Loomnie

By Alexis Okeowo for More Intelligent Life.

If you have not heard of Mexico’s native blacks, you are not alone. The story that has been passed down through generations is that their ancestors arrived on a slave boat filled with Cubans and Haitians, which sank off Mexico’s Pacific coast. The survivors hid away in fishing villages on the shore. The story is a myth: Spanish colonialists trafficked African slaves into ports on the opposite Gulf coast, and slaves were distributed further inland. The persistence of this story explains the reluctance of many black Mexicans to embrace the label “Afro”, and why many Mexicans assume black nationals hail from the Caribbean.

Colonial records show that around 200,000 African slaves were imported into Mexico in the 16th and 17th centuries to work in silver mines, sugar plantations and cattle ranches. But after Mexico won its independence from Spain, the needs of these black Mexicans were ignored.

Some Afro-Mexican activists identify themselves as part of the African diaspora. Given their rejection from Mexican culture, this offers a more empowering cultural reference. But with no collective memory of slavery (it was officially abolished in Mexico in 1822), or of any time in Africa before then, Afro-Mexicans are considerably removed from their African roots.

Full article.

Plus, a tiny little bit about Blacks in Germany.

If you count the book sales on Amazon and plot them according to frequency, the curve hugs the vertical and horizontal axes, indicating a few very large numbers (the blockbusters) and many small ones (the ‘long tail’ of books like yours and mine). This is a typical manifestation of something called a ‘power-law’ distribution. This is a relationship between the size and frequency of a variable, where the frequency decreases faster than the size increases. If the data are plotted on a log-log scale, the result is a straight line sloping down from left to right. Thus an earthquake that is twice as strong will occur four times more rarely. If this pattern holds for earthquakes of all sizes, it is said to ‘scale’, meaning that there is no typical size that could be said to be representative of earthquakes as a class of phenomena, as is the case with normal distributions. Power laws are found in a wide range of natural and manmade instances. But research on them has grown rapidly in recent decades. Power laws have been discovered for the frequency of words used in natural language; and the distribution of molecular reactions in cells reveals a few hubs linked to most reactions and many weakly connected molecules.

Keith Hart in the essay goes on to discuss the science of networks, the differences in the ability of people to act as hubs or connectors in networks, and the paradigm shift in ideologies that accept the inevitability of, say, inequality in income distribution.

This whole paradigm shift in scientific and statistical models coincides with the breakdown of the nation-state’s monopoly of society and with it the corporatist premises of twentieth century economy, such as jobs for life and social planning. For three decades neo-conservative liberals subordinated national economy to global markets; and the digital revolution has given us a new emergent model of society in the internet. The norm of this new world market was stark inequality. The egalitarian premises of nation-states, seeking to curb capitalism’s polarizing tendencies, gave way to a world society where the winner takes all. All of this has been thrown into stark relief by the economic crisis of 2008-9. But for now the power-law is king. It’s a different model of statistics, for sure. Perhaps it captures society poised between national and world forms. Or maybe we reverted temporarily to the imbalance between market and state typical of the Gilded Age, before national regulation aspired to curb domestic capitalism. The pressing political question for humanity, now given a new urgency by the collapse of the credit boom, remains whether new forms of association will enable us to harness the polarities of the network economy for common ends.

The whole article.

Our hunch is that its place [culture in development] has already shifted since we wrote Seeing Culture Everywhere. On the one hand, there is China and David Brooks. On the other, there is a new trend in “development thinking” around the World Bank and elsewhere (like Narayan. Pritchett and Kapoor’s Moving out of Poverty and Jessica Cohen and William Easterly’s What Works in Development) that seem to abandon the term altogether and focus on micro-scale interventions – rightly, we believe.

That is from Joana Breidenbach and Nyiri Pal, guest bloggers at Savage Minds. Read the whole post here.

