BLOOMSBURG STATE COLLEGE Bloomsburg Pennsylvania Department of Philosophy/Anthropology ANTHROPOLOGY NEWSLETTER Vol. 3, No. 6 March 1979 Summer School 1979 The Master Class Schedule Booklets for the Summer Sessions 1979 have just become available. Students currently enrolled may schedule sunnner courses any time from March 1 until the end of the spring semester in the Office of Extended Programs, WAB. Because all but one anthropology course is listed as TBA in the schedule, we thought you'd like to know who is scheduled to teach each course. 46.100 46.100 46.200 46.320 46.440 46.480 General Anthropology - Session I - Solenberger General Anthropology - Session V - Reeder Cultural Anthropology - Session III - Minderhout Contemporary World Cultures (SW Trip) - Reeder & Minderhout Language & Culture - Session III - Minderhout Religion & Magic - Session VII - Reeder We hope this will help you plan your schedule and inform your friends. Book Review At first glance, The Cult of the Wild by Boyce Rensberger (Doubleday 1978) is just another animal book urging us to conserve our wildlife heritage. However, once you begin reading, the book lives up to its cover advertising as "myth-shattering." Why is this book being reviewed in an anthropology publication? Well, basically, there are two reasons: (1) the book chronicles the long history of the interrelationships between animals and man and (2) much of the book is based on E. 0. Wilson's Sociobiology. There are, as we all know, good animals and bad animals: sly, crafty foxes, innocent lambs, proud peacocks, scavenging hyenas, and proud, majestic lions. As Rensberger points out, in reality animals don't have th~se qualities; humans impose their own motives and evaluations on them. Not only does this affect the animal population (scavenging hyenas are killed; proud lions are preserved), but it has affected scientific appraisal of many of them. Rensberger looks at the work of recent ethologists and devotes individual chapters to some of the most prominent animals, including chapters on baboons and gorillas, in order to set the story straight. As it turns out, for instance, it's the hyenas who make the kills and then get driven away from their prey by scavenging lions. Attacking the Lorenz-Ardrey position in his chapter on murder, Rensberger argues that humans are no more inclined to murder than other mammals and that in fact some mannnals, such as lions, have a higher murder rate than humans do. Man the hunter, yes; man, the bloodthirsty, aggressive ape, no. I should point out that Rensberger is proconservation. But, he argues, what about the needs of the growing populations of Africa, Asia, and Latin· America? What right do we have in the Western world, after having destroyed most of our own wildlife in the name of progress, to say that land-starved Africans have to preserve thousands of acres for elephants--for our pleasure as tourists? A realistic balance must be struck between the needs of the animals and the needs of humans. Furthermore, he argues, we should conserve not out of a naive sense of what we think an animal is, but with a clear concept of what they're really like: not cute or cuddly, but unique unto themselves. All in all, this controversial book is well worth reading. Information Please The anthropology faculty are constantly receiving notices of graduate programs, field schools, and archaeological opportunities. While some of these are posted on the Anthropology Bulletin Board and in 219 Bakeless, there isn't room to post them all, If you're interested, just ask. For instance, the faculty just received a 2 brochure from Loyola University of Chicago. Loyola is offering a Master's Program in what they call Public Anthropology. This degree is oriented towards the development of skills directly applicable to opportunities in non-academic fields of employment. The emphasis is on urban research and planning with cross-cultural opportunities in Latin America. The application deadline is Apri.l 15, 1979. Dr. Minderhout has this brochure if you're interested. Anthropology Majors The following students have either declared the Sociology/Anthropology major to the Registrar or have announced their intentions to do so to the faculty. Get to know your fellow majors. If you're not on this list, and you think you should be, contact one of the faculty. Lesly Barr Susan Barron Jeff Bohlin Carl Borkland Mark Bujno Debbie Cardene Al Casterline Cathy Davis Jim Davis Mike Dinsmore Jan Dunlevey Tim Eldredge Janice Gitomer Doug Gross Chris Hagner Steve James Judi Johnson Bruce Kelly Dave Kowalewski Brent Lees Sue Lilly Jeff Long Debbie Martinez Kim Osborne Linda Price Mary Ann Rubbo Linda Scheier Karen Schick Jim Schriver Cliff Tillman Wally Yuslum Keith Zoba Trese Zoba M.A.N. Club News The M.A.N. Club plans a meeting at 6:30 p.m., Monday, March 26, in the Green Room, Kehr Union, to plan outdoor archaeological reconnaissance trips on Saturdays during April and May. Indian artifacts should be 's urfacing in the fields following spring plowing. The archaeological survey of the Danville-Riverside area, mentioned last month, has been completed by Solenberger and Kowalewski and will be reported on at this meeting. We now have map locations for over 15 nearby sites where artifacts have been found and the routes of four important historic Indian trails. Another promising place for investigation is a swamp area where present and prehistoric ecology can be compared. All students in Anthropology, Biology or Earth Science-Geology are invited to attend and to suggest further indoor or outdoor activities. Anthropology Satire by David M. Smith (Associate Professor of Anthropology & Education, University of Pennsylvania). Bronislaw Malinowski got himself stranded in the Trobriand Islands during World War I. This was a fateful event in the history of anthropology. Not only did he keep a journal that revealed a struggle with lustful thoughts that would exhaust even Jimmy Carter, but he set a standard for every anthropologist who followed. He adopted a tribe. The Trobriand Islanders became his. It soon became apparent that this was the only way to do anthropology. No one dared call himself an anthropologist unless he could talk about "his" tribe--nor could he get tenure. The scramble for tribes started. Anthropologists