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coherent subjects. Instructing new generations of students, they settle their roots in places where the capoeira game will stop being an imported culture to become a locally adapted culture. At the same time, this internationalization is deeply influenced by a migratory dimension. The life stories of Brazilian capoeiristas (the ones who practice capoeira) enable to state that their group’s networks export worldwide a “migratory social capital” acquired in Brazil. As a migratory phenomenon, the capoeira collectives constitute sui generis social nets, distinguished by the specialization of a service offered by Brazilians migrants to other Brazilians, but preferably destined to European and North American people. Simultaneously, these nets consolidate the commerce of “originally Brazilian” capoeira products, therefore activating an economy that changes substantially many Brazilian localities. From this point of view, the global capoeira is a migratory phenomenon that gives rise to a transnational economy. Both this economy and the circulation of people mobilized by the capoeiristas are strongly connected to the net of international localities to which the capoeiristas emigrated. A surprising fact is to be pointed out: these capoeira groups located in globalized cities remain in touch with—and in often many cases are commanded by—their Brazilian headquarters. The complex, symbolical (and yet communitarian) life of the capoeira groups is the key to understand how Brazilian masters—which are usually located in poor communities, and often situated in peripheral stratum of Brazilian society—can still exercise both a leadership and a charismatic authority strong enough to allow them coordinate, command and determine the way their disciples from different nationalities worldwide would live their quotidian experience as capoeiristas. Please send any comments, suggestions and ideas, including photos for future columns, to Annelou Ypeij at
[email protected] or to CEDLA (Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation), Keizersgracht 395-397, 1016 EK Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Society for Linguistic Anthropology J S M P, C E DLAB and ALAB: Lives are on the Line
By James Stanlaw The Defense Language Aptitude Battery (“Dee-Lab”) is the military test used to determine those likely to succeed in learning one of the 50 languages taught at the Defense Language Institute. The DLAB is said to also statistically predict success in particular languages. If candidates score high enough they can apply to study a language in one of four groups: Category I (French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish); Category II (German or Indonesian); Category III (Dari, Hebrew, Hindi, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, SerboCroatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek); and
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Category IV (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean). The University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL)—“Language Research in Service to the Nation”—has updated this test. CASL claims DLAB 2 now incorporates “new cognitive measures, as well as non-cognitive measures such as personality and motivation.” No one is supposed to know what is on the DLAB ahead of time, and those who take it are not supposed to talk about it. Lately, however, more information has come out through the grapevine and the internet. The Navy, under its “cryptology” job description site even has some sample questions, though some claim these are easier than the actual exam. The test is about two hours, consisting of an audio and visual portion. In the audio portion, test-takers are asked to identify stress patterns in nonsense words. Next, an almost-English pig-Latin-like language is presented in a foreign accent. You are told rules for this language and asked to select the correct translation for a short phrase, such as “red car,” from the choices spoken only once. Then new rules are added, like verbs begin and end in –i. Next, you may be asked to extrapolate a rule for tense by looking at example sentences. In the visual portion of the test, you are given a picture and asked to extrapolate some linguistic features of the item presented. You might be given these pictures and glosses: a black dog, black cat and white dog. You are then asked to give a gloss when shown a picture of a white cat. However, in spite of all these efforts at recruitment, the number of US nationals in Afghanistan who speak Dari or Pashto is still quite small. The vast majority of translators are Afghanis who speak English—to varying degrees. The Western media has often questioned their English proficiency. For example, Brian Ross in a Nightline report in September 2010 claimed that more than a quarter of Afghani translators in the battlefield could not speak passable English. CASL again has offered a solution. They are currently validating their ALAB (Afghan Language Aptitude Battery), designed to find Afghanis who will succeed in the Defense Language Institute’s English language program. However, this test differs from DLAB in several significant ways. First, there is a range of nonlinguistic tests for general intelligence (like spatial reasoning). The language analysis test examines things like case marking, using an artificial language as in DLAB. For instance, given these examples—zorit (“farmer”), volip (“the worker”), zorit volipu pigom (“The farmer pushed the worker”)—the test-taker would be asked to translate “The worker pushed the farmer.” But ALAB also tests for ability to be numerically and orthographically literate, as well as being able to transliterate scripts between Dari, Pashto, and the artificial language. The predictive power of DLAB seems supported by several decades of testing by applied linguists. However, ALAB is still new. Never before has the military taken on such a vast and expensive undertaking— a billion and a half dollars to provide intensive English language training from scratch to hundreds of locals during a war. But this is a mission that must be accomplished. As one wrote on The Economist blog, “Yes, training competent linguists is hard. So is … training F-18 pilots. But the American military does [the latter] … in superlative fashion.”