Nigerian-born singer, Nneka, performs on David Letterman’s show. Someone writes on Twitter, ‘it feels good to hear ‘Nigeria’ being mentioned for something good on US National TV. …’

I wrote about her first album a couple of years ago here.

Sola Odunfa, Nigerian journalist, writes in an article on the BBC website:

I often ask myself: Should Nigeria break up, how many countries will it produce?

I am not aware that any three of its more than 200 ethnic groups sincerely agree so much as to come together in a peaceful independent state.

There is so much distrust that any major national crisis can only lead to civil wars here and there but at the end of the day the leaders will contrive a common interest and settle for a truce.

That is what I think. Breaking up is hard to do, especially so in the case of Nigeria.

I’ve met many people who say that Nigeria should break up, and I quickly tell them that the problem with Nigeria is not simply that there are too many and too different ethnic groups in the country. The bad eggs leaders are not going to go away with a breakup; they are actually going to be the ones who take over power in whatever nations are formed after a breakup.

Besides, how many countries would we have after the breakup? Many people argue along the lines of the three biggest ethnic groups. But then, in each of the three regions, there are several minority ethnic groups, and the picture that one sees in the Nigerian nation – of ethnic groups feeling marginalised because they belong in the minority – will be replicated in each of the three new nations that are formed along those large ethnic lines.

And then there is the issue of the Niger Delta…

It seems we are stuck with what we have; thinking about how to make it work is what we should be doing.

Theme song: Neil Sedaka’s Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Just learnt of him through NPR’s A Blog Supreme. A short bio:

Loueke was born in Benin, studied music in the Ivory Coast as a teenager, did further jazz-specific training in Paris for five years and finally ended up with a Berklee scholarship. In Boston, he met his trio: Swedish bassist Massimo Biolcati, who has an Italian name, and drummer Ferenc Nemeth, who grew up in a small town in Hungary. On Mwaliko, he also collaborates with Angelique Kidjo — also from Benin — and the Congolese-born Richard Bona. Loueke uses his jazz skills, forged in the crucibles of conservatories, to revisit songs and ideas he learned back in Cotonou. Obversely, some of the unique techniques he practices — even on the album’s unabashedly “jazz” tunes — were inspired by sounds he remembers from his childhood.

Check out this video of a live performance with Herbie Hancock

CLINT EASTWOOD’S “Invictus” has given Morgan Freeman, a 72-year-old ever-rising cinematic star from Memphis, Tennessee, his best chance yet to show what a canny actor he is. The year is 1995, just 14 months after South Africa’s first multiracial elections. Nelson Mandela wants to use the rugby World Cup, for white South Africans the absolute pinnacle of sport, to prevent the veneer of social unity from being rent asunder. Mr Freeman plays Mandela as a man both burdened and blessed by having become a living icon after years of political struggle, many of them spent as the world’s most famous political prisoner. But the newly elected President Mandela is determined to make use of his image rather than letting it use him, and no director could understand this better than Mr Eastwood, who has always kept ahead of his audience by ringing unexpected changes on his own star persona. The confluence of these three wily men—Mr Freeman, Mr Eastwood and Mr Mandela—has given birth to a perfect storm of a character study.

Full review.

1. Unmet promises tied to ebb of truce in Niger Delta – NYTimes

2. No. 1 above has led to attacks, which in turn have led to Shell announcing on Sunday that it had shut down three pumping stations in the region – Reuters

3. Gaddafi goes, Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi in, as AU chairman – FT

4. No. 3 above makes Gaddafi angry with African leaders – Reuters

5. One major hindrance to trade in West Africa? Road transportation – NEXT

6. Another answer to No. 5 above? Differences in monetary and trade policies – Here

7. Traditional rulers in Ondo State of Nigeria who give land to marijuana farmers will from now on be charged to court – NEXT

In the powerful essay “Africa’s Tarnished Name,” for example, he returns to his highly polemical 1975 assessment of Joseph Conrad’s racism in “Heart of Darkness.” Adamantly refusing the notion that the British writer’s portrayal of African barbarity might be excused by his socio-historical context, Achebe makes Conrad, the man, answerable for the offensive stereotypes he promulgates as a writer. Comparing Conrad’s novel to other European portraits of Africa and its peoples, Achebe concludes that “without doubt, the times in which we live influence our behavior, but the best or merely the better among us . . . are never held hostage by their times.”