roamed the world over with a prospector's zeal not even matched by Occidental Petroleum. (Malinowski created. another problem. Since he had a lot of time to kill, he was able to analyze everything important to the field of anthropology. Every anthropologist since has been reduced to studying trivia.) This wasn't bad at first. The supply of tribes seemed almost inexhaustible. And so things might have gone had not Margaret Mead come on the scene. She wrote about sex and anthropology went public. Everybody wanted to get into the act. (There is no evidence to suggest a statistical correlation between anthropology's hallowed tradition of participant observation-based fieldwork and its curious interest in describing sexual practices.) Many did. By 1960 at least one anthropologist had emerged from the closets 3 of each sociology department in the country. offices, and finally, whole departments. They began by demanding desks, then However, the world wasn't ready for anthropology. Nor were anthropologists ready for the world. Chaos reigned. Those who could, the purists, beat a retreat to the University of Pennsylvania and talked the trustees into building a fortress with a wide moat around it. The annual meeting changed from decorous, intimate family gatherings where evenings were spent viewing lantern slides of the past year's field excursions to boisterous headaches for the country's major convention hotels. Not only would thirteen blue-jeaned students and assistant professors crash into each room, but they refused to use the hotel's valet service or to drink its booze. (My field observations indicate that anthropologists don't drink less, but they tend to bring their own stuff from home. Contrary to popular opinion, this isn't because they are cheaper than psychologists. It's a carry-over from their field experiences where the first rule is "Never drink the local water.") In the colleges and universities the professors who had failed to make the drawbridge into Penn were forced to rethink the underlying philosophy of the discipline. Some of the upstart, post-World War II students thought that their studies should prepare them for a career. This challenged the time honored notion that "real anthropologists" only teach other anthropologists so they can teach their students to be anthropologists in turn. (Fortunately, we seem to have weathered this crisis. Anyone who can afford to go to college today obviously doesn't have to worry about earning a living later.) Most troubling, however, was the effect this upsurge in the popularity of the discipline had on depleting the world's reserves of unclaimed tribes. By 1963 it was obvious that there just weren't going to be enough to go around. Several· less than ingenious solutions were discussed. Some thought that college enrollment should be limited or even that academic standards should be enacted to cut down on the number of students. However, this would have meant going back to the closets, and most anthropologists now had offices so cluttered with field memorabilia that this was impractical. Suggestions to divide up tribes, to send teams to a single tribe, to engage in extraterrestrial explorations or to create fictitious tribes were all met with similar objections. The problem was compounded by those few, like Colin Turnbull, who claimed more than one tribe. He laid claim to both the Mouti Pygmies and the Ik. This was a particularly controversial case. Some thought he should be allowed two tribes since the Pygmies weren't very big anyway. Others were skeptical of the authenticity of the Ik study. They reasoned that if these people were so degenerate, how come they hadn't left Turnbull to die of starvation on the mountainside. Charity prevailed. The anthropological establishment passed a belated code of professional ethics. However, this attacked only an infinitesimal part of the problem. Besides the code had about as many teeth as an old Eskimo woman after fifty years of chewing moccasins. The only sanction of two-tribe anthropologists was to urge department chairmen to assign them eight a.m. classes of male undergraduates. The result has been a disturbing disintegration of the whole social order and an individual sense of anomie with bizarre manifestations. The rise in mushroom consumption is only one. Some anthropologists have taken the unthinkable step of accepting government employment, of working for wages or even panhandling. A few have totally freaked out and have "gone native." Marrying native women, they are content to pass their days hoeing corn, telling stories, and raising naked children. In the fall of 1976 I found myself an anthropologist without a job and without a tribe. Being allergic to mushrooms and embarrassed by naked children, I chose to nurse my 4 depression in a Philadelphia bar. Years before I found that gin and tonic was effective in staving off malaria. This was one peril I was determined to avoid in Philadelphia. My prudence paid off. By sheerest luck I discovered a virgin tribe right under my nose, so to speak • • • (to be continued) Ethnographic Facts While the U.S. and other industrialized countries find themselves in an energy crunch because of petroleum supplies, it is hard to realize that in most poorer nations, 90% of the people depend on firewood for cooking and heat. More wood is cut each year in the world for firewood than for construction, paper, or other products such as rayon. With each person needing firewood using roughly a ton a year, and with the increasing world population, there is another energy crisis--firewood. As one Indian official put it: "Even if we somehow grow enough food for our people in the year 2000, how in the world will they cook it?" The firewood shortage is already severe. In some countries in West Africa, villagers have to walk as far as 40 kilometers to find firewood. For those who cannot gather their own, firewood is for sale, but at ever increasing prices: up to one-quarter of the budget of a family in Niger can go to firewood. As the readily available wood disappears, people have taken to poaching on national forest preserves. One of the innnediate consequences is erosion as hillsides are denuded of vegetation. The Mexican government, for instance, has forbidden woodcutting on hillsides; this forestalls