Please send your comments, contributions, news and announcements to SLA contributing editors Jim Stanlaw (
[email protected]) or Mark Peterson (petersm2@ muohio.edu).
Society for Medical Anthropology K R, C E Death, Dying, and Biomedicine: “Thinking with Film” as a Teaching Resource for Medical Anthropologists
By Rafael Wainer (U British Columbia) As medical anthropology gains caché within Schools of Medicine around the globe, we are increasingly asked to contribute to the education of medical students, interns, and practicing physicians. In 2007, I received such an invitation to present a seminar to medical residents and staff physicians at a public hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I decided that a good topic for health care providers (HCP) would be using anthropological perspectives as a platform to explore the complexities of death and dying and how historical, socio-economic, and political changes have altered the relationships between death and dying and biomedicine. I designed the PowerPoint presentation to gradually engage the audience in a discussion about their medical knowledge, practices, and personal experiences linked to multifaceted processes associated with death and dying. My first slide asked the audience to engage in a “free listing” exercise using the word “death,” which produced words such as “anguish,” “powerlessness,” “nothingness,” and “relief.” I asked the audience to keep their list of words in mind while viewing the film clips I was about to show them. During the seminar, many HCP enthusiastically engaged in listening to each other’s experiences related to death and dying, such as examples of particular patients or situations. Occasionally though, audience members had difficulties expressing their feelings and the room was wrapped in silence. At such moments of unease, I used the film clips to visually illustrate particular points, catalyze discussions, and engage the audience in self-reflection and critical thinking.
2AFAEL7AINERATTHE*EWISH#EMETERYIN6ILLA$OMINGUEZ %NTRE2IOS !RGENTINAPhoto courtesy Ana Vivaldi
To structure the seminar, I organized the film clips around three main perspectives germane to end- of-life issues: (1) the dying person’s perspective(s); (2) the www.anthropology-news.org
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physician’s perspective(s); and (3) the surviving family’s perspective(s). To illustrate a dying person’s perspective, I used a short clip (90 seconds between 01:38:13 and 01:39:40) from Isabel Coixet’s 2003 film, My Life without Me (www.imdb.com/title/tt0314412). Set in the contemporary Canada, the film revolves around Ann, who is a 23-year-old working class mother of two who has just found out that she has two months to live. In the film clip, Ann wishes her daughters and husband will continue to live fulfilled lives despite her death. To illustrate a physician’s perspective, I used a longer clip (6 minutes between 00:39:00 and 00:45:08) from Akira Kurosawa’s 1965 film, Red Beard (www.imdb.com/title/ tt0058888). Set in a poor health clinic in preindustrial rural Japan, the film revolves around Dr Niije (aka Red Beard) and an ambitious young intern, Dr Yasumoto. When Yasumoto is reluctantly tasked with attending an elderly patient during the man’s agonized last hours, Red Beard tells the young intern that “Nothing’s so solemn as a man’s last moments. Watch him closely.” To illustrate the perspective of surviving family members, I used a longer clip (4 minutes between 01:30:45 and 01:35:00) from Jim Sheridan’s 2002 film, In America (www.imdb.com/title/tt0298845). Set in the early 1980s, the film revolves around an Irish immigrant family’s first months in New York City as they cope with daily stressors associated with living in extreme poverty, their new surroundings, and the father’s unresolved grief over the death of their two-year-old son, Frankie. I used these film clips to illustrate my argument that historical, socio-economic, and political changes have deeply altered the relationship between death and dying and biomedicine for patients and HCP. Drawing on, for example, Philippe Ariès’ work regarding the Western “invisibilization” of death, I compared and contrasted Ann’s decision to not disclose her terminal illness to her family with Red Beard’s order to Yasumoto to maintain a respectful vigil at the bedside of their dying patient. Such film clips can graphically illustrate the multiplicity and simultaneity of perspectives that are co-producing end-of-life processes. Since that 2007 seminar for HCP in Buenos Aires, I continue to draw inspiration from film as a powerful resource for creating spaces for self-reflection and collective critical thinking among many different audiences— from undergraduate anthropology students to HCP— on the complex relationships between death and dying and biomedicine. To submit contributions to this column please contact SMA Contributing Editor Kathleen Ragsdale (kathleen.