That is from a New York Times review of Chinua Achebe’s book of essays, “The Education of a British-Protected Child”.

“Recycling Textile Technologies”

A workshop to be held at the Department of Anthropology,
University College London,
on June 14th 2010

This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together researchers who work
on textile recycling, including anthropologists, geographers,
historians, political economists, designers, and materials scientists.
This is with a view to develop a research agenda that explores
innovation in textile recycling technologies in the widest sense, and
how these succeed or fail in becoming socially embedded. Textile
recycling activities, as socio-technical systems, arise in specific
cultural contexts within global trading patterns, and their study may
incorporate the underlying relationships between people and things, raw
materials and technologies and the emergence of entrepreneurs and
innovators in social networks amongst other (f)actors.

We see at least three possible clusters of themes emerging, but welcome
further ideas:

1. Reinventing Old Solutions to New Problems?

Industrial recycling practises are specific, historically situated
socio-technical systems. While pre-industrial papermaking industries
used rags as a source of raw materials, 19th century textile mills
looked to recycled clothing as a cheaper source of raw material for the
wool shoddy industries. In the 21st century, the problem has changed to
what to do with mountains of cast-off clothing, and this drives the
search for technologically solutions appropriate to diverse cultural
contexts. Anthropological understandings of technology embrace
materials, makers, designers, and users in a relational networks
including socio-economic, political, and legal factors. In this broader
context, how are some old technologies being reinvented for the future,
and in what fields are new technologies being successfully developed?

2. The value of knowledge and skills in cultural contexts

As different cultures have developed different somatic skills and
practices, we wish to investigate the importance of tacit knowledges to
recycling. Consideration of these embedded knowledges within the global
perspective raises a number of questions specific to the processing of
waste textiles. How are knowledge and skills valued differently within a
textile waste industry compared to primary production? How intimately do
you need to know used textiles in order to process them effectively, and
how do differing levels of entanglement affect your social status within
a recycling system? For those who are bodily engaged with waste, how
valuable are these tacit knowledges and are they acknowledged by others?
And what are the cultural specificities of the valuing of people and
skills within different textile waste sectors? For example, there are
differences in skills and status between an immigrant rag sorter in a UK
factory, an illiterate migrant woman cutting up rags in an Indian shoddy
factory and the designer creating eco-textiles from recycled materials.
Do these differences come down to a narrowing of knowledge domains? Are
these limitations the only factors affecting personal value ranking
within global systems?

3. Networks of global trade

Since at least the early 19thC rags have been globally traded for reuse
and recycling industries. Many rag businesses are family businesses that
have been trading for generations, and have nurtured valuable networks
of business contacts that span the developed and developing world in
both directions. The movement of second-hand textiles across the globe
both creates social relations and at the same time is enabled by
pre-existing social contacts. Why is it difficult to start up a new rag
trade business? A related question is what can waste do as an actor in
international trade? For example, how does the trade in second-hand
clothing and textile waste facilitate the movement of other goods along
similar networks? To what extent is textile waste trade a conduit for
other licit and illicit goods? How might the degrees of regulatory
frameworks surrounding waste enable or inhibit other flows of goods, and
is this conducive to it becoming the visible front for invisible
commodity exchange? Is this particular to textiles, to waste or raw
materials in general?

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words by Feb 28th to:
Lucy Norris lucy.norris@ucl.ac.uk AND Julie Botticello
j.botticello@ucl.ac.uk
Department of Anthropology, UCL.

This workshop is being initiated as part of the ESRC project, the Waste
of the World
www.thewasteoftheworld.org