erosion but aggravates the fuel situation. Alternative fuel sources are not yet practical: oil and kerosene are too expensive and solar and methane technology are still out-of-reach for a peasant family. The basic alternative is to burn dried animal dung, a pattern already well established in many countries, such as India. But burning the dung makes it unavailable as fertilizer for overworked agricultural land. The most successful solutions lie in reforestation programs. The Chinese government has had one established fo~ 25 years, and the South Korean government for 10. But these long-term solutions, while entirely desirable, do little to alleviate the innnediate need. Philosophy-Anthropology Journal Several students and faculty have been discussing an interdisciplinary student-faculty journal for BSC. We would like to produce an issue this spring, but we need papers. If you are interested in contributing research papers, poetry, or original art work to a journal, please contact Steve James, Scott Zinnnerman, Marjorie Clay, or Dave Minderhout. Point-Counterpoint In the December issue, John McVeigh presented the case for using animals in experiments. In this issue, Steve James presents the rebuttal to the McVeigh article. It is not my purpose in defending the rights of animals from the sometime cruel and inhumane treatment experienced during experimentation to naively propose a ban on all animal experimentation. The benefits derived from certain experiments undoubtedly outnumber the cost to those animals. What is important for those who must form an opinion on the issue of animal rights is to be aware of the logic of both sides of the controversy. My goal then is to present the precepts of those supporting the doctrine of animal equality and to show the need for qualifying restrictions on the use of animals in the lab. The philosophical doctrine of animal rights is essentially an extrapolation from the notion of human rights. Equality is viewed as a state of mind, a means of moral reckoning. It is not, as most people believe, an assumption of fact. The principle of equality is not a description of alleged actual equality of human beings; it is a prescription of how human beings should be treated. (Singer, 1975.) When justifying racism, sexism or individual type superiority people have pointed to intelligence, strength and might makes right to support their case. These hierarchial arrangers have 5 missed the point. Equality does not disregard actual differences in ability or intelligence; it questions the correlating of these differences with the amount of consideration we give a person. In reply to assertions from whites that blacks and women lacked intelligence, black feminist Sojourner Truth stated the idea quite well. ''What does this so-called intelligence have to do with women's or black's rights? If my cup wouldn't hold but a pint and yours a full quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure?" While there are doubts about differences, the question is, should these differences be paralleled with how we view or treat others. Those supporting animal experimentation have used for the crux of their argument the idea that experiments are justified because animals are less developed and thus inferior to humans. Again, differences are being correlated with the consideration one receives and thus treatment. Like those opposing women's an_d black' s rights, the proponents of animal experimentation have missed the fundamental concept of equality. Looking at ethnographic data, one becomes aware of the varying cultural attitudes concerning man's place in nature. The Western world tends to consider man as dominant over nature and sometimes over his fellow man. Tracing the development of Western thought, the idea of speciesism (the bias of one towards one's own species) runs throughout. The Romans delighted at the sight of animals being slain. Christian doctrine clearly separates man from beast as can be seen in the early and later attacks of Darwin's evolution. Two thousand years of Western philosophical development produced at most ten notables who saw injustice in the inhumane treatment of animals. Even Descarte, an enlightened man of the Renaissance, saw no wrong in dissecting live dogs hung crucifix style on a board to examine the circulatory system. (Lecky,. 1869.) Since history is in some sense a formula of the present, it is not hard to put the attitudes concerning animals today into context. Philosophical arguments or an understanding of the history of speciesism is not enough to verify the stand of those supporting animal rights but as one looks through the literature on animal experiments one intuitively senses something is wrong. Dogs are hung from hammocks and delivered shocks in sensitive areas to see what behavioral patterns emerge i.n response to inescapable shock. Pigeons are starved to 60% or 70% of their normal weight to insure the proper responses to behavior modification treatment. Monkeys are raised in total isolation to see if neurotic or anti-social .behavior follows. It has been estimated that up to 60 million animals are used in experiments in a year's time. (Ryder, 1972.) Even more inhumane than the actual experiments is the fact that the majority of the experimental results cannot be extrapolated to human beings because of behavioral and physiological differences of the subjects. More telling is that in some of the experiments, laboratory procedures do not reveal natural behavior, only forced behavior. Experiments carried out in natural settings, although more difficult to carry out, are often more truthful in their results. Until recently this type of experimentation has gone unused. When I think of the word "researcher," I do not conjure up images of a Dr. Frankenstein in a white lab jacket dealing Mephistopheles-like evil. I cannot reject the researcher's desire to in some way aid the development of mankind. I see much to be commended in the actions of certain researchers in trying to establish more ethical practices towards animals. What is needed in the controversy is for those carrying out this type of research to at all times consider the ethical implications of their work. It is only fair to weigh the costs and benefits of their research in terms of human lives AND animal suffering.