[email protected]).
Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology J H, C E As the incoming SUNTA Secretary, Susan Falls of the Savannah College of Art and Design will be editing this column in future. May she find this process as enjoyable www.anthropology-news.org
as I have. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with AAA and SUNTA members on a different level. Thank you to everyone who supported this column through their kind “Keep up the good work” messages or by submitting essays. These research summaries are a reminder of the range of urban and rural research, community projects, and advocacy groups in which SUNTA members participate, and their significance and scope that crosscuts national boundaries. In keeping with the scope of SUNTA, the essays members volunteered for this column focused on urban life, and migrants’ journeys and adjustments to and in their new homes. Among the former, Erick Castellanos and Elizabeth Gilmour explored the choices made by residents of New York City boroughs where fast food restaurants outnumber locations selling fresh fruits and vegetables. Writing about Oaxaca, Mexico, I examined teacher union labour actions—which include strikes, marches and human roadblocks—that brought a normally bustling capital city to a standstill as a means of protesting neoliberal policies. More recently, Margaret Baurley and Dan Branstrator’s essay highlighted ways their knowledge of and relationship to the city changed when they became involved with the members of an Indianapolis neighborhood association while participating in an ethnographic field school. Essays on migration and transnationalism examined communities in the United States and abroad. In the first volunteered column in my tenure, Laura de Luca examined the compelling question of the “new humanitarianism” and aid provided to Sudanese refugees—and particularly the “Lost Girls”—who relocated to Colorado. Shortly after, Ana Croegaert analyzed the financial orientation of Bosnian refugees in Chicago, whose housing choices provided differing degrees of security for them. Barbara Waldern contributed a fascinating perspective on her experiences as a North American teaching English in Korea, where food options and language were constant reminders that she was a guest in a foreign land. Two articles explored what it’s like for South American’s lived in North America and Europe: Deborah Altamirano’s discussion of return migration and repatriation among transnational Chileans living in Canada and Santiago. Maria Tapias and Xavier Escandel analyzed ways that Bolivians living in Spain process and perceive the migratory experience. In another, Wendy Vogt explored the harsh realities of Central American migrants’ experiences in Mexico vis-à-vis representations in popular films. Two authors wrote about Maya communities in the United States. Ronald Loewe discussed the efflorescence of Maya culture in Guatemala and the California diaspora. Lisa Maya Knauer provided her experiences of working with members of a Massachusetts Maya K’iche’ community to accurately represent their histories. Tamar Diana Wilson provided an analysis of ways the recession in the U.S. economy has reduced remittances going to Mexico and the numbers of migrants seeking their fortunes in el norte. Invited essays written by recipients of the SUNTA Undergraduate and Graduate Student Paper Prize highlighted cutting edge local level research with global implications, whether “leaky” water systems in Mumbai (Nikhil Anand), urban gardens in Havana (Marina Gold), or HIV-educational programs in South Africa (Theodore Powers). Similarly, these students’
research engages the symbolism of protest imagery, ranging from is graffiti at Oscar Wilde’s grave (Hannah McElgunn) to the anti-colonial cum anti-neoliberal sentiments expressed by Caribbean vendors (Adom Philogene Heron). You’ll be hearing from Susan as 2012 begins. Please send your photos and essays for this column to her at
[email protected]. With Anthropology News available online, this really is a great way to share your research with colleagues and students. Incoming contributing editor Susan Falls can be contacted at
[email protected].
Society for Visual Anthropology W D, C E This month, we share experiences from elementary school educators and pre-service teachers following a Narrative Book Arts workshop.
!LEXSBOOKPhoto courtesy of the artist Alex Hruby
Narrative Book Arts: Hands-on Workshop
By Patrick Lindhardt (Ringling C), Tary Wallace (U South Florida Sarasota-Manatee) and Wendy Dickinson (Ringling C) The College of Education (U South Florida) offers a course entitled, Creative Experiences for the Child
3PAGHETTIBOOKPhoto courtesy of the artist Natasha Vincent
