejudices against those of ill health in family law cases and there is something profoundly regressive about such contingencies. The verdict? It is good to have a clean health record if you plan to enter into a family law case and if you are unhealthy in any way or have been in the past, plan to fight a little bit harder and a lot more cautiously with a substantial increase in paperwork. I can't quite argue that this complication is unfounded; parents with health issues do face more challenges to effective parenting and when the effectivity of a parent is compromised it would ne natural for the Court to lean towards the healthy parent in awarding visitation. What is difficult to digest about this is the lack of resources and/or support for disabled parents or parents with near permanently ill health. I don't equate these to because some people who are ill for long periods of time still do not self-identify as being disabled and that is a stance that should be respected, as should the stance that being sick or disabled does not have to compromise parenting actions.  With the way parenting is treated as more of a human right than a privilege in our culture, I wonder why there isn't more help to access this right for disabled americans. Then of course, immediately upon wondering this, I have to also question why there isn't more support for any and all rights for disabled americans. It is this sort of double-bind disability brings about that makes it a fascinating contradiction in logic. Parents of all abilities have the right to struggle in their roles, in the end, because parenting is a challenge by its very nature, even in ideal circumstances and struggles will come about nonetheless. So it remains, disabled parents face more challenges to parenting, a fact that is self-evident, but they also can face prejudices from the Court during family law cases because of that disability. Troublesome though it is, this is a problem that I suspect will not welcome solution through legislation alone but will require a profound reassessment of what it means and what it should mean to be a parent. It involves more than resources, good decision making, responsibility and morality; indeed, it involves the entire physicality of a person.